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With this groundbreaking collection, translated and edited by the
renowned poet and translator David Hinton, a new generation will be
introduced to the work that riveted Ezra Pound and transformed
modern poetry. The Chinese poetic tradition is the largest and
longest continuous tradition in world literature, and this rich and
far-reaching anthology of nearly five hundred poems provides a
comprehensive account of its first three millennia (1500 BCE to
1200 CE), the period during which virtually all its landmark
developments took place. Unlike earlier anthologies of Chinese
poetry, Hinton's book focuses on a relatively small number of
poets, providing selections that are large enough to re-create each
as a fully realized and unique voice. New introductions to each
poet's work provide a readable history, told for the first time as
a series of poetic innovations forged by a series of master poeets.
From the classic texts of Chinese philosophy to intensely personal
lyrics, from love poems to startling and strange perspectives on
nature, Hinton has collected an entire world of beauty and insight.
And in his eye-opening translations, these ancient poems feel
remarkably fresh and contemporary, presenting a literature both
radically new and entirely resonant.
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The Analects (Hardcover)
Confucius; Translated by David Hinton
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R299
R234
Discovery Miles 2 340
Save R65 (22%)
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Ships in 5 - 10 working days
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Formed in a time of great unrest in ancient China, The Analects is
vital to an understanding of Chinese history and thought, and,
2,500 years on, it remains startlingly relevant to contemporary
life. Complete and unabridged. Part of the Macmillan Collector's
Library; a series of stunning, cloth-bound, pocket-sized classics
with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books
make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. Highly regarded
for the poetic fluency he brings to his award-winning work, David
Hinton's translation is inviting and immensely readable. Confucius,
the 'great sage' of China, believed that an ideal society is based
on humanity, benevolence and goodness. His profoundly influential
philosophy is encapsulated in The Analects, a collection of sayings
which were written down by his followers. Confucius advocates an
ethical social order, woven together by selfless and supportive
relationships between friends, families and communities. He taught
that living by a moral code based on education, ritual, respect and
integrity will bring peace to human society.
During the great oil speculations in the 1920s, both promoters and
investors became victims of their common greed. Outlining the
activities of several different promoters and drawing on business
papers, federal court records, and local land records, the Oliens
describe the legal and regulatory responses to fraud. Their
fascinating story breaks new ground in American social and business
history and offers new insight into the culture of American
capitalism.
Shale Boom describes how independent oilman George P. Mitchell
developed technology that would unlock trillions of cubic feet of
natural gas in the North Texas rock formation known as the Barnett
Shale. When he succeeded, other oilmen used it to uncover vast
reserves, prompting a gas boom extending through twenty-one North
Texas counties including the Fort Worth metropolitan area. The boom
created enormous wealth, but brought drilling rigs into urban
neighborhoods and created safety and environmental concerns,
especially with respect to the fracking technology necessary to
produce gas. As the new technology was adapted to develop shale in
other areas, controversy over it became national and global.
Overall, however, what happened in the Barnett Shale meant profound
changes for the future of petroleum at home and abroad.
Wang Wei (701-761 C.E.) is often spoken of, with his contemporaries
Li Po and Tu Fu, as one of the three greatest poets in China's
3,000-year poetic tradition. Of the three, Wang was the consummate
master of the short imagistic landscape poem that came to typify
classical Chinese poetry. He developed a nature poetry of
resounding tranquility wherein deep understanding goes far beyond
the words on the page a poetics that can be traced to his assiduous
practice of Ch'an (Zen) Buddhism. But in spite of this
philosophical depth, Wang is not a difficult poet. Indeed, he may
be the most immediately appealing of China's great poets, and in
Hinton's masterful translations he sounds utterly contemporary.
Many of his best poems are incredibly concise, composed of only
twenty words, and they often turn on the tiniest details: a bird's
cry, a splinter of light on moss, an egret's wingbeat. Such
imagistic clarity is not surprising since Wang was also one of
China's greatest landscape painters. This is a breathtaking poetry,
one that in true Zen fashion renders the ten thousand things of
this world in such a way that they empty the self even as they
shimmer with the clarity of their own self-sufficient identity."
Generally acclaimed as one of China's greatest poets, Po Chu?-i
(772-846 C.E.) practiced a poetry of everyday human concerns and
clear plain-spoken language. In spite of his preeminent stature,
this is the first edition of Po Chu?-i's poetry to appear in the
West. It encompasses the full range of his work, from the early
poems of social protest to the later recluse poems, whose spiritual
depths reflect both his life-long devotion to Taoist and Ch'an
(Zen) Buddhist practice. David Hinton's translations of ancient
Chinese poetry have earned wide acclaim for creating compelling
English texts that have altered our conception of Chinese poetry.
Among his books published by New Directions are The Selected Poems
of Tu Fu, and The Selected Poems of Li Po. His work has been
supported by fellowships from The National Endowment for the Arts
and The National Endowment for the Humanities.
