B U R E A U O F P U B L I C S E C R E T S |
Shih Ching (The Book of Songs)
[ca. 500 BC]
The Shih Ching is a collection of ancient Chinese folksongs from ca.
1000-500 BC. Many of them are evidently remnants of peasant courtship rituals
and seasonal festivals, similar to the lyrics that accompany folk dances or
evolve into nursery rhymes once their original meaning has been forgotten. They
have a charm and freshness like almost nothing else in literature — “as though
the beginning of the world had come again.”
Arthur Waley’s The Book of Songs is the version to get
— preferably the
updated 1996 edition, which includes valuable additional material and notes by
Joseph R. Allen and Stephen Owen. Ezra Pound’s
translation (The Confucian Odes,
reprinted as Shih-Ching: The Classical Anthology Defined by Confucius) is
extremely eccentric and often ludicrous: not recommended except as a curiosity.
(In contrast, Pound’s other translations of Chinese poetry are superb.)
I have reproduced a few
different versions of one of the songs
here.
Chinese Poetry
This is a huge and rich field. The Chinese have a longer and probably greater
tradition of lyric poetry than any other country. Fortunately, despite the
differences of language and culture many of the qualities come through from
Chinese to English, insofar as they depend on sense, word order and images
rather than on sounds, wordplay and obscure cultural allusions, and the quality
of modern poetic translations has generally been pretty high. If you are
interested, you can explore some of the world’s greatest poets in considerable
depth and detail.
There are numerous collections. Rexroth did four volumes, all excellent:
One Hundred Poems from the Chinese, One Hundred More Poems from the Chinese
(a.k.a. Love and the Turning Year), Women Poets of China (a.k.a.
The Orchid Boat), and the Complete Poems of Li Ch’ing-chao
(China’s greatest woman poet). The New Directions Anthology of Classical
Chinese Poetry (ed. Eliot Weinberger) presents a real all-star selection,
confining itself to translations by Pound, Rexroth, Gary Snyder, William Carlos
Williams and David Hinton. Other good anthologies include
Witter Bynner’s
The Jade Mountain, Robert Payne’s
The White Pony, Burton Watson’s The Columbia Book of Chinese Poetry
and Wu-chi Liu and Irving Lo’s Sunflower Splendor. Arthur Waley’s
various collections are still well
worth reading, as are more recent translations by
Burton Watson, David Hinton, C.H. Kwock, Sam Hamill
and Red Pine,
to mention only a few that I’m familiar with.
Two helpful general introductions: James J.Y. Liu’s The Art of
Chinese Poetry and François Cheng’s Chinese
Poetic Writing.
[Rexroth translations of Chinese
poetry]
Tu Fu, Poems [712-770]
In order not to lose your way amid such abundance, it is a good idea to
explore at least one poet in depth. Tu Fu, Li Po, Po Chü-i,
Wang Wei, Han Shan, Su Tung-p’o,
and perhaps one or two others have been translated
extensively enough by enough different translators to make this possible. I
suggest Tu Fu. The Chinese themselves consider him their greatest poet. Rexroth
considers him the greatest lyric poet in any language (though he thinks
Sappho might have edged him out if a sufficient number of her poems had
survived).
Rexroth’s translations of 35 Tu Fu poems are included in One Hundred Poems
from the Chinese. Burton Watson, Sam Hamill, David Hinton and David Young have
each done a fine
volume of selections. David Hawkes’s A
Little Primer of Tu Fu provides a detailed analysis
of the 35 Tu Fu poems included in the classic Jade Mountain anthology.
If
you really get into him, you might try to find Florence Ayscough’s two volumes,
Tu Fu: The Autobiography of a Chinese Poet and Travels of a Chinese
Poet. They’re both long out of print and tend to be rather expensive, but
they include a far more generous selection of Tu Fu’s poems than any of the
other collections, presented in the context of his life.
Ayscough’s literal character-by-character translations are sometimes
helpful, but sometimes misleading when (following the dubious notion propounded
in the Pound-Fenollosa essay “The Chinese Written Character as a Medium
for Poetry”) she expands the meaning of a character based on its supposed
etymology. William Hung’s Tu Fu: China’s Greatest Poet covers
the same biographical territory as Ayscough, rendering the poems more
prosaically but also more accurately.
