Snyder, Gary

Gary Snyder and China : general
Quellen
[Chinese and Buddhist literature].
Chang, Kwang-chih. The archaeology of ancient China [ID D13609].
Confucius. [Texts].
Elvin, Mark. The pattern of the Chinese past [ID D12822].
Fenollosa, Ernest. Epoch of Chinese and Japanese art [ID D5101].
Fenollosa, Ernest. The Chinese written character as a medium for poetry [ID D22141].
Frodsham, John D. The murmuring stream [ID D19382].
Gernet, Jacques. Daily life in China on the eve of the Mongol invasion. (Stanford, Calif. : Stanford University Press, 1962).
Grousset, René. The empire of the steppes. (New Brunswick : Rutgers University Press, 1970).
Kahn, Paul. The secret history of the Mongols : the origin of Chinghis Khan : an adaptation of the Yuan ch'ao pi shih. (Berkeley, Calif. : North Point Press, 1984).
Karlgren, Bernhard. Glosses on the Book of odes [ID D3516].
Laozi. Dao de jing.
Marco Polo. The travels. (New York, N.Y. : Penguin, 1958).
Needham, Joseph. Science and civilisation in China.
Payne, Robert. The white pony [ID D32201].
Pound, Ezra. [Translations of Chinese poetry].
Fairbank, John K. ; Reischauer, Edwin O. East Asia [ID D8482].
Hawkes, David. Chu ci : the songs of the South [ID D14573].
Sherman, E. Lee ; Wen, Fong. Streams and mountains without end. In : Artibus Asiae (1976).
Siréen, Osvald. The Chinese on the art of painting [ID D29304].
Sowerby, Arthur de Carle. Nature in Chinese art. (New York, N.Y. : John Day, 1940).
Ssu-ma Ch'ien. Records of the grand historian [ID D10059].
Su, Tung-p'o [Su, Shi]. Su Tung-p'o : selections from a Sung dynasty poet [ID D10954].
Sullivan, Michael. On the origins of landscape representation in Chinese art. In : Archives of the Chinese Art society of America ; vol. 7 (1953).
Sze, Mai Mai. The way of Chinese landscape painting. (New York, N.Y. : Vintage, 1959).
Suzuki, Daisetz Teitaro. [Texts].
Tang shi san bai shou du ben. [300 Tang poems]. 唐詩三百首讀本
Tuan, Yi-fu. China. (Chicago, Ill. : Aldine, 1970).
Waley, Arthur. [Translations of Chinese poetry].
Watson, Burton. Chinese lyricism [ID D10951].
Yoshikawa, Kôjirô. An introduction to Song poetry [ID D10945].
Zhuangzi. [Works].

Sekundärliteratur
1972
Wand, David Happell Hsin-fu [Wang, David Rafael] : Gary Snyder found in classical Chinese poetry in translation a sense of the harmony of man and nature 'better and to me more accurate than anything in English or Western poetry tradition'. Being a mountain-climber, Snyder finds a spiritual affinity with the Chinese landscape poet Xie Lingyun. He also admires Wang Wei and Yuan Zhen. Snyder finds no simple rule or rules for translating Chinese poetry. Being a Buddhist like Wang Wei and Wei Yinwu and being steeped in the tradition of China, whose culture he has studied, he is adequately trained to be their interpreter. Believing fully that 'whatever is or ever was in any other culture can reconstructed from the unconscious through [Zen] meditation. Snyder subscribes to the theory that a poet is a medium through whom other voices or spirits would distill and speak. Being thoroughly immersed in the translation and explication of Chinese poets as Han Shan, Wang Wei and Wei Yingwu, he penetrated into the essence of these classical Chinese poets and emerges as their twentieth-century American medium. Totally identified with them in his Zen outlook and sensibility, he not only lends the Chinese poets his voice but also fuses with them so skillfully as to make us wonder if he were their poetic reincarnation. With his Taoist-Zen orientation, Snyder believes only in the constancy of flux. Just as the Taoists believe that water is the highest good, because it is characterized by eternal fluidity, Snyder subscribes to no fixed principle about prosody, but tacitly agrees that organicity and spontaneity are the bases of satisfactory rhythm in poetry. As the rhythm of the Chinese poems is totally incomprehensible to those unfamiliar with the sound pattern and tonal variations of the Chinese language, a knowledge of Chinese prosody might have contributed to Snyder's use of syllabic count and stress patterns in some of his short poems. Snyder has learned a lesson from classical Chinese poets. And this lesson can by summarized as : make the poem as compressed as possible and omit all words that do not absolutely contribute to the image.
1986
Yip Wai-lim : It is no accident that Snyders early Amerindian studies, his love for Taoism and Chinese landscape poetry and his Ch'an Buddhist training all converge into one center of awareness where man becomes truly 'moral' by trusting his natural being and by 'following the grain'. The primitive mode of perception of nature was concrete, viewing things as holistically self-complete ; it was a state of total harmony between man and nature before polarization. The Taoist philosophy and esthetic at work in Chinese landscape poetry seeks the restoration of the original mode of perception, giving back to things their own status and their natural endowment and function, allowing them to emerge from their silent world as self-generating, self-conditioning, self-complete beings. In Snyder's paraphrase, this is 'the non-human, non-verbal world, which is the world of nature as nature is itself, before language, before custom, before culture. Ch'an Buddhism, which also give primacy to this world, attempts to teach man, through intuition and poetic flashes in the form of 'kung-an (koan), to live and function within nature's way ; to do this by a process of dispossessing the partial and reduced forms that intellectualization has imposed upon him and which has thus distorted his original commerce with nature's potentials. For Snyder, the underlying principle is the complete awareness of all the beings in Nature as 'self-so-complete' or 'tzu-jan' as the Taoists and the Chan Buddhists would say. It is upon this ground that a new humanism is to be built or rebuilt.
2007
Robin Chen-hsing Tsai : Snyder claims that Christianity desacralizes nature. His knowledge of nature, along with his life experience and proclivity toward direct action, leads to his dual vision of verse-making : 'A poet faces two directions : one is to the world of people and language and man and society, and the other is to the nonhuman, nonverbal world, which is nature as nature is itself, and the world of human nature – the inner world – as it is itself, before language, before custom, before culture'. From a Zen-Buddhist perspective, the poet is strongly convinced that 'the notion of emptiness engenders compassion. Snyder's idealization of the other stems from his deep involvement with the cultural other in/of Eastern thinking, including (Tibetan) Buddhism, Taoism, and Zen Buddhism (in China and Japan). He writes poetry so as to arouse our 'ecological consciousness' in response to the call of the other. Generall speaking, Snyder's notions of the other are threefold : 1) the human other ; 2) the nonhuman other ; 3) the 'other in the self' or ecological unconscious, 'the wild'. Snyder is both romantic and anti-romantic in his attitude toward 'freedom' in nature, in part because the art of the wild, being 'abyssal', 'disorderly', and 'chaotic'. He looks to the East for religious and cultural inspiration, hoping that the Zen Buddhist's conception of compassion will help achieve and East-West fusion.
2009
Robin Cheng-hsing Tsai : Gary Snyder was much influenced by the Beat generation and countercultural movement of the fifties and sixties, which closely linked anti-establisment politics with non-Western (especially Asian) religions and modes of thought. He attempts to sensitize us to the constant disruptions of our environment by rationalized, capitalist and essentially Western technology. Poet and translator as well as radical ecologist, anarchist-pacifist and Native American mythographer, Snyder was also a disciple of Confucianism, Daoism and Zen Buddhism. These cross-fertilizing influences form the basis of his eco-poetics. Snyder's translation of Chinese literature, in particular poetry and Buddhist scriptures, has been instrumental in (re)shaping his imagination of the local and the global. His interest in Asian texts and philosophies has been a crucial element in his expression of a transcultural, post-civilizational, post-human 'culture of wildness'. In Snyder's view, Western discourse of the human and social sciences has been uncritical of the centrality it has historically accorded to culture, civilization and man.
A very important 'Other-culture' for Snyder is ancient China. In addition to its Daoist-Buddhist spiritual values, which recognize the vital importance and centrality of the earth in a way that the Western or Middle Eastern monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) do not. Chinese civilization has a very old writing system that includes historical, religious-philosophical and literary texts. This means that the rich ancient culture of China is readily 'translatable'. Snyder's literary and cultural translation of traditional Chinese literature, mostly classical poetry and Zen-Buddhist texts, helps Western readers to see that their horizon of expectations is too narrow and that they need a much wider and more encompassing cultural-environmental imagination. Snyder readily admits the enduring creative influence of Chinese landscape paintings on his imagination that began with the visit to the Seattle Art Museum.
2009
Joan Qionglin Tan : Snyder developed his ecopoetic way by absorbing a variety of influences from global subcultures : American Indian culture, Hinduism, Japanese haiku, Japanese Nô plays, Chinese classical poetry, Chinese landscape painting, and different branches of Buddhism. His works cover Indian Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhism, Huayan Buddhism, Chan Buddhism and Rinzai Zen, whereas his daily practice is 'zazen' ('sitting in meditation') as a Zen practitioner. What he adopted in his poetry is consistent with his belief that 'poetry also exists as part of a tradition'. In his eyes, 'the collective unconscious' and 'cultural history' are embedded in 'the language' of a tradition. Snyder's 'cultural unconscious' refers to the active interaction in translation he created between his mountain experiences on the coast of western America and Han Shan's seclusion in the costal mountain ranges of eastern China.
Chinese landscape paintings, Ezra Pound's ideogrammic method and Zen practice gave Snyder an impetus to study Chinese culture and Buddhism.
As a teenager Snyder was greatly influence by his first viewing of Chinese landscape paintings at the Seattle Art Museum. He was surprised to find en echo in his soul when confronted by the Chinese depiction of the world in the painting. The same empathy for nature in his own aesthetic sensibilities prefigures his later choice of the Chinese tradition in his poetry.
Snyder's interest in Chinese poetry is inseparable from his belief in Mahayana Buddhism. His enthusiasm for Mahayana Buddhism reflects his respect for primitivism and priorities he expressed in his poetry. He found that Chan and Chan poetry suited him because they express the ineffable 'dao in 'koans' and transparent images.
Snyder articulates his own unique manifesto of ecopoetry in the hope of legitimating right understanding, right speech and right action. The idea is publicly expressed from the angle of Buddhist environmentalism with an imperative voice through the poem. As a poet in contemporary times, Snyder believes that one should have a right understanding of the relationship between man and nature. In this place, plants, animals, land and planets are in a harmonious and ecological balance.

