Sinicized Male-Male Desire 39

Sinicized Male-male Desire 39 Chapter Three Transforming Homosexual Subtexts: Sinicized Male-male Desire Underlying homosexual subtexts in The Picture of Dorian Gray go through dramatic transformation in Wan Dahong’s Du Liankui, and these changes are yet to be discovered. As mentioned in the second chapter of this thesis, Wilde deliberately builds his homosexually suggestive story on a heterosexual model only to subvert from within, and then within this mock heterosexual framework he integrates multiple homosexual hints that metonymically relate to “gross indecency” in the Victorian England. Some of these homosexual representations under camouflage are modified, omitted, and even metamorphosed in Du Liankui. On top of these changes, many added passages can be observed in the target text. Chan Tak-hung and Du Shinshin have both identified succinctly a diminution in homosexual desire in Du Liankui, but they neither elaborate on Wang’s treatment of Wilde’s homosexual subtexts, nor identify Wang’s strategy for homoerotic representation.1 This chapter aims to delve into the much unexplored arena of Wang’s homosexual poetics in his translation by analyzing his representation of the original Wildean homosexual subtexts. As recontextualization marks Wang’s translation, I propose that his treatment of Wilde’s homosexual desire is subjugated to this major translating scheme. Chan’s interpretation of the concept of intertextuality helps trace this possibility of Wang’s homoerotic poetics. The theory itself originally proposes that a text cannot exist as a hermetic or self-sufficient whole, and so does not function as a closed system.2 Given that the writer is a reader of texts before becoming a creator of texts, the work of art of is “inevitably shot through with references, quotations, and influences of every kind.” 3 These “other textual structures” could include cultural and ideological norms—which entails the importance of reconstructing the cultural codes realized in texts.4 Chan applies the concept of intertextuality to translation study and points out that the source text inevitably figures as an intertext for its translation, but in an adaptive, recontextualized translation like Du Liankui, further intertexts from the target culture are invoked, causing intertextual processes to proliferate.5 In other words, The Picture of Dorian Gray is not simply Sinicized textually in Du Liankui, 1 Chan Leo Tak-hung, “The Poetics of Recontextualization: Intertextuality in a Chinese Adaptive Translation of The Picture of Dorian Gray” Comparative Literature Studies 41, no. 4 (2004): 477. Also see Du Shinshin, “The Pictures of Dorian Gray: A Cultural Analysis of Six Chinese Translations in Taiwan” (MA Thesis, National Taiwan Normal University, 2005), 64. They both observe that homoeroticism is toned down in Wang’s translation. 2 Julia Kristeva, Semiotiké: Recherches pour une sémanalyse (Paris: Seuil, 1969), 146. 3 Judith Still and Michael Worton, “Introduction” to their eds., Intertextuality: Theories and Practices (Manchester: Manchester UP, 1990), 1. 4 John Frow, “Intertextuality and Ontology,” in Judith Still and Michael Worton, eds., Intertextuality: Theories and Practice (Manchester: Manchester UP, 1990), 45-6. 5 Chan, “The Poetics of Recontextualization,”477. Sinicized Male-male Desire 40 because its content too becomes immersed in a web of Chinese cultural intertextual echoes. Wilde’s homoeroticism in the original novel is indeed disrupted by forces unleashed by Wang’s adaptive translation: A later section of this chapter will demonstrate how Wang’s translation utilizes traditional Chinese male-male desire as a representational devise. I would illustrate first how the translation departs from original homosexual subtexts/desire, and then trace the resurfacing of these target-cultural codes in Du Liankui to discuss Wang’s own homoerotic representation. 1. From Manifestation to Diminution: Digression from Homosexual Subtexts Numerous evidences show that Wang’s translation of homosexual desire is quite disparate from Wilde’s homosexual subtexts. One eminent question for the interest of this study is if Wang has not transplanted Wildean erotic expressions into the target text, what he would utilize to fill up the resulting gaps. But first it is important to have a general understanding of how homosexual subtexts are dug out, laid bare and discarded. As in what follows my study will compare quite a number of passages from the original novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray and the translated text, Du Liankui, I would utilize Wang’s Sinicized character names whenever necessary to discuss his modification in the translation to avoid confusion with the source text. The following list succinctly juxtaposes corresponding naming in the source and target text: Original naming: Sinicized naming: Roles in the novel: Dorian Gray Du Liankui 杜連魁 protagonist Lord Henry Wotton Wu Teng 吳騰 aristocrat Basil Hollward Bei Xi 貝席 painter Sibyl Vane Xue