Arthur Waley, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death

    

Arthur Waley

British academic

Date of Birth: 19-Aug-1889

Place of Birth: Royal Tunbridge Wells, England, United Kingdom

Date of Death: 27-Jun-1966

Profession: writer, poet, translator, curator, orientalist, sinologist

Nationality: United Kingdom

Zodiac Sign: Leo


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About Arthur Waley

  • Arthur David Waley (born Arthur David Schloss, 19 August 1889 – 27 June 1966) was an English orientalist and sinologist who achieved both popular and scholarly acclaim for his translations of Chinese and Japanese poetry.
  • Among his honours were the CBE in 1952, the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 1953, and he was invested as a Companion of Honour in 1956.Although highly learned, Waley avoided academic posts and most often wrote for a general audience.
  • He chose not to be a specialist but to translate a wide and personal range of classical literature.
  • Starting in the 1910s and continuing steadily almost until his death in 1966, these translations started with poetry, such as A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems (1918) and Japanese Poetry: The Uta (1919), then an equally wide range of novels, such as The Tale of Genji (1925–26), an 11th-century Japanese work, and Monkey, from 16th-century China.
  • Waley also presented and translated Chinese philosophy, wrote biographies of literary figures, and maintained a lifelong interest in both Asian and Western paintings. A recent evaluation called Waley "the great transmitter of the high literary cultures of China and Japan to the English-reading general public; the ambassador from East to West in the first half of the 20th century", and went on to say that he was "self-taught, but reached remarkable levels of fluency, even erudition, in both languages.
  • It was a unique achievement, possible (as he himself later noted) only in that time, and unlikely to be repeated."

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