Gary Snyder graduated from Reed College in Portland in Anthropology and Literature.
He studied Far Eastern culture at Reed College and read Ezra Pound's and Arthur Waley's translations of Chinese poetry and classics, was amazed at the convergence of Mahayana Buddhism, Daoism and Chinese poetry in the Tang Dynasty.
He ceased his graduate study of linguistics at Indiana University.

Gary Snyder studied Oriental culture and languages (Chinese, Japanese, Sanskrit, French) at the University of California, Berkeley under Peter A. Boodberg and Chen Shixiang. He studied ink and wash painting under Chiura Obata and Tang Dynasty poetry under Chen Shixiang.

Wang, Wei. At deer hedge. Transl. by Gary Snyder. In : Phi Theta annual ; vol. 5 (1954-1955).
Empty, the mountain –
Not a man,
Yet sounds, echoes,
as of men talking.
Shadows swing into the forest.
Swift light
Flashes
On dark moss, above.

Wei, Yingwu. To a friend on autumn night. Transl. by Gary Snyder. In : Phi Theta annual ; vol. 5 (1954-1955).
Good friend,
The autumn night is yours, and I
I walk singing under a cold sky.
On empty peaks the pine trees shed
And you, old man, not yet in bed.

Snyder, Gary. Endless streams and moutains. In : Orion ; vol. 14, no 3 (1955).
Commenting on a line from Kanglikui's colophon to the scroll, Snyder observes :
"The remark leads a viewer to turn the handscroll slowly and to journey through the streams and mountains and into the mists and clouds. The scroll is read from right to left and one is affected by the nature as if actually there. The journey a viewer makes through the canvas is marked clearly : There is a path that can followed even if, at times, there are alternate paths to create variety, and always along a passage, a reader experiences a harmony with nature."

San Francisco Renaissance and Beat Generation.
The San Francisco Renaissance poets tended to be characterized by an 'outdoor ethic', an interest in hiking, cycling and working as woodsmen to fund their studies. Natural meditation techniques tend to be preferred to synthesized drug use of the city Beats. Jack Kerouac appears to point towards the greater sobriety of the San Francisco scene when he noted that his contact with it helped to turn him from a 'hot' to a 'cool' hipster, in particular after he was engaged in Buddhist meditation.
For the early Beats, the significance of 'the 1955 Gallery Six Poetry Reading' lies in their discovery of Buddhism as a means of spiritual training and new poetic excitement. This discovers is, more or less, connected with Snyder's Zen Buddhist practice, his reading of Arthur Waley's translations of Chinese classics and poetry, and his mountaineering life. Allen Ginsbergs first meeting with Snyder in 1955 helped to expand his poetic vision to Eastern religions – Buddhism and Hinduism. Kerouac's close contact with Snyder pushed him to study Buddhist sutras systematically and he even planned to adopt a celibate, meditative life like a Chinese monk. The Gallery reading encouraged the early Beats to accept Buddhism as a valid alternative spirituality and to take the Chinese hermit-poet lifestyle as a valid mode of countercultural expression.
For the early Beats, the significance of 'the 1955 Gallery Six Poetry Reading' lies in their discovery of Buddhism as a means of spiritual training and new poetic excitement. This discovers is, more or less, connected with Snyder's Zen Buddhist practice, his reading of Arthur Waley's translations of Chinese classics and poetry, and his mountaineering life. Allen Ginsbergs first meeting with Snyder in 1955 helped to expand his poetic vision to Eastern religions – Buddhism and Hinduism. Kerouac's close contact with Snyder pushed him to study Buddhist sutras systematically and he even planned to adopt a celibate, meditative life like a Chinese monk. The Gallery reading encouraged the early Beats to accept Buddhism as a valid alternative spirituality and to take the Chinese hermit-poet lifestyle as a valid mode of countercultural expression.
Encouraged by Snyder, Kerouac wrote an original Buddhist-cum-Beat sutra The scripture of the golden eternity (1956), which was 'one of the most successful attempts yet to catch emptiness, nonattainment and egolessness in the net of American poetic language. His friendship with Snyder and others was portrayed in his novel The dharma bums, which merged Hand Shan and Snyder into one : an American Han Shan and a Beat hero. Kerouac's interest and belief in Buddhism came to his great spiritual and intellectual passions. Though a casual Buddhist practitioner, he was very serious and enthusiastic.
Kerouac's popularizing of Buddhism had a strong impact upon other Beats, among Ginsberg acknowledged his first knowledge about Buddhism. Not until the 1955 poetry reading, when Ginsberg met with Snyder and Philip Whalen he understand that Zen could be seen as part of a global cultural context with a deep resonance in relation to art and the human condition. Ginsberg started to attend D.T. Suzuki and Allan Watts's lectures on Zen Buddhism and was deeply impressed by 'satori' after he read Suzuki's writing. Whalen was much influenced by Snyder in almost every aspect.
Whalen, Snyder and Lew Welch began their poetic careers as the Reed campus trio and soon became influential figures within the San Francisco Renaissance. The were influence by William Carlos Williams, Kenneth Rexroth, Watts and Suzuki. After the 1955 poetry reading, Whalen, Snyder, Ginsberg and Kerouac became the main members of the San Francisco Beat scene.

