Despite the turbulent times in which he lived, the Buddhist priest Kenkō met the world with a measured eye. As Emperor Go-Daigo fended off a challenge from.
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An Arian bishop, too, by way of deepening the scandal! We shall hear next that Saint Denis was a Calvinistic minister, and Saint lago, whom devout Spanish eyes have seen mounted in the hottest of the fray, was a friendly well- wisher of the Moors. But why sigh over fighting saints, in a day when even fighting sinners have scant measure of praise?
Physical heroism is a small matter, often triv ial enough," wrote that clever, emotional, sen sitive German woman, Rahel Varnhagen, at the very time when a little " physical heroism " might have freed her conquered fatherland. We are irresistibly reminded by such a verdict of Shelley s swelling lines " War is the statesman s game, the priest s delight, The lawyer s jest, the hired assassin s trade ; " lines which, to borrow a witticism of Mr.
Oscar Wilde s, have " all the vitality of error," and will probably be quoted triumphantly by Peace Societies for many years to come. In the mean time, there is a remarkable and very significant tendency to praise all war songs, war stories, and war literature gener ally, in proportion to the discomfort and hor ror they excite, in proportion to their inartistic and unjustifiable realism.
The very first description of Napoleon, Napoleon, the idol of my youthful dreams, as a fat, pale man, with a tuft of hair upon his fore head, filled me with loathing for all that was to follow. But I believe I finished the book, it never occurred to me, in those innocent days, not to finish every book that I began, and then I re-read in joyous haste all of Sir Walter Scott s fighting novels, " Waverley," " Old Mortality," " Ivanhoe," " Quentin Durward," and even " The Abbot," which has one good battle, to get the taste of that abom inable story out of my mouth. Of late years, however, I have heard a great deal of French, Russian, and occasionally even English litera ture commended for the very qualities which aroused my childish indignation.
No one has sung the praises of war more gallantly than Mr. Kuskin began and ended his brief poetical career have been singled out from their braver brethren for especial praise, and offered as " grim, naked, ugly truth " to those " who would know more of the poet s picturesque qualities. We all know the melancholy anticlimax of Campbell s splendid song " Ye Mariners of England," when, to three admirable verses, the poet must needs add a fourth, descriptive of the joys of harmony, and of the eating and drinking which shall replace the perils of the sea.
Such shocking lines as " The meteor-flag of England Shall yet terrific hurn," while quite in harmony with the poet s ordi nary achievements, would have been simply impossible in those first three verses of "Ye Mariners," where he remains true to his one artistic impulse. Pie strikes a different and a finer note when, in " The Battle of the Baltic," he turns gravely away from feasting and jollity to remember the brave men who have died for England s glory: Rudyard Kipling, how ever, from whom I have wandered far, he is more in love with the " dear delights " of bat tle than with its dismal carnage, and he wins an easy forgiveness for a few horrors by show ing us much brave and hearty fighting.
It is a good and wholesome thing for a man to be in sympathy with that primitive virtue, courage, to recognize it promptly, and to do honor to it under any flag. Theodore de Baiiville, hot with shame over fallen France, checks his bitterness to write some tender verses to the memory of a Prussian boy found dead on the field, with a bullet-pierced volume of Pindar on his breast. Lang in the letter of an English officer, who writes home that he would have given the rest of his life to have served with the French cavalry on that awful day.
Sir Francis Doyle delights, like an honest and stout-hearted Briton, to pay an equal tribute of praise, in rather question able verse, to the private of the Buffs, " Poor, reckless, rude, low-born, untaught, Bewildered and alone, " who died for England s honor in a far-off land ; and to the Indian prince, Mehrab Khan, who, brought to bay, swore proudly that he would perish, " to the last the lord Of all that man can call his own, " and fell beneath the English bayonets at the door of his zenana. This is the spirit by which brave men know one another the world over, and which, lying back of all healthy national prejudices, unites in a human brother hood those whom the nearness of death has taught to start at no shadows.
But there is neither east nor west, border nor breed nor birth, When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth. Kipling at liis best, and here, too, is a link somewhat simpler and readier to hand than that much-desired bond of cultiva tion which Mr. Oscar Wilde assures us will one day knit the world together. The time when Germany will no longer hate France, "because the prose of France is perfect," seems still as far-off as it is fair ; the day when " intellectual criticism will bind Europe to gether " dawns only in the dreamland of desire.
Wilde makes himself merry at the expense of " Peace Societies, so dear to the sentimentalists, and proposals for unarmed International Arbitration, so popular among those who have never read history ; " but crit icism, the mediator of the future, " will anni hilate race prejudices by insisting upon the unity of the human mind in the variety of its forms.
