Concealment & Revelation
Original Opening Remarks (Jan 2013):
Welcome to the Open Discussion Forum—the online companion to our Reading Club (founded in Spring 2013) dedicated to Lu Xun, China’s most original and profound thinker whose ‘untimely meditations’ on modern civilization, world history, and the human condition resonate with those of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Strindberg, and Kafka and prove to be timely and timeless. Lu Xun’s intense and idiosyncratic voice culminates in the prose poetry anthology Wild Grass. Listed below are the 5 units of 13 prose-poems, each of which, however enveloped in a world of its own, contributes to the dialectic of concealment and revelation prevailing in Lu Xun’s writings. Click on a title and you will be able to read the translation and interpretation and post your own comments. Bold perspectives and experimental approaches are encouraged!
New Preface to the Reopened Forum (Nov 2014):
Welcome to the Open Discussion Forum—the online companion to our Reading Club (founded in Spring 2013) dedicated to Lu Xun, China’s most original and profound thinker whose ‘untimely meditations’ on modern civilization, world history, and the human condition resonate with those of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Strindberg, and Kafka and prove to be timely and timeless. Lu Xun’s intense and idiosyncratic voice culminates in the prose poetry anthology Wild Grass. Listed below are the 5 units of 13 prose-poems, each of which, however enveloped in a world of its own, contributes to the dialectic of concealment and revelation prevailing in Lu Xun’s writings. Click on a title and you will be able to read the translation and interpretation and post your own comments. Bold perspectives and experimental approaches are encouraged!
New Preface to the Reopened Forum (Nov 2014):
Huiwen (Helen) Zhang
Inspired by Friedrich
Nietzsche’s idea of “philology” and William Gass’s concept of “transreading,” I
employ “transreader” to suggest the integration of four roles into one: reader,
translator, writer, and scholar. Transreading
recognizes the interdependence of close reading, literary translation, creative
writing, and cultural hermeneutics with its concern for the broad context and
ultimate goal of these intertwined activities: to transfer, transvalue,
transform, and transcend the canon. In
this sense, Lu Xun and his European interlocutors are “transreaders of the
canon.” Their architecture of the modern
breakthrough is a joint transfer, transvaluation, transformation, or transcendence
of pre-modern canons.
This method is proven in
my newly published article, “‘Translated, it is: …’—An Ethics of Transreading” (Educational Theory, Vol. 64, No. 5,
2014). The re-opened Lu Xun Discussion Forum continues to practice and reinforce
the theory of transreading by utilizing prompts. It departs from a hypothesis: prompts are
textual phenomena that simultaneously demand and enable transreading.
As a University professor,
I have incorporated my own scholarship into undergraduate courses such as
“Modernization and Its Discontents,” “The Dilemma of Modernity,” “Four Faces of
the Wanderer,” “The Treasure of Sorrow,” “Blessed in Translation,” “Authentic Beauty:
Modern Poetry & Prose,” and “Untimely Meditations: A Chinese Perspective.” Common to all of my courses is the combination
of the concept of cross-cultural dialogue and the method of transreading.
Fall Semester 2014:
Revenge (The Second) [updated on Nov 15 2014]
Tombstone Inscription [updated on Nov 15 2014]
The Shadow's Farewell [updated on Nov 19 2014]
Tombstone Inscription [updated on Nov 15 2014]
The Shadow's Farewell [updated on Nov 19 2014]
Concepts Minted, Myths Reversed:
Moments of Contemplation:
The Beggar (Feb. 28 2013)
Recollections of Childhood:
Snow
Confronting Midlife:
A
Dried Leaf
Oneself as Another:
Trembling of Degradation Lines
In Faint Ripples of Blood (coming soon!)
Discussion Topics from Fall 2012:
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