^4 
Land & Water 
August 15, 19 1 8 
Life and Letters mjJXSouue 
A Translator of Genius 
DURING the last couple of years those who 
watch the periodical Press may have noticed 
unobtrusively stealinfj forth batches of transla- 
tions from the Chinese by Mr. Arthur Waley, 
one lot of which was honoured by a front-page 
•article in The Titnes Literary Supplement. Mr. Waley is 
•one of the most brilliant of our younger Orientalists. His 
•original literary gifts are even rarer than his Chinese scholar- 
ship, and 170 Chinese Poems (Constable, 7s. 6d. net) contains 
the first fruits of his poetic industry'. 
****** 
There is very little knowledge of Chinese literature in this 
country. There is a good deal of misconception as to its 
nature. People think of the East comprehensively as a 
place very addicted to what Gibbon calls "the science — or, 
rather, the language — of Metaphysics." Translators foster 
the impression — or, at least, do not lay themselves out to 
<iissipate it. Thus, even a series which contains a good deal 
of very amusing matter (such as the sayings of Chuang Tzu) 
is portentously named "The Wisdom of the East" series; 
and most of what little translation has been done from 
Chinese is, as a fact, concerned with Confucianism and 
Taoism. People who know about Mencius have never 
heard of the Tippling Scholar, the Drunken Dragon, or the 
Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove. Only, I think. Pro- 
fessor Giles, with his excellent History of Chinese Literature 
and his skilful volume of rhymed versions from tire poets, 
has taken pains to show how little the Chinese have been 
concerned with isms. As Mr. Waley says, their "philosophic 
literature knows no mean between the traditionalism of 
Confucius and the nihihsm of Chuang Tzu. In mind, as 
in body, the Chinese were for the most part torpid main- 
landers. Their thoughts set out on no strange quests and 
adventures, just as their ships discovered no new conti- 
nents." The glory of their literature is not their speculative 
work, but their lyric poetrj'. They do not write epics. 
They admire brevity, and if a poet cannot saj' what he wants 
in a hundred — or, better, in a dozen — lines, they think 
nothing of him. They have no Homer, Dante, Milton, or 
Shakespeare. But they have written at least as much 
^reat lyric poetry as any nation on earth, and the volume 
of their good lyric work is unparalleled in the West. 
****** 
The one thing the Western reader misses is development, 
•conspicuous change. An unusually static — though a high — • 
■civilisation and fixed modes of thought have resulted in 
the subjects and even the forms of poetry remaining very 
much the same as they were before the great T'ang Age. 
There is no scholastic dictation as to what should be written 
about. The Chinese poets wrote about what they thought 
and felt. But those of one age thought and felt the same 
things as those of another : they lived the same lives in the 
same surroundings, with the same unaltering religions and 
scepticisms and the same tastes. They arrived early at what 
they considered the perfect forms, the perfect arrangements 
of tones and rhymes, for short poems, and they have considered 
even slight variations verj' daring. Mr. Waley gives transla- 
tions of what he calls the "Seventeen Old Poems," which 
date from about the time of Christ. "These poems," he 
says, "had an enormous influence on all subsequent poetry, 
and many of the habitual cliches of Chinese verse are taken 
from them." I quote one (the translation, like all the others, 
should be read aloud) : 
Green, green, 
The grass by the river-bank. 
Thick, thick, 
The willow-trees in the garden. 
Sad, sad. 
The lady in the tower. 
White, white. 
Sitting at the casement window. 
Fair, fair. 
Her red-powdered face. 
Small, small, 
She puts out her pale hand. 
Once she was a dancing-house girl, 
Now she is a wandering man's wife. 
The wandering man went, but did not return ; 
It is hard alone to keep an empty bed. 
To the reader of translations this might be of any period ; 
subj ect, details, words, turn up again and again for centuries. 
But, in spite of all their spiritual and technical limitations' 
the Chinese poets achieve a prodigious amount of variety, 
all the more wonderful because of the narrow field in which 
the}' work. When a good poet is moved to write of the 
thousand-times-written-about subject of home-sickness or the 
deserted maiden it is a new thing that he makes, a new 
beauty of an old kind. 
* * * * * * ' 
Mr. Waley's translations cover a large field ; he gives 
specimens of poets living as far apart as the fourth century 
B.C. and the sevenieenth of our era. He ignores Li Po, who 
in the West and in modern China has been regarded as the 
greatest of all, and takes for his central figure Po-Chu'i, 
who, he thinks, is inadequately appreciated. Po (ninth 
century) was, like many great Chinese writers, a provincial 
governor. Instead of copying ■ out his biography, I may 
usefully busy mj'self with giving a few of his poems. The 
first is a poem rejoicing at the arrival of a bosom friend ; 
When the yellow bird's note was almost stopp)ed ; 
And half-formed the green plum's fruit ; 
Sitting and grieving that spring things were over. 
I rose and entered the Eastern -garden's gate. 
I carried my cup, and was dully drinking alone : 
Suddenly I heard a knocking .sound at the door. 
Dwelling secluded, I was glad that some one had come ; 
How much the more, when I saw it was Ch'en Hsuing ! 
At ease and leisure, — all day we talked ; 
Crowding and jostling, — the feelings of many years. 
How great a thing is a single cup of wine ! 
For it makes us tell the ston,- of our whole lives. 
• The next is satirical : 
Sent as a present from Annam- — 
A red cockatoo. 
Coloured like the peach-blossom. 
Speaking with the speech of men. 
And they did to it what is always done 
To the learned and eloquent. 
They took a cage with stout bars. 
And shut it up inside. 
The next is a lament for his little daughter. Golden Bells, 
who died : 
Ruined and ill — a mail of two score ; 
Pfetty and guileless, — a girl of three. 
Not a boy, — but, still, better than nothing : 
To soothe one's feeling, — from time to time a kiss ! 
There came a day, — they suddenly took her from me ; 
Her soul's shadow wandered I know not where. , 
And when I remember how just at the time she died 
She lisped strange sounds, beginning to learn to talk, 
Then I know that the ties of flesh and blood 
Only bind us to a load of grief and sorrow. 
At last, by thinking of the time before she was born, 
By thought and reason I drove the pain away. 
Since my heart forgot her, manj- days have passed. 
And three times winter has changed to spring. 
This morning, for a little, the old grief came back. 
Because, in the road, I met her foster-nurse. 
Some of his longest poems are his best ; but I have room 
here only for two more short ones. The first is on "The 
Hat given to the Poet by Li Chien " ; the second was written 
after retirement, and is called "Ease" : 
Long ago, to a white-haired gentleman 
You made the present of a black gauze hat. 
The gauze hat still sits on my head ; 
But you already are gone to the Nether Springs. 
The thing is old, but still fit to wear ; 
The man is gone, and will never be seen again. 
Out on the hill the moon is shining to-night, 
And the trees on your tomb are swayed by the autumn wind. 
Lined fcoat, warm cap, and easy felt slippers, 
In the little tower, at the low window, sitting over the 
sunken brazier. 
Body at rest, heart at peace ; no need to rise early. 
I wonder if the courtiers at the Western capital know 
of these things or not ? 
Mr. Waley's translations appear to me as good as translations 
can be. He was right in avoiding rhyme, as there was no 
hope of reproducing the intricate rhyme-schemes of the 
originals without gross contortions. His wavelike unrhymed 
lines have a beauty of their own, and, although the extreme 
economy of^ Chinese writing cannot be fully reproduced, his 
versions are wonderfully terse, exact, and concrete in their 
imagery. His book, which I hope will be the first of a series, 
will not only increase English understanding of China, but 
is a gain to our own literature. 
