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Arthur Waley Quotes

Arthur David Waley was an English orientalist and sinologist who achieved both popular and scholarly acclaim for his translations of Chinese and Japanese poetry. Among his honours were the CBE in 1952, the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 1953, and he was invested as a Companion of Honour in 1956.Although highly learned, Waley avoided academic posts and most often wrote for a general audience. He chose not to be a specialist but to translate a wide and personal range of classical literature. Starting in the 1910s and continuing steadily almost until his death in 1966, these translations started with poetry, such as A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems and Japanese Poetry: The Uta , then an equally wide range of novels, such as The Tale of Genji , an 11th-century Japanese work, and Monkey, from 16th-century China. Waley also presented and translated Chinese philosophy, wrote biographies of literary figures, and maintained a lifelong interest in both Asian and Western paintings.

A recent evaluation called Waley "the great transmitter of the high literary cultures of China and Japan to the English-reading general public; the ambassador from East to West in the first half of the 20th century", and went on to say that he was "self-taught, but reached remarkable levels of fluency, even erudition, in both languages. It was a unique achievement, possible only in that time, and unlikely to be repeated." Wikipedia  

✵ 19. August 1889 – 27. June 1966
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Arthur Waley: 21 quotes0 likes

Famous Arthur Waley Quotes

“Since the classical language has an easy grammar and limited vocabulary, a few months should suffice for the mastering of it.”

Arthur Waley

Japanese Poetry: The Uta (1919), Introduction, p. 8

“When translating prose dialogue one ought to make the characters say things that people talking English could conceivably say. One ought to hear them talking, just as a novelist hears his characters talk.”

Arthur Waley

"Notes on Translation", in The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 202, No. 5 (November 1958), p. 109

“I have a theory of my own about what this art of the novel is, and how it came into being. To begin with, it does not simply consist in the author's telling a story about the adventures of some other person. On the contrary, it happens because the storyteller's own experience of men and things, whether for good or ill—not only what he has passed through himself, but even events which he has only witnessed or been told of—has moved him to an emotion so passionate that he can no longer keep it shut up in his heart.”

Arthur Waley

Source: Translations, The Tale of Genji (1925–1933), Ch. 25: 'The Glow-Worm'

“Anyone with a good classical education could learn Chinese by himself without difficulty.”

Arthur Waley

1968 remark, quoted in Japan Quarterly, Vol. XVIII, No. 1 (January-March 1971), p. 107

“You that in far-off countries of the sky can dwell secure, look back upon me here; for I am weary of this frail world's decay.”

Arthur Waley

Source: Translations, The Tale of Genji (1925–1933), Ch. 40: 'The Law'

“Master, we can start now; I have killed them all.'
'I am very sorry to hear it,' said Tripitaka. 'One has no right to kill robbers, however violent and wicked they may be. The most one may do is to bring them before a magistrate. It would have been quite enough in this case if you had driven them away. Why kill them? You have behaved with a cruelty that ill becomes one of your sacred calling.'
'If I had not killed them,' said Monkey, 'they would have killed you.'
'A priest,' said Tripitaka, 'should be ready to die rather than commit acts of violence.”

Arthur Waley

Source: Translations, Monkey: Folk Novel of China (1942), Ch. 14 (p. 132)

Arthur Waley Quotes

“Tripitaka stepped lightly ashore. He had discarded his earthly body; he was cleansed from the corruption of the senses, from the fleshly inheritance of those bygone years. His was now the transcendent wisdom that leads to the Further Shore, the mastery that knows no bounds.”

Arthur Waley

Source: Translations, Monkey: Folk Novel of China (1942), Ch. 28 (p. 282)

“There was a rock that since the creation of the world had been worked upon by the pure essences of Heaven and the fine savours of Earth, the vigour of sunshine and the grace of moonlight, till at last it became magically pregnant and one day split open, giving birth to a stone egg, about as big as a playing ball. Fructified by the wind it developed into a stone monkey, complete with every organ and limb.”

Arthur Waley

Source: Translations, Monkey: Folk Novel of China (1942), Ch. 1 (p. 11)

“Anything whatsoever may become the subject of a novel, provided only that it happens in this mundane life and not in some fairyland beyond our human ken.”

Arthur Waley

Source: Translations, The Tale of Genji (1925–1933), Ch. 25: 'The Glow-Worm'

“Suddenly they saw a body in the water, drifting rapidly down stream. Tripitaka stared at it in consternation. Monkey laughed. 'Don't be frightened, Master,' he said. 'That's you.' And Pigsy said, 'It's you, it's you.' Sandy clapped his hands. 'It's you, it's you,' he cried. The ferryman too joined in the chorus. 'There you go!”

Arthur Waley

he cried. 'My best congratulations.'
Source: Translations, Monkey: Folk Novel of China (1942), Ch. 28 (p. 282)

“To hope for [immortality],' said the Patriarch, 'would be like trying to fish the moon out of the water.'
'There you go again!' said Monkey. 'What pray do you mean by fishing the moon out of the water?'
'When the moon is in the sky,' said the Patriarch, 'it is reflected in the water. It looks just like a real thing, but if you try to catch hold of it, you find it is only an illusion.”

Arthur Waley

Source: Translations, Monkey: Folk Novel of China (1942), Ch. 2 (p. 22)

“Ceaseless as the interminable voices of the bell-cricket, all night till dawn my tears flow.”

Arthur Waley

Source: Translations, The Tale of Genji (1925–1933), Ch. 1: 'Kiritsubo'

“It is in general the unexplored that attracts us.”

Arthur Waley

Source: Translations, The Tale of Genji (1925–1933), Ch. 9: 'Aoi'

“A team of horses cannot overtake a word that has left the mouth.”

Arthur Waley

Source: Translations, Monkey: Folk Novel of China (1942), Ch. 27 (p. 266)

“I have not used rhyme, because what is really, in the long run, of most interest to American readers is what the poems say; and if one uses rhyme, it is impossible not to sacrifice sense to sound.”

Arthur Waley

Translations from the Chinese (1941), p. 1

“Though the snow-drifts of Yoshino were heaped across his path, doubt not that whither his heart is set, his footsteps shall tread out their way.”

Arthur Waley

Source: Translations, The Tale of Genji (1925–1933), Ch. 19: 'A Wreath of Cloud'

“Real things in the darkness seem no realer than dreams.”

Arthur Waley

Source: Translations, The Tale of Genji (1925–1933), Ch. 1: 'Kiritsubo'

“Think not that I have come in quest of common flowers; but rather to bemoan the loss of one whose scent has vanished from the air.”

Arthur Waley

Source: Translations, The Tale of Genji (1925–1933), Ch. 41: 'Mirage'

“Nothing in the world is difficult,' said the Patriarch, 'it is only our own thoughts that make things seem so.”

Arthur Waley

Source: Translations, Monkey: Folk Novel of China (1942), Ch. 2 (p. 26)

“I would rather be dead.”

Arthur Waley

Response when offered the Chair in Chinese at Cambridge, as quoted in Orientalism and the Operatic World (2015) by Nicholas Tarling, p. 78

“To the European poet the relation between man and woman is a thing of supreme importance and mystery. To the Chinese, it is something commonplace, obvious—a need of the body, not a satisfaction of the emotions.”

Arthur Waley

A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems (1919), Introduction, p. 18

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