Patchwork

The Chinese literary scholar and novelist Qian Zhongshu (1910-1998) was one of the great minds of the twentieth century. Fluent also in a range of modern and classical European languages, his writings offer a remarkable engagement with the literary and artistic traditions of China.Duncan M. Campbell teaches aspects of traditional Chinese culture, history, and classical literature and translation at the Australian National University in Canberra. His research focuses on the literary and material culture of the late imperial period in China.

• Series Editors' ForewordIntroduction by Professor Zhang LongxiTranslator’s IntroductionPrefaceChinese Poetry and Chinese PaintingOn Reading LaokoonSynaesthesiaLin Shu’s TranslationsPoetry as a Vehicle of Grief(translated by Siu-kit Wong)Longfellow’s “A Psalm of Life”—the First English Poem Translated into Chinese—and Several Other Related MattersAn Historical Anecdote, a Religious Parable, and a NovelAppendix

"Duncan Campbell’s translation of Qian Zhongshu’s Patchwork: Seven Essays on Art and Literature is a labour of love that enables readers of English to reach deeper understandings of how one twentieth-century Chinese intellectual construed both Chinese and Western traditions in literature and the arts. [...] Rather than “domesticate” the text for an English-speaking audience, Campbell has chosen to make it rich in Chinese linguistic forms. The liberal inclusion of both pinyin and Chinese characters for key terms, easy to do now in our digital age, is a great boon to scholars who may wish to pursue further study of the sources and the arguments." - Ellen Soulliere, Massey University, in: New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies, Vol 17.1 (June 2015)