The Chinese Classics, James Legge, London, 1870.
Lyrics from the Chinese, Helen Waddell, London & Boston.
From the Jesuits’ excellent Latin.
Cathay, Ezra Pound, London, 1915. Few, perfect, a classic in English, Pound’s best verse.
170 Chinese Poems, Arthur Waley, London & New York, 1918.
Excellent.
Chinese Lyrics from the Book of Jade, French of Judith Gautier, translated by James Whitall, New York, 1918. Misses the lassitude of her French.
Coloured Stars, E. Powys Mathers, London & Boston, 1918. Highly colored, from the French.
More Translations from the Chinese, Arthur Waley, London & New York, 1918. Excellent.
The Garden of Bright Waters, E. Powys Mathers, London & Boston, 1920. Both Mathers’ are reissued by Knopf.
Fir Flower Tablets, Amy Lowell & Florence Ayscough, Boston, 1920. Very good.
The Works of Li Po, Shigeyoshi Obata, London & New York, 1922. Good.
The Temple and Other Poems, Arthur Waley, London & New York, 1923. Excellent.
The Lost Flute, French of Franz Toussaint, translated by G. L. Joerissen, London, 1923. Fair.
Lotus and Chrysanthemum, anthology, J. L. French, New York, 1927. None too good.
Tu Fu, Florence Ayscough, London & Boston, 1929. Excellent.
The Jade Mountain (300 Poems of T’ang), Witter Bynner, New York, 1929. Excellent, Bynner’s best verse.
Images in Jade, Arthur Christy, New York, 1929. Fair.
Selections from Su Tung P’o, C. D. Le G. Clark, London, 1931.
Very good.
Festivals and Songs of Ancient China, Marcel Granet, London & New York, 1932. Essential.
Poetry of the Orient, Eunice Tietjens, New York, 1934. Fair.
The Way and Its Power (Tao Te Ching), Arthur Waley, London & New York, 1934. Excellent.
Travels of a Chinese Poet (Tu Fu, Volume n), F. Ayscough, London & New York, 1934. Excellent.
The Prose Poetry of Su Tung P’o, C. D. Le G. Clark, Shanghai, 1935. Excellent.
Modern Chinese Poetry, Acton and Ch’en, London, 1936. Very good.
The Book of Songs, Arthur Waley, London & New York, 1937. Excellent.
Chinese Lyrics, Chu Ta-kao, Cambridge, 1937. Fair.
The White Pony, anthology, edited by Robert Payne, New York, 1947. Very good.
Contemporary Chinese Poetry, edited by Robert Payne, New York, 1947. Very good.
The Gay Genius (Su Tung P’o), Lin Yu Tang, New York, 1947. Biased.
Po Chu-i, Arthur Waley, London & New York, 1949. Very good.
The Book of Odes, Bernhard Karlgren, Stockholm, 1950. The best Shi Ching.
Li Po, Arthur Waley, London & New York, 1950. Only “good,“ he doesn’t like Li Po.
The Art of Letters, E. R. Hughes, New York, 1951. Very illuminating, too much influence of I. A. Richards.
Tao the Hermit, William Acker, New York & London, 1952. Good.
Tu Fu, William Hung, Cambridge, Mass., 1952. Very good, if a little prosaic.
Poems of T’ao Ch’ien, Chang and Sinclair, Honolulu, 1953. Good.
The Confucian Odes (Shi Ching), Ezra Pound, Cambridge, Mass., 1954. The less said the better.
The Nine Songs, Arthur Waley, London, 1955. Very good.
Poems of Lee Hou-chu (Li Yu), Liu Yih-ling and Shahid Suhrawardy, Bombay, 1948.
Leaves from Chinese History in Verse, Li Chin-lun, New York, 1952. A general anthology.
Lin Ho-ching (Lin Pu), Max Perleberg, Hong Kong, 1952.
The Book of Songs (Shi Ching), Arthur Waley, London & New York, 1954; Definitive.
One Hundred Poems from the Chinese, Kenneth Rexroth, New York, 1956. Thirty-five poems of Tu Fu, the rest Sung.