Meanwhile, the world, which rolls so easily in old and well-worn ways, will probably remember that " power is measured by resistance," and will go on arguing stolidly in platoons. Ruskin, who has taken upon himself the defense of war in his own irresistibly un convincing manner. Others indeed have de lighted in it from a purely artistic standpoint, or as a powerful stimulus to fancy. Saintsbury exults more than most critics in battle poems, and in those " half -inarticulate songs that set the blood coursing.
Froude, who is as easily seduced by the picturesqueness of a sea fight as was Canon Kingsley, appears to believe in all seriousness that the British privateers who went plunder ing in the Spanish main were inspired by a pure love for England, and a zeal for the Protestant faith. He can say truly with the little boy of adventurous humor, " There is something that suits ray mind to a T In the thought of a reg lar Pirate King.
Lang s love of. As a child, he confesses he pored over " the fightingest parts of the Bible," when Sunday deprived him of less hallowed reading. As a boy, he devoted to Sir Walter Scott the precious hours which were presumably sacred to the shrine of Latin grammar. Lang makes a strong plea in behalf of that literature which has come down to us out of the past to stand forevermore unrivaled and alone, stirring the hearts of all generations until human nature shall be warped from simple and natural lines.
There is no good quality that they lack ; manliness, courage, reverence for old age and for the hospitable hearth, justice, piety, pity, a brave attitude towards life and death, are all conspicuous in Homer. All these things have the lovers of war said to us, and in all these ways have they striven to fire our hearts.
Ruskin is not content to regard any matter from a purely artistic standpoint, or to judge it on natural and congenital lines ; he must indorse it ethi cally or condemn. Accordingly, it is not enough for him, as it would be for any other man, to claim that " no great art ever yet rose on earth but among a nation of soldiers.
It is not enough for him to say, with equal truth and justice, that if " brave death in a red coat be no bet ter than "brave life in a black one," it is at least every bit as good. He must needs wax serious, and commit himself to this strong and doubtful statement: Still I feel as if it were, somehow, grander and worthier in him to have made his bread by sword play than any other play.
I had rather he had made it by thrusting than by batting, much more than by betting ; much rather that he should ride war horses than back race horses ; and - I say it sternly and deliberately much rather would I have him slay his neighbor than cheat him. In this commercial age we get tolerably ac customed to being cheated like the skinned eel, we are used to it, but there is an old rhyme which tells us plainly that a broken neck is beyond all help of healing. It is best to leave ethics alone, and ride as lightly as we may.
The finest poems of battle and of camp have been written in this unincumbered spirit, as, for example, that lovely little snatch of song from " Rokeby: To pull the thorn thy brow to braid, And press the rue for wine. A lightsome eye, a soldier s mien, A feather of the blue, A doublet of the Lincoln green, No more of me you knew, My love! No more of me you knew. My bed is cold upon the wold, My lamp yon star.
My slumbers short and broken ; From hill to hill I wander still, Kissing thy token. He rides as free from our tangled perplexity of introspection as from our irksome contrivances for comfort. It is not that he is precisely guileless or ignorant. One does not journey far over the world without learning the world s ways, and the ways of the men who dwell upon her. But the knowledge of things looked at from the outside is never the knowledge that wears one s soul away, and the traveling com panion that Lord Byron found so ennuyant, " The blight of life the demon Thought," forms no part of the " Wandering Knight s " equipment.
There is one more point to consider. Saintsbury appears to think it strange that battles, when they occur, and especially when they chance to be victories, should not imme diately inspire good war songs. But this is seldom or never the case, " The Charge of the Light Brigade " being an honorable exception to the rule.
Dray ton s heroic ballad was writ ten nearly two hundred years after the battle of Agincourt ; Flodden is a tale of defeat ; and Campbell, whose songs are so intoxicat- ingly warlike, belonged, I am sorry to say, to the " Peace at all price" party. The fact is that a battle fought five hundred years ago is just as inspiring to the poet as a battle fought yesterday ; and a brave deed, the memory of which comes down to us through centuries, stirs our hearts as profoundly as though we witnessed it in our own time.
These are the deeds that belong to all ages and to all nations, a heritage for every man who walks this troubled earth. Has it been more than a hundred years since this distinctly modern sentiment was uttered, more than a hundred years since the spreading chestnut boughs bent kindly over the lean, strenuous, caustic, disappointed man of genius who always had so much to do, and who found in the doing of it a mingled bliss and bitterness that scorched him like fever pain? How is it that, while Dr. They are the kind of witticisms which we do not say for ourselves, simply because we are not witty ; but they illustrate with biting accuracy the spirit of restlessness, of disquiet, of intellec tual vanity and keen contention which is the brand of our vehement and over-zealous gen eration.
