“Letter from an Unknown Woman”: A Chinese reception of a German novel “Brief einer Unbekannten”

• Main Authors: Li, Yi-Jin, 李依瑾
• Other Authors: Chang, San-Lii
• Format: Others
• Published: 2015
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/22979009530029927289

碩士 === 輔仁大學 === 德國語文學系碩士班 === 103 === In recent years, there are a large number of Chinese-language films adapted from both Chinese and foreign novels, and the film “Letter from an Unknown Woman”(2004) directed by the Chinese director Xu, Jing-lei (1974-) is adapted from the German novel “Brief einer Unbekannten”, which is written by the Austrian writer Stefan Zweig (1881-1942). It is a story about an unknown woman, who deeply in love with a man is, but he doesn’t know that. By reading the letter from her, we get glimpses into her life story: A writer, returning home from his holidays, receives a letter from an unknown woman. Since she was a teenager, she has loved the writer, who lived in the neighborhood. When her widowed mother remarried, she was forced to move with her mother to another city. She thinks about the writer all the time. A few years later she returned to the place she used to live. Sadly, the writer doesn’t recognize her, but he is attracted by her beauty. After spending few days together, he left her for work. She is pregnant, but the writer never contacts her afterwards. She needs to raise the kid by herself. To make enough money, she spends time with her “boyfriends”, who she never loves. Many years passed by, the woman and the writer see each other in many social places accidentally, but he never recognizes her. After their kid died, she decides to write a letter about herself to him. This letter is the one, which the writer just receives from an unknown woman. At the end, she never tells him about her name. Stefan Zweig, as a male author, shows concern with woman issues in his works. The original novel narrates from male perspective, the film by Xu narrates however from female perspective. In the film, it presents a rich works of the change of narrative techniques, which caused by adapting from the original novel. The film also presents the new Gender perspective from the director Xu. As director Xu presents more and more films, her early work, “Letter from an Unknown Woman” has brought a broader discussion. This paper compares the literal text from Stefan Zweig and Xu Jing-lei’s film text and aims to try to explain the phenomenon of rewriting the German literary work into a Chinese film.