Selected Poems of Du Fu [Paperback]

Burton Watson (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 15, 2003 | ISBN-10: 0231128290 | ISBN-13: 978-0231128292 0

The great Buddhist priest Kûkai (774-835) is credited with the introduction and establishment of tantric -or esoteric -Buddhism in early ninth-century Japan. In Ryûichi Abé examines this important religious figure -neglected in modern academic literature -and his profound influence on Japanese culture. Offering a radically new approach to the study of early religious history -combining historical research, discourse analysis, literary criticism, and semiology -Abé contends that the importance of Kûkai´s transmission of esoteric Buddhism to Japan lay not in the foundation of a new sect but in his creation of a general theory of language grounded in the ritual speech of mantra. embeds Kûkai within the fabric of political and social life in ninth-century Japan and explains how esoteric Buddhism played a crucial role in many societal changes in Japan -from the growth of monasteries into major feudal powers to the formation of the native phonetic alphabet, kana. As Abé illustrates, Kûkai´s writings and the new type of discourse they spawned also marked Japan´s transition from the ancient order to the medieval world, replacing Confucianism as the ideology of the state. Abé begins by placing Kûkai´s life in the historical context of medieval Japan and the Ritsuryo state, then explores his interaction with the Nara Buddhist intelligentsia, which was seminal to the introduction of esoteric Buddhism. The author discusses Kûkai´s magnum opus, () and introduces a number of Japanese and Chinese primary-source texts previously unknown by Western-language scholars. Instead of tracing Kûkai´s thought through literal readings, explores the rhetorical strategies Kûkai employed in his works, shedding valuable light on what his texts meant to his readers and what his goals were in creating a discourse that ultimately transformed Japanese culture.

(Translation Review )

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Du Fu, long regarded as China's greatest poet, excelled in a variety of lyrical forms, displaying a richness of language that incorporated formal elegance and powerful colloquialism, flowery allusion and spare, unembellished verse... Watson has selected 127 poems for this collection, including those for which Du Fu is best remembered and several lesser known works that deserve to be rediscovered." -- "Translation Review"

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Chinese --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 128 pages
• Publisher: Columbia University Press (February 15, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0231128290
• ISBN-13: 978-0231128292
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.3 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,659,734 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Serviceable translations, poorly presented, April 23, 2003

By 

Mark "markalexander100" (Oxford, United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Selected Poems of Du Fu (Paperback)

Burton Watson's collection of Du Fu translations presents 135 poems, including most of the poet's best-known poems. They are presented in chronological order, each with notes on the circumstances of its composition and explanatory footnotes where necessary. Each poem has a page to itself, although the notes and numbering are sometimes intrusive aesthetically.
The poems are preceded by a chronology and an introduction sketching Du Fu's life and identifying the main characteristics of his works: there are no particularly penetrating insights on offer here, but this is a useful summary for those not yet familiar with him. Vitally, however, what the book lacks is any kind of indexing: there is no contents list for the poems, no title index and no index of first lines. Unless one knows the date of composition, therefore, there is no way of finding a particular poem short of flicking through the whole book.
The translations themselves steer a middle course between the naturalisation and barbarisation camps: as an example, his translation of Spring View is as follows:

Spring Prospect
The nation shattered, mountains and river remain;/city in spring, grass and trees burgeoning./Feeling the times, blossoms draw tears;/hating separation, birds alarm the heart./Beacon fires three months in succession,/a letter from home worth ten thousand in gold./White hairs, fewer for the scratching,/soon too few to hold a hairpin up.

The first notable touch is the title itself: the word "prospect" brings out the double meaning of the view in springtime and the prospects for the country. In the first line, Watson declines to clarify the relationship between the two parts of the line with a conjunction, but the translation of zai as "remain" economically achieves the same effect. "Shattered" and "burgeoning", however, seem unnecessary elaboration of Du Fu's simpler vocabulary.
The translation of the second couplet is confused and consequently confusing. The original Chinese is ambiguous as to whether it is an observer or (metaphorically) the flowers and birds which feel, weep, hate and are alarmed. Watson seems to attempt to replicate this ambiguity, but can only do so by conflating the two interpretations: the flowers and birds feel and hate respectively, but the observer weeps and is alarmed. It must be preferable to accept that the ambiguity, as so often in Chinese poetry, is untranslatable and to choose one interpretation for the translation.
This is in fact exactly what Watson does in line 5; the original text speaks of beacon fires as being "connected", but does not narrow this down to connection in either space or time. Again, this ambiguity cannot be replicated in English, and Watson this time opts to translate the temporal connection only.
In each of the last four lines, Watson follows the original in leaving out active verbs; the beacon fires, the letter and the hairs don't do anything. The danger with this approach is that it can come across as overly telegraphic and stilted in English; whether Watson's striking of the balance between fidelity and naturalness is acceptable must be for each reader to decide.