Fidelity to the deep structure of literature: Yu Kwang-chung’s translation of Emily Dickinson

Abstract

ABSTRACT Yu Kwang-chung embarked on a translational project, Anthology of American Poetry, around 1960. Edited by Stephen Soong, the anthology was published by World Today Press, Hong Kong, in 1961. This research commences with Yu’s plight in selecting what poems of Dickinson’s to translate, a plight associated with Poundian translatology. It follows with textual analyses of Yu’s translations of and introduction to Dickinson’s poetry. I aruge that Yu is far from being an absolutist inasmuch as translational fidelity is concerned. In contrast, what he pursues in poetry translation is an optimal fidelity, one that intends to bring about as profuse poetics as possible in the target language. The translator exerts optimal faithfulness to a variety of traditional literary elements, all of which amount to what I call “fidelity to the deep structure of literature.” It is with such a flexible fidelity that Yu transplants Dickinson’s metaphysical universe onto the Chinese soil.