What’s wrong with the world today? Does Shakespeare’s expression “the times are out of joint” (“Hamlet,” Act I, Scene 5) give us a hint? Or what about Wordsworth’s poem “The
Some people, and I am one, feel that Tang (618–907 CE) poetry is the finest literary art they have ever read. But does one need to learn Chinese in order to have such a view, or can classical Chinese poetry be adequately translated?In 1987 Eliot Weinberger, who has written brilliant essays on topics as various as the mystical I Ching (Book of Change), Buddha as “impostor,”