Han, Shan. The cold mountain poems. Transl. by Gary Snyder. [ID D29190].
Preface to the Poems of Han-shan
by Lu Ch'iu-yin, Governor of T'ai Prefecture
No one knows what sort of man Han-shan was. There are old people who knew him: they say he was a poor man, a crazy character. He lived alone seventy Li (23 miles) west of the T'ang-hsing district of T'ien-t'ai at a place called Cold Mountain. He often went down to the Kuo-ch'ing Temple. At the temple lived Shih'te, who ran the dining hall. He sometimes saved leftovers for Han-shan, hiding them in a bamboo tube. Han-shan would come and carry it away; walking the long veranda, calling and shouting happily, talking and laughing to himself. Once the monks followed him, caught him, and made fun of him. He stopped, clapped his hands, and laughed greatly - Ha Ha! - for a spell, then left.
He looked like a tramp. His body and face were old and beat. Yet in every word he breathed was a meaning in line with the subtle principles of things, if only you thought of it deeply. Everything he said had a feeling of Tao in it, profound and arcane secrets. His hat was made of birch bark, his clothes were ragged and worn out, and his shoes were wood. Thus men who have made it hide their tracks: unifying categories and interpenetrating things. On that long veranda calling and singing, in his words of reply Ha Ha! - the three worlds revolve. Sometimes at the villages and farms he laughed and sang with cowherds. Sometimes intractable, sometimes agreeable, his nature was happy of itself. But how could a person without wisdom recognize him?
I once received a position as a petty official at Tan-ch'iu. The day I was to depart, I had a bad headache. I called a doctor, but he couldn't cure me and it turned worse. Then I met a Buddhist Master named Feng-kan, who said he came from the Kuo-ch'ing Temple of T'ien-t'ai especially to visit me. I asked him to rescue me from my illness. He smiled and said, "The four realms are within the body; sickness comes from illusion. If you want to do away with it, you need pure water." Someone brought water to the Master, who spat it on me. In a moment the disease was rooted out. He then said, "There are miasmas in T'ai prefecture, when you get there take care of yourself." I asked him, "Are there any wise men in your area I could look on as Master?" He replied, "When you see him you don't recognize him, when you recognize him you don't see him. If you want to see him, you can't rely on appearances. Then you can see him. Han-shan is a Manjusri (one who has attained enlightenment and, in a future incarnation, will become Buddha) hiding at Kuo-sh'ing. Shih-te is a Samantabbhadra (Bodhisattva of love). They look like poor fellows and act like madmen. Sometimes they go and sometimes they come. They work in the kitchen of the Kuo-ch'ing dining hall, tending the fire." When he was done talking he left.
I proceeded on my journey to my job at T'ai-chou, not forgetting this affair. I arrived three days later, immediately went to a temple, and questioned an old monk. It seemed the Master had been truthful, so I gave orders to see if T'ang-hsing really contained a Han-shan and Shih-te. The District Magistrate reported to me: "In this district, seventy li west, is a mountain. People used to see a poor man heading from the cliffs to stay awhile at Kuo-ch'ing. At the temple dining hall is a similar man named Shih-te." I made a bow, and went to Kuo-ch'ing. I asked some people around the temple, "There used to be a Master named Feng-kan here, Where is his place? And where can Han-shan and Shih-te be seen?" A monk named T'ao-ch'iao spoke up: "Feng-kan the Master lived in back of the library. Nowadays nobody lives there; a tiger often comes and roars. Han-shan and Shih-te are in the kitchen." The monk led me to Feng-kan's yard. Then he opened the gate: all we saw was tiger tracks. I asked the monks Tao-ch'iao and Pao-te, "When Feng-kan was here, what was his job?" The monks said, :He pounded and hulled rice. At night he sang songs to amuse himself." Then we went to the kitchen, before the stoves. Two men were facing the fire, laughing loudly. I made a bow. The two shouted Ho! at me. They struck their hands together -Ha Ha! - great laughter. They shouted. Then they said, "Feng-kan - loose-tounged, loose-tounged. You don't recognize Amitabha, (the Bodhisattva of mercy) why be courteous to us?" The monks gathered round, surprise going through them. ""Why has a big official bowed to a pair of clowns?" The two men grabbed hands and ran out of the temple. I cried, "Catch them" - but they quickly ran away. Han-shan returned to Cold Mountain. I asked the monks, "Would those two men be willing to settle down at this temple?" I ordered them to find a house, and to ask Han-shan and Shih-te to return and live at the temple.
I returned to my district and had two sets of clean clothes made, got some incense and such, and sent it to the temple - but the two men didn't return. So I had it carried up to Cold Mountain. The packer saw Han-shan, who called in a loud voice, "Thief! Thief!" and retreated into a mountain cave. He shouted, "I tell you man, strive hard" - entered the cave and was gone. The cave closed of itself and they weren't able to follow. Shih-te's tracks disappeared completely..
I ordered Tao-ch'iao and the other monks to find out how they had lived, to hunt up the poems written on bamboo, wood, stones, and cliffs - and also to collect those written on the walls of people's houses. There were more than three hundred. On the wall of the Earth-shrine Shih-te had written some gatha (Buddhist verse or song). It was all brought together and made into a book.
I hold to the principle of the Buddha-mind. It is fortunate to meet with men of Tao, so I have made this eulogy.

