Found in Translation: The Poet's Love(r)

Chanda VanderHart

Exposition

Found in Translation: The Poet's Love(r) (2025)

Chanda VanderHart, Rebecca Babb-Nelsen, Eric Stokloßa

open exposition

About this exposition

The impossibility of perfect translation is a widely acknowledged trope, yet translation remains a powerful act of meaning-making. This research-creation project investigates not what is lost, but what is gained through translation, by presenting and reflecting on our artistic re-interpretation of Dichterliebe, Robert Schumann’s nineteenth-century song cycle on texts by Heinrich Heine. Drawing on theories of translation by Walter Benjamin, Umberto Eco, and Hans Vermeer, we approach art song translation beyond its conventional linguistic scope, exploring it as a mode of modernization and gendered recontextualization. Our project, The Poet’s Love(r), features a new, singable English translation, alongside newly composed spoken poetry that gives voice to the song cycle’s historically silent female protagonist. In our methodological approach, we consider translation as a generative act within a broader artistic assemblage, incorporating artificial intelligence (AI)-generated images derived from the translated texts. These visuals, created with minimal textual prompts, offer a ‘post-human’ reflection on our hybrid nineteenth-century/twenty-first-century intervention, illuminating both the creative potential and the inherent biases of AI-generated art. Through an iterative process of artistic experimentation, pedagogical engagement with students at the mdw — University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna — and comparative analysis of contemporary Dichterliebe adaptations, we examine the strengths, limitations, and ethical considerations of translation as artistic research. Ultimately, we argue that translation — understood both linguistically and as creative transformation — can enhance access to art song’s multiple communicative layers (music, text, subtext), expanding its interpretative possibilities. By embracing a translational methodology, we advocate for a shift away from rigid notions of fidelity to historical works and toward a more dynamic, pluralistic engagement with musical tradition, informed by feminist, posthumanist, and experimental artistic perspectives. By situating The Poet’s Love(r) within a broader assemblage of interpretations — drawing on Paulo de Assis’s concept of musical works as decentralized, evolving entities — the project challenges traditional notions of fidelity and authorship in art song. It argues for translation as a vital creative practice that expands accessibility, deepens emotional resonance, and enriches the afterlife of canonical works. Download Accessible PDF

type	research exposition
keywords	Dichterliebe, Schumann, translation, Gender studies, art song, reflective practice, post-human, the poet's lover, Lieder, song cycles, poetry, voicing the unvoiced, agency, piano, voice, female voice, empathy, AI
date	15/07/2025
published	15/07/2025
last modified	15/07/2025
status	published
share status	private
affiliation	mdw - University for Music and Performing Arts Vienna
copyright	Chanda VanderHart, Rebecca Nelsen, Eric Stoklossa
license	CC BY-NC-ND
language	English
url	https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/2082863/3177915
doi	https://doi.org/10.22501/jar.2082863
published in	Journal for Artistic Research
portal issue	35. 35
external link	https://iwk.mdw.ac.at/chanda-vanderhart/

Copyrights

name	Cover Art CD
copyright	Rebecca Nelsen, Eric Stoklossa, Chanda VanderHart, Dina Lee
license	CC BY
usages	picture

name	WhatsApp Image 2023-04-25 at 14.59.55
copyright	Rebecca Nelsen, Eric Stoklossa, Chanda VanderHart
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name	The wondrous lovely month of May
copyright	Rebecca Nelsen, Chanda VanderHart, Eric Stoklossa
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name	IMG_3165
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name	The Rhine, its holy stream flowing
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name	The wondrous lovely month of May
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name	From my own tears there sprang
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name	Never before in my young life
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name	My mother is an empty shell
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name	The flower that we planted
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name	No grudge I bear
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name	I go to the church for confession
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name	Poets Lover Origin Part 2
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name	Poets Lover Origin Part 1
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name	I go to the church for confession
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name	If only the flowers so small knew
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name	A choir of flutes and of fiddles
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name	The man I wed I do not love
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name	I have become a stranger's wife
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name	When that sweet tune is blowing
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name	A young Man loves a maiden
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name	I am beset with anger
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name	One shimmering summer's morning
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name	This morning in the Garden
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name	I in my dream was weeping
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name	My husband and my lover are not one and the same
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name	Each night love in my dreams you appear
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name	The day has come when our sweet child will lay upon my breast
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name	The time has come when our sweet child will lay upon my breast 2
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name	The old and angry music
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name	The old and angry music 2
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name	The old and angry music 3
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name	I heard the chilling news today
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name	His Path 2
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name	Her Path
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name	down arrow
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name	Song 2 Dichterliebe
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name	Song 4 Dichterliebe
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name	Song 8 Dichterliebe
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name	Song 9 Dichterliebe
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name	SongPoem 16 Dichterliebe
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name	Poem 3 Dichterliebe
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name	Poem 4 Dichterliebe
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name	Down arrow 2
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name	Poem 6 Dichterliebe
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name	Poem 8 Dichterliebe
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name	From olden tales it tempts us 3
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name	I saw my lover in my dreams
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name	From olden tales it tempts us
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name	The man I wed I do not love
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name	No grudge I bear
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name	My father says 2
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name	My father says 3
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name	We meet in secret 6
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name	AI#1
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name	Rebecca Translation Trim
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name	Eric Chanda Recording 1
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name	Eric Chanda Recording 2
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name	Eric Chanda Recording 3
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name	The writing process April 19 2019
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name	VolksoperPlakat
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name	Eric emotional moment
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name	Student comment
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name	Chanda quote MDW LECTURE 2
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name	Eric quote and class discussion MDW Lecture 2
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name	MDW lecture with Chanda and Eric on imagery Dichterliebe copy
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name	Transcript mdw lectures
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name	Erlkings origin story
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name	What is the Erlkings?
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name	Dichterliebe Reimagined Liner Notes
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name	Ambitus Meredith
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name	Johanna on Dichterliebe Extended
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name	WhatsApp Image 2023-04-26 at 18.52.10
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name	MarriageisaTrap
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name	Klimtnightmare
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name	Codependence
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name	Addiction
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name	Pedestal
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name	Bearly legal
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name	WhatsApp Image 2024-09-30 at 09.39.13
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Found in Translation: The Poet's Love(r) (2025)

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