Nineteen Ways of Looking at Wang Wei

By Eliot Weinberg,

Book cover of Nineteen Ways of Looking at Wang Wei

Book description

The difficulty (and necessity) of translation is concisely described in Nineteen Ways of Looking at Wang Wei, a close reading of different translations of a single poem from the Tang Dynasty-from a transliteration to Kenneth Rexroth's loose interpretation. As Octavio Paz writes in the afterword, "Eliot Weinberger's commentary on the…

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1 author picked Nineteen Ways of Looking at Wang Wei as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

An extraordinary gem of a booklet that considers the many ways that four lines of a single poem, composed by an 8th century Chinese Buddhist, have been translated into modern idiom. It is amazing how a mere twenty ideograms, depicting a mountain and forest scene devoid of people, can illuminate the variety and subtlety of consciousness. I recommend the 2016 edition with additional translations.

From Christof's list on consciousness from a neuroscientist.

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