The cold mountain poems
1
The path to Han-shan's place is laughable,
A path, but no sign of cart or horse.
Converging gorges - hard to trace their twists
Jumbled cliffs - unbelievably rugged.
A thousand grasses bend with dew,
A hill of pines hums in the wind.
And now I've lost the shortcut home,
Body asking shadow, how do you keep up?
2
In a tangle of cliffs, I chose a place -
Bird paths, but no trails for me.
What's beyond the yard?
White clouds clinging to vague rocks.
Now I've lived here - how many years -
Again and again, spring and winter pass.
Go tell families with silverware and cars
"What's the use of all that noise and money?"
3
In the mountains it's cold.
Always been cold, not just this year.
Jagged scarps forever snowed in
Woods in the dark ravines spitting mist.
Grass is still sprouting at the end of June,
Leaves begin to fall in early August.
And here I am, high on mountains,
Peering and peering, but I can't even see the sky.
4
I spur my horse through the wrecked town,
The wrecked town sinks my spirit.
High, low, old parapet walls
Big, small, the aging tombs.
I waggle my shadow, all alone;
Not even the crack of a shrinking coffin is heard.
I pity all those ordinary bones,
In the books of the Immortals they are nameless.
5
I wanted a good place to settle:
Cold Mountain would be safe.
Light wind in a hidden pine -
Listen close - the sound gets better.
Under it a gray haired man
Mumbles along reading Huang and Lao.
For ten years I havn't gone back home
I've even forgotten the way by which I came.
6
Men ask the way to Cold Mountain
Cold Mountain: there's no through trail.
In summer, ice doesn't melt
The rising sun blurs in swirling fog.
How did I make it?
My heart's not the same as yours.
If your heart was like mine
You'd get it and be right here.
7
I settled at Cold Mountain long ago,
Already it seems like years and years.
Freely drifting, I prowl the woods and streams
And linger watching things themselves.
Men don't get this far into the mountains,
White clouds gather and billow.
Thin grass does for a mattress,
The blue sky makes a good quilt.
Happy with a stone under head
Let heaven and earth go about their changes.
8
Clambering up the Cold Mountain path,
The Cold Mountain trail goes on and on:
The long gorge choked with scree and boulders,
The wide creek, the mist blurred grass.
The moss is slippery, though there's been no rain
The pine sings, but there's no wind.
Who can leap the word's ties
And sit with me among the white clouds?
9
Rough and dark - the Cold Mountain trail,
Sharp cobbles - the icy creek bank.
Yammering, chirping - always birds
Bleak, alone, not even a lone hiker.
Whip, whip - the wind slaps my face
Whirled and tumbled - snow piles on my back.
Morning after morning I don't see the sun
Year after year, not a sign of spring.
10
I have lived at Cold Mountain
These thirty long years.
Yesterday I called on friends and family:
More than half had gone to the Yellow Springs.
Slowly consumed, like fire down a candle;
Forever flowing, like a passing river.
Now, morning, I face my lone shadow:
Suddenly my eyes are bleared with tears.
11
Spring water in the green creek is clear
Moonlight on Cold Mountain is white
Silent knowledge - the spirit is enlightened of itself
Contemplate the void: this world exceeds stillness.
12
In my first thirty years of life
I roamed hundreds and thousands of miles.
Walked by rivers through deep green grass
Entered cities of boiling red dust.
Tried drugs, but couldn't make Immortal;
Read books and wrote poems on history.
Today I'm back at Cold Mountain:
I'll sleep by the creek and purify my ears.
13
I can't stand these bird songs
Now I'll go rest in my straw shack.
The cherry flowers are scarlet
The willow shoots up feathery.
Morning sun drives over blue peaks
Bright clouds wash green ponds.
Who knows that I'm out of the dusty world
Climbing the southern slope of Cold Mountain?
14
Cold Mountain has many hidden wonders,
People who climb here are always getting scared.
When the moon shines, water sparkles clear
When the wind blows, grass swishes and rattles.
On the bare plum, flowers of snow
On the dead stump, leaves of mist.
At the touch of rain it all turns fresh and live
At the wrong season you can't ford the creeks.
15
There's a naked bug at Cold Mountain
With a white body and a black head.
His hand holds two book scrolls,
One the Way and one its Power.
His shack's got no pots or oven,
He goes for a long walk with his shirt and pants askew.
But he always carries the sword of wisdom:
He means to cut down sensless craving.
16
Cold Mountain is a house
Without beans or walls.
The six doors left and right are open
The hall is sky blue.
The rooms all vacant and vague
The east wall beats on the west wall
At the center nothing.
Borrowers don't bother me
In the cold I build a little fire
When I'm hungry I boil up some greens.
I've got no use for the kulak
With his big barn and pasture -
He just sets up a prison for himself.
Once in he can't get out.
Think it over -
You know it might happen to you.
17
If I hide out at Cold Mountain
Living off mountain plants and berries -
All my lifetime, why worry?
One follows his karma through.
Days and months slip by like water,
Time is like sparks knocked off flint.
Go ahead and let the world change -
I'm happy to sit among these cliffs.
18
Most T'ien-t'ai men
Don't know Han-shan
Don't know his real thought
And call it silly talk.
19
Once at Cold Mountain, troubles cease -
No more tangled, hung up mind.
I idly scribble poems on the rock cliff,
Taking whatever comes, like a drifting boat.
20
Some critic tried to put me down -
"Your poems lack the Basic Truth of Tao."
And I recall the old timers
Who were poor and didn't care.
I have to laugh at him,
He misses the point entirely,
Men like that
Ought to stick to making money.
21
I've lived at Cold Mountain - how many autumns.
Alone, I hum a song - utterly without regret.
Hungry, I eat one grain of Immortal medicine
Mind solid and sharp; leaning on a stone.
22
On top of Cold Mountain the lone round moon
Lights the whole clear cloudless sky.
Honor this priceless natural treasure
Concealed in five shadows, sunk deep in the flesh.
23
My home was at Cold Mountain from the start,
Rambling among the hills, far from trouble.
Gone, and a million things leave no trace
Loosed, and it flows through galaxies
A fountain of light, into the very mind -
Not a thing, and yet it appears before me:
Now I know the pearl of the Buddha nature
Know its use: a boundless perfect sphere.
24
When men see Han-shan
They all say he's crazy
And not much to look at -
Dressed in rags and hides.
They don't get what I say
And I don't talk their language.
All I can say to those I meet:
"Try and make it to Cold Mountain."

Sekundärliteratur
2007
Robin Chen-hsing Tsai : Han Shan inspired Snyder primarily through his economy of form and spiritual-ecological theme. Snyder attempts, in translating 'Cold mountain' and more generally Eastern thought, not to superimpose a hierarchical relationship between the original and the simulacrum : his translation project is note purely a textual operation based on cross-referencing. He makes clear that Han Shan is the very embodiment of a cranky and eccentric poet-hermit who traverses the boundary between the sacred and the profane. This hermit's poems not only treat of the poet himself but of his relation to the physical environment of Cold Mountain and his state of mind. The second theme is that of Han Shan the man's relationship to the environment and the third theme contains the tripartite concept of Han Shan the man, his relationship with the environment and his state of mind. Like Han Shan, Snyder is looking for 'one mind' embedded 'in the flesh' in its true nature, as represented by the moon, the central image in the poem.
2009
Joan Qionglin Tang : Han Shan's Cold mountain poems may be heralded as condensed collection of Chinese philosophical ideas drawn from Confucianism, Daoism and Chinese Buddhism (including different branches of Chan Buddhism). Han Shan's spiritual journey to Cold Mountain is often seen as a reflection of the ancient Chinese literati's pilgrimage to Chan enlightenment. Han Shan's poems seem more colloquial, laconic and direct, but they still follow some of the main characteristics of Chinese classical poetry. The nature-Chan images used in his Chan poems not only make the ineffable Chan or 'dao' explicable, but also endow the poems with a high degree of literary virtuosity. Through translation, the legend of Han Shan and his poems were brought to such countries as Japan, Korea and the United States of America. The hermit-poet's name, Han Shan, has become synonymous with the recluse-rebel against the mainstream culture, and also with the 'dao'-Chan mountain spirit, whilst the place name, Cold Mountain, is often used to symbolize a nature-Chan world of peace, transcendence and enlightenment. In China, Han Shan is idolized as an incarnation of Manjusri ('keen awareness', 'the bodhisattva of wisdom') with the sword of wisdom.
Arthur Waley translated twenty-seven of Han Shan's poems in 1954, Gary Snyder twenty-four translations in 1958 and Burton Watson one hundred poems in 1962. But neither has proved as influential as Snyders translation. Waley and Watson looked at the poems only as translators, whereas Snyder responded to them also as a poet, as a Mahayana Buddhist and as a mountain hiker. He adopted a principle of selection and a visualization process in his translation to invent his own mentor in the person of Han Shan. His translations are all related to Han Shan, to Cold Mountain, and to a spiritual quest for Chan enlightenment. Through his translation, he discovered that Han Shan had fascinated him from childhood. Han Shan's life on Cold Mountain seemed to have overlapped with Snyder's early life in the American western mountains. As a Mahayana Buddhist, he was attracted by Chan enlightenment in Han Shan's Chan poems, Han Shan secluded life and Han Shan's meditative practice on Cold Mountain. He melded Han Shan harmoniously into his translation and later into some of his works, even into his life. Many years later, he still admitted that 'a bit of a Han Shan spirit' was present in him and others.
The eccentric life of the hermit-poet Han Shan, the vernacular style of Hans Shan's poems and the nature-Chan world of enlightenment on Cold Mountain accord with Snyder's interests, personality, and aims as a poet. His successful translation encouraged him to start his own spiritual quest for Cold Mountain, which symbolizes the literary mountain of ecopoetry for him. The comparative study of Snyder and Han Shan has been confined mainly to Snyder's translation techniques, or to the Chinese grammatical influence on Snyder's early works.
Both Han Shan and Snyder are not purists in pursuit of Chan enlightenment in their poetics. Han Shan's spiritual quest underwent a rather complicated process, the workings of which were enmeshed with a wide range of Chinese religious or philosophical ideas. He started from Confucianism, but resorted to Daoism after his failure in the Civil Service Examination. He soon accepted Indian Buddhism, and then absorbed the essence of Daoism and Chinese Buddhism, finally turning to Chan Buddhism. Snyder's eclecticism is quite different, for Snyder considers all Buddhist doctrines as 'one teaching'. Although he is a Zen practitioner in his daily life and claims himself as a Mahayana Buddhist, he never refutes other religious teachings in his work, such as Hinduism and Theravada Buddhism. Snyder's principle is to interweave these teachings with archaic values in an eclectic way to rebuild his sense of 'wholeness'. This principle encourages him not to exclude alternative and even opposing Buddhist sects from inclusion within his system of thought.
It was the mountain spirit of the poets that linked Han Shan and Snyder so tightly together that Snyder became an exemplary representative of an American Han Shan.
Snyder's poetic journey to Cold Mountain can be divided into three stages : pre-turning, turning and returning. This division is mainly based on his acceptance of Han Shan and Chan. It also assumes that Snyder as a poet has achieved a state of enlightenment after his self-cultivation, a 'kensho' in Japanese Zen terminology.
2011
Cong Zihang : One reason that Snyder chose to translate Han-Shan's poems is that these poems evoke memories of his childhood. The other reason is that the harmony and concord in Taoism echo with his ecological view, Snyder established 'depth ecology', which 'contains the concept of energy transformation, of that being a link in the food chain, human beings should be thankful for their food, and of that animals, plants, and minerals are equal to human beings'. Furthermore, concepts of 'impermanence, no-self, the inevitability of suffering, connectedness, emptiness, the vastness of mind, and a way to realization' propagated by Buddhism have too much effect on Snyder. Some of his researches show that it is Buddhism that further strengthens his aspiration for equality among humans and harmony between human and environment. Similar to ancient Chinese officials who served the society, or Taoists who withdraw from society to live leisurely in nature, Snyder combines 'meditation, morality and wisdom' and he himself is the perfect embodiment of the Confucian concept of 'self-cultivating, family-regulating, state-ordering and then nation governing'.