Readers of Dick ens if any one has the time to read Dickens nowadays may remember Miss Monflather s inspired amendment of that familiar poem concerning the Busy Bee: In work alway, Let my first years be past. Bagehot s uninspired words, this is the prize dangled alluringly before our tired eyes ; and if we are disposed to look askance upon the booty, then vanity is subtly pricked to give zest to faltering resolution.
It is the paean of self-glorification that wells up perpet ually from press and pulpit, from public ora tors, and from what is courteously called liter ature, that keeps our courage screwed to the sticking place, and veils the occasional bare ness of the result with a charitable vesture of self-delusion. No one seriously doubts this truth. Adam may have doubted it when he first took spade in hand, and Eve when she scoured her first pots and kettles ; but in the course of a few thousand years we have learned to know and value this honest, troublesome, faithful, and extremely exacting- friend.
The god of labor -does not abide exclusively in the rolling-mill, the law courts, or the corn field. He has a twin sister whose name is leisure, and in her society he lingers now and then to the lasting gain of both.
Sainte-Beuve, writing of Mine, de Sevigne and her time, says that we, " with our habits of positive occupation, can scarcely form a just conception of that life of leisure and chit-chat. The whole duty of life seemed to be con centrated in the pleasant task of entertain ing your friends when they were with you, or writing them admirable letters when they were absent. Occasionally there came, even to this tranquil and finely poised French woman, a haunting consciousness that there might be other and harder work for human hands to do.
Not that we have the time now to read Mme. Why, there are big volumes of these delightful letters, and who can afford to read big vol umes of anything, merely for the sake of the enjoyment to be extracted therefrom? It was all very well for Sainte-Beuve to say " Lisons tout Mme. It was all very well for Sainte-Beuve to plead, with touching confidence in the intellectual pas times of his contemporaries, " Let us treat Mme. The words would be antiquated even for Dr. Rain may fall or rain may cease, but leisure comes not so lightly to our calling. In one respect at least we follow his good counsel.
We do treat Mme. And what of the leisure of Montaigne, who, taking his life in his two hands, disposed of it as he thought fit, with no restless self-accusa tions on the score of indolence. In the world and of the world, yet always able to meet and greet the happy solitude of Gascony ; toiling with no thought of toil, but rather " to enter- taine my spirit as it best pleased," this man wrought out of time a coin which passes current over the reading world. And what of Horace, who enjoyed an industrious idle ness, the bare description of which sets our hearts aching with desire! Horace goes to bed and gets up when he likes ; there is no one to drag him down to the law courts the first thing in the morning, to remind him of an important engagement with his brother scribes, to solicit his interest with Ma3cenas, or to tease him about public affairs and the latest news from abroad.
He can bury him self in his Greek authors, or ramble through the woody glens which lie at the foot of Mount Ustica, without a thought of business or a feeling that he ought to be otherwise en gaged. Leisure has a value of its own. It is not a mere handmaid of labor ; it is something we should know how to cultivate, to use, and to enjoy. It has a distinct and honorable place wherever nations are released from the pres sure of their first rude needs, their first homely LEISURE. We prefer uttering agreeable plati tudes concerning the blessedness of drudgery and the iniquity of eating bread earned by another s hands.
Yet the creation of an ar tistic and intellectual atmosphere in which workers can work, the expansion of a noble sympathy with all that is finest and most beautiful, the jealous guardianship of what ever makes the glory and distinction of a nation ; this is achievement enough for the fortunati of any land, and this is the debt they owe. It would appear, then, that we have no fortunati, that we are not yet rich enough to afford the greatest of all luxuries leisure to cultivate and enjoy " the best that has been known and thought in the world.
The yearly taxes of the United States sound to innocent ears like the fabled wealth of the Orient ; the yearly expenditures of the people are on no rigid scale ; yet we are too poor to harbor the priceless literature of the past because it is not a paying investment, because it will not put bread in our mouths nor clothes on our shiver- LEISURE.
Until we are able to believe, with that enthusiastic Greek scholar, Mr. Butcher, that " intellectual training is an end in itself, and not a mere preparation for a trade or a profession ; " until we begin to understand that there is a leisure which does not mean an easy sauntering through life, but a special form of activity, employing all our faculties, and training us to the adequate reception of whatever is most valuable in literature and art ; until we learn to estimate the fruits of self-culture at their proper worth, we are still far from reaping the harvest of three centuries of toil and struggle ; we are still as remote as ever from the serenity of intellectual accomplishment.
