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HENGDIAN, China — The woman who has become one of China’s most-read poets — even hailed as its Emily Dickinson — spent most of her 41 years in a brick farmhouse tucked away behind trees and surrounded by wheat fields.
然后，在2014年，她的生活改变了。 “Across China, everything is happening: volcanoes erupting, rivers running dry, prisoners and exiles are abandoned, elk and red-crowned cranes are under fire. “大半个中国，什么都在发生：火山在喷，河流在枯，一些不被关心的政治犯和流民，一路在枪口的麋鹿和丹顶鹤。 I brave a hail of bullets to sleep with you. I compress countless dark nights into one dawn to sleep with you.” 我是穿过枪林弹雨去睡你，我是把无数的黑夜摁进一个黎明去睡你。” That year, Yu Xiuhua posted these lines from her poem “Crossing More Than Half of China to Sleep With You” on her blog and created a sensation. Her poems were discovered by Liu Nian, an editor at Poetry, a leading Chinese literary journal. Mr. Liu wrote about her and reprinted some of her works, and by February 2015 two volumes of her poetry had been published: “In Such a Staggering World” and “Moonlight Drops on My Left Hand.” The latter became the best-selling book of poetry in China in 30 years. 那一年，余秀华在她的博客上发布了这首《穿过大半个中国去睡你》，引发了轰动。她的诗歌被中国著名的文学杂志《诗刊》的编辑刘年发现。刘年写了关于她的文章，并转载了她的作品，到2015年2月，她已经出版了两本诗集：《摇摇晃晃的人间》和《月光落在左手上》，后者成为了30年来最畅销的中国诗集。 Swarms of journalists descended on her farmhouse, eager to see for themselves the disabled peasant woman who wrote of erotic longing with such startling vividness. She was appointed deputy chairwoman of the Federation of Literary and Art Circles in the nearby city of Zhongxiang. Mr. Liu invited Ms. Yu to a poetry reading at Renmin University of China in Beijing, where she was interviewed by People’s Daily, CCTV and other national news outlets. 一大批记者蜂拥到她的农舍，想要亲眼见见这位把情欲热望写得如此生动的残疾农妇。她被任命为附近钟祥市的文联副主席。刘年邀请她到北京的中国人民大学参加一个读诗会，在那里，她接受了《人民日报》、央视等国家新闻媒体的采访。 Last year saw the release of a documentary about her, “Still Tomorrow,” by the filmmaker Fan Jian, and the publication of another volume of poetry, “We Forget That We Loved.” This year she left China for the first time, appearing at Stanford and other American universities for film showings and seminars. 去年，电影导演范俭拍了一部关于她的纪录片《摇摇晃晃的人间》，她的另一部诗集《我们爱过又忘记》也出版了。今年，她第一次离开中国，出现在斯坦福和其他美国大学的电影放映会和研讨会上。 “I think Yu Xiuhua is China’s Emily Dickinson: extraordinary imagination and a striking power with language,” Shen Rui, a professor at Morehouse College in Atlanta specializing in Chinese literature and feminism, wrote in the preface to “Moonlight Drops on My Left Hand.” “我觉得余秀华是中国的艾米丽·狄金森，出奇的想象，语言的打击力量，”亚特兰大莫斯洛特学院(Morehouse College)的教授、专门从事中国文学和女性主义研究的沈睿在《月光落在左手上》的序言中写道。 For the record, Ms. Yu says she dislikes being compared with Dickinson, whom she has never read. In fact, her grounding in world literature is somewhat lacking, she said on a recent afternoon at her home in Hengdian. 余秀华说她并不喜欢别人将自己和狄金森做比较，她从未读过狄金森的作品。近日的一天下午，她在横店的家中说，她对世界文学的了解有限。 Before she began writing poetry in her late 20s, she said, “I rarely read literature. I only started to read more famous works on my mobile phone after 2006. But I knew how to write before I read.” 余秀华在近30岁的时候开始写诗，她说，在那之前，“我很少读文学。2006年以后，我才开始在手机上看到更多的名著，但是在读它们之前，我就知道如何写作了。” “I like writing poems, because they’re simple and don’t have many words,” she said, speaking haltingly as her mouth twitched. “This suits me because I’m lazy.” “我喜欢写诗，因为它们简单，没有多少字，”她嘴巴抽搐着，断断续续地说道。“这适合我，因为我很懒。” She now lives with her father in a newly built two-story house, a short walk from their old farmhouse. A recent village renovation razed most of the old buildings and moved residents into new housing, but her family home has been preserved as a tribute to a local celebrity. 她现在和父亲住在一栋新建的两层楼房子，距离他们的旧农舍几步之遥。最近一次村里进行翻修的时候，大部分的老房子都被推平了，居民们搬到了新居，但出于对当地名人的尊重，她家老宅被保留下来。 She shrugs off the fame and the labels usually applied to her as a writer: female, peasant, disabled. She claims to be indifferent to readers’ reactions. 她作为一个作家，通常会被贴上这样的标签：女性、农民、残疾人，但她对自己的名声和这些标签并不在意。她还说自己对读者的反应没感觉。 “Writing poems means facing myself, first and foremost, not facing others,” she said. “It’s to express myself. It’s other people’s business whether they respond to my poems. It has nothing to do with me.” “最重要的是，写诗意味着面对我自己，并不是面对别人。”