Bard Translation and Translatability Initiative Presents

The Language of Landscape: Literary Translation in Comparative Context

When we see, feel, and think of nature, it is never just an objective encounter with an outside world. Rather, landscapes carry meaning like a complex language, spoken and written in land, air, and water. Humans are storytellers in dialog with landscapes, influenced by their past, present and imagined future. When a group of German farmers who had fled famine and persecution settled along the Hudson, they were reminded of their river back home, the Rhine, and founded Rhinebeck. In a broad sense, then, they translated their home into their new place. This talk examines two river landscapes, the Hudson River Valley and the Rhine Valley in Germany, the contradictory narratives they were shaped by and the cultural translation of landscape, from the visual into the textual and what that entails. To what extent is our perception filtered through experience and our collective history?

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For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].

Time: 5:30 pm – 6:30 pm EST/GMT-5

Location: Olin Humanities, Room 203

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