The Lyrical Lu Xun: A Study of His Classical-Style Verse (review)

194 China Review International: Vol. 4, No. 1, Spring 1997 persistent sub-etìinic division between minority mainlanders and majority Taiwanese —and its significant impact on Taiwan's foreign policy. Klintworth labels all citizens ofTaiwan "Taiwanese," and uses fhe terms "Kuomintang government " and "Taiwanese government" almost interchangeably. Klintworth has provided an important and timely contribution to the largely neglected study ofTaiwan's regional and even global political economy. He does so in prose refreshingly free oftheoretical jargon, writing at a level easily accessible to upper-division undergraduates. Ifthe Asia-Pacific region—as meeting place of the United States, Japan, and a rising China—is destined to be an area of growing importance in the twenty-first century, New Taiwan, New China righdy reminds us that Taiwan, poised among these giants as "one ofthe most well-endowed middle powers in a post-Cold War world," can only increase in stature and strategic significance as well. Karl J. Fields University ofPuget Sound Karl Fields is an associateprofessor ofpolitics andgovernmentspecializing in East Asian political economy. Jon Kowallis. The Lyrical Lu Xun: A Study ofHis Classical-Style Verse. Honolulu: University ofHawai'i Press, 1996. xii, 378 pp. isbn 0-8248-1511-4. The work under review is an ambitious, comprehensive, and thorough English translation and study ofLu Xun's classical-style poetry. As such it has great potential for enhancing our overall understanding of one of the most talented, complex , and influential Chinese writers and social critics offhis century. Lu Xun used the classical style to express those thoughts and feelings on contemporary issues and events that are not so frequendy found in his more public-oriented essays and short stories. This volume thus helps to round out the English-language reader's view of Lu Xun the person (his diaries and collected letters are avaüable for the reader of Chinese texts). This is not the first complete English translation ofLu Xun's classical-style© 1997 by University verse: David Y. Ch'en's Lu Hsun: Complete Poems, published in 1988, provides ofHawai ? Presstranslations and annotations for not only the present forty-nine tides ofregulated verse, but six "ancient poems" also in the classical style as well as several poems in the folk-song and modern styles.1 Dr. Kowallis' volume provides a more detaüed Reviews 195 and comprehensive introduction to Lu Xun's life, and analytical introductions as weU as more detaüed notes for each translation. Each poem is presented in the form ofits original Chinese text with pinyin romanization under each character, and a literal English-word equivalent under the pinyin. The translation that follows attempts "to produce English versions of Lu Xun's verse that preserve not only fhe imagery, but the literary feel and the tight-knit auditory effects ofthe originals" (p. x), the reason being that "the somewhat archaic tone ofLu Xun's verse lends itself to such expression in English more readüy than many other more famüiar examples ofclassical Chinese poetry " (ibid.). The resulting English verses most often take the form ofa-a-b-b end-rhymed iambic lines, somewhat like heroic couplets. Ch'en's 1988 translations also employed end rhyme, but used a greater variety ofrhyme schemes, such as a-b-a-b and a-b-b-a, in addition to a-a-b-b. Here and there a translation is marred by an unfortunate typographical error (for example, "twinkling of bells" on p. 92, and "afflications" on p. 139), but most ofthe renditions are accurate enough, and do indeed create a somewhat archaic tone. Often reasons are given in the copious notes why a particular interpretation of the meaning of a phrase, a metaphor, or an allusion is chosen over other potential readings, citing authoritative Chinese studies. Yet there are few if any references to differences in interpretation with fhe earlier translations by David Ch'en. Since the first English versions ofthese poems were produced in the author's M.A. thesis in 1978, and Ch'en's translations were published in 1988, fhe reader might expect by 1995 to find some discussion ofdifferences between the two, at least in the Preface ifnot in die annotations to each piece. The...