Nineteen Ways of Looking at Wang Wei, Week 1 of 2

[x_los]

This week and next, we're looking at Eliot Weinberger's "Nineteen Ways of Looking at Wang Wei". This short book discusses many ways to translate a single, brief Tang dynasty poem and the choices involved therein. We'll look at the first nine poems (or versions thereof) this week, and the remainder the following. 

I'll reproduce the translations under discussion here, but c/ping from the pdf is not very reliable and frequently introduces errors. I'm including the text here primarily as a reference point for our discussions: I advise you to look at the book file itself for your reading.

Comments

Re: 3. Character-by-character translation

[forestofglory]

This mostly lines up with my classical dictionary except that the dictionary offers "sunlight" for the second character in the third line as well as bright. And "merely" for the first character on the second line.