ABSTRACT
Facilitating meaningful connections where cultures overlap requires meticulous investigation into the mental, historical, and creative contexts of authors. This allows their messages to withstand the tumultuous voyage between semantic shores. This chapter introduces the method of “transreading,” which integrates four interdependent activities: lento (slow-motion) reading, poetic translation, cultural hermeneutics, and creative writing. Their synergy is essential to understanding the cosmopolitan figures who inform the present through their foundational yet often cryptic works. This chapter draws from pedagogical experiments conducted while teaching Lu Xun in an undergraduate seminar, consisting of students from 22 disciplines, none of whom had prior knowledge of Chinese. Lu Xun is a perfect exemplar of the efficacy of transreading. Obscure even to native readers, Lu Xun’s idiosyncratic artistic and philosophical works challenge American students to discern the multi-faceted beauty of Chinese. The findings of these experiments exhibit both the scholarly and pedagogical value of transreading, proving it an effective approach to developing cultural cosmopolitanism. Transreading benefits students, teachers, and researchers, regardless of their language skills, by combining a concrete technique and a humble mindset that stimulates empathetic critique.
