David Hawkes (sinologist) Quotes

David Hawkes was a British sinologist and translator. After being introduced to Japanese through codebreaking during the Second World War, Hawkes studied Chinese and Japanese at Oxford University between 1945 and 1947 before studying at Peking University from 1948 to 1951. He then returned to Oxford, where he completed his D.Phil. and later became Shaw Professor of Chinese. In 1971, Hawkes resigned his position to focus entirely on his translation of the famous Chinese novel The Story of the Stone , which was published in three volumes between 1973 and 1980. He retired in 1984 to rural Wales before returning to Oxford in his final years.

Hawkes was known for his translations that preserved the "realism and poetry" of the original Chinese, and was the foremost non-Chinese Redology expert. Wikipedia

✵ 6. July 1923 – 31. July 2009

David Hawkes (sinologist): 8 quotes 0 likes

Famous David Hawkes (sinologist) Quotes

“I'd thought that what I'd like to do is to a translation where I don't have to think about academic considerations. Scholarly considerations. I'll just think about how to present – this is Penguins, after all – how to present this book in such a way that I do the whole of it but at the same time it's enjoyable for the English reader, if possible, and they can get some of the pleasure out of it that I got myself.”

David Hawkes (sinologist)

Source: Interview, 1998, p. 148

“My one abiding principle has been to translate everything – even puns. For although this is… an 'unfinished' novel, it was written (and rewritten) by a great artist with his very lifeblood. I have therefore assumed that whatever I find in it is there for a purpose and must be dealt with somehow or other. I cannot pretend always to have done so successfully, but if I can convey to the reader even a fraction of the pleasure this Chinese novel has given me, I shall not have lived in vain.”

David Hawkes (sinologist)

Introduction to The Story of the Stone, Vol. 1: 'The Golden Days' (1973), p. 46
Preface to The Golden Days, 1973

“The idea that the worldling's 'reality' is illusion and that life itself is a dream from which we shall eventually awake is of course a Buddhist one; but in Xueqin's hands it becomes a poetical means of demonstrating that his characters are both creatures of his imagination and at the same time the real companions of his golden youth. To that extent it can be thought of as a literary device rather than as a deeply held philosophy, though it is really both.”

David Hawkes (sinologist)

Source: Preface to The Golden Days, 1973, p. 45

“Many of the symbols, word-plays and secret patterns with which the novel abounds seem to be used out of sheer ebullience, as though the author was playing some sort of game with himself and did not much care whether he was observed or not. Chinese devotees of the novel often continue to read and reread it throughout their lives and to discover more of these little private jokes each time they read it.”

David Hawkes (sinologist)

Source: Preface to The Golden Days, 1973, p. 45

“Our task is not the training of interpreters, nor the indulgence of exotic tastes, nor the revelation of some arcane Truth which the Orient possesses but we do not, nor the mastery of a sterile Asiatic scholasticism, but literature. If universities are not to teach language by means of literature—by means of books which are intrinsically worth-while reading, I for one do not want to be a university teacher.”

David Hawkes (sinologist)

Source: Inaugural Lecture, Oxford, 1961, p. 27

“It seems to me ridiculous to try to believe that Gao E sat down and wrote the last 40 chapters [of Dream of the Red Chamber]. I'm sure that's not true. Because you can see the way Gao E works. Gao E is trying I think just to reconcile – he's not altering, I think he doesn't feel he can alter what's been found. I think he tried to alter things occasionally to square one thing with another. If you're just making something up, forging something, you wouldn't be bothered about trying to reconcile inconsistencies. You'd make jolly well sure that they didn't occur.”

David Hawkes (sinologist)

Source: Interview, 1998, pp. 146–147

“We must make [the Honour School of Chinese] sufficiently broad and humane to satisfy those whose interests are not narrowly philological […] by presenting Chinese literature as a part of our total human heritage; [and] we must always insist that the Honour School should be based on the study of literature.”

David Hawkes (sinologist)

Source: Inaugural Lecture, Oxford, 1961, p. 27

“A translator has divided loyalties. He has a duty to his author, a duty to his reader and a duty to the text. The three are by no means identical and are often hard to reconcile.”

David Hawkes (sinologist)

Preface to The Story of the Stone, Vol. 2: 'The Crab-Flower Club' (1979), p. 20

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