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Title: A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems by Arthur Waley ISBN: 0-939218-17-8 Publisher: Chapman Billies, Inc. Pub. Date: 01 July, 1997 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.67 (3 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Fine collection superseded
Comment: Arthur Waley is the most famous Sinologist this century, the man (other than Ezra Pound) who has done most in bringing Chinese poetry to the fore of Western public. Hence, no matter what, Waley's historical importance cannot be overestimated. And he is a competent all-round translator too, as this fine anthology demonstrates, one who has an uncanny ear of transforming Chinese rhythms and rhymes into naturalized English metrics.
Yet in the final analysis, most of Waley's work has been superseded by finer translations from Hinton and Watson. His English now strikes one with a certain archness (if still deceptively simple) which gives a somewhat falsified idea of the Chinese; in Li Po and Tu Fu, for example, his reproduction of their tone is uneven, seldom showing their difference in temperament or use of diction (incidentally, in Chinese one _can_ see the subtle differences in how either works). At times he "stretches out" Tu's metrics, making him less than succinct, or slurs over his use of an image.
Yet in his favorite poet Po Chu-I Waley does very well. Here is when his obvious talent in phrasing tastefully does the poet justice. Elsewhere, even if Waley can be faulted here and there, he is still very close lexically to the original.
To conclude, Waley's anthology is still worth getting, especially if you enjoy his translations. But supplementing it with either Watson's or Hinton's texts would probably give you a better idea of some poets.
Rating: 5
Summary: Refreshing the roots of the mind.
Comment: Waley, who was one of the great Sinologists of the twentieth century, translated a wide variety of Eastern works but is perhaps best known for his translations of Chinese poetry. His '170 Chinese Poems,' a book which contains, among other riches, the marvelous poems of T'ao Ch'ien, Po Chu-I, and Wang Wei, has been reissued many times. And although we have seen other very fine translations of Chinese poetry from writers as diverse as A. C. Graham, Kenneth Rexroth, and Gary Snyder, none of them have had the impact of Waley. Chinese poetry, for many, is and always will mean Arthur Waley. His influence has been enormous.
I would attribute his success to two things. In the first place, there is the very special quality of his English, a quality impossible to describe. In the second place, Waley was a master at evoking an atmosphere, a feeling tone, that strikes one as authentically Chinese. So good was he at this that one sometimes gets the feeling, as one does when reading the poems of that other remarkable and far greater genius, the poet Emily Dickinson, a woman whose mind also had a very Chinese cast, that they must have been Chinese souls who had somehow strayed and ended up reincarnating in Western bodies.
My remark about Emily Dickinson's 'Chinese-ness' may raise some eyebrows. Perhaps it takes a certain amount of exposure to Eastern culture, particularly to Buddhist thought, to see this quality in her, but I find it everywhere. I find it, for example, in lines such as these, slightly adjusted since they should be set out as poetry :
"I cross till I am weary / A Mountain - in my mind - / More Mountains - then a Sea - / More Seas - And then / A Desert find -" (J550).
It is into this strange dreamscape in which a solitary figure moves through a vast, enigmatic, obstacle-filled, wearying land that, a few lines later, "Asiatic Rains" arrive to work their effect.
Perhaps it might not be too fanciful to suggest that the rains from the East which bring relief, and even understanding, to Emily Dickinson's persona in poem J550 can be equated with Waley's poems, poems which drifted through the Chinese sky of his mind to bring something needful to the "Desert" of the modern Western sensibility. Perhaps this was the real reason for his great success - he brought something that was missing from the mechanized and arid Western spirit, something that we all inwardly yearn for that has been lost in the West but that the Eastern tradition can provide in abundance.
I don't know, but whatever the case, Waley's Chinese poems do have a truly magical effect on all readers. Once you have been exposed to them you can never forget them.
The particular beauty of Waley's style, a style which despite its age still strikes one as modern, can be seen in a poem such as Po Chu-I's 'Passing T'ien-men Street in Ch'ang-an and Seeing a Distant View of Chung-nan Mountain,' a poem which has always been one of my favorites. It reads:
"The snow has gone from Chung-nan; spring is almost come. / Lovely in the distance its blue colours, against the brown of the streets. / A thousand coaches, ten thousand horsemen pass down the Nine Roads; / Turns his head and looks at the mountains, - not one man!"
Here is the infinitely precious color and marvel of a Nature that is blazing with life and beauty and consciousness, sadly set over against a busy-ness that is also ours, an obsession and total involvement exclusively with people and their multifarious doings that blinds us - a mindset that leads us to overlook the universe, to pass it by like Po Chu-I's horsemen without even noticing it.
Waley's Chinese poems captivate us. They are a gentle rain which trickles down to bathe and refresh the roots of our mind. I envy those who are coming to them for the first time.
Rating: 5
Summary: A Sampler of Ancient Chinese Poetry
Comment: Kenneth Rexroth cited this book of translations in his "One Hundred Poems from the Chinese" as among a handful that are outstanding sources for those interested in Chinese poetry. I love the directness of the old Chinese poets, particularly their simplicity and accessibility -- at least as they have been translated today by people such as Rexroth. Those same qualities can be found in Waley's translations, where they have a seductively "commonplace" feel that both belies and accentuates their delicacy.
What I hadn't been prepared for, however, were Waley's introductory essays which were, like the poetry he translated, direct and unpretentious and , so, wonderfully informative.
Waley was one of the very first Westerners to undertake translations of ancient Chinese poetry, so, quite apart from the beauty of his work, he also holds an important position historically. This particular volume was first published in 1919.
A very easy and sumptuous read.
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