Item 122 - Speech by R. C. Trevelyan introducing a poetry reading by Arthur Waley

1 item: typescript with autograph additions and corrrections: 4 sheets.

Trevelyan's confidence in Waley's 'scholarship and accuracy as a translator', and praise of his translations for lacking 'irrelevant echoes of English poetical rhetoric and technique. The words only are English; the spirit is Chinese'. The gathering today is to give sympathy and whatever help they can to the Chinese people in their current 'terrible and undeserved trials'; to sympathise, it is necessary to understand, and literature is one of the best ways of 'understanding the character and the mental qualities of a people'. Waley's work as a translator and 'historian of ideas and culture' cover over two thousand years of Chinese civilization; he has recently published a translation of "Monkey", which dates from as late as the Ming Dynasty. Thirty years ago, Trevelyan spent a few weeks at Pekin [Beijing], and visited the Temple of Confucius with a Chinese friend, Mr Kung, who was he thinks a 60th generation descendant of a cousin of Confucius. As a southerner, Kung had never before visited the Temple, 'from which the tablet of Confucius had lately been sacrilegiously removed by Yuan Shi-k'ay' and was much moved; Trevelyan felt awkward as he had always 'ignorantly thought Confucius a 'rather tiresome, pedantical sort of moraliser'. Now however, having read Waley's translations of and writing on Confucius, he realises his wisdom, humanity, and sense of humour.

Handwritten text to be given after Waley's reading, commenting that his 'quiet unemphatic' reading style is well suited to the poetry, and inviting the audience to ask any questions they may have. Has also been asked to draw the audience's attention to the interesting 'exhibition of contrasted Chinese and English art' upstairs.