Lao She

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Lao She

Lao She ( Chinese  老舍 , Pinyin Lǎo Shě ), (born February 3, 1899 in Beijing , † August 24, 1966 there ) was a modern Chinese writer .

He was born under the name Shū Qìngchūn ( 舒慶春 ); according to ethnic origin he was Manchurian . In addition to Lao She, he also used the pseudonym Shu Sheyu .

Life

The son of a Manchurian soldier who died in 1900 grew up in poverty in Beijing. The mother supported the family as a cleaning lady and laundress. Nevertheless, he was able to attend the Beijing teachers' college from 1913 to 1918, as it did not charge school fees with free board and lodging. After graduating, he took up a job as a teacher and also studied English at Peking University. This gave me the opportunity to go to England as a Chinese lecturer at the School of Oriental Studies in London in 1924 . He stayed in England for five years and began writing during that time.

His journey home took him three months through France, Germany and Italy; from Marseille he traveled by ship to Singapore, where he temporarily taught Chinese in order to earn the money for the onward journey. In 1930 he returned to China, where he was appointed professor of literature at the university in Jinan , the capital of Shandong Province.

In the summer of 1931, he married Hu Jieqing, a teacher who was teaching Chinese in a middle school at the time.

In 1934 the first collection of his short stories "Hastiggeschrittenes" ( Ganji ) was published. In September 1934 he moved to Shandong University in Qingdao . In 1936 he gave up teaching in order to devote himself entirely to writing.

But as early as July 1937 the war broke out and Lao She and the family (meanwhile the third child had just been born) had to leave Qingdao. He went back to Jinan, where he also had to flee in mid-October, but had to leave behind his wife and children. He got inland, where the Guomindang government had withdrawn. During the Sino-Japanese War he headed the "Anti-Japanese Society of Chinese Art and Literature Creators" in Chongqing and tried hard to secure his existence by writing. At the end of 1943, his wife and the children managed to get through to him and, with her stories about the Japanese occupation, inspired him to write a great work on the subject. At the end of 1946 the first two parts of "Four Generations under One Roof" appeared. After the end of the war, he wrote the remaining parts partly in the USA, where he and the playwright Cao Yu had received an invitation in 1946 . In 1949, after the founding of the People's Republic of China, he returned to his country at the invitation of Prime Minister Zhou Enlai .

During the Cultural Revolution , Lao She, like most other intellectuals, was terrorized and humiliated and mistreated as “the reactionary ruler of the cultural sphere”. He passed away on August 24, 1966, he drowned himself in the Taiping Lake in Beijing ( 太平湖  - "Lake of Great Peace").

It was not until 1978 that he was posthumously rehabilitated. Today his works are being read and seen again in China.

plant

The novel that established his literary fame was called Luòtuo Xiángzi ( 駱駝祥子 , Rikschakuli , literally Kamel Xiangzi ) and was published in 1936. It is considered to be one of the most important works in recent Chinese literature to this day .

Lao She wrote 16 novels, 36 dramas and over 70 novellas and short stories. He was one of the writers who elevated the Chinese colloquial language to the language of literature, which was tantamount to a revolution in Chinese literary history. All plants deal with Beijing in different ages. His style is sharp, precise, partly satirical and humorous; it is often based on Chinese dialects, which makes it difficult for translators to translate the works into European languages. Nevertheless, he is one of the most frequently translated Chinese authors.

The stage name Lao She comes from the splitting of his surname into the two graphic components shě ( 舍  - "give up") and yú ( 予  - "I"), ie "give up the self", whereby he actually the "me" from his name erased.

Works (selection)

literature

  • Zbigniew Słupski: The Evolution of a Modern Chinese Writer - An Analysis of Lao She's Fiction with Biographical and Bibliographical Appendices. (= Dissertationes Orientales. Vol. 9). Oriental Institute in Academia, Prague 1966.
  • Ranbir Vohra: Lao She and the Chinese Revolution . Harvard University Press, Cambridge 1974, ISBN 0-674-51075-5 . (English)
  • Lao She. In: Heinz Ludwig Arnold (ed.): Critical Lexicon of Foreign Language Contemporary Literature (KLfG). Munich 1983.
  • Volker Klöpsch: Lao She. In: Wolfgang Kubin (Ed.): Modern Chinese Literature. Frankfurt am Main 1985, ISBN 3-518-38545-3 .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Lao, She
ALTERNATIVE NAMES 老舍; 舒慶春; Shū, Qìngchūn
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Chinese writer
DATE OF BIRTH February 3, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Beijing
DATE OF DEATH August 24, 1966
Place of death Beijing