A Microcosm of Modernism: The Introduction and Continuation of James Joyce in China (1922 1949) - From the Circulation of the First Edition of Ulysses in China

Abstract

On February 2, 1922, Ulysses was published in Paris by the Shakes­peare & Company in a limited first edition of 1,000 copies. Among the customers who have booked were William Butler Yeats, Ezra Pound, Andre Gide, Ernest Miller Hemingway and other world-renowned writers. Surpri­singly, the Company received an order from China. It is recorded that Joyce excitedly told the news to his patron, Ms. Harriet Shaw Weaver, editor of The Egoist magazine. This order ushers in a great story of the entry of mo­dern Western literature into China represented by Ulysses, especially the promotion of Joyce in China and its influence on Chinese modern literati. In November of the same year, Shen Yanbing沈雁冰 published a review of Joyce citing Western commentaries of his new work in the column “News from the Overseas Literary World” in Novel Monthly小說月報, Vol. 13, No. 11, unfortunately misrepresenting him as a “new American writer” and a “representative of Dadaism”. On July 7, 1923, Xu Zhimo published a new poem he composed, “KangQiao Xiye Muse”康橋西野暮色(Dusk in the West Suburb of Cambridge) in a supplement to Shanghai Shishi Xinbao上海時事新報, Xue Deng學燈, with a foreword referring to Joyce and his work Ulysses. Subsequently, Zhao Jingshen趙景深, Fei Jianzhao費鑒照, Xia Ji’an夏濟安, Wu Xinghua吳興華 and others began to pay attention to and promote Joyce and his works. Their introduction may be particularly interesting and have, to some extent, influenced the understanding of Joyce in later genera­tions. After a hundred years of Ulysses’s publication, this paper will trace the origin of Joyce’s introduction and continuation in China with some new materials, using the circulation of the first edition of Ulysses in China as the main clue, and analyzing the comments or translations by Xu Zhimo, Shen Yanbing, Zhao Jingshen, Wu Xinghua, in an attempt to restore the interac­tion between the spread of Chinese and Western literature, and also to ex­plore the spread and influence of modernism in China.