There is a strange pleasure in work wedded to leisure, in work which has grown beautiful because its rude necessities are softened and humanized by sentiment and the subtle grace of association. A little paragraph from the journal of Eugenie de Guerin illustrates with charming simplicity the gilding of common toil by the delicate touch of a cultivated and sympathetic intelligence: One may fancy one s self Homer s Nausicaa, or one of those Biblical princesses who washed their brothers tunics. We have a basin at Moulinasse that you have never seen, sufficiently large, and full to the brim of water.
It embellishes the hollow, and attracts the birds who like a cool place to sing in. The fagot gather ing, indeed, can hardly be said to have assumed the proportions of real toil ; it was rather a pastime where play was thinly dis guised by a pretty semblance of drudgery. A very ordinary and estimable young woman might have spread her wash upon the grass with honest pride at the white ness of her linen ; but it needed the solitude of Le Cayla, the few books, well read and well worth reading, the life of patriarchal simplicity, and the habit of sustained and delicate thought, to awaken in the worker s mind the gracefid association of ideas, the pretty picture of Nausicaa and her maidens cleansing their finely woven webs in the cool, rippling tide.
For it is self-culture that warms the chilly earth wherein no good seed can mature; it is self-culture that distinguishes between the work which has inherent and lasting value and the work which represents conscientious "activity and no more. Oscar Wilde, who delights in scandalizing his patient readers, and who lapses unconsciously into something resembling animation over the wrongs inflicted by the solemn preceptors of mankind.
The notion that it is worth while to learn a thing only if you intend to impart it to others is widespread and exceedingly popular. I have myself heard an excellent and anxious aunt say to her young niece, then working hard at college, " But, my dear, why do you give so much of your time to Greek? You don t expect to teach it, do you? Yet this restless desire to give out infor mation, like alms, is at best a questionable bounty ; this determination to share one s wis dom with one s unwilling fellow-creatures is a noble impulse provocative of general discon tent.
When Southey, writing to James Murray about a dialogue which he proposes to publish in the " Quarterly," says, with characteristic complacency: The same principle, working under different conditions to-day, entangles us in a network of lectures, which have become the chosen field for every educational novelty, and the diversion of the mentally unemployed. A gen tleman of this calibre, his fellow -traveler in a coach, once asked him if he had ever made " any calculation as to the value of the rental of all the retail shops in London?
Johnson, too, had scant sympathy with insistent and arrogant industry. He could work hard enough when circumstances de- o maiided it ; but he " always felt an inclination to do nothing," and not infrequently gratified his desires. He hated to hear people boast of their assiduity, and nipped such vain preten sions in the bud with frosty scorn. When he and Boswell journeyed together in the Har wich stage-coach, a "fat; elderly gentle-wo man," who had been talking freely of her own affairs, wound up by saying that she never permitted any of her children to be for a moment idle.
Johnson testily, " that you would educate me too, for I have been an idle fellow all my life. And that gentleman there " pointing to poor young Boswell " has been idle also.
Essays in Idleness | work by Yoshida Kenkō | leondumoulin.nl
He was idle in Edinburgh. His father sent him to Glasgow, where he continued to be idle. He came to London, where he has been very idle. And now he is going to Utrecht, where he will be as idle as ever.
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Every genera tion needs such a man, not to compile diction aries, but to preserve the balance of sanity, and few generations are blest enough to possess him. As for Boswell, he might have toiled in the law courts until he was gray without ben efiting or amusing anybody. It was in the nights he spent drinking port wine at the Mitre, and in the days he spent trotting, like a terrier, at his master s heels, that the seed was sown which was to give the world a mas terpiece of literature, the most delightful bi ography that has ever enriched mankind.
It is to leisure that we owe the " Life of Johnson," and a heavy debt we must, in all integrity, acknowledge it to be. Shortreed said truly of Sir Walter Scott that he was " making himself in the busy, idle pleasures of his youth ; " in those long rambles by hill and dale, those whimsical adventures in farmhouses, those merry, pur- LEISURE. Ill poseless journeys in which the eager lad tasted the flavor of life. At home such unauthor ized amusements were regarded with emphatic disapprobation.
In later years Sir Walter recognized keenly that his wasted school hours entailed on him a lasting loss, a loss he was determined his sons should never know. It is to be forever re gretted that " the most Homeric of modern men could not read Homer. It, is in his pleasures that a man really lives, it is from his leisure that he constructs the true fabric of self. Perhaps Charles Lamb s fellow- clerks thought that because his days were spent at a desk in the East India House, his life was spent there too.
