Baudelaire en Chine (1920-1937) : premières traductions, premières exégèses

Abstract

China in the 1920s and 1930s was marked by a spirit of revolution, characterized by deconstructing traditional Confucian values in favor of modern intellectual currents. It is in this context that we observe the publication of many critical articles and translations devoted to Baudelaire. In our text, we focus on showing the ways in which Chinese critics and translators construct different images of Baudelaire, images that refer to various currents of ideas that have influenced China at the time: fight against utilitarianism, search for freedom, praise of art for art, marxism, conservatism in literary language or search for novelties in poetry. In order to reveal the subjectivity in the construction of these Chinese images of Baudelaire, particular attention is given to the rewriting of the original texts, in the criticism as in the translation.

Keywords

• China in the 1920s and 1930s
• criticism
• translation