A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems
Classical Chinese Verse on Exile, Friendship, War, Landscape, and TransienceBy Anonymous
Length3h 25m
About this audiobook
A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems is a landmark anthology of Chinese poetry in English translation, gathering lyrics from the Shijing and Han era through the Tang and later dynasties. Its selection balances courtly and popular voices, meditations on exile, friendship, war, labor, nature, and impermanence. The translations are distinguished by lucid, unrhymed English, restrained diction, and a supple attention to tone rather than a mechanically literal reproduction of Chinese form. In its literary context, the volume belongs to the early twentieth-century movement that introduced classical East Asian writing to modernist readers, making poems of remarkable brevity and suggestiveness feel immediate without disguising their historical distance. Though attributed here to Anonymous, the book is conventionally associated with the eminent translator Arthur Waley, whose scholarship and poetic tact reshaped Anglophone understanding of Chinese literature. Waley's engagement with Chinese language, history, and aesthetics arose from a broader intellectual effort to challenge narrow European literary canons and to present translation as both disciplined research and creative re-creation. His accompanying notes and ordering of materials further reveal an interpreter attentive to social setting as well as verbal beauty. This anthology is strongly recommended to readers seeking an accessible yet intellectually serious entrance into classical Chinese poetry. It will reward students of comparative literature, translation, and modernism, while its emotional clarity and contemplative imagery remain compelling for general readers. The volume is especially valuable as a study in how sensitive translation can preserve poetic atmosphere across languages and centuries.
Audiobook details
Rating★★★★ 4.0 (102)
Includes Goodreads
GenrePoetry
Length3 hrs 25 mins
Narrated byListen with 1,000+ voices
FormateBook with Audio
Publish dateNov 20, 2023
LanguageEnglish
Table of contents
1The Kojiki, or Records of Ancient Matters
26THE AUTUMN WIND
2PART II
27LI FU-JĒN
3Principal Chinese Dynasties
28SONG OF SNOW-WHITE HEADS
4THE LIMITATIONS OF CHINESE LITERATURE
29TO HIS WIFE
5TECHNIQUE
30LI LING
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6THE RISE AND PROGRESS OF CHINESE POETRY
31LAMENT OF HSI-CHÜN
7THE METHOD OF TRANSLATION
32CH’IN CHIA
8BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
33CH’IN CHIA’S WIFE’S REPLY
9BATTLE
34SONG
10THE MAN-WIND AND THE WOMAN-WIND
35SATIRE ON PAYING CALLS IN AUGUST
11MASTER TĒNG-T’U
36ON THE DEATH OF HIS FATHER
12THE ORPHAN
37THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST WU TWO POEMS
13THE SICK WIFE
38THE RUINS OF LO-YANG
14COCK-CROW SONG
39THE COCK-FIGHT
15THE GOLDEN PALACE
40A VISION
16“OLD POEM”
41THE CURTAIN OF THE WEDDING BED
17MEETING IN THE ROAD
42REGRET
18FIGHTING SOUTH OF THE CASTLE
43TAOIST SONG
19THE EASTERN GATE
44A GENTLE WIND
20OLD AND NEW
45WOMAN
21SOUTH OF THE GREAT SEA
46DAY DREAMS
22THE OTHER SIDE OF THE VALLEY
47THE SCHOLAR IN THE NARROW STREET
23OATHS OF FRIENDSHIP
48THE DESECRATION OF THE HAN TOMBS
24BURIAL SONGS
49BEARER’S SONG
25SEVENTEEN OLD POEMS
50THE VALLEY WIND
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