Ba jin

Ba Jin (Chinese: 巴金, pinyin: Bā Jīn, Wade-Giles: Pa Chin) (Chengdu, China, November 25, 1904 - Shanghai, 17 October 2005) was a Chinese writer. He is considered one of the most important writers in contemporary Chinese literature. He wrote the main works of it in the first half of the XX century.

Deceased at the age of one hundred, in recent years he lived with Parkinson's disease.

His most famous works are his two trilogies Amor and Torrente. The first novel in the Torrente trilogy, entitled The Family, has been one of the most influential works of contemporary Chinese literature. The Family is a partly autobiographical novel that narrates the conflicts faced by different generations of a wealthy Chinese family at the time of social change at the turn of the century XX. Although formally less elegant than Ba Jin's later compositions, it is one of the best-known contemporary Chinese novels, having been translated into numerous languages.

Name

His real name was Lǐ Yáotáng (traditional Chinese: 李堯棠, simplified Chinese: 李尧棠), and his courtesy name zì Lǐ Fèigān (李芾甘). During his student days in France, upon publishing his first novel, Destruction, he began using the pen name 'Ba Jin'. The usual explanation of the name is that it is formed by the first syllable of the Chinese transcription of the surname of the Russian anarchist Bakunin followed by the last syllable of the transcription of the surname of Kropotkin, another Russian anarchist. Despite the spread of this explanation, some sources claim that Ba Jin himself would have denied this explanation for his nickname, perhaps in an attempt to deny his anarchist tendency.

As in the case of other Chinese pseudonyms, such as Mao Dun or Lao She, it should not be interpreted as a Chinese name made up of a surname plus a given name. It is incorrect to refer to Ba Jin simply as 'Ba'. The two syllables "Ba Jin" must always be written.

Biography

She was born in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province, into a wealthy family. At the age of 15, she entered the Chengdu Specialized School of Foreign Languages (成都外語 專門學校 / 成都外语专门学校 Chéngdū Wàiyǔ Zhuānmén Xuéxiào). There he began to study French and English. In 1923, he moved to Shanghai and then to Nanking, where he continued his studies at the University of the Southeast, graduating in 1927. After his graduation, he will go to study in France. There he would complete his first novel, Destruction , which he already signs with his pseudonym, maintaining correspondence with the unjustly imprisoned and later executed American anarchist, Vanzetti. In 1929, Ba Jin returned to China, settling permanently in Shanghai, with a brief hiatus between 1934 and 1935, when he was in Japan.

In Shanghai he participated in the edition of various literary magazines, and published his best-known works, such as the novels of the Love trilogy: Mist (1931), Rain (1933) and Lightning (1935). In 1933, he also published La Familia, a story that will continue in the novels Spring (1938) and Otoño (1940), with which he forms the Torrente trilogy. At that same time he shows his total support for the Spanish revolutionary masses, especially those framed in anarcho-syndicalism, ignoring and confronting communist guidelines for this reason. The last two were already published during the Sino-Japanese war, a stage in which Ba Jin collaborated with other Chinese writers and intellectuals, such as Mao Dun, in the anti-Japanese resistance. From 1935 to 1949 he directed the Pingming Publishing House (平明出版社 Píngmíng Chūbǎnshè) in Shanghai, which published translations of works on anarchism and diaries from the Spanish Civil War, such as The Events of May in Barcelona, by Augustin Souchy (1937) or Diary of an International Volunteer, by Albert Minnig (1939). On May 8, 1944, she married Xiāo Shān (蕭珊 / 萧珊).

In 1945, after the defeat of Japan, he continued writing in Shanghai during the civil war between the Chinese Communist Party and the Kuomintang government of Chiang Kai-shek. In 1946 he published another of his most important works, Cold Nights .

After the proclamation of the People's Republic of China in 1949, Ba Jin continued to publish literary magazines. Unlike what happened to other writers, such as Shen Congwen or Eileen Chang, his apolitical career did not prevent him from preserving his literary prestige under the new communist regime. Only at the time of the Cultural Revolution would he be criticized, being accused of "counterrevolutionary". He was rehabilitated in 1977, and since then, he has held numerous public posts in China.

He was a prominent Esperanto speaker, and was vice president during the 1980s of the Chinese Esperanto League. At his death, caused by cancer, he held the honorary title of President of the China Writers Association.

Work

The following are some of his main novels.

• Destruction (Mi / oriented Mi Mièwáng), 1927.
• Trilogy Love (designate / oriented vision Àiqíng):
  • Niebla 1931.
  • Rain 1933.
  • Lightning (. / Navega Diàn), 1935.
• Trilogy Torrente (Jīliú):
  • The Family (Jiā), 1933.
  • Spring (Chūn), 1938.
  • Autumn (Qiū), 1940.
• Nights Frias (Hán Yè), 1946.