Yuan Mei, Arthur Waley, London & New York, 1956. Poems and biography. Excellent translations and picture of eighteenth-century China.
Why I Live on the Mountain, C. H. Kwôck and Vincent McHugh, San Francisco, 1958.
The Jade Necklace, Lin San Kwei, verse rendered by Stanwood Cobb, Washington, 1958. A T’ang anthology.
Ch’u Tz’u, The Songs of the South, David Hawkes, Oxford & New York, 1959. Very good.
Chinese Love Poems, D. Klemer, illustrated by Seong Moy, Garden City, 1959. Gift book.
The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons, Liu Hsieh, translated by V. Yu-chung Shih, New York, 1959. A major work of Six Dynasties literary criticism and poetics. Excellent introduction and notes.
Poems of Solitude, Jerome Ch’en and Michael Bullock, London & New York, 1960. A general anthology.
The Jade Flute, Mount Vernon, New York, 1960. A gift book.
The Penguin Book of Chinese Verse, edited by Albert Richard Davis, translated by Robert Kotewall and Norman L. Smith, Harmondsworth, Middlesex & Baltimore, 1962.
Cold Mountain (Han Shan), Burton Watson, New York, 1962. Good. Snyder’s version is better.
The Poet Kao Ch’i, F. W. Mote, Princeton, 1962. A biography with poems, excellent as a picture of the troubled times of transition from the Mongol Dynasty to the Ming. Translations good.
The Art of Chinese Poetry (Liu Lo-yu), James J. Y. Liu, London & Chicago, 1962. Good.
Lament Everlasting (The Death of Yang Kuei-fei) (Po Chu-I), Howard S. Levy, Tokyo, 1962.
The Moment of Wonder, edited by Richard Lewis, illustrated, New York, 1964. Chinese and Japanese poetry.
Poems of the Late T’ang, A. C. Graham, Baltimore, 1965. Good.
Cold Mountain Poems (Han Shan), Gary Snyder, San Francisco, 1965. Excellent.
A Collection of Chinese Lyrics, Duncan Robert Mackintosh, London & Nashville, 1965. Poor.
Su Tung’o (Su Shih), Burton Watson, New York, 1965. Good.
The Murmuring Stream (Hsieh Ling Yun), J. D. Frodsham, O.U.P., Kuala Lumpur & New York, 1967. Excellent biography and poems; translations accurate but prosaic.
An Anthology of Chinese Verse, J. D. Frodsham and Ch’eng Hsi, O.U.P., Oxford & New York, 1967. Excellent. Includes verse from the Six Dynasties; first volume of a projected series to cover all dynasties.
Chinese Moonlight, Walasse Ting, New York, 1967.
A Primer of Tu Fu, David Hawkes, Oxford & New York, 1967. Gives transliteration in modern orthography of thirty-five poems, exegesis, literal and prose translations. A bit prosaic, but invaluable and very sound.
Fifty Songs from the Yüan, Richard Fu-sen Yang and Charles R. Metzger, London, 1967.
An Introduction to Sung Poetry (Yoshikawa K?jir?), Burton Watson, Cambridge, Mass., 1967. Good; very square, modern Japanese taste.
The Poetry of Li Shang-yin, James J. Y. Liu, Chicago, 1969. Poems, biography, and elaborate exegesis. Excellent.
Cantonese Love Songs, Clementi, Oxford, no date. Very good; as a volume of texts, unique.
Flower Shadows, Lee, New York, no date. Fair.
Poésies Chinoises de l’Epoque Thang, Hervey St. Denys, Paris, 1862. Still good.
Le Li Sao, Hervey St. Denys, Paris, 1870. Untranslatable, still the best.
La Poésie Chinoise, C. Imbault-Huart, Paris, 1886. Good.
Un Poète Chinois du XVIII Siècle, C. Imbault-Huart, Shanghai, 1886. Good.
Poésie Moderne, C. Imbault-Huart, Paris, 1892. Good.
