David Hawkes (sinologist)

David Hawkes
David Hawkes
Born	23 July 1923; Oxford University
Doctoral advisor	Homer H. Dubs
Chinese name
Hanyu Pinyin	Huò Kèsī
Wade–Giles	Huo K'o-ssu

David Hawkes (6 July 1923 – 31 July 2009) was a British

D.Phil. and later became Shaw Professor of Chinese. In 1971, Hawkes resigned his position to focus entirely on his translation of the famous Chinese novel The Story of the Stone (also known as Dream of the Red Chamber), which was published in three volumes between 1973 and 1980. He retired in 1984 to rural Wales

before returning to live in Oxford in his final years.

Hawkes was known for his translations that preserved the "realism and poetry" of the original Chinese, and was the foremost non-Chinese Redology expert.^[1]

Life and career

Early life

David Hawkes was born on 6 July 1923 in

Second World War, Hawkes was recruited to study Japanese in London.^[1] His talent for East Asian languages was soon recognized by his military superiors, and he was made an instructor to the Japanese codebreakers.^[1] After the war's end in 1945, Hawkes returned to Oxford, where he transferred from Classics into the newly established Honours School of Chinese, whose only teacher was the former missionary E. R. Hughes (1883–1956).^[2]

Hawkes studied at Oxford until 1947, when he decided to move to China to continue his studies at

Communist Party of China's defeat of Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalist Party (Kuomintang) in the Chinese Civil War.^[1]

Marriage and career

In 1950, Hawkes was joined in Beijing by his fiancée, Jean, and the two were married in April 1950 after a long negotiation with the local police station.

Verses of Chu (楚辭; Chǔ Cí). Hawkes' work attracted the attention of the prominent translator Arthur Waley, whom Hawkes came to consider his mentor.^[2]

Hawkes succeeded Dubs as Oxford's chair of Chinese in 1959, and much of his tenure focused on altering the Chinese curriculum to include modern Chinese literature, which it had not previously covered.

Four Great Novels and the short stories of Lu Xun.^[1] Hawkes' lectures were noted as being "scholarly but entertaining" to the point of being suggestive of his "early love of the theatre".^[2]

In the 1960s, Hawkes became increasingly interested in Cao Xueqin's 18th-century epic novel Dream of the Red Chamber (紅樓夢), and in 1970 he was approached by Penguin Books to do a non-scholarly translation for publication in the Penguin Classics series.^[1] Translating all 120 chapters of Dream of Red Chamber proved a huge task, and in 1971 Hawkes shocked much of the Sinological world by resigning the chair of Chinese to focus exclusively on his translation.^[1] He obtained a Research Fellowship at All Souls College in 1973, which provided him with financial support during his translation work, which took nearly 10 years.^[1] He translated the first 80 chapters of the novel, which were published in three volumes (1973, 1977, 1980) under the novel's original title Story of the Stone (石頭記; Shítou Jì).^[1] The remaining 40 chapters, which appeared after Cao's death and whose authenticity has long been debated, were later translated by Hawkes' son-in-law, the British sinologist John Minford.^[1]

Retirement

Hawkes formally retired from Chinese scholarship in 1984 and relocated with his wife to

goats, while Hawkes focused his personal studies on the history of religion and learning the Welsh language. His only subsequent Chinese publication was a small translation of a Yuan dynasty drama entitled Liu Yi and the Dragon Princess, published in 2003. Hawkes was a severe critic of organized religion in his later life, and in 2004 edited a series of his essays into a small volume entitled Letters from a Godless Grandfather, which was published privately in Hong Kong.^[2] He was a vocal critic of Israel's treatment of Palestinians and of British and American military involvement in the Middle East, and participated in several protest marches.^[2]

Hawkes died in Oxford on 31 July 2009, aged 86.

Selected works

Hawkes, David (1955). "The Problem of Date and Authorship of Ch'u Tz'u". D.Phil. dissertation (Oxford University).

——— (1959). Ch'u Tz'ǔ: the Songs of the South, an Ancient Chinese Anthology. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 2nd edition (1985).

——— (2016). A Little Primer of Tu Fu (revised ed.). New York: New York Review Books.
ISBN 978-9629966591
.

——— and John Minford, trans. (1973–86). The Story of the Stone: A Chinese Novel in Five Volumes. London, New York: Penguin Books.

——— The Story of the Stone: a Translator's Notebooks. Hong Kong: Lingnan University, 2000.

——— (1989). Classical, Modern and Humane: Essays in Chinese Literature. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press.

———, trans. (2003). Liu Yi and the Dragon Princess: A Thirteenth-Century Zaju Play by Shang Zhongxian. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press.

References

Citations

^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j ^k ^l Gittings (2009).
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j ^k ^l The Times (2009).
^ Haffenden (2006), p. 192.

Sources

Works cited

"David Hawkes". The Times. 28 August 2009. Retrieved 10 April 2015.
Gittings, John (25 August 2009). "Obituary: David Hawkes". The Guardian. Retrieved 10 April 2015.
Haffenden, John (2006). William Empson, Volume II: Against the Christians. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
ISBN 978-0199276608
.

External links

David Hawkes
David Hawkes Archive (霍克思資料庫) Digitised Collections, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

[FOOTNOTEGittings2009-1] ^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j ^k ^l Gittings (2009).

[FOOTNOTEThe_Times2009-2] ^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j ^k ^l The Times (2009).

[FOOTNOTEHaffenden2006192-3] Haffenden (2006), p. 192.

[1]

[2]

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