The Lamb who worked in the India House, and who had " no skill in figures," has passed away, and is to-day but a shadow and a name. The Lamb of the " Essays " and the " Letters " lives for us now, and adds each year his generous share to the innocent gayety of the world. This is the Lamb who said, " Riches are chiefly good because they give us time," and who sighed for a little son that he might christen him Nothing-to-do, and permit him to do nothing.
Theophile Gautier of a young and ardent dis ciple who had come to him for counsel. Words have an individual and a relative value. They should be chosen before being placed in position. This word is a mere pebble ; that a fine pearl or an amethyst. In art the handi craft is everything, and the absolute distinc tion of the artist lies, not so much in his capacity to feel nature, as in his power to render it.
He is a wise preceptor who conceals from us his awful rod of office, and grafts his knowledge dexterously upon our self-esteem. Mu sicians know the value of chords ; painters know the value of colors ; writers are often so blind to the value of words that they are con tent with a bare expression of their thoughts, disdaining the "labor of the file," and confi dent that the phrase first seized is for them the phrase of inspiration.
They exaggerate the importance of what they have to say, lacking which we should be none the poorer, and underrate the importance of saying it in such fashion that we may welcome its very moderate significance.
It is in the habitual and summary recognition of the laws of lan guage that scholarship delights, says Mr. Pater ; and while the impatient thinker, eager only to impart his views, regards these laws as a restriction, the true artist finds in them an opportunity, and rejoices, as Goethe re joiced, to work within conditions and limits.
They lie con cealed in the inexhaustible wealth of a vocab ulary enriched by centuries of noble thought and delicate manipulation. He who does not find them and fit them into place, who ac cepts the first term which presents itself rather than search for the expression which accu rately and beautifully embodies his meaning, aspires to mediocrity, and is content with fail ure. The exquisite adjustment of a word to its significance, which was the instrument of Flaubert s daily martyrdom and daily triumph ; the generous sympathy of a word with its surroundings, which was the secret wrung by Sir Thomas Browne from the mysteries of language, these are the twin perfections which constitute style, and substantiate genius.
Cardinal Newman also possesses in an extraor dinary degree Flaubert s art of fitting his words to the exact thoughts they are designed to convey. Such a brief sentence as " Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt " reveals with pregnant simplicity the mental attitude of the writer. In them a gentle dignity of thought finds its appropriate expression, and the restfulness of an unvexed mind breathes its quiet beauty into each cadenced line.
Here are no " boisterous metaphors," such as Dryden scorned, to give undue em phasis at every turn, and amaze the careless reader with the cheap delights of turbulence. Here is no trace of that " full habit of speech," hateful to Mr. Arnold s soul, and which, in the years to come, was to be the gift of journalism to literature. The felicitous choice of words, which with most writers is the result of severe study and unswerving vigilance, seems with a favored few who should be envied and not imitated WORDS. Shelley s letters and prose papers teem with sentences in which the beautiful words are sufficient satisfaction in themselves, and of more value than the conclusions they reveal.
They have a haunting sweetness, a pure perfection, which makes the act of read ing them a sustained and dulcet pleasure. Sometimes this effect is produced by a few simple terms reiterated into lingering music. Once read, we can no more forget its charm than we can forget " that chastity of honor which felt a stain like a wound," or the mournful cadence of regret over virtues deemed superfluous in an age of strictly icon oclastic progress. But until we can produce something better, or some thing as good, those " long savorsome Latin words," checked and vivified by " racy Saxon monosyllables," must still represent an excel lence which it is easier to belittle than to emulate.
It is strange that our chilling disapproba tion of what we are prone to call " fine writ ing " melts into genial applause over the WORDS. We look askance upon such an old-time mas ter of his craft as the Opium-Eater, and re quire to be told by a clear-headed, unenthusi- astic critic like Mr. George Saintsbury that the balanced harmony of De Quincey s style is obtained often by the use of extremely simple words, couched in the clearest imagi nable form.
Place by the side of Mr. Both passages are as beautiful as words can make them, but the gift of simplicity is in the hands of the older writer. Or take the single sentence which describes for us the mystery of Our Lady of Sighs: Saintsbury justly points out, are no needless adjectives, no unusual or extrava gant words. The sense is adequate to the sound, and the sound is only what is required as accompaniment to the sense.
That he should delight in seeing his pages studded all over with such spikes as " mammonism," " flunkeyhood," " nonentity," and " simula crum," that he should repeat them again and again with unwearying self-content, is an enigma that defies solution, save on the simple presumption that they are designed, like other instruments of torture, to test the fortitude of the sufferer. It is best to scramble over them as bravely as we can, and forget our scars in the enjoyment of those vivid and matchless pictures in which each word plays its part, and supplies its share of outline and emphasis WORDS.
