Cold Mountain: One Hundred Poems by the T'ang Poet Han-shan / Edition 1

by Burton Watson

Overview

This collection is one of the earliest and most important works of Chinese Buddhist poetry and is especially influential in the later literature of the Zen Sect of Buddhism, which looked back to these poems as a classic of Zen literature. The poems cover a wide range of subjects: the conventional lament on the shortness of life, bitter complaints about poverty, avarice, and pride, accounts of the difficulty of official life under a bureaucratic system, attacks on the corrupt Buddhist clergy and the foolish attempts by Taoists to achieve immotal life, and incomparable descriptions of the natural world in a mountain retreat. These poems represent the largest number so far made available in English and are important both as vivid descriptions of the wild mountain scenery in Han-shan's home, Cold Mountain, and as metaphors of the poet's search for spiritual enlightenment and peace.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231034500
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	10/22/1970
Series:	UNESCO Collection of Representative Work
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	118
Sales rank:	531,312
Product dimensions:	8.00(w) x 4.70(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Burton Watson is one of the world's best-known translators from the Chinese and Japanese. His translations include The Lotus Sutra, The Vimalakirti Sutra, Ryokan: Zen Monk-Poet of Japan, Saigyo: Poems of a Mountain Home, and The Columbia Book of Chinese Poetry: From Early Times to the Thirteenth Century, all published by Columbia.

Editorial Reviews

Burton Watson . . . possesses all the qualities which distinguish a master translator. As a craftsman and as a poet, he has inspired and challenged two generations.

Asian Affairs