BUREAU OF PUBLIC SECRETS


 

 

Appendix II:

Passages from Recommended Works

 

Homer: The Iliad and The Odyssey (4)

Sappho: Love Poem (44)

The Book of Songs (Shih Ching): “The reeds and rushes . . .” (6)

Tao Te Ching (Chapter 1) (175+)

Chuang Tzu: The Dexterous Butcher (6)

Tu Fu: Thoughts While Traveling at Night (38)

Murasaki Shikibu: The Tale of Genji (3)

Carmina Burana: “Dum Diana vitrea . . .” (8)

The Kalevala: The Pikebone Harp (3)

Rabelais: Gargantua and Pantagruel (8)

Montaigne: Essays (7)

Cervantes: Don Quixote (13)

Bashô: Frog Haiku (32)

Bashô: Narrow Road to the Interior (9)

Baudelaire: The Balcony (25)

Martin Buber: I and Thou (2)

 


Appendix II of Gateway to the Vast Realms: Recommended Readings from Literature to Revolution (Ken Knabb, 2004). This appendix contains excerpts from diverse translations of a few of the works in my “Gateway” list. I may add more in the future.

Copyright notice: Most of these translations are copyrighted by the respective translators. I believe that my reproduction of these excerpts from them constitutes “fair use.” They form part of my reviews of the original works (in “Gateway to the Vast Realms”) and are not being used for any commercial purpose. The main reason I have reproduced them here is to give readers a chance to compare examples of different versions in order to decide which ones they might want to get.