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AUTHOR: Anne Birrell

CATEGORY: Book

MANUFACTURER: Penguin Books

ISBN: 0140447199

TYPE: Asia - China, China, Description and travel, Ethnology, Fairy Tales, Folklore & Mythology, Fiction, Folklore, Folklore & Mythology - Mythology, Literature: Folklore/Mythology, Mythology, Chinese, Oral And Folk Literature, Sociology, Asian / Middle Eastern history: BCE to c 500 CE, Chinese, Cultural studies, Literary studies: classical, early & medieval, Myths & mythology, Oriental religions, Other prose: classical, early & medieval

MEDIA: Paperback

# OF MEDIA: 1

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Customer Review of The Classic of Mountains and Seas (Penguin Classics)
Ian Myles Slater on: A Literary Version of a Problem-Child
Although I agree with the earlier reviewer's complaints about the absence of helpful apparatus -- to which I would add the difficulty of converting references using traditional Chinese section titles into parts of Birrell's translations -- I rate the book considerably higher. Descriptions and quotations tended to make it sound like Pliny's "Natural History," only dull. Birrell has made it read like an appendix to a Chinese Ovid, but more entertaining. Earlier attempts at translation that I have seen (mainly, it is true, of passages, often discontinuous) have been, at least from my point of view, almost unreadable. The self-imposed burden of trying to identify places and tribes can reduce even a few pages of what is reputed to be a fascinating, and sometimes whimsical, work to something more like an ordeal to read. To say nothing of the careful reproduction of Chinese names, which mean nothing to a reader who needs an English version!

Birrell has chosen to treat the "Classic of Mountains and Seas" as a somewhat eccentric work of literature, which can be read for pleasure, like "Mandeville's Travels," or, to use other medieval European examples, Bestiaries and Lapidaries (accounts of strange beasts and the miraculous properties of precious stones). Although some sections are more consistently interesting than others, most pages hold something to keep the reader's attention. Since I can't judge the plausibility of Birrell's translations of Chinese names, I will say that I found her versions amusing. (I also noted the apparent ultimate source of the "Pokemon" convention that strange animals are named for the sounds they make, which happen to have meanings.)

As a long-time reader of myths and legends, fantasy, and science fiction, I have fairly high standards for the entertainment level of a book about strange lands, peoples, and creatures. Taken as a whole, I found Birrell's translation entertaining and intriguing. Its major defects (lack of aides to the reader) could be, and I hope will be, repaired in some expanded edition in the future. For now, I am grateful to have it. The ethnographic, religious, geographical, and historical implications are fascinating - and more properly the subject of a full commentary than a literary work for the Penguin Classics.

The Classic of the Mountains and Seas
The Classic of the Mountains and Seas is a geographical gazetteer of ancient China and a catalogue of the natural and supernatural fauna and flora allegedly dating back to the 8th century BCE and spanning a period of perhaps a millennium. It is also a repository of strange spirits, curious folkways, medical beliefs, and other related oral and written traditions of earlier origins.

In many ways, this Chinese classic bears some similarity in content and theme to the Hippocratic treatise "Airs, Waters, Places," although it is not commonly associated with being a part of the Chinese medical corpus as the latter is in Greek medicine. For, like this ancient Greek treatise, The Classic of the Mountains and Seas is based upon a philosophical and scientific premise of nature--the Chinese "Weltanschauung." The Chinese quest for a harmonious union between themselves and their biophysical and socioanthropological environment gave rise to such a "world concept" in which people and their way of reasoning were conceived of as being an integral part of the cosmos and intrinsically interjoined with the spiritual, physical, and moral "influences."

Dr. Birrell's translation makes for an interesting read, with her scholarship enhancing our appreciation and understanding of this fascinating work. Her detailed Introduction is most helpful in acquainting the reader with the historical background of The Classic of the Mountains and Seas. Its shortcomings lie in its lack of numeric footnotes, a more specialized bibliography, a concordance with Romanization and Chinese equivalents, and her rendering of the place-names and denizens found in this zoomorphic setting.

One can never be too careful when it comes to the translation of ancient Chinese words, for it is not uncommon to find that many of them have been vitiated by the bland assumption that they meant then what they mean in later dynastic periods; accordingly, such assumptions can be distorted or entirely false. One of the pleasures found in ancient languages lies in their implicitness, whereas, modern languages revel in their explicitness. Fortunately, the rich resources of English are capable of coping reasonably well with the varigated shades of the implicity found in the former. Dr. Birrell has attempted to avoid this pitfall, although I question some of her renderings as being too much of an effort to appeal to a more popular readership.

For those readers wanting to further explore the many ethnographic features of this setting, the following works are recommended:

(In Russian) E.M. Ianshina entitled, Katalog gor i morei (Shan Hai Tszin), or "A Catalogue of Mountains and Sea: The Classic of the Mountains and Seas."

(In Chinese) Yuan Ke's Shan hai jing jiao zhu, or "A Critical Commentary on The Classic of the Mountains and Seas."

(In French) Rémi Mathieu's two-volume Étude sur la Mythologie et L'ethnologie de la Chine Ancienne.

(In English) Richard E. Strassberg's A Chinese Bestiary: Strange Creatures from the Guideways Through Mountains and Seas.

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