她说：“这是在表达我自己。无论他们回应我的诗与否，那是其他人的事。跟我无关。” And they have responded. In her “Crossing More Than Half of China to Sleep With You,” she goes on to say: 读者的确做出了回应。在《穿过大半个中国去睡你》中，她写道: “There is little difference between me sleeping with you, and you sleeping with me. “睡你和被你睡是差不多的，无非是 It’s no more than a collision of two bodies, composing a force under which the flowers blossom.” 两具肉体碰撞的力，无非是这力催开的花朵。” The poem was widely discussed online, with some condemning it as lewd, while others praised it for channeling the feminist voice of a woman taking the initiative to “sleep with” others. 这首诗在网上引起了广泛的讨论，一些人谴责它淫秽，其他一些人却称赞它表达了一个主动“睡”别人的女性的女权主义声音。 “Her poems, among contemporary Chinese poems, are like putting a murderer among a group of respectable ladies,” wrote Mr. Liu, the Poetry editor. “Everybody else wears fancy clothes, puts on makeup and perfume and readers can’t see a single bead of sweat. But hers are full of smoke and fire — and mud and landslides. Her words are stained with blood.” “她的诗，放在中国女诗人的诗歌中，就像把杀人犯放在一群大家闺秀里一样醒目，”《诗刊》编辑刘年写道。“别人穿戴整齐，涂着脂粉，喷着香水，白纸黑字，闻不出一点汗味，唯独她烟熏火燎，泥沙俱下，字与字之间，还有明显的血污。” Born in 1976 in Hengdian, Ms. Yu never finished high school. At 19 she married a construction worker 12 years older, in a wedding arranged by her parents, who were concerned that she would never be able to care for herself. At 27, she began writing poetry. 余秀华1976年出生于横店，没上完高中。19岁那年，她在父母的安排下，和一个年长她12岁的建筑工人结婚。父母担心她永远都无法照顾自己。27岁那年，她开始写诗。 “I needed to do something to keep my spirit up,” she said. “Each day, I wrote one or two poems, and I felt I had accomplished something.” “我需要做点事情来提神，”她说。“每天，我写一两首诗，就会有成就感。” Many of her writings centered on life in her village. In a poem about the wheat her father grew, she wrote: “Your happiness is the brown wheat hull, your pain the white wheat core.” 她的很多作品都是关于她的农村生活的。在一首有关她父亲种的小麦的诗中，她写道：“你的幸福是一层褐色的麦子皮，痛苦是纯白的麦子心。” And often she writes about love and its turmoils. From her poem “I Am Not Alone”: 她也经常以爱情和它带来的混乱为主题写诗。在《唯独我，不是》中，她写道： “I believe what he has with others is love. It’s only with me that it’s not.” “我相信他和别人的都是爱情。唯独我，不是。” Mr. Fan, the filmmaker, said: “You can read in her poems that she has to suppress her desires. She longs for it, but she’s afraid. She’s never really experienced true love.” 前述电影导演范俭说：“你能在她的诗里读出她不得不压抑自己的欲望。她渴望爱情，但又感到害怕。她其实从来没有经历过真正的爱情。” Ms. Yu concedes her marriage was not successful. “I was too young and didn’t understand it,” she said. “I didn’t love him. He didn’t love me. Our characters weren’t at all compatible.” 余秀华承认自己的婚姻不成功。“我当时太年轻了，不懂，”她说。“我不爱他。他也不爱我。我们的性格一点都不和。” For years, she wanted a divorce, but her husband refused. One factor, she said, was that her husband, who often lived far from home as a migrant worker, had nowhere else to return to. 多年里，她一直想离婚，但她丈夫不愿意。她说，一个原因是经常去离家很远的地方打工的丈夫回来后没有其他地方可去。 Last year, after Ms. Yu received about $90,000 in royalties from her books, she bought a house for him, and the two divorced. Their son attends a university in Wuhan, Hebei’s capital. 去年，在收到大约九万美元（约合60万元人民币）的版税后，余秀华给他买了一处房屋，两人离婚。他们的儿子在湖北省会武汉的一所大学上学。 “My mother wasn’t happy at first, but she was all right later, because she saw I was really happy,” Ms. Yu said. Not long afterward, her mother died of cancer. “我母亲一开始不高兴，但后来就好了，因为她看到我真的很快乐，”余秀华说。不久后，她母亲因癌症去世。 Ms. Yu said of life after her divorce: “This is my best time. I feel great.” She is still scathingly self-critical, though. 谈到离婚后的生活时，余秀华说：“这是我最美好的时光。感觉很好。”但她对自己依然持否定态度。
“我真的长得难看，”她说。“所以找不到男朋友。” For the moment, she has her poems. 暂时，她还有诗。 “What is poetry?” she wrote in an epilogue to “Moonlight.” “I don’t know and can’t tell. It’s when my heart roars, it emerges like a newborn. It’s like a crutch when one walks unsteadily in this unsteady world. Only when I write poetry do I feel complete, at peace and content.” “诗歌是什么呢，”她在《月光》的后记中写道。“我不知道，也说不上来，不过是情绪在跳跃，或沉潜，不过是当心灵发出呼唤的时候，它以赤子的姿势到来，不过是一个人摇摇晃晃地在摇摇晃晃的人间走动的时候，它充当了一根拐杖。于我而言，只有在写诗歌的时候，我才是完整的，安静的，快乐的。” Tang Yucheng自北京对本文有报道贡献。 翻译：纽约时报中文网 |
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