Library of Chinese Classics: The Poems of Ruan Ji

Library of Chinese Classics: The Poems of Ruan Ji (Chinese-English)
Translated into English by Wu Fusheng and Graham Hartill
Translated into Modern Chinese by Wu Fusheng
Published by Zhonghua Book Company, 2006
Library binding book, dimensions 960 x 640, 1/16, hardcover, 175 pages
ISBN: 7101042965
ISBN: 9787101049268

Ruan Ji (210-263), courtesy name Sizong, was a major poet of the Wei-Jin era. He was one of the renowned "Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove". Runa Ji's time was one of the most chaotic and dangerous periods in Chinese history. Although he once "had the desire to serve the world," in order to protect himself he feigned an escapist attitude and sought comfort in philosophy, poetry, music, and drinking. His eighty-two Songs of My Heart selected in this book are crucial to the history of Chinese poetry. In a style of remarkable grace, they express the poet's poignant reflection on the sufferings of the world. Through various symbolic devices such as historical allusions, mythological legends, avian imagery and aesthetic distance, they render ethereal and elegant the danger and hardship of human life. These poems have become a model of poetic self-expression for later poets, and have been praised as "one of the superb works of all times". This book is the result of cooperation between Wu Fusheng, an American-Chinese scholar, and Graham Hartill, an English poet. it is the first bilingual poetic translation of Ruan Ji's Songs of My Heart.