{"id":3708,"date":"2017-04-21T09:00:47","date_gmt":"2017-04-21T01:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=3708"},"modified":"2017-04-23T15:59:33","modified_gmt":"2017-04-23T07:59:33","slug":"john-timothy-wixted-on-burton-watson-1925-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=3708","title":{"rendered":"John Timothy Wixted on Burton Watson (1925 \u2013 2017)"},"content":{"rendered":"

In honor of Burton Watson\u2019s passing, <\/span>I am collecting statements and memories from friends and fans, to be posted as they come in. The following comment is from John Timothy Wixted, translator and professor emeritus at Arizona State University:<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

\u201cRemembering Burton Watson\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Tim Wixted<\/em><\/p>\n

Harbert, Michigan<\/em><\/p>\n

I first knew Burton Watson in 1965-66, as an M.A. student at Stanford when he was a visiting professor. He taught a Chinese poetry course which started with the \u201cNineteen Old Poems\u201d of the Han. Another graduate student and I, unbidden, would bring available translations to class and read them aloud at the end of the discussion of each poem. We students would pounce on errors in translation. Watson\u2019s approach was different. He listened intently to the rhythms and turns of phrase that a Kenneth Rexroth or Witter Bynner might use rather than gloat on their mistakes. For him, infelicity of expression was a far greater sin than inaccuracy in translation. Gradually it dawned on me, having a good understanding of a poem is quite a different kettle of fish from re-creating it in another language. Watson took for granted that specialists, including graduate students, understood the texts being studied. That wasn\u2019t the problem, he said: \u201cLots know Chinese or Japanese well; few know English.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Once we suggested that the class meet at an inn in the countryside a few miles from Palo Alto. It had a patio, a large tree, and a surprisingly green (for California) rolling lawn that dipped into a hollow. The class (what? maybe six of us) sat on chairs under the tree and discussed the day\u2019s readings. A cat jumped on Watson\u2019s lap, making itself at home. Now, I have seen dozens of people interact with cats, but never someone with such naturalness, such utter quiet; he was at one with the animal.<\/em><\/p>\n

Watson was the kind of person students felt comfortable inviting to student gatherings. A group came to my place once, where the conversation was relaxed. A few days later, something from the evening came up and he made a comment that struck me by its perceptiveness. I couldn\u2019t help asking myself: \u201cHow had I missed that? I\u2019d been there, too, and heard the exact same words. He had no special entr\u00e9e.\u201d Then it occurred to me. He was a better listener. He was attuned not only to the words, but also especially to tone and gesture; he was more interested in absorbing\u2014while participating and enjoying\u2014than in impressing.As a New Yorker in Palo Alto, Watson got around on a bicycle or walked. Going home from a gathering one night, he was stopped by the police. Clearly, no one should be on the streets of Palo Alto at such an hour. His colleagues at Stanford\u2014the McCulloughs, Ed Seidensticker, Bob Brower, and the department chair Pat Hanan\u2014all wanted him to stay. But he was a New Yorker, one who lived much in Kyoto and Tokyo. While in California, the temporary transplant found respite in San Francisco, where he spent weekends. The mecca was post-Beat, but still thriving, and a wonderful place to walk\u2014also, it was more congenial to his elusive personal lifestyle.<\/em><\/p>\n

Already when I first knew him, Watson had published much. I commented on the royalties he must be taking in. He patiently explained that the volumes for the \u201cTranslations of the Asian Classics\u201d series by Columbia University Press were royalty-free; any profits were plowed back into the series. Of course, he did freelance work for pay. And he was to be reimbursed by Kodansha and the Soka Gakkai for translations. (But his name does not appear on Hisamatsu Sen\u2019ichi, <\/em>Biographical Dictionary of Japanese Literature, which, he later confirmed for me, he had translated.) He received a subvention for his Yoshikawa K\u014djir\u014d book-translation. But as a deshi of the great scholar, whenever English was needed at Ky\u014ddai or the Jinbun in Kyoto, they send him the material, often with a tight deadline: for example, for English-language summaries of <\/em>Ch\u016bgoku bungaku h\u014d articles.<\/em><\/p>\n

