Chinese Stories (Classic Reprint)

Bücher

Angebote / Angebote:

Excerpt from Chinese Stories Mencius. Pity and contempt are the only feelings which such an attempt to swim against the current would arouse. Years of careful training will make a tree whose shoots should spring heavenwards bend the points of its branches towards the earth. Cen turies Of constraint have had a parallel effect on the Chinese. If ever they possessed a desire to soar into the higher atmosphere Of imagination, their efforts have been thwarted, and their aspirations have been forced downwards to the solid groundwork Of prosaic literature. By this careful and persistent training they have learned to believe that to pass from the contemplation of the classical and historical literature to that Of the lighter efforts of more subtle authors, is to descend from Parnassus into the gutter. This is, however, a pious opinion in which there is no reason that we Should concur. The standard of taste in Peking is happily not necessarily the same as in London, and we may be forgiven if, in this instance, we dissent from the orthodox View. In the classical literature we have re¿ected, it is true, the serious bent of the people's mind, but it fails to reproduce the fancy and personal esprit which are brought out in their romances and plays. On all such works the Chinese pour out the Vials of their contempt. Sz'ao hwa, or small-talk, is the only term they can find to express their Opinion Of them, and they profess to relegate them to the apartments Of the women and the homes of the uneducated. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.