A short list of Classical Chinese reading materials

[croptoptux]

[reposted from tumblr]

Disclaimer: I put this together from my notes rather quickly, and cannot swear by the quality of the links below.

Confucianism

Kongfuzi (Confucius) 孔夫子
《論語 - The Analects》
https://ctext.org/analects

Mengzi (Mencius) 孟子
https://ctext.org/mengzi

Daoism

Laozi 老子
《道德經 - Dao De Jing》
https://ctext.org/dao-de-jing

Zhuangzi 莊子
https://ctext.org/zhuangzi

Liezi 列子
https://archive.org/details/book-of-master-lie-lieh-tzu-thomas-cleary/mode/2up

Buddhism (esp. Chan Buddhism)

Tao Yuanming 陶淵明
《桃花源記 - The Peach Blossom Spring》
https://eastasiastudent.net/china/classical/tao-yuanming-taohua-yuan/

Su Shi 蘇軾
《赤壁賦 - Ode on the Red Cliff》
https://ajmccready.wordpress.com/2014/05/05/translation-su-shi-meditation-on-red-cliff/

Bai Juyi 白居易
《長恨歌- Song of Everlasting Regret》
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Translation:Song_of_Everlasting_Regret

Du Fu 杜甫
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Du_Fu
https://allpoetry.com/Du-Fu

Li Bai 李白
https://archive.org/stream/worksoflipochine00libauoft/worksoflipochine00libauoft_djvu.txt

Wang Wei 王維 (and Pei Di 裴迪)
《輞川集 - Wheel River Collection》
https://scholarworks.iu.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/2022/23162/Bruneel_2018.pdf?sequence=1

Additional misc. collection of the above 4 poets
https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Chinese/AllwaterWangWei.php

Hanshan 寒山
https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Chinese/HanShan.php

Platform sutra
https://www.thezensite.com/ZenTeachings/Translations/PlatformSutra_DharmaJewel.pdf

Lotus sutra
http://www.pawhitney.com/LotusSutrax.pdf

Heart sutra
https://huntingtonarchive.org/resources/downloads/sutras/02Prajnaparamita/heartsutra.pdf

Comments

[larryhammer]

Legge's translation is useless. I try not to even glance at it, while using ctext's dictionary lookups on the text. (Or any other translation, for that matter, though for others it's to retain my own voice rather than to avoid being led astray.)

Though to be fair, Legge is not as atrocious as the Witter Bynner attached to ctext's 唐诗三百首, which is has at least one outright mistranslation every poem that I checked. Which I eventually stopped doing because life's too short.

A Traditional Chinese Medicine text is as good as guess as any. I've no specific insights, though.

[croptoptux]

The absolute worst Daodejing commentary I found in the library is the Ursula K. Le Guinn one. I can't believe someone wasted paper on this. Her primary reference was the Paul Carus translation. If what Wikipedia says is true, that guy got heckled out of the profession!

[larryhammer]

I'm not looking at* her rendering (which she was at least honest about it not being a translation -- she did actual translations of other works and did indeed know the difference) but in the past I've found her commentary on it of some use, at least for conceptualizing.


* Especially not while still theoretically engaged in my own. Le Guin was a master wordsmith and I do not want to sound like her,** because I am not her.
** Unless I'm writing fiction, in which case I would love to have even a hundredth of her craft.