The art that can dictate such a brief bit of description as " little red-colored pulpy infants " is the art of a Dutch master who, on five inches of canvas, depicts for us with subdued vehemence the absolute realities of life. Arnold, " tend to impair the beauty and power of language ; " yet so prone are we to confuse the bizarre with the picturesque that at present a great deal of English literature resembles a linguis tic museum, where every type of monstrosity is cheerfully exhibited and admired.
Writers of splendid capacity, of undeniable originality and force, are not ashamed to add their curios to the group, either from sheer impatience of restraint, or, as I sometimes think, from a grim and perverted sense of humor, which is enlivened by noting how far they can venture beyond bounds. George Meredith is pleased to tell us that one of his characters "neighed a laugh," that another "tolled her naughty head," that a third " stamped ; her aspect spat," and that a fourth was discovered " pluming a smile upon his succulent mouth," we cannot smother a dawning suspicion that ESSAYS IN IDLENESS.
Perhaps it is a yearning after subtlety rather than a spirit of uncurbed humor which prompts Vernon Lee to describe for us Carlo s " dark Renaissance face perplexed with an in cipient laugh ;" but really a very interesting and improving little paper might be written on the extraordinary laughs and smiles which cheer the somewhat saturnine pages of modern analytic fiction. She is as tame as a woman with only one head and two arms amid her more striking and richly endowed sisters in the museum. Walter Bage- hot, " is a treasure of dexterous felicities ; " and to awaken the literary conscience to its forgotten duty of guarding this treasure is the avowed vocation of Mr.
Pater, and of another stylist, less understood and less appreciated, Mr. That " unblessed freedom from restraint," which to the clear-eyed Greeks appeared diametrically opposed to a wise and well-ordered liberty, and which finds its amplest expression in the poems of Walt Whitman, has dazzled us only to betray. The emancipation of the savage is sufficiently comprehensive, but his privileges are not always as valuable as they may at first sight appear. Brownell, in his admira ble volume " French Traits," unhesitatingly defines Whitman s slang as " the riotous medium of the under-languaged ; " and the re proach is not too harsh nor too severe.
Macaiday, one of the most acute and enthusiastic of his English critics, admits sadly that it is " gutter slang," equally pur poseless and indefensible. That a man who held within himself the elements of greatness should have deliberately lessened the force of his life s work by a willful misuse of his material is one of those bitter and irremedi able errors which sanity forever deplores. It is neither pleasant nor profitable to hear the sun s rays described as " scooting obliquely high and low. There is a kind of humorousness which a true sense of humor would render impossible ; there is a species of originality from which the artist shrinks aghast; and worse than mere vulgarity is the constant employment of words indecorous in themselves, and irreverent in their application, the smirching of clean and noble things with adjectives grossly un fitted for such use, and repellent to all the canons of good taste.
This is not the " gentle pressure " which Sophocles put upon common words to wring from them a fresh significance ; it is a deliberate abuse of terms, and betrays a lack of that fine quality of self-repression which embraces the power of selection, and is WORDS. Oh, for the polished, pure, and moderate writers! Pater indeed expresses the same thought in ampler English fashion which but emphasizes the superiority of the French when he says, " For in truth all art does but consist in the removal of surplusage, from the last finish of the gem-engraver blowing away the last particle of invisible dust, back to the earliest divination of the finished work to be, lying somewhere, according to Michel angelo s fancy, in the rough-hewn block of stone.
Authors who have the gift of continuity disregard with insistent generosity the limits of time and patience. What a noble poem was lost to myriads of readers when " The Ring and the Book " reached its twenty thousandth line! How inexorable is the tyranny of a great and powerful poet who will spare his readers no thing! Authors who are indifferent to the beauties of reserve charge down upon us with a dreadful impetuosity from which there is no escape.
The strength that lies in delicacy, the chasteness of style which does not aban don itself to every impulse, are qualities ill- understood by men who subordinate taste to fervor, and whose words, coarse, rank, or unc tuous, betray the undisciplined intellect that mistakes passion for power. Francisque Sarcey, whose requirements are needlessly exacting, but whose views would have been cordially in dorsed by at least one great master of English. Dryden always maintained that the admirable quality of his prose was due to his long train ing in a somewhat mechanical verse.
A more modern and diverting approximation of M. Sarcey s views may be found in the robust statement of Benjamin Franklin: What a delicious pic ture is presented to our fancy of a nineteenth- century Franklin amusing himself and im proving his language by an occasional study of " Bordello "! Lowell, pondering deeply on the subject, lias devoted whole pages to a scholarly analysis of the causes which assisted Shakespeare to his unapproached and unapproachable vocabulary.
