Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #342813 in Books
• Published on: 2000-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

Customer Reviews

For the Hermit in all of us
This book is the most comprehensive collection to date of the poems of Han-shan, or Hanshan, or Cold Mountain. There is a lengthy and well-researched introduction by Red Pine (Bill Porter) in which he examines the origins of these poems. Hanshan was a wandering poet-monk of 7th to 9th Century China who lived in the mountains and wrote poems on the walls of caves. It now seems unlikely that all the poems were written by one person, but the large time-span suggests several poets who were sympathetic to the original man.
Part of the attraction of these poems in the illusiveness of the author or authors. Who was this Zen Saint?
Red Pine's notes on each poem are excellent - they give historical and literary context, and allow even the novice to access these beautiful pieces of poetry.
If you live in the city and cannot escape, this books allows to slip away for a few minutes at least.

Excellent book, very good service
Everything is in the title, really.

If you hesitate between Henricks' and Red Pine's versions, maybe what follows will help you :

Hanshan by Red Pine is really easy to read, it is quite a pleasure to have it in your hands, and there are pictures of Hanshan's cave, something you can't find anywhere else.

The translation by Henricks is far less seductive, but the introduction, contrary to Red Pine's, is a real academic work.

Perfect.
Briefly: remarkable - lucidly thought poems, in utterly transparent words by a wonderful translator. And a really beautiful edition, with meticulous but unobtrusive scholarly apparatus, produced with care and love.

The strangest thing is: Red Pine comments in his introduction that several publishers actually rejected these translations, before a small press agreed to print them.