2019-06-04 ☼ writing
Chinese Poetic Writing by François Cheng (translated by Donald A. Riggs & Jerome P. Seaton) The first half of this book (translated from the French) comprises a detailed explanation of classical Chinese poetry, which cites it in the wider context of Chinese culture (calligraphy, painting, music, religion), outlines some of its distinctive features (the elision of personal pronouns, the ambiguity of time, the mechanics of rhyme and cadence), and unpacks recurring symbols and metaphors. Densely informative but accessible to a non-specialist, this overview is paired with translations of 135 Tang poems (presented alongside the original texts) in the second half of the book. See also: Classical Chinese Poetry: An Anthology (edited and translation by David Hinton). A hefty volume that ranges across 3,000 years of poetic history, from ancient oral traditions to the Song Dynasty.
Read the full article at SupChina.