“I Sing of Flesh”: The Rhythm of Mu Dan’s Self-translation

Almost buried beneath the prominence of Mu Dan’s extraordinary career as a scholar, poet, and translator lie twelve poems, first composed in Chinese during his youth and later rendered into English, by means of which he earns his place among the large ranks of the Sinophone self-translators. Remarkably, in his ambitious tightrope walk between languages and lyrical identities, Mu Dan places poetic rhythmic and melodic dimension in the role of a counterpoise between the body of the poem(s) and that of its author, while keeping balance between translating and rewriting himself. His sound-based poetics of self-translation reveals an attempt to reassert lyricality and authenticity, in the framework of Chinese translingual and translational modernity.