Tu Fu (712-770 C.E.) has for a millennium been widely considered
the greatest poet in the Chinese tradition, and Hinton's original
translation played a key role in developing that reputation in
America. Most of Tu Fu's 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.
The books collected in this volume represent the first time since
the mid-nineteenth century that the four seminal masterworks of
ancient Chinese thought have been translated as a unified series by
a single translator. Hinton's award-winning experience translating
a wide range of ancient Chinese poets makes these books sing in
English as never before. But these new versions are not only
inviting and immensely readable, they also apply much-needed
consistency to key philosophical terms in these texts, lending
structural links and philosophical rigor heretofore unavailable in
English. Breathing new life into these originary classics, Hinton's
new translations will stand as the definitive texts for our era.
Perhaps the most broadly influential spiritual text in human
history, Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching is the source of Taoist philosophy,
which eventually developed into Ch'an (Zen) Buddhism. Equally
influential in the social sphere, Confucious' Analects is the
source of social wisdom in China. The Chuang Tzu is the wild and
wacky prose complement to the Tao Te Ching. And with its
philosophical story-telling, the Menicius adds depth and complexity
to Confucius' vision.
Poetry. THE SELECTED POEMS OF TAO CHIN brings into English some of
the most important poetry in all of Chinese literature. As David
Hinton writes in his introduction, Tao Chien "stands at the head of
the great Chinese tradition like a revered grandfather: profoundly
wise, self-possessed, quiet, comforting." Tao was the first writer
to make a poetry of his natural voice and immediate experience,
thereby creating the personal lyricism which distinguishes ancient
Chinese poetry and makes it seem so contemporary. While maintaining
a scholar's attention to the complexities of the original, Hinton
here recreates Tao Chien as a compelling poetic voice in English.
*David Hinton's account of a series of walks up and around a
mountain near his home in Vermont is nature writing of a profound
sort: as we accompany him with his observations of the terrain,
vegetation, and wildlife, we gain access to the view of someone who
has, through his translation work, become intimate with the mind of
the ancient Chinese sages. Taking on the mind of the sages
ourselves, we begin to get a clear vision of our place in the
landscape, the planet, and ultimately the cosmos.
Late in life, Meng Chiao (A.D. 751--814) developed an
experimental poetry of virtuosic beauty, a poetry that anticipated
landmark developments in the modern Western tradition by a
millennium. With the T'ang Dynasty crumbling, Meng's later work
employed surrealist and symbolist techniques as it turned to a deep
introspection. This is truly major work-- work that may be the most
radical in the Chinese tradition. And though written more than a
thousand years ago, it is remarkably fresh and contemporary. But,
in spite of Meng's significance, this is the first volume of his
poetry to appear in English.
Until the age of forty, Meng Chiao lived as a poet-recluse
associated with Ch'an (Zen) poet-monks in south China. He then
embarked on a rather unsuccessful career as a government official.
Throughout this time, his poetry was decidedly mediocre,
conventional verse inevitably undone by his penchant for the
strange and surprising. After his retirement, Meng developed the
innovative poetry translated in this book. His late work is
singular not only for its bleak introspection and "avant-garde"
methods, but also for its dimensions: in a tradition typified by
the short lyric poem, this work is made up entirely of large poetic
sequences.
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Mencius (Paperback)
David Hinton
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R451
R394
Discovery Miles 3 940
Save R57 (13%)
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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This ancient text records the teachings of Mencius (4th c. B.C.E.),
the second originary sage in the Confucian tradition which has
shaped Chinese civilization for over two thousand years. In a
culture that makes no distinction between those realms we call the
heart and the mind, Mencius was the great thinker of the heart, and
it was he who added the profound inner dimensions to the Confucian
vision. Given his emphasis on the heart, it isn't surprising that
his philosophical method is very literary in nature: story and
anecdote full of human drama and poetic turns of thought. Indeed,
the text is considered a paragon of literary eloquence and
style.Mencius' strikingly contemporary empiricism represented a
complete secularization of the spiritualist concepts of governance
that had dominated China for over a millenia. He invested the
humanist Confucian vision with its inner dimensions by recognizing
that the individual is an integral part of a self-generating and
harmonious cosmos. He saw all the spiritual depths of that
cosmology inside us, and this led to a mystical faith in the
inherent nobility of human beings. In his chaotic and war-ravaged
times, he was therefore passionate in his defense of the people.
Indeed, he advocated a virtual democracy in which a government's
legitimacy depended upon the assent of the people. Such is the
enduring magic of the Mencian heart full of compassionate and
practical concern for the human condition, and yet so empty that it
contains the ten thousand transformations of the entire cosmos.
