From Mao to Gnosticism

Q. and A.: Willis Barnstone on Translating Mao and Touring Beijing With Allen Ginsberg (Ian Johnson, NYT Blog).

Willis Barnstone is a polymath author of more than 70 books — a poet, translator and scholar of Gnosticism and the New Testament. But the 87-year-old also has had a long and colorful relationship with China, translating Mao Zedong’s poetry and befriending numerous Chinese artists and political leaders in the 1980s.

Recently he was in Beijing to speak at the Bookworm Literary Festival. In an interview, he discussed his love of classical Chinese poetry, a telegram he sent to Zhou Enlai and taking Allen Ginsberg to a Taoist temple.

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Most of the article is about Barnstone's experiences with China and translating the poetry of Mao. That happens to be interesting to me because I am just now finishing the biography of Mao by Pantsov and Levine, Mao: The Real Story. That would be neither here nor there but for the fact that Barnstone has also come up in PaleoJudaica as a translator (with Marvin Meyer) of Gnostic texts and (on his own) of his idiosyncratic canon called The Restored New Testament. This recent interview nicely rounds out the picture of his work.