Livre de Jade, Judith Gautier, Paris, 1908. Excellent, a French, or world, classic. The best English translations of Judith Gautier are the few by the French-American poet Stuart Merrill in his Pastels and Prose, published about sixty years ago by Harper.
La Flute de Jade, Franz Toussaint, Paris, 1920. Fair.
Fêtes et Chansons Anciennes de la Chine, M. Granet, Paris, 1929.
Essential.
Anthologie de la Littérature Chinoise, Sung-nien Hsu, Paris, 1933. Fair.
T’ao Yuan Ming, Wong Wen Po, Paris, 1934. Good.
Wang Wei, Liou Kin Ling, Paris, 1941. Good.
Cent Quatrains des T’ang, Lo Ta Kang, Paris, 1947. Very good—a lovely book.
Homme d’Abord, Poète Ensuite, Lo Ta Kang, Paris, 1948. Ditto.
Anthologie Raisonnée de la Littérature Chinoise, G. Margouliés, Paris, no date, recent. Excellent.
Florilège des Poèmes Song, Soulié de Morant, Paris, no date. Excellent, second only to J. Gautier.
Die Lieder des Li Yü, Alfred Hoffmann, Köln, 1950.
Poetische Werke (Han Yu), Erwin von Zach, edited with an introduction by James Robert Hightower, Cambridge, U.S.A., 1952.
Gedichte (Tu Fu), Erwin von Zach, edited with an introduction by James Robert Hightower, Cambridge, Mass., 1952.
Nuits de Chine, Yeou Ta, introduction and adaptation by Joséphine, Paris, 1954.
Liriche Cinesi, edited by G. Valensin, Rome, 1954.
La Poésie Chinoise, Patricia Guillermaz, Paris, 1957. Excellent.
Leben und Dichtungen des Ni Tsan, Helga Kuntze-Shroff, Bombay, 1959.
Poesía China, Maria Teresa León and Rafael Alberti, Buenos Aires, 1960. Good, very free, general anthology. Alberti is a major poet.
Poesie del Fiume Wang, Wang Wei and P’ei Ti, translated by Martin Benedikter, Torino, 1961.
Anthologie de la Poésie Chinoise Classique, Paul Demiéville, Paris, 1962. Excellent general anthology.
La Poésie Chinoise Contemporaine, Patricia Guillermaz, Pads, 1962. Excellent.
La Poésie Chinoise, des Origines à la Révolution, Patricia Guillermaz, Paris, 1966. Excellent.
Aux Origines de la Poésie Classique en Chine, Jean Pierre Diény, Leiden, 1968. Very good. Exegesis, texts, translations, general criticism.
The best German versions are still those of Klabund.
There are many new translations in Russian, Swedish, Dutch, Finnish (those of Pertti Nieminen are among the best contemporary Finnish poetry), Polish, Czech, Bulgarian, Rumanian, Norwegian, Indonesian, Korean (both North and South), and Vietnamese, those in the socialist countries stimulated by the Chinese Communist regime. Japan has witnessed a tremendous burst of activity in Sinology in the past twenty years; to a lesser extent this is also true of Russia. Japanese translation and criticism are dominated by the conventional taste of the Japanese establishment, but there are large and ever-growing minority opinions and tastes which are anything but conventional. Japanese is rapidly becoming a required language for those who would study classical Chinese literature.
There are a number of general works in English of great value: histories of Chinese literature by Lai Ming, Liu Wu-chi, collections like Wen-lin, by the University of Wisconsin, Studies in Chinese Literature by the Harvard Yen Ching Institute, Hightower’s Topics in Chinese Literature, Burton Watson’s Early Chinese Literature, and an immense number of books on Chinese philosophy, civilization, history, and new translations and commentaries on Confucius, Lao Tse, and Chuang Tsu. Especially to be recommended is one of the greatest scholarly works of all time, Joseph Needham’s Science and Civilization in China, eventually to be many massive volumes. I have included no works of or on twentieth-century Chinese literature, really a different subject, and none on Communist Chinese literature, a different subject again. Translations into English now being issued in Peking are uniformly extremely poor. The Communist government should hire a new editor for their English language publications.