Product Description

Li Po (AD 701-62) and Tu Fu (AD 712-70) were devoted friends who are traditionally considered to be among China’s greatest poets. Li Po, a legendary carouser, was an itinerant poet whose writing, often dream poems or spirit-journeys, soars to sublime heights in its descriptions of natural scenes and powerful emotions. His sheer escapism and joy is balanced by Tu Fu, who expresses the Confucian virtues of humanity and humility in more autobiographical works that are imbued with great compassion and earthy reality, and shot through with humour. Together these two poets of the T’ang dynasty complement each other so well that they often came to be spoken of as one - ‘Li-Tu’ - who covers the whole spectrum of human life, experience and feeling.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #205637 in Books
• Published on: 2006-04-27
• Original language: Mandarin Chinese
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Customer Reviews

Legendary poets of China
Li Po (AD 701 - 762) and Tu Fu (AD 712 - 770) are regarded as the two greatest Chinese poets. Li Po was a spiritual poet whose verse deals with consciousness and the human mind, whilst Tu Fu was a chronicler of the everyday life.

The book includes a thorough introduction encompassing the pronunciation of Chinese words and names, notes on the Chinese calligraphy and the introduction proper which provides information on the poets and their times, plus the backgrounds to T'ang Poetry pertaining to the Book of Odes, the Ch'u Tz'u, the ballads and the principles of Chinese syllabic metre, the approach to translation, the tones and the `Chinese Sonnet.'

The poems are elucidated with explanatory notes and with reference to Ezra Pound's translations in his book Cathay. In this regard, I found here another translation of Li Po's poem The Ballad Of Ch'ang-Kan (The Sailor's Wife) the first part of which was translated as The River Merchant's Wife: A Letter, by Pound.

I was very pleased to find the second part of this beautiful poem here. Although there is no unanimity amongst scholars that it really is by Li Po, it perfectly completes the first part and Cooper's notes here are very illuminating, especially as regards place names on the Yangtze River.

This excellent book concludes with a list of titles and an index of first lines, including poems by other poets like Liang Wu-ti, Wang Wei and Li Shang-yin that are discussed in the introduction.

Li Po and Tu Fu
This seems to me one of the most helpful and stimulating books of poetry in translation that I have read.

The book has a very detailed 100-page introduction, almost amzingly good, that covers a large amount of historical and biographical ground; and introduces some of the formal charatceristics of Chinese poetry.

I can't comment on the fidelity of the translations to the Chinese, but they certainly read well in English. They at least give me the sense that this is poetry of importance. Li Po and Tu Fu are translated in equal amounts, and most poems are followed by a commenary (sometimes extending to two pages in length). I have found these very useful. Chinese poetry seems so different to English that I have felt unable to understand it at all when the words alone are translated (as, for example, in the old Penguin book of Chinese Verse): all that I am able to get out of these is a sense of picturesqueness. The literary background (and biographical, in Tu Fu's case) has added to my understanding and enjoyment of the poems.

I had been introduced to Chinese poetry (perhaps like many English poetry readers) by Ezra Pound's volume 'Cathay' (included in full in his Collected Shorter Poems and his Selected Poems, published by Faber), in which he poemizes translations made by Ernest Fellanosa. Two of the poems of Tu Fu's Pound includes in Cathay (what he titles as 'Jewelled Stairs Grievance' and 'The River Merchant's Wife: a Letter') are included, in Cooper's translation, here.

This book also contains reproducions of the texts of certain of the poems in the Chinese, written in different calligraphic styles.