Red Pine and Cold Mountain FTW

The Collected Songs of Cold Mountain by Hanshan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

There is a great deal to recommend here.

If you like the poet Han-than ("Cold Mountain," named for the place where he hid himself away), or the translator Red Pine, or poetry based (mostly) on Buddhist thought, or poetry based (somewhat) on Taoist thought, you will almost certainly appreciate this book. It is a complete collection of Cold Mountain's poetry, with almost every single poem getting a paragraph of annotation. (For those who read Chinese, the original is included, on the facing page. Useful for some. For me, that's just nice art.) And I find Red Pine's translations, always, to be clear and comprehensible without glaring modernisms or strange archaisms. For this generation, IMO, speaking only as an ignorant reader, his translations can't be beat.

Here's a random selection:

Sitting alone I keep slipping away
far off with the cares of my heart
clouds wander by the mountainside
wind rushes out the valley
gibbons swing from the trees
birds call through the forest
time slips past my temples
yearend finds me old with regrets

You hear the poem in unadorned language, without gimmick. I like it.

As I am only academically interested in either Buddhism or Taoism, I'll admit I got my fill of those philosophies before I got to the end of the book. (Lots of verses like "The suffering of the Wheel is relentless/ back and forth stirring up the dust/ the ant patrol on its endless round/ the Six Paths are nothing but confusion...") I lean more towards the type of poem above, the ones that sound more like Wordsworth or something, with lots of nature imagery. But even without a deep interest, I was glad to learn quite a bit about religious thought during the Tang dynasty, just acquiring bits and pieces via the poetry and the notes.

Anyway, it was fine. No doubt others will find that aspect more to their taste.

The volume includes a few poems by two of Cold Mountain's associates. That's just the whipped cream on top.

Lots of people should be reading this. Maybe they are. Nobody has consulted me. But If you like any of the things mentioned above, this should be an easy choice.

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Poetry by Han-shan

Cold Mountain: 100 Poems by the T'ang poet Han-Shan by Hanshan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I enjoyed this volume of poetry a lot.

Han-than, a Tang era zen poet, is somewhat popular in China, but for some reason is one of the most popular poets in the West from that era. I'm not sure quite how that happens, but I can say that I really liked the poetry. I agree with the others that there's something important here.

I'm not sure I'd like the poet himself. He talks about the wife he left to go live on Cold Mountain (the English translation of the name he also calls himself) and I don't understand him. I guess he just bailed on her. I only hope it wasn't as bad as it sounds.

But his poetry, filled with nature imagery, ruminations on the pointlessness of ambition, and laments about growing old, makes a lot of sense. It's easy to connect with him on a human level. This collection, translated by Burton Watson, is written in natural language with a hint of poetic language, just the way I most like it. He doesn't try to make it rhyme, and he supplies enough of the missing articles and verbs that it scans well in English. Good stuff.

Here is a representative sample of both the poetry and the translation:

I sit alone in constant fret,
Pressed by endless thoughts and feelings.
Clouds hang about the waist of the mountain,
Wind moans in the valley mouth.
Monkeys come, shaking the branches;
A bird flies into the wood with shrill cries.
Seasons pass and my hair grows ragged and grey;
Year's end finds me old and desolate.

You can hear the poet's voice. You can see the wild natural setting where he has hidden himself. You can feel his loneliness. I think it's just about perfect.

Recommended.

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