Arthur WaleyRezensionen

Sleeper book of translations that span a poet's life, has a 'narrative thread' that I'm sure Waley meant for but the book itself and the poetry is enrapturing.

One of the best works of translations from ancient Chinese poetry I've had the good fortune to stumble on. Beautiful moments in landscape observed well over a thousand years ago, and still shimmering in this English translator's verse from the early twentieth century.

In this paper Arthur Waley gets away with inaccuracy, slovenly scholarship and infelicitous judgements only because his audience knows even less about his subject than he does.

Published in 1918 when Waley was twenty-nine years old, his first translations of Chinese poetry still bear up under close scrutiny. It remains probably the best general anthology of Chinese poetry by a single translator in English. Waley's renderings are always serviceable, more often than not totally accurate, and often sublime. The introduction to part 1 gives a useful overview of the development of Chinese versification throughout its long history, and the introduction to part 2 contains a potted biography of the great Tang poet Bai Juyi.

'Above all, considering imagery to be the soul of poetry, I have avoided either adding images of my own or suppressing those of the original.'

The blurb of this book promises the following:

"This unique anthology of Buddhist scripture traces the development of Buddhism through the ages and around the world. Designed to serve scholars and students, this classic text has become a valuable resource for Buddhists and all those who wish to explore for themselves the original sources of one of the world's great religions.
Accessible and jargon-free, these translations from the original Pali, Sanskrit, Chinese, Tibetan and Japanese are presented in plain English by four leading experts on the language and literature of Buddhism, while a glossary of foreign terms completes a thoroughly comprehensive and timeless introduction to the subject."

What utter rubbish.

What the book contains are excerpts of translated texts that have been translated and complied by academics for academics. There is a short introduction to the texts dating back to 1953 but this gives no indication of how the texts were selected or what their significance is.

For a book that presumes to be a comprehensive and timeless introduction to the subject, there is a remarkable lack of explanations. In fact, there are none.

So what the book really is, is a collection of nondescript texts that are presented without any context, relevance, time lines, or anything else that could serve to gain an understanding of the text and how they relate to the subject. Unless, of course, you consult a variety of additional reference works.

1.5* rounded up.

This is a treat. The narrative is thin but consistent. Waley gives us excerpts from several Chinese-language sources about the nefarious doings of the British. The first and the longest is the diary of Lin Tse-hsü, the famous Commissioner Lin, who, at the behest of the Qing emperor Tao-kuang (or Daoguang) sought to destroy the opium trade in China. An impossibility, of course, in a nation with such an endless unguarded coast. But Lin gave it his all. When about halfway through Lin's diary we read of the Emperor' insistence that Lin complete his task (again, an impossible one) so he can take up the reigns of a governorship in another part of China, we realize he is doomed. In time, when he can't deliver, he is investigated though not tried, and reduced in rank. It's sad to see the Chinese of the 1840s trying to respond militarily to the British. There is no command and control, no training, no planning. Lin's section, the longest, verges on a character study. It's fascinating. Subsequent diaries, one by Pei Ch'ing-ch'iao, a young man of no rank but with a gung-ho father, gives us the Chinese military's Keystones Cops-like response to British arms under General I-Ching. It would be laughable were it not so tragic. Further diaries include Chu Chih-yün's, a poet who lived near the Grand Canal outside the walls of Chinkiang, ninety miles up the Yangtze estuary. He tells us of the British encroachment on that town and "the horror, the horror," experienced by the residents. It's hard to believe Niall Ferguson now wants us to look on the gentle side of empire. Just think of all the wonderful things it gave to the world, he says. Ok, like what, bureaucracy? Sorry, Niall. That just won't square the Brits with China. Besides the Chinese were already known for their own homegrown style of administration back when the British were still crawling from the sea on vestigial limbs. It simply strikes one dumb to think that the Brits thought it their right to sell opium to the Chinese, thus creating a vast class of addicts, something of course never permitted in Merry England. Highly recommended.

Motivated by reading William T. Vollmann's Kissing the Mask , I re-read Arthur Waley's (1889-1966) translations of nineteen Noh plays (with summaries of sixteen others). Though reading a Noh play is much like reading the libretto of an opera, it is unavoidable, probably even for the Japanese, since the classic Noh plays (and that is most of them) are written in the formal language of the fourteenth century Japanese court. When Waley wrote this book (it appeared in 1921), he asserted that this courtly language was still used to write very formal letters in Japan. Nearly a century later, and knowing the enormous upheavals in Japanese society which have intervened, I feel safe in speculating that relatively few Japanese would have learned that archaic version of Japanese in our time. In the West, the opportunities to actually see a live performance of a Noh play are rare indeed. Even in Japan, where the Noh acting troupes are partially supported by the government, Noh performances are not frequent and most definitely sinfully expensive. Except for the occasional performance for a temple or other public institution (where they are free and are serving an outside purpose), Noh performances are attended by the old and exceedingly wealthy, to a degree that goes well beyond the situation of classical music in the West, where a certain minority of the young are still drawn to the music and into the concerts. When I asked my Japanese friends about Noh performances, they snorted with disdain and said they are for very old poseurs who go there to sleep. This news saddened me at the time but did not surprise.