Essays in Idleness
But nevermind, I have new things to say! Basically, after my first review, I lost the book. I don't know how, I don't know when but it was lost for a period of time. And then I found out I was going to Japan. So before I went, I was at Kinokuniya using up all those vouchers people gave me; and quite naturally, I I actually didn't know that I already reviewed this book once before here.
So before I went, I was at Kinokuniya using up all those vouchers people gave me; and quite naturally, I bought this book. I can't actually say that reading it in Japan is a different experience because honestly, I read it in my dorm room does the fact that I was eating edamane at the same time count?
But I can say that this book is timeless. I wasn't bored with it even though it was a re-read. In fact, I think this book was "made" for re-reads. It's essentially full of seemingly random short chapters, so you really could just flip to a random page and read a chapter which can be as short as a paragraph really. I learnt that although the arrangement of the chapters seem random, they're actually really skillfully arranged.
Sadly, my literature skills aren't at the level to discern and appreciate it without any help, although every now and then, I'd get the "woah, cool arrangement" feeling. Being written so long ago, it's imbued with many Buddhist thoughts. This was because at that time, the only two religions in Japan were Shintoism and Buddhism.
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Plus, the Tsurezuregusa of Kenko is a Buddhist priest. But I would think that it's a pity to skip this book merely because of its religious influence. I think it's a really great way to appreciate the culture of that period and once you know that the religious aspect is there and really, it's very obvious , you can always take a step back whenever you feel uncomfortable.
The book isn't wholly spiritual after all. Kenko seems to be attached to the past and the secular world he doesn't sound like a hermit so plenty of, in fact the majority of, the passages are related to life in Japan then or the past rather than to Buddhism. And let me reiterate again, that I really like the Donald Keene translation. It would be interesting to read it in Japanese but let's face it, my proficiency is no where near what is necessary and even my sensei has said that it's hard for the Japanese to understand it.
I suppose I'll have to wait another year or two so you might actually see a third review written in Japanese! First posted at Inside the mind of a Bibliophile Frequentando la gente, la parola si adegua alle intenzioni altrui, non al proprio cuore. Potrebbe mai il Buddha di neve attendere la fine della costruzione? Jan 28, V rated it it was amazing.
Very interesting to read in combination with contemporary texts that follow a similar structure and method. Endless text, forever with its movable parts. A Buddhist monk, Yoshida Kenko wrote these essays - reflections, really - during the 14th century. Many of the reflections have little relevance or context for the present-day reader, especially an American, at least as they're rendered in translation; these A Buddhist monk, Yoshida Kenko wrote these essays - reflections, really - during the 14th century.
Many of the reflections have little relevance or context for the present-day reader, especially an American, at least as they're rendered in translation; these are anecdotes recounting sayings or acts notables from that time or earlier or mundane observations about medicine or customs. An important recurring theme concerns the transience of life and futility of desiring material comfort and actively pursuing worldly ambition; the author instead extols plainness, simplicity, humility, skill for the sake of its own merit of excellence. Although he does refer to episodes of women speaking and acting virtuously, wisely, and with propriety, the more substantial reflections upon women - such as - are deeply misogynistic.
The topics are so varied, though, that there are quite a few comments worth considering. But soon they themselves must pass away. Then how can later generations grieve, who only know him by repute? After a fime they go no longer to his tomb, and the people do not even know his name or who he was. True, some feeling folk may gaze with pity on what is now but the growth of grasses of succeeding springs; but at last there comes a day when even the pine trees that groaned in the storms, not lasting out their thousand years of life, are split for fuel, and the ancient grave, dug up and turned to rice-field, leaves never a trace behind.
Well-bred people do not talk in a superior way even about things that they have a good knowledge of. It is a fine thing when a man who thoroughly understands a subject is unwilling to open his mouth, and only speaks when he is questioned. The love of men and women - is it only when they meet face to face? To feel sorrow at an unaccomplished meeting, to grieve over empty vows, to spend the long night sleepless and alone, to yearn for distant skies, in a neglected home to think fondly of the past - this is what love is.
It is a great mistake for a foolish man, who is quick and skilful only at the game of checkers, and sees that a wise man is poor at the game, to come to the conclusion that the other's wisdom does not equal his own, or for any expert in one of the various accomplishments, seeing that others are ignorant thereof, to think himself their superior. If there is width to right and left, there is no obstruction. If there is a distance before and behind there is no confinement. In narrow spaces things are crushed and shattered.
