Crossing the World to Sleep with You Yu Xiuhua's Poetry as Performance and Its Cross-Cultural Translatability

This arti cle advances a crit i cal account of Chi nese internet poetry as per for ma tive speech acts by focus ing on the rise of Yu Xiuhua as a "crip" fig ure. Then, discussing Yu's poetry as world lit er a ture via transla tion, it pos its a per for ma tive frame work of trans la tion as a response to the chang ing notion of textuality and her me neu tic of Chi nese poetry in our transmedial ecol ogy. Treating trans la tion as per for mance requires a move toward an under stand ing of poetry as not merely tex tual scripts but also as dynamic cul tural per for mances of a poetic voice that is aided by its tonal, affec tive, and nar ra tive rep er toire. The arti cle cross-exam ines var i ous English trans la tions of Yu's sen sa tion ally received poem "Crossing China to Sleep with You" in order to dem on strate a com par a tive read ing prac tice that strives for an intertexual dia logue among var i ous trans la tions of a given poem. Such a mul ti pli ca tion of trans lated textuality puts into motion a poem's rhetoricity and the cul tural work that it performs. This article thus envisions a critical pedagogy of teaching translated literature, namely, cataloging mul ti ple trans la tions of the same text and cross-ana lyz ing the for mal and per for ma tive ten sion that they present enables a read ing expe ri ence and prac tice that is more cross-cul tur ally vital and eth i cal.