Burton Dewitt Watson

We miss him

He is very much missed

While Burton has left us, his contributions to the understanding of Chinese literature in the West will remain.

He is greatly missed, as a scholar and translator, a teacher, and a friend

Living for some years in Japan, I had the pleasure of getting to know Burton Watson. During that time I experienced a deep loss and Burton's great insight and wise counsel made a great difference to me in seeing my way out of the darkness. Rest well, dear friend. You are missed.

Burton Watson was an amazing person whom enlightened my life. I was a graduate student at Columbia University, co-teaching an Asian Humanities course with Prof. Barbara Miller, when Prof. Watson joined our class as a visiting scholar in 1990-1991. Burton Watson was such a warm, pleasant, and unassuming person, despite his vast scholarly experience and literary accomplishments. He enjoyed participating candidly in the class, and guiding me (a graduate student) in a quiet, yet very supportive...

Thanks a lot for having this page that we can leave our words of appreciation for his great work in introducing Classic Chinese literature into the English world. I am from Xian, China, and I was lucky to invite him to Xian in year 2011, at his age of 86, introducing his book of China at Last to Chinese readers. [email protected]

Contemplating the Phantasamal
-from Selected Poems of Po Chü-I
tr. Burton Watson

All beings rise out of extinction,
numbering their point of departure, after that no more sameness.
From delight we move at last to sorrow,
through mounting afflictions to end in nothingness.
Little by little eyes grow dimmer;
so brief the time, candles in the passing wind.
And the there's no where you can look for us,
bird tracks left behind in an empty sky.