CEAS Lecture. Helen Huiwen Zhang (University of Tulsa). Thus Spoke the Modern Daoist Kafka Kafka - moderner Daoist ohne Kompromisse.

Tuesday, October 29, 2019 - 4:30pm
Location: 
Room 202, Henry R. Luce Hall
34 Hillhouse Avenue
New Haven, CT 06511

Thus Spoke the Modern Daoist Kafka Kafka—moderner Daoist ohne Kompromisse 卡夫卡续写老庄

This talk challenges the audience to decipher one of the most astonishing cross-cultural enigmas: How through transreading—which integrates lento reading, poetic translation, creative writing, and cultural hermeneutics—Franz Kafka transplants the seed of Dao and nurtures it in a European mind. Distinct from the approaches of his contemporaries, Kafka’s Dao is a patience game with words and thoughts maneuvered like marbles. Not only does Kafka’s game echo the voices of ancient Chinese poet-philosophers Laozi and Zhuangzi, but it also delivers their messages in an uncompromising way that continues to inform and inspire us.