Translation from ... Chinese

       Perry Link's piece on The Wonderfully Elusive Chinese Novel -- nominally a review of the final volume of David Tod Roy's five-volume translation of The Plum in the Golden Vase or, Chin P'ing Mei -- is now freely accessible at The New York Review of Books site, and well worth a read.
       Among the points raised by Link:

Whether Chin P'ing Mei is taken as broad social canvas, literary innovation, serious ethical criticism, or only spicy entertainment, a question that has haunted its study over the last hundred years is whether it is -- indeed whether China has -- a "great novel." I think China would be better off if the question were not asked so much.

       He explains:

But why do I feel that China -- and Sinologists -- would be better off to relax about the idea that "we have great novels, too" ? I feel this because I think that setting up literary civilizations as rivals (although I can understand the insecurities that led Liang Qichao and others to do it) only gets in the way of readers enjoying imaginative works.

       Interesting also his observation:

Should we compare poetry across civilizations ? If we do, classical Chinese poetry wins easily. The contest is almost unfair, because, as my students of Chinese language eventually come to see, the fundaments of language are different.

       I'm sure there are a few English professors left gasping by the thought:

Emily Dickinson might have come to be known as the greatest poet in world history if she had written in classical Chinese.

       Overall, the piece is a good (and probably necessary) reminder of how varied literature is, and why familiarity with the foreign (mostly, sigh, via translation) -- and an understanding of its 'difference' -- is so (in)valuable.

       Like longtime local favorite The Story of the Stone, I can certainly recommend Chin P'ing Mei -- though I read (back in my college days) the Clement Egerton translation (with its infamous Latin passages). For the David Tod Roy translation (beginning with volume one), see the Princeton University Press publicity page, or get your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.