Snyder, Gary. After the Chinese. In : Combustion ; no 7 (Aug. 1958).
She looked like a fairy
All dressed in shaky cheesecloth,
And ran off with a fairy poet
Back to town. Her hair
Was black as a mud-snail's bowels
Her skin was like chilled grease.
My sleeves are sopping wet
From crying. My white hair scraggly
And my eyes all red. Pour another
Cup of wine for this poor
Bureaucrat stuck out in the sticks.

Snyder, Gary. The back country. In : Galley sail review ; vol. 2, no 1 (Winter 1959-60). [Li Po issue].
Kyoto footnote
She said she lived in Shanghai as a child
And moved to Kobe, then Kyoto, in the war ;
While putting on her one thin white brassiere,
She walked me to the stair and all the girls
Gravely and politely said take care,
out of the whorehouse into cool night air.
(BC 81)

Snyder, Gary. Riprap [ID D29318].
Lay down these words
Before your mind like rocks.
placed solid, by hands
In choice of place, set
Before the body of the mind
in space and time:
Solidity of bark, leaf, or wall
riprap of things:
Cobble of milky way,
straying planets,
These poems, people,
lost ponies with
Dragging saddles—
and rocky sure-foot trails.
The worlds like an endless
four-dimensional
Game of Go.
ants and pebbles
In the thin loam, each rock a word
a creek-washed stone
Granite: ingrained
with torment of fire and weight
Crystal and sediment linked hot
all change, in thoughts,
As well as things.

Sekundärliteratur
Joan Qinglin Tan : Snyder refers to his work 'Riprap' as a labourer in the mountains and at sea, dedicating his firs lyrical book to those who worked 'in the woods & at sea'. This work also signifies what was occurring within his mind, as he became a practitioner of meditation on Chan, landscape and ecology. The latter is closer to the Chinese tradition. Though there is no unified style in 'Riprap', some poems are obviously successful imitation of Chinese Chan poetry. With nature-Chan images, the reader can detect the basic Chan teachings. Snyder's great innovation lies in his own unique ideogrammic method – riprapping, a result of his turning to Chan, Han Shan and Chinese landscape poetry.
'Riprap' can be seen as Snyder's formal aesthetic statement in poetic form. The poem itself is a good example of presenting the reader with 'the complexity far beneath the surface texture'. To create visual effects, Snyder mimics Chinese landscape paintings o give appropriate blank space. He often deals with this through his use of indented lines, that is, through a visual and spatial dismemberment of the line into small units. The arrangement of lines, when seen from the bottom, like solid rocky steps up a mountain. To express ineffable nonduality, emptiness and 'satori', Snyder likes to employ phrases as compositional units and small nature-Chan images. The image of burning rocks alludes to sudden 'satori' after the Buddhist fire. Through burning, all things are changed. People achieve transcendence in a similar way to the transformation of rocks into granite, crystal and sediment. To illustrate the nature of nature, he often borrows features of Chinese classical poetry. Riprapping, as a method in Snyder's ecopoetry, is a response to the wilderness and to nature. To express his ecological concerns, he chose Chan, not Christianity as one of the riprapping ways. He explained that Chan is 'a way of using your mind and practicing your life and doing it with other people', which inevitably involves 'responsibility and commitment'.

Snyder, Gary. Statement of poetics. In : Allen, Donald. The new American poetry, 1945-1960 [ID D29319].
"Walking, climbing, placing with the hands, I tried writing poems of tough, simple, short words, with the complexity far beneath the surface texture. In part the line was influenced by the five- and seven-character line Chinese poems I'd been reading, which work like sharp blows on the mind."
"I've just recently come to realize that the rhythms of my poems follow the rhythm of the physical work I'm going and life I'm leading at any given time – which makes the music in my head which creates the line."

Snyder, Gary. Myths & texts [ID D29322]. [Auszüge und Sekundärliteratur].
1972
David Rafael Wang : Myths and texts is a long poem in three sections – a poem which has no precedent or equivalent in classical Chinese poetry. The first section entitled 'Logging' consists of fifteen individual poems ; the second section 'Hunting' of sixteen poems ; and the third section 'Burning' of seventeen poems.
2009
Joan Qionglin Tan : From a Chan point of view, the three fragments 'Logging', 'Hunting' and 'Burning' complete a spiritual quest for enlightenment on a mythopoetic level uniting Chan and ecology.

