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: Introduction

[superborb]

Perhaps especially relevant since references and allusions to poetry form a greater part of modern Chinese than English?