Arthur Waley

Arthur David Waley (born Arthur David Schloss, August 19, 1889 - June 27, 1966) was an English orientalist and Sinologist who received both popular and scientific recognition for his translations of Chinese and Japanese poetry. Among his awards were CBE in 1952, the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 1953, and he was invested as an honorary companion in 1956. Despite a high level of knowledge, Waley avoided academic positions and most often wrote for a wide audience. He decided not to be a specialist, but to translate a wide and personal range of classical literature. Starting in the 1910s and continuing almost until his death in 1966, these translations began with poems such as One Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems (1918) and Japanese Poetry: Utah (1919), and then with the same a wide range of novels such as The Tale of Genji (1925-26), 11th-century Japanese work, and Monkey from 16th-century China. Whaley also represented and translated Chinese philosophy, wrote biographies of literary figures, and maintained a lifelong interest in Asian and Western paintings. A recent assessment called Waley "the great transmitter of the high literary cultures of China and Japan among the general public reading English; ambassador from east to west in the first half of the 20th century, "and further said that he was" self-taught, but achieved a remarkable level of fluency, even erudition, in both languages. It was a unique achievement, perhaps (as he himself later noted) only at that time, and is unlikely to be repeated. ”