Extensive Tu Fu selections are also
included in most of the anthologies mentioned above. No single translation can
hope to convey the full richness of the original, but if you compare different
versions of a particular poem you may begin to get some sense of it.
I have reproduced numerous versions of one of his shorter poems
here.
[Rexroth essay on Tu Fu]
[Rexroth translations of Tu Fu]
Chinese Classic Novels
The following are generally considered the five greatest Chinese novels. They
are all very great indeed, worthy of being set on the shelf beside the
masterpieces of
Western fiction. A good general introduction is C.T. Hsia’s The Classic
Chinese Novel.
[Rexroth essay on the classic Chinese novels]
The Romance of the Three Kingdoms [14th century]
An epic historical novel of political intrigue and military strategy
during the period following the fall of the Han Dynasty (220 AD), when three
smaller states emerged and began struggling for dominance.
I recommend the one-volume abridged version translated by Moss Roberts,
entitled Three Kingdoms.
All Men Are Brothers [14th century]
A lusty picaresque narrative following the
individual stories of dozens of
different characters whose adventures and misadventures
ultimately lead them to flee the
authorities and form a group of bandit-rebels.
I’m
very fond of Pearl Buck’s translation, entitled All Men Are Brothers.
There are other versions under the titles The Water Margin and Outlaws of the
Marsh.
The Journey to the West [16th century]
This delightful fantasy, loosely based on the historical journey of a Chinese
Buddhist priest to India to bring Buddhist writings to China, is sometimes
called “a Buddhist Pilgrim’s Progress,” but it is far more comical than
Bunyan’s book. The priest is accompanied by Monkey, a mischievous character who
recalls the Buddhist characterization of the human mind as continually restless
and curious like a monkey, and Pigsy, who naturally represents gluttony, etc.
Whatever allegory there may be does not stop them from being very lively and
amusing characters.
There is a good complete edition in four volumes (trans. Anthony C. Yu), but
most readers will probably want to start with Arthur Waley’s one-volume
abridgment, entitled Monkey.
Chin P’ing Mei [ca. 1618]
This brilliant portrayal of social cynicism and moral decadence
centers around the domestic life of Hsi-men Ch’ing, a corrupt, greedy,
insatiably lustful, upwardly mobile merchant, and in particular his erotic
adventures with his numerous wives and concubines.
Different editions of the one-volume abridged version are entitled Chin
P’ing Mei or The Golden Lotus. An excellent complete five-volume
translation is in progress under the alternative title The Plum in the Golden
Vase (trans. David Tod Roy), but so far only the first two volumes have
appeared.
Cao Xueqin, The Story of the Stone
[1792]
This is the greatest of them all. In the case of the other four novels
mentioned above the abridged versions will probably suffice for most readers,
but this is such a rich and wonderful work that I encourage you to read the
complete five-volume version, entitled The Story of the Stone (trans.
David Hawkes and John Minford).
If that seems too daunting, there are two different abridged versions under
the more well known title The Dream of the Red Chamber.
[Rexroth essay on The Dream of the Red Chamber]
Shen Fu, Six Records of a Floating Life
[1809]
A moving nonfictional reminiscence of the love of a man and wife — a theme
otherwise rarely treated in Chinese literature.
There are two translations, one in Penguin, the other in Lin Yutang’s The
Wisdom of India and China.
* * *
Murasaki Shikibu, The Tale of Genji
[ca. 1015]
Rexroth usually ranked this as the world’s greatest novel. At other times,
depending on his mood, he would say that it was edged out by The Dream of the
Red Chamber. I can’t imagine any competent critic not putting both among the
top ten.