Logging
Tan : The fragment 'Logging' contemplates destruction. In basic Chan teachings greed, anger and ignorance are the three poisons, the origin of suffering. These can be turned into 'sila' (morality), 'samadhi' (meditation) and 'prajna (wisdom).
1
"The morning star is not a star
Two seedling fir, one died
Io, Io."
Tan : Begins with the statement 'The morning star is not a star'. There is a subtle relationship between two parallel traditions. Venus is a planet, one of the brightest celestial objects in the sky. It is not a star, but is called the morning star and the evening star as well, because it is nearer the sun than the earth.
Wang : It is the Taoist 'self-transformation'.
2
"The ancient forests of China logged
and the hills slipped into the Yellow Sea.
Squared beams, log dogs,
on a tamped-earth sill.
San Francisco 2x4's
were the woods around Seattle."
Wang : The forests of China merge with 'the wood around Seattle.
Tan : Logging 2 uses the image of Chinese landscape as a comparison. In ancient China, the large scale of logging resulted in the vanishing of the forests and the erosion of the landscape. This historical disaster plays an apocalyptic role, for Snyder always tries to 'hold both history and wilderness in mind'. When juxtaposed with the present logging site in Seattle, the astonishing similarity between ancient china and present day Seattle deforestation is designed to move the reader to greater awareness. To address the destruction of American forests, the poet refers to the idea of reincarnation in Buddhism and the natural process of rebirth in physical world and hopes that these may give some consolation.
3
Tan : In Logging 3, the nature-Chan image of 'lodgepole pine' is used to exemplify the regenerative power of nature, for lodgepole seed can withstand fire. The possibility of renewal expresses the idea of reincarnation in Buddhism. In Snyder's mind, spiritual fire in Buddhism, as one of the mythical forms of healing, helps to eradicate the three poisons (greed, anger and ignorance) in humans. Hsü Fang's simple life is deftly compared to life in modern American society. Hsü Fang was a mythic figure in ancient China, who, like Han Shan, lived on mountain plants and vegetables. This image is juxtaposed with the apparently unrelated image of the American grown-up kids, which virtually shows some automatic connections. If the kids are well-educated, they will realize the importance of environmental protection.
10
"Man is the heart of the universe
The upshot of the five elements,
Born to enjoy food and color and noise.
Get off my back Confucius
There's enough noise now."
Shu Yunzong : In this passage Snyder first turns Confucius into an epicurean who advocates that men should enjoy themselves at the expense of the rest of the world. Then Snyder pits himself against Confucius from an exological perspective rather than from the one held by Chuang Tzu.
12
" At the high and lonely center of the earth:
Where Crazy Horse
Went to watch the Morning Star,
& the four-legged people, the creeping people.
The standing people and the flying people
Know how to talk…
In a long south flight, the land of
Sea and fir tree with the pine-dry
Sage-flat country to the east.
Han Shan could have lived here,
& no scissorbill stooge of the
Emperor would have come trying to steal
his last poor shred of sense.
On the wooded coast, eating oysters
Looking off toward China and Japan…"
Tan : Han Shan is treated as a mythical Chan Buddhist sage. The 'scissorbill stooge' was an allusion to Lü Qiuyin, an official of Taizhou appointed by the Emperor in the Tang dynasty.
15
"Pine sleeps, cedar splits straight
Flowers crack the pavement.
Pa-ta Shan-jen
(A painter who watched Ming fall)
Lived in a tree :
'The brush
May paint the mountains and streams
Though the territory is lost."
Wang : The 'Ming' referred to the Ming Dynasty whose downfall was brought about the invasion of the Manchus. Pa-ta Shan-jen lived on to paint the mountains and streams of his homeland, even when his homeland was lost.
Tan : The last poem is a summation of the first fragment 'Logging'. Unlike Logging 1, this poem manifests two traditions and two worlds, including the Oriental and the Occidental, the Buddhist and the Romantic, the physical and the spiritual, and the human and the non-human. Through juxtaposing different images, Snyder attempts to create a harmonious scene within the poem. In the opening stanza, the void where a lodgepole cone is waiting for fire is the right place where enlightenment will be attained through transcendence and reincarnation in the Chan tradition. The poet invokes the Chinese tradition in the form of the painter Pa-ta Shan-jen's (Bada Shanren) powerful brush, which the artist used both literally and metaphorically to keep the landscape intact.

Hunting
Tan : The subtitle 'Hunting' hints in a primeval forest, where animals and plants will be seen to possess a supernatural power in shaman songs. This fragment is mainly concerned with native American lore, which dedicates some poems to the animals, birds, bears, and deer. Throughout 'Hunting' humanity's life will be intimately tied to the life cycles of animals and the myths surrounding them.
Three main aspects are involved in the process of hunting. First, there must be pure divination before hunting, for hunting in the proper time and place is seen as a spiritual encounter, in which the hunted will sacrifice themselves to the hunter. Second, mindfulness is needs for such a spiritual encounter.
2
"Atok: creeping
Maupok: waiting
to hunt seals.
The sea hunter
watching the whirling seabirds on the rocks
The mountain hunter
horn-tipped shaft on a snowslope
edging across cliffs for a short at goat
'Upon the lower slopes of the mountain,
on the cover, we find the sculptured forms
of animals apparently lying dead in the
wilderness' thus Fenollosa
On the pottery of Shang
It's a shem I didn't kill you,
Yang Keui Fei,
Cut down in the old apartment
Left to bleed between the bookcase and the wall,
I'd hunt you still, trail you from town to town.
But you change shape,
death's a new shape,
Maybe flayed you'd be true
But it would't be through.
'You who live with your grandmother
I'll trail you with dogs
And crush you in my mouth. '
- Not that we're cruel –
But a man's got to eat."
Wang : Legend of Yang Guifei, the favorite concubine of Ming Huang of the Tang Dynasty, who was forced to hang herself from a beam when the Tang soldiers revolted in protest against her nepotism and the usurpation of power by her relatives. What starts out to be Eskimos hunting becomes Fenollosa's commentary on the art of the Shang Dynasty, then becomes Yang Guifei of Tang China bleeding to death in an apartment and finally becomes contemporary America.
Going through the three stanzas of the poem, we find that the first one deals with hunting for food (Eskimo hunters), the second one with hunting for revenge (Wang Guifei), and the third one with a rationalization for hunting. Whereas the Eskimos may have a legitimate reason for hunting since they need food for survival, whereas the Tang soldiers may have an adequate excuse for demanding the death of Yang Guifei (who was indirectly responsible for the An Lu-shan rebellion in 755), there is neither a legitimate reason or an adequate excuse for trailing someone who lived with his grandmother with a pack of dogs in order to crush him 'in my mouth'. Reading Snyder's poem in the light of the different justifications for hunting, we find that the Eskimos can be exonerate of their guilt because they need food, that the Tang soldiers can be pardoned because they demanded the restoration of order in the empire, but that the thrill-hunters are accountable for their guilt. The poem seems to suggest a progressive degeneration of values, with 'primitive' Eskimos hunting for food, 'sophisticated' Chinese hunting for revenge, and the 'civilized' modern hunting for thrills. By a cyclical reference to man's eating habit, we mean that the poem starts with showing us the activity of hunting to acquire food and ends with giving us the reason for hunting. In each case, 'eating' is man's justification for his acts of violence. In this light, Snyders's poem can be interpreted as a Buddhist's plea for mercy, or universal compassion, for according to the Buddha, man perpetuates his sin in the killing of any sentient being, human or animal. Snyder's Myths and texts can be viewed as a demonstration of the Buddhist belief that all appearance is illusory or deceptive, because the poem in the beginning, turns out to be carfully designed in the end. The unity of the poem lies in Snyder's use of metamorphosis as the leitmotiv. This metamorphosis illustrates the Buddhist principle that nothing is permanent or real in this world as well as the Taoist principle that the only permanence is change. Snyder's selection of primordial images from the myths of diverse cultures serves to demonstrate that, despite the barriers of languages and cultures, all mankind shares a collective unconscious. The poem illustrates the Taoist concept of endless self-transformation. And, as the Taoist transformation is cyclical, we feel the inevitability of the end when 'The morning star is not a star' is transformed into 'The sun is but a morning star'.
Tan : Snyder borrowed tow Inuit verbs, 'atok' and 'maupok', literally 'creeping' and 'waiting', to describe the Inuit's hunting habit with a harpoon, which 'was central to all sea mammal hunting'. For the Inuit, this harpoon hunting is called 'maupok', because it depends upon timing, patience and co-ordination as well as hunters' extensive knowledge of the habits of sea mammals.
5
Tan : Hunting 5 is a good example of embodying the third aspect of hunting. Snyder depicts how Native American people used 'the head of the mountain-goat' for 'the making of the horn spoon'. The sacredness is manifested in the last line.
10
"Flung from demonic wombs
Off the some new birth
A million shapes – just look in any biology book.
Wang : Snyder is referring to the popular Buddhist belief that on can cat reborn in different shapes.
14
"Buddha fed himself to tigers
& donated mountains of eyes
(through the years)
To the blind."
Wang : Buddha must be reborn in order to feed himself to tigers and he must have 'mountains of eyes' to donate them continually to the blind.
16
"Meanging: compassion.
Agents: man and beast, beasts
Got the Buddha-nature."
All but
Coyote.
Tan : 'Hunting' comes to its end with an image from the Chinese tradition. The Chan master Zhao Zhou tried to instruct the novice that all sentient beings possess the Buddha nature. Hunting 16 is about Zhao Zhou's famous 'koan' concerning the Chan concept of 'wu/no'. The last lines not only reveal the theme of the second fragment 'Hunt8ing', but also suggest that the spiritual quest should go ahead.

