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mary_soon_lee's review against another edition
5.0
In this brilliantly-executed book, David Hawkes examines thirty-five poems by Tu Fu (also known as Du Fu), an eighth-century Chinese poet. For each poem, Hawkes provides the original Chinese, a transliteration, a general discussion, a line-by-line examination that includes a word-by-word translation, and lastly a prose rendering of the whole poem. I found it wonderful. As a non-Chinese reader, this is the closest I've approached to understanding the original version of classic Chinese poetry. It's painstaking but illuminating. I recommend it very highly indeed.
I note that the final prose translations of the poems are rather flat. The examination leading up to each prose rendition, however, conveys both meaning and impact. I also note that the book often made me melancholy. The upheavals of war and shifting political power were not kind to Tu Fu. A sense of loss pervades the collection, as in the fourth poem where he thinks about his far-distant wife and children, or the tenth poem where briefly meets an old friend for a single night, or the thirty-first poem where he thinks about a dead dancer whom he saw as a small boy.
Two additional remarks. Firstly, I was interested to learn that Tu Fu was a huge admirer of Kongming (Zhuge Liang), advisor to the ruler Liu Bei, who lived about five hundred years before Tu Fu. Secondly, this is a minor point, but I think the discussion of poem 25 erroneously compares it to poem 7 instead of to poem 16.
An excellent, excellent book.
About my reviews: I try to review every book I read, including those that I don't end up enjoying. The reviews are not scholarly, but just indicate my reaction as a reader, reading being my addiction. I am miserly with 5-star reviews; 4 stars means I liked a book very much; 3 stars means I liked it; 2 stars means I didn't like it (though often the 2-star books are very popular with other readers and/or are by authors whose other work I've loved).
I note that the final prose translations of the poems are rather flat. The examination leading up to each prose rendition, however, conveys both meaning and impact. I also note that the book often made me melancholy. The upheavals of war and shifting political power were not kind to Tu Fu. A sense of loss pervades the collection, as in the fourth poem where he thinks about his far-distant wife and children, or the tenth poem where briefly meets an old friend for a single night, or the thirty-first poem where he thinks about a dead dancer whom he saw as a small boy.
Two additional remarks. Firstly, I was interested to learn that Tu Fu was a huge admirer of Kongming (Zhuge Liang), advisor to the ruler Liu Bei, who lived about five hundred years before Tu Fu. Secondly, this is a minor point, but I think the discussion of poem 25 erroneously compares it to poem 7 instead of to poem 16.
An excellent, excellent book.
About my reviews: I try to review every book I read, including those that I don't end up enjoying. The reviews are not scholarly, but just indicate my reaction as a reader, reading being my addiction. I am miserly with 5-star reviews; 4 stars means I liked a book very much; 3 stars means I liked it; 2 stars means I didn't like it (though often the 2-star books are very popular with other readers and/or are by authors whose other work I've loved).
spacestationtrustfund's review against another edition
3.0
This is exactly how I think all translations should be presented: the original text; a transliteration; contextualising information; a line-by-line analysis; a word-for-word (or character-for-character) translation; a more fluid translation. David Hawkes's translations of the 35 poems herein dissected (so to speak) are in prose, and unequivocally terrible, but the rest of the stuff is so good that it almost makes up for it.