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

[x_los]

This week, we're finishing 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. This week, we'll look at the last ten poems. 

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: Postscript

[superborb]

The timeline of how aesthetics changed were really interesting.

I wonder what Weinberger would think of the Baike vernacular translations lol. It doesn't add a pronoun, but it sure does add some extra details. "The golden rays of the setting sun shine directly into the deep forest."

Re: Postscript

[x_los]

Yeah that IS another thing that's kind of absent from this inquiry--changing Chinese receptions over time, from PoV, from language subcultures.