The Selected Poems of Tu Fu: Expanded and Newly Translated by David Hinton [Paperback]

Tu Fu (712770 C.E.) has for a millennium been widely considered the greatest poet in the Chinese tradition, and Hintons original translation played a key role in developing that reputation in America. Most of Tu Fus 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. Through it all, his is a wisdom that can only be called elemental, and his poems sound remarkably contemporary.A new and substantially expanded version of Hintons landmark translation of Tu Fu, published on the thirtieth anniversary of that original edition Hinton's translation of? Hintons austerely beautiful translations assume that Chinese classical poetry cannot be severed from philosophy. His translations have always gone against the grain. He has been building, translation by translation, an English language for a Chinese conceptual world. His versions get closest to what makes Du Fu sublime for Chinese readers. David Hinton is the best English-language translator of classical Chinese poetry we have, and have had for decades. A magicians grace glows through all of the poems, a grace and ease uncommonly found,uncommonly masterful. Tu Fu said A poet's ideas are noble and simple. But Tu Fu does not seem so simple to us. His richly-layered work is well represented in these crisp translations. The background notes are invaluable. One of the world's finest poets is made available here. Tu Fu is the greatest non-epic, non-dramatic poet who has survived in any language.