John Cage and the Task of the Translator

Abstract

Although primarily regarded as a composer of music, John Cage was also a writer, publishing essays and poetry, and a printmaker of both etchings and monotypes. He moved freely among creative media, yet an understanding of Cage’s practice as such has been difficult to formulate due in part to the medium-specific priorities of modernist discourse. This paper posits that by viewing Cage’s practice in light of Walter Benjamin’s notion of translation—and Cage himself as a kind of translator—one is able to understand Cage’s work with different media in terms of “modalities of expression.” Doing so allows the interrelatedness of Cage’s seemingly varied artistic practices to come into focus and fosters interdisciplinary understanding.

KEYWORDS:

• John Cage
• Walter Benjamin
• Task of the Translator
• I Ching
• translation studies
• silence
• Empty Words
• Lecture on Nothing
• printmaking
• film
• Robert Rauschenberg
• White Paintings