Ibsen metamorphosed: textual re-appropriations in the Chinese context

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Since Henrik Ibsen has a wide international reputation and influence and his plays are read and performed across cultures, translation has played an important role in “establishing” multiple productions of his plays. It is true that Ibsen has been translated in different languages and cultures, and there are actually metamorphosed “Ibsens”, or varying (unalike) versions of his works. According to Walter Benjamin, “since the important works of world literature never find their chosen translators at the time of their origin, their translation marks their stage of continued life” or a sort of “afterlife”. Inspired by Benjamin’s reflections on translation and Damrosch’s emphasis on the role played by translation in constructing world literature, the author lays particular emphasis on the translation of Ibsen’s plays in the Chinese context and deals with different productions of Ibsen’s plays in 21st-century China. The contention here is that such translations and retranslations endow Ibsen and his plays with a “continued” life or “afterlife”, enabling him to remain one of the best-known Western writers, without which he might have become “marginalized” like many of his Scandinavian peers in the Chinese cultural and literary context(s). And it is through such translations and retranslations, both interlingual and intercultural—and even intersemiotic, that there have appeared a multiplicity of Ibsens and variegated productions of his plays in China.