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Categories: Science fiction Fantasy Mystery Romance Business Classic Sports Young adult Humor Memoirs See all categories... |
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Categories: Science fiction Fantasy Mystery Romance Business Classic Sports Young adult Humor Memoirs See all categories... |
This book was published in 1923. the book contains 170 Chinese poems the author collected and translated of ancient poets in china. An excerpt from the author's introduction: Those who wish to assure themselves that they will lose nothing by ignoring Chinese literature, often ask the question: "Have the Chinese a Homer, an Aeschylus, a Shakespeare or Tolstoy? " The answer must be that China has no epic and no dramatic literature of importance. The novel exists and has merits, but never became the instrument of great writers. Her philosophic literature knows no mean between the traditionalism of Confucius and the nihilism of Chuang-tzu. In mind, as in body, the Chinese were, for the most part, torpid mainlanders. Their thoughts set out on no strange quest and adventures, just as their ships discovered no new continents. To most Europeans, the momentary flash of Athenian questioning will seem worth more than all the centuries of Chinese assent. Yet we must recognize that for thousands of years the Chinese maintained a level of rationality and tolerance that the West might well envy. They had no Index, no Inquisition, no Holy Wars. Superstition has indeed played its part among them; but it has never, as in Europe, been perpetually dominant. It follows from the limitations of Chinese thought that the literature of the country should excel in reflection rather than in speculation.