From Mensagenda - March 2010

Miniature Literature

R.C.H. Schmidt

There was a time when I had an interest in reading translations of Chinese and Japanese literature. It didn't last long. There was no test. With one exception, I took no notes. The exception is on this month's cover, read from top to bottom in columns from right to left. The passage is taken from Romance of the Western Chamber, written by Wang Shi Fu, who lived from 1250 to 1307.

The English translation is:

Blue clouds in the sky.
Yellow flowers on the ground.
The west wind blows hard
And northern geese fly south.

Consider the content of those four lines:

Five of the six directions, up,
down, north, south,
and west, but no east.
Animal (geese), vegetable (flowers),
and mineral (ground).
Earth, water (clouds), air (wind
but no fire.
Two colors, blue and yellow.

A literary authority's discussion of the story claimed that, according to tradition, Wang felt that he had exhausted this imagination when he wrote those lines and retired.

With this column my shallower well of imagination has run dry, too. So it's time to type "30" and leave the space to others. Thanks for going along with me.

30