The Sound of Bombs- Translating Chinese Poetry from the Second World War.

Abstract

“The Sound of Bombs—Translating Chinese Poetry from World War II” examines the historical contexts and aesthetic elements of poetry by four innovative Chinese writers, who lived in Kunming, China during World War II, Mu Dan (1918-1977), Zhou Dingyi (b. 1913), Zhao Ruihong (1915-1999) and Feng Zhi (1905-1993). In so doing, the dissertation develops a methodology of translation as a practice of listening, in which translation is a key tool in understanding both the complexity of the air raid experience and the aesthetics the poets use to describe it. The dissertation also engages notions of impossibility or incommensurability in translating between Chinese and English. It examines how translating differences in sound, syntax and grammar—elements often considered “untranslatable”—offer opportunities to learn about the Chinese texts within an English-language context. Chapter 1 establishes Kunming as a wartime soundscape through close-readings/translations of Mu Dan’s poems “Chorus in Two Parts” and “Torch Parade, Kunming 1939” and Zhou Dingyi’s poem “Listening to Rain.” Chapter 2 engages the effects of air raids on subjectivity by considering how to translate the Chinese word wo, or “I” in Mu Dan’s poem “Lyric from an Air Raid Shelter.” Chapter 3 considers Zhao Ruihong’s narrative poem about the day of an air raid, “Portrait of Kunming, Spring 1940” and explores how time is expressed differently in Chinese and English. It suggests how attention to sonic and grammatical features in the Chinese poem offers insights into the temporal experience of air raids. Chapter 4 offers close readings and translations of a set of poems related to Feng Zhi’s 1942 collection "Sonnets." In this chapter, translation reveals itself, not as trained on a target, but as a means to engage connections between many different texts. Finally, in the conclusion the dissertation expands to consider the work of two contemporary sound artists Christine Sun Kim and Jeffery Mansfield. Their practices complicate ideas of sound, listening and translation, and bring to the fore themes of translation as both a mode of listening and as an intersubjective and empathetic act.