In contrast to the classic Chinese novels, which are generally very
down-to-earth, Lady Murasaki’s novel takes place in the extremely rarefied world
of the medieval Japanese court. The main characters have virtually no concerns
beyond creating for themselves the most exquisite, aesthetically refined life
possible. Love affairs are frequent, but they take place within the framework of strange and
extremely formal customs. For
example, ladies are never viewed by strangers, remaining
hidden behind screens even when carrying on a conversation. A
man may fall in love with a woman from seeing her silhouette in the window or
hearing her play the koto. Friends and lovers
are constantly sending each other poems, and any ineptness in either the
composition or the calligraphy sticks out like a sore thumb. Yet within all the
formality and aestheticism the characters are real and often memorable. In
psychological subtlety Lady Murasaki is fully a match for Proust, but she is far
wiser.
Arthur Waley’s translation was long the standard version. It is
a lovely work,
but rather free. Two more recent translations, by Edward
Seidensticker and Royall Tyler, stick closer to the original. Tyler’s has the
most detailed and illuminating notes, and is apparently the most literal,
following the original text’s long and sometimes rather confusing sentence
structure and its use of formal titles rather than personal names. This is
perhaps truer to the exalted tone of the book, but it makes the narration harder
to follow. Seidensticker’s translation is more succinct and more readable. So I’d say read his version
or Waley’s first, then try Tyler’s if
(as is very possible) you want to reread the book sometime. You can compare the
three different versions here.
For background, see Ivan Morris’s The World of the Shining Prince. You
may also want to try the other great work of the same period, also by a court
lady, Sei Shônagon’s Pillow Book.
[Rexroth essay on The Tale of Genji]
[Rexroth
essay on The World of the Shining Prince]
Kenneth Rexroth, Poems from the Japanese
There are many good translations of classic Japanese poetry, but I suggest
that you start with Rexroth’s three volumes. One Hundred Poems from the Japanese and
One Hundred More Poems from the Japanese concentrate on the early
(pre-haiku) periods. Women Poets of Japan (a.k.a. The Burning Heart)
includes both classic and modern poets.
[Rexroth translations of Japanese poetry]
R.H. Blyth, Haiku and Senryu collections
Blyth’s four-volume Haiku set, with his illuminating commentaries, is
in my opinion still by far the best haiku collection, even though there have
been a number of other good translations since then.
Less well known, but to my taste equally interesting, are his three volumes
on senryu (Senryu, Japanese Life and Character in Senryu, and
Edo Satirical Verse Anthologies). Senryus have the same 17-syllable form as
haikus, but are concerned with everyday human affairs rather than with nature
and tend to be more humorous and satirical.
Matsuo Bashô, Poems and Travel Journals
[1644-1694]
Bashô is almost universally
considered the greatest haiku poet. Lots of his poems are included in the Blyth
volumes and in other haiku collections. You can find 30 different translations of
his
famous frog haiku here, along with an essay from Robert Aitken’s A Zen Wave: Bashô’s Haiku and Zen, an excellent series of in-depth commentaries (get the
revised 2003 edition if possible).
Bashô’s other main works
are a series of
short travel journals with haikus interspersed within the prose narrative. The
greatest of these is Narrow Road to the Interior. Of the nine
translations I am aware of, I recommend Sam Hamill’s, Donald
Keene’s and Hiroaki Sato’s. Sato’s version has the most extensive notes, conveniently located on
facing pages.
I’d say get all three of those editions if possible and read them together. The brevity of Bashô’s
works makes this easy to do, and their subtle resonances make it almost
essential.
There is also a website that reproduces
five other translations of Narrow Road,
conveniently organized for paragraph-by-paragraph comparison, along with
detailed commentary. I have reproduced
the nine different versions of the opening
paragraph here.
[Rexroth
review of two Bashô translations]
Donald Keene (ed.),
Anthology of Japanese Literature; Modern Japanese Literature
[1955, 1956]
Two excellent anthologies that will introduce you to particular
authors or genres you may want to pursue in greater depth.
[Rexroth review of Keene’s two anthologies]
Junichiro Tanizaki, The Makioka Sisters
[1944]
Probably the greatest modern Japanese novel.
[Rexroth
review of The Makioka Sisters and other Japanese novels]
Section from Gateway to the Vast Realms: Recommended
Readings from Literature to Revolution, by Ken Knabb (2004).
No copyright.
Bureau of Public Secrets, PO Box 1044, Berkeley CA 94701, USA
www.bopsecrets.org knabb@bopsecrets.org