That Watson was so prolific aroused the suspicion, and envy, of colleagues. To translate huge chunks of the <\/em>Shiji with little or no annotation was unheard of at the time. It was supposed to take decades. Immediately, errors were found. (Surprise! In more than one thousand pages of text there actually were errors.) They would be pointed out, with glee or contempt. And if any alternative rendering was offered (most criticized, but did not expose themselves by offering an alternative rendering), more often than not it galomphed along as prose. I personally heard Achilles Fang exclaim, \u201cThere should be an Act of Congress to stop Burton Watson.\u201d Fang was a great scholar; but unfortunately, he published little.<\/em><\/p>\n

The rap on Watson was that he used Japanese renditions of difficult Chinese texts as a crib, translating from them. This overlooked several things. For one, the Japanese (as I was to learn myself over the years) is often harder to understand than the Chinese. Second, Japanese scholars usually do their homework well, citing and drawing upon vast amounts of earlier schol\u00adarship in Chinese and Japanese that other scholars (not infrequently, the very Chinese or West\u00aderners who criticize them) have not taken into account. Third, Watson engaged with Chinese scholarship, but his use of Japanese provided a convenient stick to beat him with; worse, it pointed up the weakness (and incompetence) of those unable and unwilling to learn from it themselves. Fourth and most revealing, most of Watson\u2019s critics were deaf and blind to the aptness of the English of his renderings. In my experience, the patronizing attitude and backhanded compliments towards him (that one still occasionally encounters, but less frequently than thirty years ago) invariably tell more about those making them than the supposed subject of attention.<\/em><\/p>\n

One disadvantage of Watson\u2019s skill at writing so well is that his own essays read so smoothly, so naturally, that it is easy to miss how much is being communicated. I came to realize this when assigning students his introductions to texts and his <\/em>Chinese Lyricism book. Students would sail right through; but they had to be quizzed (and encouraged to reread the material) to realize just how much was embedded there.<\/em><\/p>\n

Watson avoided conferences. The annual meeting of the American Oriental Society, Western Branch\u2014a small group\u2014was held in Palo Alto the year we were there, but he did not attend. I can only guess why: scholars\u2019 masks, the tone of some exchanges, the careerism of many, the phoney bonhomie of a few.<\/em><\/p>\n

I visited and stayed briefly at the house Burt rented in Kyoto and the apartment he had in Wakayama for a year. His routine was to work a few hours every day, take walks, and go to a bar at night. Going with him two or three times, I noted he was treated as a regular. His natural disposition to meld into his surroundings worked to his advantage; he was the opposite of the <\/em>gaijin showing off his\/her Japanese. My memorable first ride on a Kyoto trolley was heading back from a bar with him.<\/em><\/p>\n

Watson helped those who sent him material by reading it and sending along comments. He was surprised to find that, after writing and sending along several pages, some never wrote back even to say thank you. With a translation of mine, he cautioned not to stay too wedded to the original; and one locution I used, he said, made him \u201ccringe.\u201d His comments were invariably helpful, but too pointed for the faint-hearted.<\/em><\/p>\n

When I last saw Burt in 2009, we met for coffee near the Akamon (Red Gate) in front of T\u014ddai. First thing he said, he wanted \u201cto hear all the gossip.\u201d I told him I\u2019m poorly connected for that; but we knew enough people in common to make it interesting. As always, he was busy with a book project. By that time, with considerable reluctance he had gotten a computer; there was no place to get his typewriter fixed. He suggested meeting again, so we did, and that too was pleasant. I asked him about Jacques Barzun at Columbia (then already more than a hundred years old), since I was reading his huge history of Western civilization; he told me the good experience he\u2019d had with Barzun as one of the members of his doctoral committee. The few asides he made about other people at Columbia were also interesting and revealing.<\/em><\/p>\n

Years earlier I had wanted to recommend Burt for an honorary doctorate at my university: a way to honor him and to give our East Asia program some exposure. He would have none of it! But in 2006 I dedicated a book to him. He told me it was the first, but he didn\u2019t recall that Bill Nienhauser had dedicated one to him in 2002. In any case, I had the publisher airmail a copy to him. I didn\u2019t want him, already eighty, to die on me without ever having known about or seen it. It is good to see he was to live another eleven years.<\/em><\/p>\n

