The heterotopias of translation: sinophilic modernisms in transatlantic little magazines

This article focuses on translations and rewritings of classical Chinese poetry in a group of early twentieth-century modernist little magazines. Examining a variety of practices ranging from translations direct and indirect, imitations and the pseudotranslational, to editorial comments, reviews, and promotional materials, I discuss the emergence of sinophilic modernism, which is characterized by distinctive though variously articulated sinophilia, and the integration of Chinese poetry into literary modernism. This article offers methodological considerations on the particularity of the little magazines as a medium of transcultural practice and knowledge. I conceptualize the little magazines as multi-layered constructs of interlocking spaces: the discursive space where divergent discourses are woven into intertextual networks, the social space of actors, agents, and institutions in the field of cultural production, and the periodical space, inscribed with periodical codes and expanding across pages, issues, and titles, where diverse genres and voices coexist and interact. Drawing on methods from periodical studies and translation history, I try to unpack the formation of sinophilic modernisms in the heterogeneous, dialogic, and densely networked spaces of the little magazines.