Burning
Tan : The whole fragment 'Burning' concentrates on nonduality, emptiness and sudden 'satori' using some nature-Chan images.
2
One glance, miles below
Bones & flesh knit in the rock
'have no regret –
Chip chip
(sparrows)
& not a word about the void
To which one hand diddling
Cling.
Tan : At the end of Burning 2, Snyder chooses the bird to depict the moment before enlightenment.
3
Tan : The fragment is about enlightenment. To keep Chan in the foreground, Snyder changed the direction of his exploration into the Oriental tradition. He left his 'western American wilderness' as a logger and a hunter in the tradition of American Indian lore.
6
Tan : Snyder himself wears the mask of Han Shan on Cold Mountain. This is the early image of Han Shan's self-portrait, who was ready to cut down delusion with the sword of wisdom.
7
"Face in the crook of her neck
felt throb of vein
Smooth skin, her cool breasts
All naked in the dawn
'byrdes
sing forth from every bough'
where are they now
And dreamt I saw the Duke of Chou."
Wang : Snyder is reminiscing about a former girlfriend who appears as prominently in a dream to him as the Duke of Chou supposedly appeared in a dream of Confucius.
9
"Bodhidharma sailing the Yangtze on a reed
Lenin in a sealed train shrough Germany
Hsüan Tseng, crossing the Pamirs
Joseph, Crazy Horse, living the last free
starving high-country winter of their tribes."
Wang : Transition from China, where the Yangzi river flows, to Germany where the Soviet leader rode 'in a sealed train', to the border of China, India, and Afghanistan, and finally to the North American continent, the tribal home of Crazy Horse.
11
Snyder, with the mask of Han Shan, became 'a pure but' waiting for sudden enlightenment.
17
"The storms of the Milky Way
Buddha incense in an empty world
Black pit cold and light-year
Flame tongue of the dragon
Licks the sun
The sun is but a morning star."
Wang : The transformation of the morning star which is 'not a star' into the sun is brought about by the dragon's tongue. The dragon is 'the symbol of the infinite in Chinese art and literature.

Snyder, Gary. Li Sao, A poem on relieving sorrows, by Ch'ü Yüan [Qu Yuan]. [ID D29204].
There are only three readable translations of the Li Sao in English, and Mr. Johnson's is one of them. Although it is over a hundred years since August Pfizmaier's German translation, none of the half-dozen or so later versions into French, English, and German have done the poem justice.
This is quite understandable: the Ch'u Kingdom collection (Ch'u-tz'u) which contains the Li Sao is the most difficult and exotic group of poems in the Chinese language. They are difficult, in part, because the Ch'u Kingdom, which existed in southern and eastern China from the eighth century B.C. until it was conquered in 221 B.C. by Ch'in, was quite different culturally from the central and northern states, home of the "Poetry Classic" and Confucian philosophy. It is this difference that makes the Li Sao of interest to the folklorist and anthropologist. In brief, it seems the Ch'u culture was shamanism-oriented; and the language, imagery, and mythological references of the Li Sao suggest the god-intoxication, spirit-journeying, supernatural flying, and hypersensitive states of awareness of shaman trance-dancers and singers. It is a far cry from the sober tranquillity of T'ang dynasty poetry.
Ch'ü Yuan (332-296 B.C.), the putative author of the Li Sao, survives in a biography by Ssu-ma Ch'ien. He was a minister in the service of King Huai of Ch'u, and was banished from court through some intrigue. Wang I, the Confucian commentor on the Li Sao, saw the poem as an elaborate allegorical complaint about the difficulties of an honest man in government, and certainly this is a valid level of the poem. In fact, the juxtaposition of the poet’s intense concern for virtue and honesty in a corrupt society, with a long, free-swinging, and imaginative style of poetry, makes it into a sort of ancient Chinese counterpart of Allen Ginsberg's "Howl". The Chinese Communists have made Ch'ü Yuan into a culture hero.
The difficulty for the translator lies particularly in the wild imagery, historical allusions, and multiple obscure references to plants and flowers. The poet is seeking a kind of supernatural lover; he would arrange a marriage with her; he journeys to mythological realms in search of her, flying through the air; consults fortunetellers; recalls the trials of ancient honest worthies; but ultimately fails in his quest and resolves on suicide. The tradition is that Ch'ü Yuan did indeeid commit suicide, in the Mi-lo river. The Dragon-boat festival (5:V) is supposed to be in honor—and in search, on the waters—of the spirit of Ch'ü Yuan.
To say that Mr. Johnson's translation is readable leaves a lot unsaid. It is readable because it tries to be direct and simple, and in doing so it avoids some of the problems a more scholarly translator would feel compelled to confront. Furthermore, by a curious kind of double-talk, he tries to save himself from any criticism of the translation as poetry by saying that "Although the present translation of the Li Sao poem is intended as prose, it is printed in a typographic form suggestive of its original poetic arrangement." In other words, it looks like poetry on the page, and reads like poetry—for any irregular line arrangement creates a manner of reading and a rhythm, which is poetical—but Mr. Johnson doesn't want to call it that. It follows the Li Sao translation in Robert Payne's White Pony anthology rather closely, and at some points the English is more felicitous. David Hawkes' Ch'u Tz'u, the Songs of the South (Oxford, 1959) is a real sinologist's job. His scrupulous and considered translation shows up Johnson's work as that of an amateur—but being scrupulous, Hawkes' translation is rougher reading. None of the three above-mentioned translations show the hand of a poet, but at least one can be sure that Hawkes knows what the Chinese means.
The most unique thing about Mr. Johnson's translation is the vehicle he rides in interpreting die meaning of the Li Sao. Largely ignoring the historical and anthropological questions regarding the Ch'u poems (which are splendidly handled in Arthur Waley's book The Nine Songs, a Study of Shamanism in Ancient China) Mr. Johnson sees the Li Sao as most significantly "an account of the poet's personal struggle for individuation or self-completion (author's italics)." He offers the Li Sao as a poem in which the author is going through a kind of Jungian self- analysis, and suggests that poets and prophets "In terms of their own personal lives... tell the story of a universal experience of man that we, as a society, are just beginning to feel in this century." This may be, but to say: "Such a man was Ch'ü Yuan in third century B.C. China, and such was his problem. He had come to realize that his life was a false, fruitless and wrong thing, and he began to look for a new truth and meaning that would satisfy his needs."—is reading more of modem psychological concerns into the Li Sao than the text, and the fragility of our knowledge about Ch'ü Yuan and his times, will bear.
Mr. Johnson's translation is neither first-rate literature nor good scholarship. For two shillings more, you can buy David Hawkes' scholarly translation of the whole Ch'u collection.

Snyder, Gary. To the Chinese comrades [ID D29209].
The armies of China and Russia
Stand facing across a wide plain.
Krushchev on one side and Mao on the other,
Krushchev calls out
"Pay me the money you owe me!"
Mao laughs and laughs, long hair flops.
His face round and smooth.
The armies start marching—they meet—
Without clashing, they march through, each other,
Lines between lines.
All the time Mao Tse-tung laughing.
He takes heaps of money.
He laughs and he gives it to Krushchev.

Chairman Mao's belongings on the March:
"Two cotton and wool mixture blankets,
A sheet, two pants and jackets,
A sweater
A patched umbrella,
An enamel mug for a rice bowl
A gray brief-case with nine pockets.”

Like Han-shan standing there
—a rubbing off some cliff
Hair sticking out smiling
maybe rolling a homegrown
Yenen cigarette
Took a crack at politics.
The world is all one.