Bifang 薛碧芳 singer (originally actress) Jame Vane Xue Jimei 薛吉眉 sailor; Sibyl’s (Bifang) brother Mrs. Leaf Li Ma 李媽 housekeeper of Dorian The Duchess Lady Ma 馬夫人 married woman that flirts with Dorian Campbell Gan Boer 甘柏爾 friend of Dorian’s Hetty Chunmei 春妹 country girl Dorian seduces -- Yuxiang 玉香 prostitute, added character -- Yulan 玉蘭 country girl, added character 1.1 “Aggressive-passive” Homoerotic Voice Technically speaking, the translator of Du Liankui preserves male-male desire in The Picture of Dorian Gray—though not necessarily in the same way. Multiple passages attest that male-male eroticism ostensibly is retained in the translation, especially in Sinicized Male-male Desire 41 the early part of the book. Du points out, Lord Henry and Basil’s adoration of Dorian clearly trespasses the acceptable boundary for male friendship, but the translator does not shy away from such erotic confession.6 In Wang’s translation, the painter’s first encounter with Du Liankui expresses overt male-male desire as in the original novel. 「我一轉身便看見杜連魁，那是我們初次見面。當我們對望時，我心裡起了一種無名的恐慌，我知道我遇見了一個具有強大魅力的美男子。只要我一放鬆自己，他便會支配我整個天性，控制我整個心靈，甚至影響我的工作，我的藝術。你知道我的個性一向獨立自主，從不受任何外來的影響。但是自從我認識他以後—我真不知如何向你解說。」7 (“As I turned around I saw Du Liankui for the very first time. As we looked at each other, I felt an unknown panic, knowing that I had met an overwhelmingly charming handsome man. If I let go of myself, he would dominate my whole self, my mind, work and art. You know I have always enjoyed independent life without any external influence. But ever since I met him—I do not quite know how to explain this to you.”) But a closer look would reveal that even this seemingly faithful rendering is in essence a delusion of Wilde’s homosexual poetics. In fact, the translator’s literal portrayal of the painter’s affection surpasses that in the original book.8 In the previous example, the part in bold emphasizes the nature of such attraction: Du Liankui’s desirable physical beauty, but the original text simply reads “personality that is so fascinating,” thus showing how Wang would explicitly verbalize where Wilde tries to reserve. In the scene where Wu Teng (Lord Henry) inquires about the name of the young man “with extraordinary personal beauty,” the translation once again shows such lack of obliqueness, as Bei Xi (Basil) says,「我就是不想將我所喜歡的人的名字告訴何人。洩漏他的名字就像把他分給了別人似的，也許這是因為我的占有慾和嫉妒心太強的緣故。」.9 (“I just don’t want to tell the name of someone I like to other people. To reveal his name is like to share him with others, perhaps because I am too possessive and jealous”). As the original text simple says “When I like people immensely I never tell their names to anyone. It’s like surrendering part of them,” the translation’s added explanatory part in italics seems all the more straightforward with homoeroticism that Wilde seeks to at once hide and heighten. Later, as the love triangle among the male trio develops, the translation blatantly 6 Du, “The Pictures of Dorian Gray,” 65. 7 Wang, Du Liankui,15 (emphasis mine). 8 Du, “The Pictures of Dorian Gray,” 64. 9 Wang, Du Liankui, 12 (emphasis mine). Sinicized Male-male Desire 42 articulates Beixi and Wu Teng’s rivalry for Du Liankui. See the following juxtaposed examples: [Basil] drove off by himself, as had been arranged, and watched the flashing lights of the little broughman in front of him. A strange sense of loss came over him. He felt that Dorian Gray would never again be to him all that he had been in the past. Life had come between them.10 [貝席]面色憂沉，獨自上了車，跟在吳騰的「德姆勒」後面。他隱隱望見前面兩人並頭交談，心裡忽然若有所失，他覺得杜連魁不會再對他像以往一樣親密了，吳騰已經插入他們兩人之間。11 ([Bei Xi] with a melancholy look got into his car alone and drove following Wu Teng’s Daimler car. He seemed to spot his two friends’ intimate chatting and felt rather empty. He had a feeling that Du Liankui would not be close to him as in the past, as Wu Teng had gotten between them.) This example once again shows how the translation is comfortable with overt verbalization of the love triangle among the three men. While the original text says “Life had come between them,” the translation directly pinpoints the cause of the distance between Du Liankui and Bei Xi: Wu Teng. This explicitness about male-male relations is taken so much for granted that where Wilde hesitates to verbalize, Wang states it all in simplified textual declaration, as if the subject of homoeroticism does not encounter a censorial audience. This differentiates from the original novel’s deliberate evasion and obliqueness about affirmative and specific reference to male homoeroticism. From the very beginning it is undisputed that Wang’s homoerotic poetics digresses from Wilde’s homosexual subtexts: the former maintains an open, overt attitude, while the latter stresses the art of indirect subtlety. Such difference between Wilde and Wang’s depiction predetermines the following development of homosexual motif. Wang’s overt recognition of male homoerotic relations paradoxically does not produce as much intensity of this desire.

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