April 19, 2017<\/em><\/p>\n

www.JohnTimothyWixted.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Contact me if you would like to add your own remembrance.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In honor of Burton Watson\u2019s passing, I am collecting statements and memories from friends and fans, to be posted as they come in. The following comment is from John Timothy Wixted, translator and professor emeritus at Arizona State University: \u201cRemembering … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1774],"tags":[1819,1817,436,1816,1814,1820,1812,30,1779,1818,1815,1628,1813],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8srwF-XO","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3671,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=3671","url_meta":{"origin":3708,"position":0},"title":"John Bradley on Burton Watson (1925 \u2013 2017)","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"April 10, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"In honor of Burton Watson\u2019s passing, I am collecting statements and memories from friends and fans, to be posted as they come in. The following remembrance is by John Bradley, from his review of Salutations; a Festschrift for Burton Watson (Ahadada \/ Ekleksographia, 2015), originally published in Rain Taxi #81\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Burton Watson remembrance"","block_context":{"text":"Burton Watson remembrance","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?cat=1774"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3256,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=3256","url_meta":{"origin":3708,"position":1},"title":"Salutations; a Festschrift for Burton Watson","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"August 3, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Announcing, from\u00a0Ahadada \/ Ekleksographia, Salutations; a Festschrift for Burton Watson. Edited by Jesse Glass and Philip Williams, this collection of essays, articles, and poems about Chinese and Japanese literature and culture celebrates the illustrious scholarly career of Burton Watson, whose range of excellent literary translations into English from Japanese and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Links"","block_context":{"text":"Links","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?cat=3"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3716,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=3716","url_meta":{"origin":3708,"position":2},"title":"Burton Watson NYTimes Obituary","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"April 24, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"The New York Times has finally published an obituary of Burton Watson. It reads: Burton Dewitt Watson, scholar and translator of Chinese and Japanese literature, died on April 1, 2017, in Japan at the age of 92. As winner of the PEN\/Ralph Manheim Medal in 2015, Dr. Watson was regarded\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Burton Watson remembrance"","block_context":{"text":"Burton Watson remembrance","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?cat=1774"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ak-cache.legacy.net\/legacy\/images\/Cobrands\/nytimes\/Photos\/185122853.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3678,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=3678","url_meta":{"origin":3708,"position":3},"title":"Jonathan Chaves on Burton Watson (1925 \u2013 2017)","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"April 11, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"In honor of Burton Watson\u2019s passing, I am collecting statements and memories from friends and fans, to be posted as they come in. The following remembrance is from Jonathan Chaves, professor of Chinese at George Washington University: I am deeply saddened by the death of Burton Watson. He has been\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Burton Watson remembrance"","block_context":{"text":"Burton Watson remembrance","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?cat=1774"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3665,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=3665","url_meta":{"origin":3708,"position":4},"title":"Victor Mair on Burton Watson (1925 \u2013 2017)","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"April 5, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"In honor of Burton Watson's passing, I am collecting statements and memories from friends and fans, to be posted as they come in. The following remembrance is from Victor Mair, professor of Chinese at University of Pennsylvania: Sometime around the mid-70s, I had the great, good fortune to be invited\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Burton Watson remembrance"","block_context":{"text":"Burton Watson remembrance","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?cat=1774"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3712,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=3712","url_meta":{"origin":3708,"position":5},"title":"Columbia UP’s Jennifer Crewe on Burton Watson","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"May 1, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"At the Columbia University Press blog, associate provost and press director Jennifer Crewe, has published her remembrance in honor of Burton Watson, with whose \"passing the world has lost one of its greatest translators.\" She writes: I once heard a story, perhaps apocryphal, told to me by someone who visited\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Burton Watson remembrance"","block_context":{"text":"Burton Watson remembrance","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?cat=1774"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3708"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3708"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3708\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3739,"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3708\/revisions\/3739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}