Crawling out that hillside cave dirt house
(whatever happened to Wong—
quit Chinese school, slugged his dad
left the laundry, went to sea—
out of the golden gate—did he make A.B. ?—)
black eggshell-thin
pots of Lung-shan
maybe three thousand years B C

You have killed.
I saw the Tibetans just down from the passes
Limping in high felt boots
Sweating in furs
Flatland heat,
and from Almora gazing at Trisul
the new maps from Peking
call it all China
clear down to here, & the Gangetic plain—

From Hongkong N. T, on a pine rise
See the other side: stub fields.
Geese, ducks, and children
far off cries.
Down the river, tiny men
Walk a plank—maybe loading
little river boat.
Is that China
Flat, brown, and wide?

The ancestors
what did they leave us.
Confucius, a few old buildings remain.
—tons of soil gone.
Mountains turn desert.

Stone croppd flood, strippd hills,
The useless wandering river mouths,
Salt swamps
Silt on the floor of the sea.

Wind borne glacial flour Ice age of Europe
Dust storms from Ordos to Finland
The loess of Yenen.
glaciers
"shrink
and vanish like summer clouds..."

CROSS THE SNOWY MOUNTAIN!
WE SHALL SEE CHAIRMAN MAO!

The year the long march started I was four.
How long has this gone on.
Rivers to wade, mountains to cross—
Chas. Leong showed me how to hold my chopsticks
like the brush—
Upstairs a vhinese restaurant catty-corner
from the police
Portland, oregon, nineteen fifty-one,
Yakima Indian horseman, hair black as crows,
shovel shaped incisors,
epicanthic fold.
Misty cliffs and peaks of the Columbia:
Old loggers vanish in the rocks.
They wouldn't tote me rice and soy-sauce
cross the dam
"Snyder you gettin just like
A damned Chinaman."
Gambling with the Wasco and the Wishram
By the river under Hee Hee Butte
& bought a hard round loaf of weird bread
From a bakery in a tent
In a camp of Tibetans

At Bodh-Gaya
Where Gautama used to stay.

On hearing Joan Baez singing "East Virginia"
THOSE were the days,
we strolled under blossoming cherries
ten acres of orchard
holding hands, kissing,
in the evening talked Lenin, and Marx.
YOU had just started out for Peking.
I slipped my hand under her blouse
and undid her brassiere.
I passed my hand over her breasts
her sweet breath, it was too warm for May.
I thought how the whole world
my love, could love like this;
blossoms, the books, revolution
more trees, sweet girls, clear springs.
You took Peking.

Chairman Mao, you should quit smoking,
dont bother those philosophers
Build dams, plant trees,
dont kill flys by hand.
Marx was another westerner,
it's all in the head.
You dont need the Bomb,
stick to farming.
Write some poems. Swim the river,
those blue overalls are great.
Dont shoot me, let's go drinking,
Just
Wait.

Sekundärliteratur
David Rafael Wang : This poem has no Chinese precedent, it achieves a distinct Zen humor. Snyder chides Mao for trying too hard to emulate Marx and all the Westerners. He suggests that progress is only an illusion and that Mao should be content with writing his poems and swimming in the Yangzi river, two activities for which Mao is renowened in China. Snyder further suggests that Mao should 'go drinking' with Snyder himself and not shoot him, since drinking was an activity which united all the leading Tang poets and shooting was an invention of the West. The poem not only warns Mao against progress, but also suggests simple living as an alternative.
Joan Qinglin Tan : In the poem we can certainly take Snyder's view of Mao as heavily romanticized but it would seem to be a mistake to read this poem as naïve. Snyder appears to be quite consciously generating a mythical Mao, a Mao who can stand for the aspects of both ancient and modern Chinese culture that he admires, yet a Mao and a new China that he also has an ambivalent attitude towards. It is the mythical Mao who reveals the continued Han Shanian theme in Snyder's poetry. In the first three stanzas we can see Mao wearing the face and attitudes of the countercultural Chan master. In the final stanza, after a heavily nostalgic passage, Snyder gives direct advice to both the real Mao and the new China pleading with them to return to the simplicity of his Han Shanian, Chan Buddhist and ecological agenda. The criticism and disappointment with the political realities of the Chinese régime in the 1960s is sharply contrasted with a romanticism for the revolutionary Mao that finds its roots in the Beat attitudes of the 1950s.

Snyder, Gary. August on Sourdough : a visit from Dick Brewer. In : Holiday ; vol. 40, no 2 (1966).
Snyder, Gary. Four poems for Robin. In : Snyder, Gary. Poems of our moment. (New York, N.Y. : Pegasus, 1968).
David Rafael Wang : The two poems are strikingly Chinese in feeling and sensibility.

Snyder, Gary. Regarding wave. (San Francisco : Printed for Don Allen by Grabhorn-Hoyem, 1967).
David Rafael Wang : Snyder uses many titles in Regarding wave, that remind us of the 'yin' symbol. Some of these titles include : Sand, Running water music, Beating wings, All the spirit power went to their dancing place, Long hair, Pleasure boats, Willow, and The good earth. In all these titles we find the common denominator of fluidity, for sand, music, outspread wings, dancing, long hair, boats undulating, swaying willow trees, and the soil of the earth all share a natural rhythm and flow. And this rhythm and flow in nature, according to Snyder, is precisely the rhythm and flow of poetry as well.

Han, Shan. Cold mountain poems : twenty-four poems. Transl. by Gary Snyder. In : Evergreen review ; vol. 2, no 6 (1958). In : Snyder, Gary. Riprap & cold Mountain poems. (San Francisco : Four Seasons Foundation, 1965). (Portland, Oregon : Press-22, 1970 / cop. 1965).
hermetica.info.

Snyder, Gary. Li Sao, A poem on relieving sorrows, by Ch'ü Yüan. Transl. by Jerah Johnson. In : Olivant quarterly ; no 4 (1959). In : Journal of American folklore ; vol. 74 (1961). [Qu, Yuan. Li sao]. [Review].

Snyder, Gary. Wild in China. In : CoEvolution quarterly ; vol. 19 (Fall 1978). In : Journal for the protection of all beings ; no 4 (1978).
[Enthält] : Hsie's shoes, Oxhead mountain, The chase in the park, Empty mountain.

Snyder, Gary. The practice of the wild : essays. (San Francisco, Calif. : North Point Press, 1990). With a new preface by the author. (Berkeley, Calif. : Counterpoint, 2010). [Enthält Eintragungen über China].

The New Directions anthology of classical Chinese poetry : translations by William Carlos Williams, Ezra Pound, Kenneth Rexroth, Gary Snyder, David Hinton. Ed. by Eliot Weinberger. (New York, N.Y. : New Directions, 2003).

Wand, David Happell Hsin-fu [Wang, David Rafael]. Cathay revisited : the Chinese tradition in the poetry of Ezra Pound and Gary Snyder. (Los Angeles, Calif. : University of Southern California, 1972). Diss. Univ. of Southern California, 1972.

Cheung, Dominic. Dang dai Meiguo shi feng mao. (Taibei : Huan yu chu ban she, 1972). (Chang chun teng wen xue cong kan ; 10). [Betr. Allen Ginsberg; Charles Olson; Lawrence Ferlinghetti; Gregory Corso; Gary Snyder; Robert Lowell].
當代美國詩風貌

Denney, Reuel. The portable pagoda : Asia and America in the work of Gary Snyder. In : Asian and Western writers in dialogue : new cultural identities. Ed. by Guy Amirthanayagam. (London : Macmillan, 1982).

Yip, Wai-lim. Against domination : Gary Snyder as an apologist for nature. In : The Chinese text : studies in comparative literature. Ed. by Ying-hsiung Chou. (Hong Kong : Chinese University Press, 1986).

Sherlock, John. Gary Snyder : a bibliography of works by and about Gary Snyder ; based in part on the Gary Snyder papers and other holdings of the University of California, Davis. 2nd ed., rev. and expanded. (David : University of California, Special Collections Department, 2010).
lib.ucdavis.edu.