WILHELM, Richard.

£7,000 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Chinesische Sommergedichte; [together with] -- Chinesische Frühlingsgedichte [and] -- Chinesische Wintergedichte. Rare first editions of three collections of Chinese poetry translations, all privately issued by the philosopher-sinologist Richard Wilhelm, a close friend of Carl Jung, while serving as a missionary in Qingdao. WorldCat shows three German libraries holding copies of all three and a fourth copy of Sommergedichte at the University of Wisconsin.Themed around the seasons, the anthologies contain poems by Su Shi, Du Fu, Li Bai, and other prominent literati. Wilhelm (1873-1930) spent over two decades in China. "In the course of his educational work with the German mission in Qingdao, and later while teaching in Peking, he was in contact with both Europeans and some of the major Chinese intellectuals of the early years of the twentieth century. He came to China not with narrowly defined missionary aims, but rather as a person broadly educated, with wide-ranging artistic and scholarly interests... In Qingdao, which had been under German control since 1897, Wilhelm immediately began to study the Chinese language. From 1905 until his death, he produced a steady flow of translations, as well as articles and books on Chinese life and culture" (Eber, pp. xiii-xiv). His sinology, especially his translation of the Book of Changes, exerted considerable influence on Jung and other European intellectuals.Copies are held in Germany at the Bavarian State Library, Thuringian Universi

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