Critical realism and romanticism: Kálmán Mikszáth in China

Kálmán Mikszáth (1847–1910) was introduced to China in the early twentieth century and the translation of his work had run through the Chinese history of the last century. In order to gain a thorough understanding of Mikszáth in China, this study adopts the socio-cultural context of twentieth-century China as the entry point to probe into the translation of his work and examine his reception in China. Like the translation of Jókai’s work in China, that of his work was first influenced by the nationalist discourse of “the literature of marginalized nationalities” and then became part of the cultural exchanges between socialist countries. It finds that although Mikszáth attracted less attention in early twentieth-century China due to the lack of revolutionary subjects in his writing, the artistic values of his works had already been appreciated. Later, benefiting from the social-critical themes and anecdotal/legendary elements found everywhere in his works, Mikszáth had been vigorously promoted and widely circulated in China in the second half of the century. As a result, a great realistic writer who made the flexible use of romanticism to criticize the Hungarian society had been imprinted into the Chinese readers’ minds in the twentieth century. This way of interpretation has extended its influence to the twenty-first-century China, which hinders the modernist traits of Mikszáth’s writing from being captured by the Chinese readers in the new millennium.