The Selected Poems of Tu Fu

by Tu Fu

Paperback, 1989

Status

Available

Publication

New Directions (1989), 172 pages

Description

"Tu Fu (712-770 C.E.) has for a millennium been widely considered the greatest poet in the Chinese tradition, and Hinton's original translation played a key role in developing that reputation in America. Most of Tu Fu's best poems were written in the last decade of his life, as an impoverished refugee fleeing the devastation of civil war. In the midst of these challenges, his always personal poems manage to combine a remarkable range of possibilities: elegant simplicity and great complexity, everyday life and grand historical drama, private philosophical depth and social engagement in a world consumed by war"--

Language

ISBN

0811211002 / 9780811211000

Library's review

Tu Fu radically altered poetry as he found it in the High T’ang period. In addition to making formal innovations in language and structure, he extended the range of acceptable subject matter to include all aspects of public and private experience, thus becoming in the words of translator David
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Hinton, “the first complete poetic sensibility in Chinese literature.”

This edition of The Selected Poems of Tu Fu is the only comprehensive selection of the poet's work currently available in English. While retaining a scholar's devotion to the text, Hinton has attempted “to recreate Tu Fu's poems as new systems of uncertainty." By reflecting all the ambiguity and density of the originals, he has created compelling English poems that significantly alter our conception of Chinese poetry. Included with the poems are the translator’s introduction and translation principles. as well as a biography of Tu Fu; together these provide a fascinating portrait of a uniquely sensitive spirit during one of the most tumultuous periods in Chinese history.
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Rating

½ (17 ratings; 3.9)

Pages

172
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