Three Hundred Tang Poems

by Peter Harris (Editor), Peter Harris (Translator)

Overview

A new translation of a beloved anthology of poems from the golden age of Chinese culture—a treasury of wit, beauty, and wisdom from many of China’s greatest poets.

These roughly three hundred poems from the Tang Dynasty (618–907)—an age in which poetry and the arts flourished—were gathered in the eighteenth century into what became one of the best-known books in the world, and which is still cherished in Chinese homes everywhere. Many of China’s most famous poets—Du Fu, Li Bai, Bai Juyi, and Wang Wei—are represented by timeless poems about love, war, the delights of drinking and dancing, and the beauties of nature. There are poems about travel, about grief, about the frustrations of bureaucracy, and about the pleasures and sadness of old age.

Full of wisdom and humanity that reach across the barriers of language, space, and time, these poems take us to the heart of Chinese poetry, and into the very heart and soul of a nation.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780307269737
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	03/31/2009
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	317,328
Product dimensions:	4.40(w) x 6.30(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Peter Harris is the founder of the Asian Studies Institute at Victoria University, Wellington, New Zealand, and the editor of the Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets anthology Zen Poems.

Read an Excerpt

FOREWORD

The Tang dynasty (618–907) was the golden age of Chinese poetry. Much the best-known anthology of Tang poems in Chinese is Three Hundred Tang Poems, and this book is a new translation of all the poems in that anthology. It includes the work of many of China’s most admired poets, among them Du Fu and Li Bai as well as Bai Juyi, Li Shangyin andWangWei.

Compiledin the eighteenth centuryby the scholarSun Zhu, the original Three Hundred Tang Poems is divided up by type of poem, rather than author. There are three main types. ‘Old-style poems’, which come at the beginning of the anthology, are poems of any length. ‘Regulated poems’ are eight lines long, with stricter rules about rhyme and tone, and two couplets in the middle that each have matching lines. ‘Cut-off lines’, which Sun Zhu puts at the end, are poems with just four lines each. Nearly all the poems have five or seven characters per line, with the five-character poems coming first.

Here the poems are given by poet, in alphabetical order of name in romanized (pinyin) form. Then under each poet the poems are all arranged by type, as in the original. (Nearly all of them, anyway—a few have been rearranged for reasons of space.) There are some short notes at the back with explanations of names and other references.

Peter Harris

Table of Contents

Foreword

Bai Juyi (772–846)
Cen Shen (715–770)
Chang Jian
Chen Tao
Chen Ziang (661–702)
Cui Hao (?–754)
Cui Shu (?–739?)
Cui Tu
Dai Shulun (732–789)
Du Fu (712–770)
Du Mu (803–852)
Du Qiuniang (?–825?)
Du Shenyan (648?–708)
Du Xunhe (846–904)
Emperor Xuanzong (685–761)
Gao Shi (716?–765)
Gu Kuang (725?–814?)
Han Hong
Han Wo (842?–923)
Han Yu (768–824)
He Zhizhang (659?–744?)
Huangfu Ran (716?–770)
Jia Dao (779–843)
Jiaoran (730?–799)
Jin Changxu
Li Bai (701–762)
Li Bin (?–876)
Li Duan
Li Qi
Li Shangyin (813?–858?)
Li Yi (748–827?)
Liu Changqing (710?–789?)
Liu Fangping
Liu Shenxu
Liu Yuxi (772–842)
Liu Zhongyong
Liu Zongyuan (773–819)
Lu Lun (737?–798?)
Luo Binwang (640?–684?)
Ma Dai
Meng Haoran (689–740)
Meng Jiao (751–814)
Pei Di
Qian Qi (722?–780?)
Qin Taoyu
Qiu Wei
Qiwu Qian (692?–755?)
Quan Deyu (759–818)
Shen Quanqi (650?–713)
Sikong Shu
Song Zhiwen (656?–?712)
Wang Bo (649?–676)
Wang Changling (690?–756?)
Wang Han
Wang Jian (751?–830?)
Wang Wan
Wang Wei (701–761)
Wang Zhihuan (688–742)
Wei Yingwu (737?–792?)
Wei Zhuang (836?–910)
Wen Tingyun (?–866)
Xu Hun
Xue Feng
Yuan Jie (719–772)
Yuan Zhen (779–831)
Zhang Bi
Zhang Hu (785?–852?)
Zhang Ji (1) (776?–829?)
Zhang Ji (2)
Zhang Jiuling (678–740)
Zhang Qiao
Zhang Xu
Zheng Tian (824?–882?)
Zhu Qingyu
Zu Yong

Notes

*Dates not given if not known.