In the 1970s and 1980s the Texas wildcatter was a recognizable
figure in popular culture. Since then, the wildcatter's role is
less celebrated but still important, as shown in the new
introduction to this edition of a book originally published in 1984
by Texas Monthly Press. Drawing heavily on oral histories, this
book tells the story of the West Texas independents as a group,
looking at their business strategies in the context of their
national, regional, and local conditions. The focus is on the
Permian Basin and southeastern New Mexico over the sixty-year
period in which the region rose to prominence on the American oil
scene, producing about one-fifth of the nation's output. It is a
story that covers vast technological change, governmental
regulation, and economic fluctuation with profound implications for
the oil and gas community. The new introduction brings the story
up-to-date by addressing not only the subsequent careers of the
wildcatters described in the book but also the role of independents
in the current economy. ROGER M. OLIEN, who holds a Ph.D. from
Brown University, lives in Austin and is a member of the TSHA
Speakers Bureau.DIANA DAVIDS HINTON holds the J. Conrad Dunagan
Chair in regional and business history at the University of
Texas-Permian Basin. Her Ph.D. is from Yale University.
Having masterfully translated a wide range of ancient Chinese poets
and philosophers, David Hinton is uniquely qualified to offer the
definitive contemporary English version of Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching.
Like all of his translations, Hinton's translation of the Tao Te
Ching is mind-opening, presenting startling new dimensions in this
widely-influential text. He shows how Lao Tzu's spirituality is
structured around the generative life-force, for example, and that
this system of thought weaves the human into natural process at the
deepest levels of being, thereby revealing the Tao Te Ching as an
originary text in deep feminist and ecological thought.Lao Tzu's
Tao Te Ching is not only the single most important text ever
composed in China, it is probably the most influential spiritual
text in human history. In the past, virtually all translations of
this text have been produced either by sinologists having little
poetic facility in English, or writers having no ability to read
the original Chinese. Hinton's fluency in ancient Chinese and his
acclaimed poetic ability provide him the essential qualifications.
Together, they allow a breathtaking new translation that reveals
how remarkably current and even innovative this text is after 2500
years.
Meng Hao-jan (689740 C.E.) is generally considered to be one of
China's most important poets, but there has never been an edition
of his work in English. Ch'an (Zen) Buddhism was coming to maturity
and becoming widely practiced among the intelligentsia of China.
Ch'an not only clarified anew the spiritual ecology of early Taoist
thought, it also emphasized the old Taoist idea that deep
understanding lies beyond words. In poetry, this gave rise to a
much more distilled language, especially in its concise imagism,
which opened new inner depths, nonverbal insights, and outright
enigma. It was in the work of Meng Hao-jan that this poetic
revolution began, a revolution that marked the beginning of Chinese
poetry's first great flowering. He opened the poetic ground that
would be cultivated so productively by the great poets that
followed, and he was revered by those poets as their esteemed
elder, first master of the short imagistic landscape poem.
David Hinton's (Translator) many translations of ancient Chinese
poetry have earned wide acclaim for creating compelling
contemporary poetry. He is also the first translator in over a
century to translate the four original masterworks of Chinese
philosophy: "Tao Te Ching," "Chuang Tzu," "Analects," and
"Mencius." He has held numerous fellowships from The National
Endowment for the Arts and The -National Endowment for the
Humanities. And in 1997, his work was awarded the Landon
Translation Award from the Academy of American Poets. He lives in
East Calais, Vermont.
"Hinton's music is subtle, modulated, and does not slacken with
either contemporary or classic. He has listened to the individual
tone of each poet, and his craft is equal to his perception. . . .
He continues to enlarge our literary horizon. And the 'range of
pleasure' his translations afford 'as sight, sound, and
intellection, ' proves them true poems. Poems that breathe another
culture into our English."-The Academy of American Poets
Revered for millennia in the Chinese spiritual tradition, " Chuang
Tzu " stands alongside the " Tao Te Ching " as a founding classic
of Taoism. The Inner Chapters are the only sustained section of
this text widely believed to be the work of Chuang Tzu himself,
dating to the fourth century B.C.E. Witty and engaging, spiced with
the lyricism of poetry, Chuang Tzu's Taoist insights are timely and
eternal, profoundly concerned with spiritual ecology. Indeed, the
Tao of Chuang Tzu was a wholesale rejection of a human-centered
approach. Zen traces its sources back to these Taoist roots --
roots at least as deep as those provided by Buddhism.
But this is an ancient text that yields a surprisingly modern
effect. In bold and startling prose, David Hinton's translation
captures the "zany texture and philosophical abandon" of the
original. The Inner Chapters' fantastical passages -- in which even
birds and trees teach us what they know -- offer up a wild
menagerie of characters, freewheeling play with language, and
surreal humor. And interwoven with Chuang Tzu's sharp instruction
on the Tao are short-short stories that are often rough and ribald,
rich with satire and paradox.
On their deepest level, the Inner Chapters are a meditation on the
mysteries of knowledge itself. "Chuang Tzu's propositions," the
translator's introduction reminds us, "seem to be in constant
transformation, for he deploys words and concepts only to free us
of words and concepts." Hinton's vital new translation makes this
ancient text from the golden age of Chinese philosophy come alive
for contemporary readers.
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