Du Fu Books

David Hinton's translation of Tu Fu is a remarkable work. I read it a few years ago while in graduate school and the process of reading, then contemplating his words, became a rare treat for me.

Tu Fu wrote of a world most westerners find foreign, yet all humankind will appreciate. .. Above the clouds-on a mountain top sitting in the cabin of a friend lost long ago, Hinton's Tu gives you unique access to that other world which Tu described with such skill. It is a gift to be sure and one that will stay with you for a very long time.

THE SELECTED POEMS OF TU FU. Translated by David Hinton. 173 pp. New York : New Directions, 1989, and Reissued.

Tu Fu (712-790) was one of China's greatest poets, and the present book, after a brief 9-page Introduction, gives us a comprehensive selection of his poems, arranged chronologically, annotated, and in adequate translations of varying degrees of success.

Here is an example of Hinton's style, the first four lines of an eight-line poem, selected at random from the poem 'Skies Clear at Dusk' (and with my obliques added to indicate line breaks) :

"Dusk's failing flare breaks out. Clouds / Thin and drift - none return. Distant, / Bright, a rainbow drinks at the river. / Rain in the gorge falls - remnants scatter" (p.78).

Tu Fu is not an easy poet to translate, and readers with access to David Hawke's bilingual edition of Tu Fu, or to A. C. Graham's 'Poems of the Late T'ang, might find it interesting to compare Hinton's approach with theirs.

His book, which also includes a useful 17-page Biography which is keyed to the poems, quite full Notes, a Finding List, a Bibliography, and an Index of Titles and First Lines, would make a handy introduction for anyone new to Tu Fu.

But if, after reading it, you'd really like to discover what lies behind Tu Fu's poetry, and learn something of how his poetry works, you might take a look at the excellent bilingual anthology by Wai-lim Yip which contains a detailed treatment of a number of Tu Fu's poems. Details are as follows :

CHINESE POETRY : An Anthology of Major Modes and Genres. Edited and translated by Wai-lim Yip. 358 pp. Durham NC and London : Duke University Press, 1997. ISBN 0-8223-1951-9 (pbk.)

Tu Fu was China's greatest poet in most people's estimation. His unconventional use of classic forms illuminates the deep, familial joys and simple pleasures as well as the almost inconceivable sorrows people suffered during the middle years of the tenth century as China plunged from the cultural height of the middle T'ang dynasty to the depths of disaster caused by invasion, civil war, flooding, famine and the break down of civilization in all its forms. Though many people speak of Asian poetry as being symbolic and impersonal, the poems of Tu Fu are often highly personal and reveal a man who struggles to hold his family together and maintain his awesome dignity while being battered from the unparalleled luxury of the imperial palace to the desperation of a refugee fleeing barbaric armies killing everything in their path. Few poets will ever experience the horrible history that Tu Fu saw and survived, and few have ever recounted the moments of their lives half as well.

Many fine poets and translators have made excellent English versions of this master poet, but none has succeeded any better in terms of accuracy, clarity and lyricism than David Hinton. The Selected Poems of Tu Fu provides a wonderful sampling of the old gentleman's great diversity and adds the historical explanations that will prove invaluable to the new reader approaching this subject for the first time. I highly recommend this book and believe it belongs on every poet's book shelf.

Be sure to read the essential introduction, which lays out the translator's hurdles in properly rendering these poems. Then read the poems -- and marvel over the work of not only Tu Fu, but David Hinton as well.

Keith Holyoak has done a great job in bringing Chinese poetry to the
fore of Western public. The translator deserves much credit for these
poems read as if they were originally written in English. He brings us
a big step closer to the music of an ancient and culturally distant
century. Some poems take a more metaphysical tone but never fail to be
touching and humane.

Very serene. Simple, but descriptive. Keith paints cozy scenes of Far East life. I cannot only picture it, I can feel, taste and smell these places.

Keith Holyoak brings the mastery of these ancient eastern poets to life in our western context. Like Shakespeare these poets works are timeless, themes of joy despair, awe of nature and friendship in the artists work ring true universally, crossing cultures and time lines. A rich historical account at the beginning of the volume is an added bonus.

Nothing to say,I love this book so much.It is a book had written with love,knowledge,and passion.There is no one can replace Fu Lie------the best father in the world.I admire Fu Cong's luckiness.If you love music,art, and literature,<> should be a best enjoyment in leisure.

Not only this book is a book of history, but also a book of poetry. Tu Fu, through his poems, history of his contemporary time was also revealed. Professor Chou has also analyzed thoroughly on the structure of the poems. I highly recommand this book for anyone who is doing a research in historical Chinese poetries.

Burton Watson's collection of Du Fu translations presents 135 poems, including most of the poet's best-known poems. They are presented in chronological order, each with notes on the circumstances of its composition and explanatory footnotes where necessary. Each poem has a page to itself, although the notes and numbering are sometimes intrusive aesthetically.
The poems are preceded by a chronology and an introduction sketching Du Fu's life and identifying the main characteristics of his works: there are no particularly penetrating insights on offer here, but this is a useful summary for those not yet familiar with him. Vitally, however, what the book lacks is any kind of indexing: there is no contents list for the poems, no title index and no index of first lines. Unless one knows the date of composition, therefore, there is no way of finding a particular poem short of flicking through the whole book.
The translations themselves steer a middle course between the naturalisation and barbarisation camps: as an example, his translation of Spring View is as follows:

Spring Prospect
The nation shattered, mountains and river remain;/city in spring, grass and trees burgeoning./Feeling the times, blossoms draw tears;/hating separation, birds alarm the heart./Beacon fires three months in succession,/a letter from home worth ten thousand in gold./White hairs, fewer for the scratching,/soon too few to hold a hairpin up.

The first notable touch is the title itself: the word "prospect" brings out the double meaning of the view in springtime and the prospects for the country. In the first line, Watson declines to clarify the relationship between the two parts of the line with a conjunction, but the translation of zai as "remain" economically achieves the same effect. "Shattered" and "burgeoning", however, seem unnecessary elaboration of Du Fu's simpler vocabulary.
The translation of the second couplet is confused and consequently confusing. The original Chinese is ambiguous as to whether it is an observer or (metaphorically) the flowers and birds which feel, weep, hate and are alarmed. Watson seems to attempt to replicate this ambiguity, but can only do so by conflating the two interpretations: the flowers and birds feel and hate respectively, but the observer weeps and is alarmed. It must be preferable to accept that the ambiguity, as so often in Chinese poetry, is untranslatable and to choose one interpretation for the translation.
This is in fact exactly what Watson does in line 5; the original text speaks of beacon fires as being "connected", but does not narrow this down to connection in either space or time. Again, this ambiguity cannot be replicated in English, and Watson this time opts to translate the temporal connection only.
In each of the last four lines, Watson follows the original in leaving out active verbs; the beacon fires, the letter and the hairs don't do anything. The danger with this approach is that it can come across as overly telegraphic and stilted in English; whether Watson's striking of the balance between fidelity and naturalness is acceptable must be for each reader to decide.