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Daily Archives: September 13, 2005

The Heart of Chinese Poetry by Greg Whincup

The Heart of Chinese Poetry by Greg Whincup

This book is really very good. Not only are the English translations felicitous — so far as I can judge — but you are taken as close as can be to the original, as there are word-by-word renderings with glosses to explain some of the finer points, Pinyin transliterations so you can actually read the original poem even if in modern Mandarin pronunciation, and, for those who can read them, the original Chinese characters.

I bought my copy around the time I was compiling From Yellow Earth to Eucalypt (Longman 1995) and used it to translate a handful of poems, with M’s assistance.

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Du Fu is one of the great Tang Dynasty poets, and among the many M and I did not translate is the beautiful “Thinking of My Younger Brothers on a Moonlit Night” (759 AD). See the magnificent portrait of the poet above. Here is the original Chinese + Pinyin, with a dreadful English translation on the right under the Pinyin, but a very handy word-by-word (or character-by-character) rendering under the Chinese. Here is a translation from China Page.
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Posted by on September 13, 2005 in Asian, Chinese and China, Multicultural, poets and poetry, writers

 
 
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