Happy Valentine's Day

"A Cultural History of Civil Examinations in Late Emperial China' by Benjamin A. Elman, University of California Press.

The book is dedicated to Sarah 蔡素娥, with love and affection.

p522.
FORMAT OF PROVINCIAL AND METROPOLITAN CIVIL EXAMINATIONS 1384-1756

Session One
1. Four Books 四书     three quotations
2. Five Classics 五经  Four quotations each

 Session Two
1. Discourse 论
2. Documents 诏表[ Imperial mandates, admonitions, memorials]
3. Judicial terms 判语 [ reasons for conferring decisions ]

 Session Three
1. Five policy questions. 经史时务策 5 essays

Thomas, that is a very well put sonnet . I once was surprised to find out that Thomas means 'twin'. Per chance, I came across Steven Spender's 'DARKNESS AND LIGHT today.

Darkness and Light

 To break out of the chaos of my darkness
Into a lucid day, is all my will.
My words like eyes in night, stare to reach
A centre for their light: and my acts thrown
To distant places by impatient violence
Yet lock together to mould a path
Out of my darkness, into a lucid day.

 Yet, equally, to avoid that lucid day
And to preserve my darkness, is all my will.
My words like eyes that flinch from light, refuses
And shut upon obscurity: my acts
Cast to their opposites by impatient violence
Break up the sequent path; they fly
On a circumference to avoid the centre.

 To break out of my darkness towards the centre
Illumines my own weakness, when I fail;
The iron arc of the avoiding journey
Curves back upon my weakness at the end;
Whether the faint light spark against my face
Or in the dark my sight hide from my sight,
Centre and circumference are both my weakness.

 O Strange identity of my will and weakness!
Terrible wave white with the seething word!
Terrible flight through the revolving darkness!
Dreaded light that hunts my profile!
Dreaded night covering me in fears!
My will behind my weakness silhouettes
My territories of fear, with a great sun.

 I grow towards the acceptance of that sun
Which hews the day from night. The light
Runs from the dark, the dark from light
Towards a black and white total emptiness.
The world, my life, binds the dark and light
Together, reconciles and separates
In lucid day the chaos of my darkness.

 From 'The Still Centre', 1935

An excerpt from 'Ten Poems and Lyrics by Mao Tse-tung, translator Wang Hui-Ming'

'Art comes from convention and not invention'

'My sympathy lies with the Chinese convention that there must be painting in poetry and poetry in painting. In other words, I would like to see a poem written with a painter's eyes and a painting painted with a poet's mind.

In Chairman Mao's calligraphy, we can see that he is a man of firm determination, unpredictable mood, quick in decision and fast in action - soft yet strong, pliable yet penetrating, sophisticated yet earthy, and delicate yet robust. In short, he is indeed a "simplicated" and "complied" man. The upward tilt of the right corner of his chracters suggests a contempt for conventions. It is reminiscent of the calligraphy by the eccentric poet, essayist, painter, and seal artist Cheng Hsien (1683-1765), who called himself fengzi ("the mad man"). Both men show an unyielding independence in their work, a quality treasured by all and achieved by few in the history of art. ... Most Chinese poetry is written in simple characters, and one does not need a large vocabulary to appreciate it. After all, there are only somewhat more than a thousand characters in the great Tao Te Ching, and most of them are common characters. A student in elementary Chinese can read Chinese poetry without difficulty if the poetry is presented to him as a word-picture. In fact, he will enjoy it more and learn faster if he begins his reading in poetry and writing with a brush instead of learning Chinese as a tool to learn other things Chinese later, as commonly practiced today in universities. The very attitude of learning a language as a tool dulls the sense of wonder and diminishes the pleasure of learning. ... I realize that it is less sinful to write bad poems than to translate good ones badly. If Mao's poetry comes through my translation, credit must go to him as a good poet. IF readers find flaws, no one but I am to blame.

-- "Ten Poems and Lyrics by Mao Tse-Tung' Wang Hui-Ming, translator.

In this unusual book, Wang Hui-MIng has translated a cycle of ten poems by Mao which concern historic incidents in the Chinese Revolution, especially the Long March into Northwestern China during the 1930s. The work is distinguished by the inclusion of reproductions of Mao's original calligraphy.

Mr. Wang, an "artist who loves poetry" contributes a woodcut illustration to this volume. He is the author of 'The Land on the Tip of a Hair: poems in wood, the boat untied and other poems, a folio of woodengravings, and The Birds and the Animals, a folio of woodcuts based on the poems of Po Chu-I. He also is the illustrator of Jumping Out of Bed by Robert Bly. Wang Hui-Ming teaches in the Dept. of Art at the Univ. of Massachusetts.

I inclined to agree with Wang Hui-Ming's view that 'Art comes from convention, not invention'. Then Nikolai Gogol's nose started making face at me. I was distressed. Where lies the truth apart from false?