Cathay
Classical Chinese Lyrics of Exile, War, Longing, and Cross-Cultural Modernist VerseBy Ezra Pound, Bai Li
Length36m
About this audiobook
Cathay gathers poems associated with the Chinese classical tradition into a modernist English idiom of extraordinary compression, clarity, and emotional resonance. Its landscapes of war, exile, courtly ceremony, friendship, and seasonal change move between lyric image, dramatic monologue, elegy, and song. Pieces such as the haunted soldier's lament and the spare river journeys reveal how translation can become an act of literary re-creation, placing ancient Chinese poetics in decisive conversation with Anglo-American modernism. Ezra Pound and Bai Li represent, in different ways, the cross-cultural conditions that make the volume possible: the encounter between English-language experimental poetry and Chinese literary inheritance. Pound's imagist commitments—precision, musical economy, and the charged presentation of image—find a powerful analogue in the allusive concision of the source tradition, while Bai Li's presence foregrounds the continuing importance of Chinese voices within this encounter. Together, these perspectives illuminate questions of transmission, mediation, and cultural interpretation central to modern literary history. Cathay is indispensable for readers of translation, comparative literature, and modern poetry. This compact volume offers a remarkable multiplicity of historical moods and aesthetic methods, inviting readers to consider how poems travel across languages and eras. Its converging voices provide both an educational introduction to Chinese poetic traditions and a compelling study in the creative possibilities—and ethical complexities—of translation.
Audiobook details
GenrePoetry, Literary Classics
Length36 mins
Narrated byListen with 1,000+ voices
FormateBook with Audio
Publish dateNov 26, 2023
LanguageEnglish
Table of contents
1The Poet Li Po, A.D. 701-762 (Annotated)
2FOR THE MOST PART FROM THE CHINESE OF RIHAKU, FROM THE NOTES OF THE LATE ERNEST FENOLLOSA, AND THE DECIPHERINGS OF THE PROFESSORS MORI AND ARIGA
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