The mountain poems of Hsieh Ling-Yün ; translated by David Hinton.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Xie, Lingyun, 385-433.

Contributor:

Hinton, David, 1954-

Series:

New Directions paperbook

Standardized Title:

Poems. Selections. English

Language:

Chinese

English

Subjects (All):

Xie, Lingyun, 385-433--Translations into English.

Xie, Lingyun.

Xie, Lingyun, 385-433.

Physical Description:

xvi, 79 pages : map ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

New York : New Directions Pub. Corp., 2001.

Summary:

During the last decade of his life, living as a recluse high in the mountains of southeast China, Hsieh Ling-yun (385-433 C.E.) initiated a tradition of "rivers-and-mountains" (shan-shui) poetry that stretches across millennia in China and beyond, a tradition that represents the earliest and most extensive literary engagement with wildemess in human history. Hsieh's work, all but unknown in the West, chronicles nothing less than the aesthetic and spiritual discovery of wilderness, reading like dispatches reporting back to the human world. These poems were extremely popular in Hsieh's own time, and established him as one of the most innovative and influential poets in the history of Chinese poetry, as well as a precursor of Ch'an (Zen) Buddhism.

Like China's grand landscape paintings, Hsieh's poetry invests realistic descriptions of landscape with the philosophy of Taoism and Buddhism, shaping them into forms of enlightenment. As such, Hsieh's work presents undeniable difficulties for the reader. It is an austere poetry, nearly devoid of the human stories and poetic strategies that normally make poems compelling. Instead, with their grandiose language, headlong movement, and shifting perspective, Hsieh's poems capture the day-to-day development of the mirror-still mind that sees its truest self in the vast dimensions of mountain wilderness.

Contents:

First Exile: Yung-chia 422-23 (C.E.)

On a Tower Beside the Lake 3

Inspecting Farmlands, I Climb the Bay's Coil-Isle Mountain 4

Climbing Green-Cliff Mountain in Yung-chia 5

The Journey Home 6

Mountain Dwelling: Shih-ning 423-432

I've Put in Gardens South of the Fields, Opened Up ... 9

There Are Towering Peaks on Every Side ... 10

Inaugurating the Sangha's New Monastery at Stone-Screen Cliffs 12

Returning Across the Lake from Our Monastery ... 13

Dwelling in the Mountains 14

On Stone-Gate Mountain's Highest Peak 56

Overnight at Stone-Gate Cliffs 57

Crossing the Lake from South Mountain to North Mountain 58

Following Axe-Bamboo Stream, I Cross Over a Ridge ... 59

Stone-House Mountain 60

Final Exile: Nan-hai 431-33

On Lu Mountain 63

Out Onto Master-Flourish Ridge Above ... 64

In Hsin-an, Setting Out from the River's Mouth at T'ung-lu 65

Beyond the Last Mountains 66

Facing the End 67

Key Terms: An Outline of Hsieh Ling-yun's Conceptual World 75.

Notes:

"A new directions book."

Includes bibliographical references (page 79).

ISBN:

0811214893

OCLC:

46565220