A. Critical and Comparative Studies

17. Seaver, H. L. ‘The Asian Lyric and English Literature’. In Essays in Memory of Barrett Wendell. 1926. Reprint, New York: Russell, 1967.

Begins by asking which ‘Asian lyrics’ other than FitzGerald’s Rubàiyàt and the poetry of the Old Testament might be ‘transplanted into the English garden’. Reviews and compares translations of, in the case of the Japanese, Aston (D13), Mathers (D25), Hearn (D9b), Chamberlain (D5a), Curtis Hidden Page (1870-1946, Japanese Poetry [Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1923]), and Porter (D20). Comments on ‘the splashing journalism of Mr. Kipling’ (see CA1), the debt of the Imagists to Japanese verse, the ‘paradoxical rhapsodies’ of Noguchi (see D15e), and the ‘insufficiently appreciated’ cinquains of Crapsey (see CA4).