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Crowning nearly 50 years of scholarship, David Tod Roy翻譯社 professor emeritus in East Asian Languages and Civilizations翻譯社 has published the fifth and final volume of his translation of The Plum in the Golden Vase or, Chin P’ing Mei. The late sixteenth-century novel, written anonymously, is considered a masterpiece of Ming-era Chinese literature.

 

Since Princeton University Press released Roy’s first volume of the translation in 1993, scholars have praised his masterful translation and painstaking research. Along with extensive annotations, Roy has provided the first complete European-language version of the intricate novel, which chronicles the rise and fall of a corrupt middle-class merchant, his six wives, and his concubines.

 

This past spring and summer, Roy翻譯社 80翻譯社 spoke about his lifelong affair with the Chin P’ing Mei in interviews and at a series of workshops with graduate students. His reflections—taken from those conversations—are excerpted here.

 

 

最後一卷在2013年9月出書。

他在1982年起頭翻譯《金瓶梅》，在2012年完成了翻譯工作。

In Dr. Roy’s words:

Without a doubt, I would not be where I am without Dr. Roy’s work.Just last month, the New York Times published the article I quote from above:
David Tod Roy Completes His Translation of ‘Chin P’ing Mei’

In this second of a planned five-volume series, David Roy provides a complete and annotated translation of the famous Chin P'ing Mei, an anonymous sixteenth-century Chinese novel that focuses on the domestic life of His-men Ch'ing, a corrupt, upwardly mobile merchant in a provincial town, who maintains a harem of six wives and concubines. This work, known primarily for its erotic realism, is also a landmark in the development of narrative art--not only from a specifically Chinese perspective but in a world-historical context.

I started dreaming of what it might be like to study traditional Chinese literature at the University of Chicago, where Dr. Roy still worked tirelessly on his translation. My advisor patiently helped me with reading through some of the novel in Chinese, one chapter per week for two semesters. It was the first Chinese literature that captured my attention so deeply that I found myself caring about the characters. Laughing at their jokes. Feeling sad at their deaths.

One of the Chin P’ing Mei’s many wonders is how it immerses its readers into a complex, dizzying world of 16th century Chinese color翻譯社 food, smell, sound翻譯社 song翻譯社 poem, and even a couple baojuan. In order to understand that world and faithfully render it into English翻譯社 Dr. Roy had to first understand all the pieces that fed into the novel’s plot. As such, his office is packed, floor to ceiling, with thousands of books gathered in the years since his teenage shopping expeditions in Nanjing. Even a few from then.

Sixty-three years ago, David Tod Roy was, as the New York Times puts it, “a 16-year-old American missionary kid looking for a dirty book” at a used book store in Nanjing, China. The book? The Chin P’ing Mei (金瓶梅), a 100-chapter vernacular novel from 16th century China. It relates the intricate details of daily life a fictional polygynous family, including graphic descriptions of sex. The novel follows the main character, Ximen Qing翻譯社 from the time he acquires extreme wealth翻譯社 five wives翻譯社 fame and sexual stamina to the tragic and graphic dissipation of his estate, family, and life.A mere nine years ago, on 12/21/2004, I submitted the final paper in my first ever Chinese literature class. The paper was on my understanding of how Confucianism figured into the moral framework of that very novel Dr. Roy went looking for, all those years ago.

他回想說，他和他弟弟在中國長大，他們花了兩年時候浏覽過所有3000多頁的初期版《金瓶梅》。

他曾經說他第一次接觸16世紀的中國小說《金瓶梅》是在1949-50年和父母在南京生活的時辰。

 

 

 

 

David Roy: My parents went to China as Presbyterian missionaries in 1930 and spent their first two years in Beijing attending an intensive Chinese language program. My father was very good at learning languages and eventually lectured in Chinese at the University of Nanjing as a professor in the philosophy department. They moved to Nanjing in 1932 and I was born there in 1933 in the Drum Tower Hospital.

 

Our family returned to the United States on furlough in 1936. When the Sino-Japanese war broke out in 1937翻譯社 the University of Nanjing moved to Chengdu翻譯社 the capital of Sichuan province. We returned to China in 1938 and stayed in Chengdu until 1945.

 

I had a very adventurous childhood. In 1938–39 the Japanese bombed Chengdu, sometimes five or six times a week. Fortunately there was a very good air-raid warning system so we would spend the night in a dugout in our yard. Because of this the Canadian School, which I attended, closed down and moved to the countryside. My younger brother [J. Stapleton Roy, US Ambassador to China, 1991–95] and I were tutored by faculty members from the various universities in the city. We didn’t have any formal schooling between 1939 and 1945.

 

We returned to the United States while my father got his PhD at Princeton from 1945 to 1948. When we got back to China, I went to boarding school at the Shanghai American School for the 1948–49 academic year. The civil war in China was going on and every few weeks the Communist armies got closer to Nanjing and Shanghai. My parents decided that since they had gone to China as missionaries翻譯社 their purpose was to communicate their faith regardless of the political situation. Instead of fleeing from the Communists, they decided to see if they could stick it out.

 

The Shanghai American School had about 400 students when the school year started. Every time the Communist army moved closer, a certain number of parents would withdraw their kids and send them back to the United States or wherever they came from. By May 1949, when the Communists took the city, there were only 16 of us left out of the original 400. In fact, I took my final exam in tenth-grade geometry the day the Communists marched into Shanghai.