冯亦代·《向日葵》英译

Sunflowers

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Feng Yidai

When I learned from a foreign newspaper that Vincent van Gogh's "Sunflowers" was auctioned off in <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />London for 39 million U.S. dollars, especially when I again saw its photo that I had long missed seeing, I was kind of depressed, as if something were getting away from me, because it was the painting I doted on. I knew I could never be wealthy enough to afford it, but I cherished a great love for it. Now, having fallen into some private collection, it would not be available for the public to appreciate any more. What a pity! I had never had the good luck to see the original but, to me, a masterpiece is like a beauty and when the beauty is claimed by someone else you feel a pain of being deprived of your access to her.

I remember I once had a reproduction of the painting under the same title but its composition was slightly different. I bought it in Shanghai after the War of Resistance against Japan. One day, I was strolling along Shanxi-nan Street when I caught sight of the painting in the window of a small bookstore run by some Russian. It was a copy from the collection of van Gogh's masterpieces. Vincent van Gogh was a master who has been a great influence on modern painting since the 19th century. I do not know much about art, but I enjoy the intense hues with a tinge of forlornness against the brilliance in his paintings. "Sunflowers" is one of the seven masterpieces of a series, four of which were in museums, one damaged in Yokohama, Japan, during World War II and the one auctioned in London was one of the last two in private hands. I took the exquisite reproduction there and then for a quarter of my salary of that month.

I like his "Sunflowers" in particular, with its glorious blossoms glittering like pearls, but the blossoms, held in a vase placed against a yellow background, look lonesome and make you feel miserable, the way you feel when the feast is over and the guests are gone but the lights and candles are still glimmering in the deserted hall. I enjoy the sight of sunflowers when in the morning they slowly turn to the sun, dripping with dew — pitiful but gorgeous. I put the painting in a frame and hung it on the wall of our dining room. The wall was painted dark green and the sunflowers in the painting, as if standing in an endless field bathed in bright sunshine, looked pleasing but solitary. Every day I sat in front of it, filled with joy and shrouded in loneliness. Later I came to know from Irving Stone's Lust for Life, a biography of van Gogh's short life, that he lived for 37 years only but spent half of his lifetime trying crazily to find out about the mystery of colors until he ended up in death by suicide. Vincent van Gogh was not good at making a living, but he had carved a new path for himself in art, though the artist was not recognized till many years after his death. Having read this book, I was moved by his devotedness to art and loved his "Sunflowers" all the more for its gracefulness and suggestiveness. I seemed to understand why joyfulness and loneliness are inherently mixed in his works.

After liberation in 1949 I was transferred to Beijing. I did not take the painting with me, as I felt that it was quite out of tune with the milieu of the time. In the liberated society we were immersed in a festival atmosphere and there was not slightest suggestion of loneliness. But soon I began to be missing the painting again. It seemed as if man, like this bunch of sunflowers, would try to hang on to the setting sun in its afterglow. I thought of that dark green wall that seemed to have engulfed the brilliant yellow. I tried desperately to disperse the loneliness that followed me like a shadow but in vain. With the passage of time the golden yellow in my memory grew dim and gradually it was almost forgotten.

During the chaotic ten years (1966-76) I was banished to a farm in Nanhuang to reform through labor. I was forced to work beyond my endurance and I was in such a gloomy state of mind that I often found myself scared. One day as I was pushing a dung-cart past a farmer's thatched hut, I saw some fresh yellowish sunflowers, against a blue sky, craning out of its fence. They reminded me of the "Sunflowers" on the dark green wall in my house in Shanghai, calling back to mind the joys of the family: our three-year-old daughter was trying to speak the way adults do and, when she realized that her mimicking was funny, she giggled and then, climbing up to the desk and pointing to the book I was reading, said, "When I am grown, I will read this too." But now in front there were only a few sunflowers nodding at me and my heart began to sink and float around, not knowing where to stop. Since then each time I went dung-collecting, I would go and pass that hut even if it meant more walk in the round of my daily journey. I wanted to see the sunflowers that were turning grayish yellow, reminiscing the cheerfulness of the days gone by, until one day the farmer got the crops in. When I passed the farmer's hut that day, I heard some kids laughing and screaming over the fence, each trying to get a fair share of the seeds from the crops. I then thought of my daughter in the far north. How excited she would be if she were among the kids, making noises with them. However, if she had seen her own dad pushing the heavy dung-cart in the shabby clothes as they were, how would that have made her feel? I was on my way back with tears in my eyes and my thoughts turned to van Gogh and his "Sunflowers" again. When he was working on the painting, he might have felt more loneliness and misery of life, otherwise why did he paint the petals about to wither? However, I believed he had also dreamed of joy, or why should he have placed the petals against an intense yellow background?

Now van Gogh's "Sunflower" has become a rich man's private property but that reproduction of the painting lives on in my memory, reminding me of the artist's crazy lust for life. Though one has ups and downs to face down the road, his love for life is hard to fade away. That the golden color of the sunshine keeps popping up before my eyes is an indication that van Gogh's "Sunflowers" speaks for what I have been unable to bring out from my heart.