AFAIK, all English versions except for Anthony Yu's (in four fat volumes) are abridged. At the very least, they omit the poems found in each chapter (for the very understandable reason that they only recapitulate the action and the poetry is lost in translation). I read Waley's abridgement and found it quite readable; it's the Canfonian translation by "C.C. Low and Associates" that is particularly dull, with none of the rhetorical sparkle or descriptive excess of the original.
And I'm afraid I don't have much comfort to offer you about the body of the work. It is rather repetitive and Sanzang/Tripitaka is a rather uninteresting protagonist. A lot of it makes more sense when read as Buddhist allegory, but that still doesn't make it tremendously more absorbing IMHO. When I get that far, I'll probably only read selected episodes.
All in all, I think you'd get more enjoyment from Romance of the Three Kingdoms, if you haven't read it already.
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momijizukamori
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Date: 2005-08-26 05:55 pm (UTC)And I'm afraid I don't have much comfort to offer you about the body of the work. It is rather repetitive and Sanzang/Tripitaka is a rather uninteresting protagonist. A lot of it makes more sense when read as Buddhist allegory, but that still doesn't make it tremendously more absorbing IMHO. When I get that far, I'll probably only read selected episodes.
All in all, I think you'd get more enjoyment from Romance of the Three Kingdoms, if you haven't read it already.