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Choice Outstanding Academic Title
A primer for those with no previous knowledge of Chinese, this book introduces readers to the fundamentals of classical Chinese poetry through twenty-nine ways of understanding a single poem. “Seeing Off a Friend,” by the great Tang poet Li Bai (701–762) has long been praised for its vividness, subtlety, and poignancy. Anthologizing twenty-nine translations of the poem, Timothy Billings not only introduces the poem’s richness and depth but also the nuanced art of translating Chinese poetry into European languages.
A famous exemplar of “seeing off poetry,” which was common in an empire whose literati were continually on the move, Li’s poem has continued to fascinate readers far removed from its moment of composition, from the Victorians, to Ezra Pound, to contemporary translators from around the world. In talking us through these linguistic crossings, Billings unpacks the intricacies of the lüshi or "regulated verse poem," a form as pivotal to Chinese literature as the sonnet is to European tradition.
Step by step, Twenty-Nine Goodbyes teaches its readers to become adept interpreters of one of the most significant verse forms in Chinese literary history. Billings’s engaging teaching style, backed by a lightly worn but deep scholarly engagement with Chinese poetry, makes this work an indispensable guide for anyone interested in poetry, translation, or the cultural heritage of China.
Critically acute and compulsively readable, Twenty-Nine Goodbyes offers an illuminating introduction to Chinese poetry and poetics through the shifting lens of translation. Billings’s ‘cubist collage’ of renderings of a famous parting poem by Li Bai is equally a meditation on the challenges—and the pleasures—of translating the untranslatable, all conveyed in a vibrant, colloquial teacherly voice. Readers will close this book with a sense of parting from a newly found old friend.---David Damrosch, author of Around the World in 80 Books
Timothy Billings’s introduction to Chinese poetry through twenty-nine reinventions of a single Li Bai poem is a tour de force of literary analysis, multilingual erudition, and the blended pleasures and frustrations of reading poetry in translation. This lively, accessible, and often funny introduction will enlighten newcomers and scholars alike.---Anna Shields, Princeton University
More than just an excellent primer in classical Chinese poetry (which it is), Twenty-Nine Goodbyes shows how Chinese poetry and Anglo-American poetic traditions intertwine. Bristling with detail and poetic insight, the book shows what it means to translate between languages and traditions, and more importantly, what it means to make poetry. A gem of a book.---Ming Xie, University of Toronto
A great and important and very much needed book---Eric Hayot, author of Humanist Reason: A History. An Argument. A Plan
This little book is excellent both as a model of close reading and a celebration of the qualities of classical Chinese literature. Highly recommended.