ABSTRACT
This essay reads three embattled Chinese renditions of Celan – by Wang Jiaxin, Bei Dao, and Yi Sha – for what they reveal about discourse on poetry and poetics, and on translation, in mainland China today. Drawing on historical context as well as images of poethood and poetry, it asks why Celan is so important for contemporary Chinese poets, and contextualizes this question in debates and polemics that go back to the 1980s and continue today.
