Cold Mountain

Cold Mountain Han Shan (Burton Watson tr.) 118 pp.

Burton Watson’s translation of 100 of Han Shan’s poems is easily one of my favorite volumes of poetry. Han Shan luxuriates in sparse imagery about his life on a mountain peak. Mist and fog linger through the pages, drifting out around the reader as you flip through the pages, treated to poem after poem. In every page Han Shan’s home, the distant mountains of Tang Dynasty China wafts out to the reader.

Han Shan’s mountains, wrapped in white clouds and rendered far-away from the city feel like a predecessor to Thoreau’s Walden pond. Unlike Thoreau, however, there is little evidence that Han Shan exaggerated his seclusion; which only heightens the reader’s interest. The “dark forests, breathing endless mist,”that Han Shan takes us into are rich with symbolism. Han Shan’s symbolism is richly interwoven, calling heavily on a background of Chinese literature and culture. This vein is where Watson’s translation shines. Throughout the work, he frequently comments and explains the various references Han Shan makes in his poem, quoting out of older texts and opening the reader’s eyes to the wider scope of the poet’s tradition.

Watson’s translation is carefully arranged. Of the two-hundred some poems attributed to Han Shan, Watson has carefully arranged a closely related collection of poems. Cold Mountain is a book primarily about Han Shan’s experience out in the mountain alone, and Watson never diverges from this theme. I cannot comment on the specifics of the translation in terms of accuracy, but of the translations I have read, Watson’s is by far the most accessible to a new reader and enjoyable to return to as a fan of Han Shan.

Interestingly, despite his relative fame among American readers of Chinese poetry, Han Shan has never been widely read in China. Gary Snyder translated a much smaller selection of Han Shan’s poems into English in the 1950’s, and this translation was further popularized by Jack Kerouac’s book The Dharma Bums. So while Han Shan’s work is eminently enjoyable and worth reading, it is important to bear in mind that he is an outlier in the wider tradition of Chinese poetry. A hermit and recluse, not only in his life, but in his style.

The last poem in the selection ends the book on a somewhat lighthearted note. Han Shan says, in a voice dripping with irony, 

“Do you have the poems of Han Shan in your house?

They’re better for you than Sutra reading!

Write them out and paste them on a screen

where you can glance over them from time to time.”

Would I recommend Cold Mountain? Yes.

Score: 4.1/5

Would I keep this on my bookshelf? Yes.

-Mr. Cheddar