부산대학교 도서관

This study examines Han Heuk-gu’s translations of The New Negro and Harlem Renaissance poets, and explores how his role as a translator aligns with his broader literary and aesthetic politics. During the Japanese colonization, Han Heuk-gu was exposed to African American literature when he was a student in America in the late 1920s, early 1930s. Building upon the growing critical interest on Han’s literary endeavors during his stay in America, I analyze his translations of African American literature through Walter Benjamin’s “The Task of a Translator,” especially paying attention to Benjamin’s notion of intertextual constellations that was later interpreted as “cultural translation” by postcolonial critics such as Homi Bhabha. Benjamin argues that the “task” of the translator is to find the translatable intention in the original text and expand its meaning through the act of translation. Bhabha’s interpretation of Benjamin sheds light on how the act of translation mediates cross-cultural encounters. I argue that Han’s translations, which entail literary critique, mistranslations, and creative reconfigurations, create an ideal space for multiple registers of cross-cultural exchange and empathy between African American poets and Han Heuk-gu, both representing the dispossessed and the disenfranchised. First, I examine Han’s translations of excerpts from Alain Locke’s The New Negro to illuminate how both Locke and Han found political significance in self-expression as self-determination. Then, I delve into Han’s translations of a few poems by Langston Hughes and Claude McKay to elucidate how the translations serve as a medium through which Han expresses loss, defiance, and solidarity. In the poems written by fellow young poets, Han finds youth that symbolizes hope and endurance, and his translations reveal a steadfast faith in the power of literature which is shared by the contemporary African American writers of the Harlem Renaissance.