A Little Primer of Tu Fu

by David Hawkes

The deepest and most varied of the Tang Dynasty poets, Tu Fu (Du Fu) is, in the words of David Hinton, the “first complete poetic sensibility in Chinese literature.” Tu Fu merged the public and the private, often in the same poem, as his subjects ranged from the horrors of war to the delights of friendship, from closely observed landscapes to remembered dreams, from the evocation of historical moments to a wry lament over his own thinning hair.   Although Tu Fu has been translated often, and often brilliantly, David Hawkes’s classic study, first published in 1967, is the only book that demonstrates in depth how his poems were written. Hawkes presents thirty-five poems in the original Chinese, with a pinyin transliteration, a character-by-character translation, and a commentary on the subject, the form, the historical background, and the individual lines. There is no other book quite like it for any a nuts-and-bolts account of how Chinese poems in general, and specifically the poems of one of the world’s greatest poets, are constructed. It’s an irresistible challenge for readers to invent their own translations.

Genres: Poetry, China, Asia, Language

288 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 1, 1988

About the author

David Hawkes is a Professor of English Literature at Arizona State University and a distinguished scholar in literary criticism, economic thought, and early modern literature. He is the author of several influential books and has edited critical editions of classic literary works.
Hawkes studied at Oxford University, earning a B.A. in 1986, before continuing his postgraduate education at Columbia University, where he received his Ph.D. in 1992. At Oxford, he was a student of the literary critic Terry Eagleton and engaged in socialist-feminist scholarship with Oxford English Limited. At Columbia, he worked under Edward Said and contributed to alternative and underground journals in New York’s Lower East Side.
His academic career began at Lehigh University, where he taught from 1991 to 2007 before joining Arizona State University as a full professor. He has also held visiting positions at institutions in India, Turkey, and China. Hawkes has received prestigious fellowships, including a year-long National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship at the Folger Shakespeare Library and the William Ringler Fellowship at the Huntington Library.
A prolific writer, Hawkes' works explore themes of economic criticism, ideology, and the intersections of literature, magic, and finance in early modern thought. His books include Idols of the Marketplace (2001), The Culture of Usury in Renaissance England (2010), and Shakespeare and Economic Criticism (2015). He has also edited editions of Paradise Lost and The Pilgrim’s Progress. His recent works, The Reign of Anti-logos (2020) and Money and Magic in Early Modern Drama (2022), continue his exploration of the relationship between literature, philosophy, and economics.
Hawkes' scholarship is widely recognized for its critical engagement with ideology and material culture, offering fresh perspectives on the intersections of literature, politics, and economic systems.

Reviews

[Cassandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this greatly, and wish it had all two hundred of the poems, or that other people had done such books, because it is such a satisfying way to read poetry in translation, all the pieces there for the reader to put together. Hawkes' prose translations are, to my mind, awful, but I do not mind them because with all the rest I feel like I can see a little of what the original poem was.

[Mary Soon Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this brilliantly-executed book, David Hawkes examines thirty-five poems by Tu Fu (also known as Du Fu), an eighth-century Chinese poet. For each poem, Hawkes provides the original Chinese, a transliteration, a general discussion, a line-by-line examination that includes a word-by-word translation, and lastly a prose rendering of the whole poem. I found it wonderful. As a non-Chinese reader, this is the closest I've approached to understanding the original version of classic Chinese poetry. It's painstaking but illuminating. I recommend it very highly indeed.

I note that the final prose translations of the poems are rather flat. The examination leading up to each prose rendition, however, conveys both meaning and impact. I also note that the book often made me melancholy. The upheavals of war and shifting political power were not kind to Tu Fu. A sense of loss pervades the collection, as in the fourth poem where he thinks about his far-distant wife and children, or the tenth poem where briefly meets an old friend for a single night, or the thirty-first poem where he thinks about a dead dancer whom he saw as a small boy.

Two additional remarks. Firstly, I was interested to learn that Tu Fu was a huge admirer of Kongming (Zhuge Liang), advisor to the ruler Liu Bei, who lived about five hundred years before Tu Fu. Secondly, this is a minor point, but I think the discussion of poem 25 erroneously compares it to poem 7 instead of to poem 16.

An excellent, excellent book.

About my reviews: I try to review every book I read, including those that I don't end up enjoying. The reviews are not scholarly, but just indicate my reaction as a reader, reading being my addiction. I am miserly with 5-star reviews; 4 stars means I liked a book very much; 3 stars means I liked it; 2 stars means I didn't like it (though often the 2-star books are very popular with other readers and/or are by authors whose other work I've loved).

[Bruce Humes · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a great read per se.

The author is frank at the outset about what this primer contains and intends to accomplish.

Not sure exactly why, but I found it rather "flat."

That said, I am a fluent reader of Chinese and perhaps I was looking for a more creative interpretation of the poetry and their background.

[Leanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an older book from the 1980s which is still very important. Taking around 30 famous poems, Hawkes explains the Chinese characters and then gives an exegesis and basic translation.

[Irene · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent intro to Du Fu's poems. For each of his 35 poems collected within 300 Tang poems, there is the original chinese text, hanyu pinyin transliteration, historical background, line by line exegesis and finally overall translation.

故人入我梦，明我长相忆。

杜甫诗句里，这一句，久久在脑子里环绕。

[Steven Severance · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a bilingual publication of 35 poems by Tu Fu. Including material abut poetic forms, background to the poems, "Word for Word " translation and then a prose translation for each poem.

This book is not so useful for me because
1) the word for word is not really exact. Hawks translates 10,000 as myriad, for instance. In other words he is already translating and glossing words in the "Word for word" sections which seems bazaar and does not help the reader learn the language.

2) The word for word translations are far away from the Chinese Character text so it is hard to compare the character to his English translation of it. yuk.

It is much better to use Yip's book or the Stephen Owen complete Du Fu books.