Cloud Gate Song

5 Stars Amazon readers:

This delightful volume provides the first comprehensive English edition of a major poet of the Tang dynasty, Zhang Ji. The translator, Professor Jonathan Chaves, is one of the foremost sinologists and translators of Chinese poetry (most notably, he was editor and translator of the Columbia Book of Later Chinese Poetry). All those who appreciate the earlier and better-known Tang poets, such as Li Bai, Du Fu and Wang Wei, will find much of interest in the poetry of Zhang Ji. Most of the poems in this volume are short forms, touching on the themes most often associated with classical Chinese poetry, such as the changing of the seasons, farewells to friends, and the horrors of war. The introductory material makes it clear how Zhang Ji played a critical role in the transition from the poetry of the Tang dynasty to that of the Song dynasty that was to follow.

Professor Chaves translations are particularly noteworthy for his faithful treatment of the forms of the Chinese originals, giving a sense of their meter and rhyme. This is a welcome relief after a century in which most English translations of classical Chinese poetry simply force-fit the exquisite Chinese forms into American-style free verse.

This book belongs on the shelf of every serious reader of Chinese literature, and every serious student of the art of translation. Really a very fine book, it does for us two things: it brings to life a major Tang dynasty (618-907) poet hitherto virtually unstudied, and certainly unread, in the West; and it makes an important statement about the art of translation from Classical Chinese to English.