by [ARCHIVES & COLLECTIONS] HINTON, David
The archive spans Hinton's entire prolific career, and documents in the greatest detail his ground-breaking translations as well as his studies in ancient Chinese and Ch'an philosophy. Hinton has published twelve books of translations of classical Chinese poetry, seven translations of Chinese philosophy, and five books of his own poetry and criticism. Hinton is also the editor of two major anthologies of Chinese poetry: The New Directions Anthology of Chinese Poetry (2003) and Classical Chinese Poetry: An Anthology (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2008), the poems in which he also translated. Hinton has translated I Ching (2015), Mountain Home: The Wilderness Poetry of Ancient China (2005), The Analects of Confucius (1998), Chuang Tzu: Inner Chapters (1997), Bei Dao: Landscape Over Zero (1996) and Forms of Distance by Bei Dao (1994), as well as translations of Lao-tzu, Mencius, Li Po, T'ao Ch'ien, Wang An-Shih, Po Chu-I, Wang Wei and Tu Fu. He is the author of Awakened Cosmos: The Mind of Classical Chinese Poetry (2019), No-Gate Gateway: The Original Wu-Men Kuan (2018), The Wilds of Poetry: Adventures in Mind and Landscape (2017); Desert: Poems (2018), Existence: A Story (2016), Hunger Mountain: A Field Guide to Mind and Landscape (2012), and Fossil Sky (2004). Two new books are forthcoming: China Root: Taoism, Ch'an, and Original Zen (2020), and Source Book: Readings in Original Zen (2022).
The importance of classical Chinese Poetry, and classical Chinese poetry in translation, cannot be exaggerated; they have been transformative of modern English and American poetry. In his translations, Hinton has created a new literary tradition in English. And he has gone beyond that, to a kind of cultural translation that has become an original cultural and philosophical project. In addition to his translations, he has developed this project in numerous books of essays and poetry. Madeleine Thien, in a recent review in The New York Review of Books suggests much of this when she writes: "Hinton's austerely beautiful translations assume that Chinese classical poetry cannot be severed from philosophy. Guided by each poem, he translates and internets Daoist concepts, refined over millennia, for which there are no precise English equivalents . . . Hinton's aim is to explore the most complex ideas of Daoism . . . In essence, he wants us to learn words again, and to momentarily set aside the philosophical assumptions of the English language. . . Hinton's translations have always gone against the grain. He has been building, translation by translation, an English language for a Chinese conceptual world . . . In the twentieth century, Chinese poetry was translated into the American idiom by modernists like Ezra Pound and later poets including Kenneth Rexroth and Gary Snyder with a lightness of touch, a beguiling simplicity. Hinton is after the opposite: depth and boundlessness." [A link to the full review is provided below.]
Owing to the complexities of translating Chinese poetry, David Hinton's archive is invaluable in the detail in which it reveals the full scope of the myriad possibilities from which a translator must choose the words that will most faithfully convey the letter and spirit as well as the underlying philosophical intent of the original poems. The exactitude of Hinton's approach to the translation of classical Chinese poetry, and his original exploration of the philosophical ideas that infuse that poetry, provide an extraordinary, perhaps a unique, opportunity to study the interpretation and translation of this most difficult poetry by a modern master.
The archive is in exceptional order, all translations with their variant possibilities meticulously filed neatly in individual folders, the entire archive amounting to 18 bankers boxes, plus Hinton's digital files. An inventory is available to interested institutions. (Inventory #: 23337)
The importance of classical Chinese Poetry, and classical Chinese poetry in translation, cannot be exaggerated; they have been transformative of modern English and American poetry. In his translations, Hinton has created a new literary tradition in English. And he has gone beyond that, to a kind of cultural translation that has become an original cultural and philosophical project. In addition to his translations, he has developed this project in numerous books of essays and poetry. Madeleine Thien, in a recent review in The New York Review of Books suggests much of this when she writes: "Hinton's austerely beautiful translations assume that Chinese classical poetry cannot be severed from philosophy. Guided by each poem, he translates and internets Daoist concepts, refined over millennia, for which there are no precise English equivalents . . . Hinton's aim is to explore the most complex ideas of Daoism . . . In essence, he wants us to learn words again, and to momentarily set aside the philosophical assumptions of the English language. . . Hinton's translations have always gone against the grain. He has been building, translation by translation, an English language for a Chinese conceptual world . . . In the twentieth century, Chinese poetry was translated into the American idiom by modernists like Ezra Pound and later poets including Kenneth Rexroth and Gary Snyder with a lightness of touch, a beguiling simplicity. Hinton is after the opposite: depth and boundlessness." [A link to the full review is provided below.]
Owing to the complexities of translating Chinese poetry, David Hinton's archive is invaluable in the detail in which it reveals the full scope of the myriad possibilities from which a translator must choose the words that will most faithfully convey the letter and spirit as well as the underlying philosophical intent of the original poems. The exactitude of Hinton's approach to the translation of classical Chinese poetry, and his original exploration of the philosophical ideas that infuse that poetry, provide an extraordinary, perhaps a unique, opportunity to study the interpretation and translation of this most difficult poetry by a modern master.
The archive is in exceptional order, all translations with their variant possibilities meticulously filed neatly in individual folders, the entire archive amounting to 18 bankers boxes, plus Hinton's digital files. An inventory is available to interested institutions. (Inventory #: 23337)
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