Though, of course, Noh grew out of earlier forms of theater and performance, it attained its unique and traditional form in the fourteenth century due largely to the efforts of a father and son team, Kiyotsugu Kwanami (or Kanami) (1333-1384) and Motokiyo Zeami (or Seami or Kanze) (1363-1443/4). Zeami became the theorist of Noh, writing essays about its aesthetics, and composed many of the plays which became the models for later authors. He also wrote very concrete and practical advice for Noh actors (excerpted by Waley). Some of these essays are assiduously kept secret by the oldest troupes, which are associated with families - either you are born into the family or adopted into it if you want to be a Noh actor. Though the occasional woman was a Noh actor in the far past, all roles have been performed by men for a very long time (some of the troupes are relaxing this somewhat, but the actresses must learn to play the women's roles "with the strength of a man").

I have only ever seen videos of Noh performances and heard recordings of the performances (Noh music is strikingly unique) and have resigned myself to never seeing a live performance. You should find some of the videos online to get a flavor of the totally unique nature of Noh performance techniques. But what about Noh plays as literature? Waley explicitly writes that to explore and display precisely this aspect was the purpose of this book. Let's turn to that.

The plays translated in full were written in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, 6 or 7 by Zeami. As dance, long silences, slow chanting and singing are major components of Noh, the actual texts are less than 10 pages long. Distillation and constraint, yugen (that which lies beneath the surface, that which is hinted but not stated) are basic elements in these texts, as they are in most medieval Japanese art.

The stories are largely based upon famous stories from ancient and medieval Japanese history, though not exclusively so. They are permeated with Buddhist attitudes, though, somewhat surprisingly to me, by Amida-school Buddhist traits, not by Zen. Of course, the fact that karma plays a large role in the plays is common to all schools of Buddhism. And there are many ghost stories. As Waley explains, the ghost stories enable the Noh author to describe, not show, violent and dramatic events; this is advantageous because to show such things would be vulgar, offensive and not yugen . Typically, there are two characters (though not always), 4 musicians, and a chorus filling roles not unlike those of the chorus in ancient Greek drama; but the chorus also chanted or sang the lines of the shite , the main character, when the actor was too involved in his dancing and gesturing to comfortably chant or sing himself. (Any sign of strain or effort would not be yugen .)

The texts are mixtures of poetry and prose; often they open with a Buddhist-inspired couplet, then lapse into prose as the waki , one of the two main characters, introduces himself, the setting and then the shite . As the dramatic tension heightens, the prose usually intensifies into poetry. Viewed as literature these translations are truly admirable - graceful, charming, quite yugen (Vollmann loves them, too). Let me show you a few passages.

First, the opening couplet from Kagekiyo (Zeami):

Late dewdrops are our lives that only wait
Till the wind blows, the wind of morning blows.

A chorus from Kagekiyo :

Though my eyes be darkened
Yet, no word spoken,
Men's thoughts I see.
Listen now to the wind
In the woods upon the hill:
Snow is coming, snow!
Oh bitterness to wake
From dreams of flowers unseen!
And on the shore,
Listen, the waves are lapping
Over the rough stones to the cliff.
The evening tide is in.

From the title character in Atsumori (Zeami):

When they were on high they afflicted the humble;
When they were rich they were reckless in pride.
And so for twenty years and more
They ruled this land.
But truly a generation passes like the space of a dream.
[.............]
Wild geese were they rather, whose ranks are broken
As they fly to southward on their doubtful journey.

If The Secret History is what you're after, Waley only gives extracts. As he says himself, "Of The Secret History, I have translated only the parts founded on story-teller's tales." Whatever he means by that, it's loose translation, story-style. He says he doesn't believe in its historical value, so you won't get the text as document here.

There are other texts - mostly Chinese, but also Ainu - and essays. I like the little piece 'Blake the Taoist'.

I dream of writing so eloquently with so few words! Beautiful!

Good overview of sources for Taoism, Confucianism and Mencius. A bit dated, and the translation is clunky compared to some more modern versions, but a pretty decent buy if you can find it.

One of the best-known pioneer works in translating
Chinese verse in English, notable for including a
substantial number of poems by Po Chu-i.

lao tzu's the shit. confuscious can eff off with his "be a gentleman and respect your superiors" bull.

Learn to be a better butcher...

Arthur Waley was a self-taught scholar, best known for his translations of Chinese and Japanese poetry and "The Tale of Genji" and "The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon". The "Three Ways" cover Taoist, Confucianist (in the form taught by Mencius) and Realist thought (the latter is more commonly called 'Legalism') around the time of the Ch'in Dynasty - 255 to 206 BC - when China first coalesced into empire. Inspired selections are punctuated by Waley's wry sense of humour and the parallels he draws to 20th century totalitarian forms of government. The book is flawed, however, by lack of ambition, a point Waley admits in the epilogue where he excuses himself for not providing more historical context and advocates instead in favour of a division of labour between translator and historian. More likely, Waley wasn't up to the task of linking his research to the emerging historical scholarship on ancient China. Associated with Bloomsbury, where he also lived, Waley never traveled to the Orient.

A translation of the "Tao Tê Ching" with comments

Just FYI: I have chosen not to combine this work with other translations of the Tao te Ching. It does contain a translation of the Tao te Ching, but the main part of the work is the notes and text introduction, which set it apart from works where the translation is the main point.