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Re: poetry

From:Jonathan Chang <zhang2323@...>
Date:Friday, September 22, 2000, 5:05
In a message dated 2000:09:21 7:30:45 PM, romilly@EGL.NET writes:

>Attn. Yoon Ha Lee, and czHANg too, though he probably knows: >>Wow. :-p I must see if Chinese poetry is available in English >>translation--reading poetry in translation makes me wince, but I honestly >>don't have the time right now to learn Chinese from scratch without help!> > >Something of a classic is Arthur Waley's _Translations from the Chinese_, >Knopf 1919, 1941 (maybe later too). English only-- but nice poems.
Yes, Waley is well-known. Nice stuff if you like a flowery rendition of the original Chinese. Waley took some liberties in translating poetry (understandable considering Classical Chinese poetry is notoriously elliptical in the extreme - almost like contemporary Language poetry here in the "west." He had to "fill in" areas in order make it more sensible to English readers.) Again I recommend the translations of Wai-Lim Yip: _Chinese Poetry: An Anthology of Major Modes and Genres_ , Duke University Press, 1997, ISBN 0-822 3-1946-2, available via Amazon.com....(in English with original Chinese AND word-by-word interlinear!) Waley's translations of prose on the other hand is admired by most (even Chinese who are bilingual, I have heard...). My favourite Waley is his translation of _Monkey: Journey to the West_. Highly recommend picaresque tale of China's counterpart to the NativeAmerican TricksterGod Coyote!!!! (Monkey, a.k.a. Sun Wu K'ung, Sage Equal to Heaven, is one of my childhood heroes... might explain why I tend to being whimsical & mischievious...) okay, I have written enough... czHANg