When the mind is narrow and severe, we come into collision with things, and are broken in the conflict. When the mind is broad and gentle, not a hair is harmed. He also offers an extended commentary on drinking and drunkenness , which is worthwhile. Dec 02, Daniel Gill rated it it was amazing Shelves: If you're interested in historic Japanese Buddhist views on aesthetics, propriety, and the ideal life, you'll probably find this book worth looking at.
I would suspect Essays in Idleness is a mixed bag for typical western readers. You have some passages that are categorically profound: When I sit down in quiet meditation, the one emotion hardest to fight against is a longing in all things f If you're interested in historic Japanese Buddhist views on aesthetics, propriety, and the ideal life, you'll probably find this book worth looking at.
- Diary of a Mad Gen Yer.
- Essays in Idleness Quotes.
- Essays in Idleness Quotes by Yoshida Kenkō.
When I sit down in quiet meditation, the one emotion hardest to fight against is a longing in all things for the past. As I tear up scraps of old correspondence I should prefer not to leave behind, I sometimes find among them samples of the calligraphy of a friend who has died, or pictures he drew for his own amusement, and I feel exactly as I did at the time. Even with letters written by friends who are still alive I try, when it has been long since we met, to remember the circumstances, the year.
What a moving experience that is! And then others that are so bound to their historic or cultural context as to render them almost meaningless to a typical non-scholar American like me: Once when the retired emperor's courtiers were playing at riddles in the Daigakuji palace, the physician Tadamori joined them.
The Chamberlain and Major Counselor Kinakira posed the riddle: This quote justifiably has half a page of footnotes that accompany it in the Donald Keene translation , but it's inarguable that this passage and others like it just don't have much to offer people like me. The words "fixed complement" are used not only about priests at the various temples but in the Engishiki for female officials of lower rank. The words must have been a common designation for all officials whose numbers were fixed. In addition, there are some passages that are perhaps best described as straight non sequiturs.
So I'm not sure what to conclude about Essays in Idleness except that I found my time reading it ultimately well spent. I enjoyed reading the quirky nonsense, and the moving profundity. Here's one of my favorite passages. If we pick up a brush, we feel like writing; if we hold a musical instrument in our hands, we wish to play music. The mind invariably reacts in this way to any stimulus. That is why we should not indulge even casually in improper amusements. Even a perfunctory glance at one verse of some holy writing will somehow make us notice also the text that precedes and follows; it may happen then, quite suddenly, that we mend our errors of many years.
Suppose we had not at that moment opened the sacred text, would we have realized our mistakes? This is a case of accidental contact producing a beneficial result. Though our hearts may not be in the least impelled by faith, if we sit before the Buddha, rosary in hand, and take up a sutra, we may even in our indolence be accumulating merit through the act itself; though our mind may be inattentive, if we st in meditation on a rope seat, we may enter a state of calm and concentration, without even being aware of it.
Phenomenon and essence are fundamentally one. If the outward form is not at variance with the truth, an inward realization is certain to develop. We should not deny that is is true faith; we should respect and honor a conformity to truth. This is a miscellany. It is a collection of various thoughts and things and events that the author finds interesting. A journal basically, or a diary. Some of it was uninteresting to me though, and did not translate at all. Proper etiquette is discussed.
What constitutes refined behavior, and other matters. He talks a lot about how this tradition has been performed during the time of this or that emperor. Where the book shines is with regards to aesthetics. Yoshida shows a taste on things which This is a miscellany. We do not know that we grow old in years. We do not know that sickness attacks us. We do not know that death is near. We do not know that we have not attained the Way we follow. We do not know what evil is in our own persons, still less what calumny comes from without.
People always exaggerate things. More so, when months and years have passed and the place is distant do they relate any story they please, or even it put down in writing, so that at least it becomes established fact. Anyhow, it is a world that is full of lies, and we shall make no mistake if we make up our minds that what we hear is really not at all strange and unusual but merely exaggerated in the telling. To yearn for the moon when it is raining, or to be closed up in ones room, failing to notice the passing of Spring, is far more moving.
Treetops just before they break into blossom, or gardens strewn with fallen flowers are just as worthy of notice. There is much to see in them. Is it any less wonderful to say, in the preface to a poem, that it was written on viewing the cherry blossoms just after they had peaked, or that something had prevented one from seeing them altogether, than to say "on seeing the cherry blossoms"?
Flowers fall and the moon sets, these are the cyclic things of the world, but still there are brutish people who say that there is nothing left worth seeing, and fail to appreciate. Things that don't offend good taste even if numerous: Keisarin valtaistuin toki on liian korkealla: Being born into this world there are, I suppose, many aims which we may strive to attain.
The Imperial Throne of the Mikado inspires us with the greatest awe; even the uttermost leaf of the Imperial Family Tree is worthy of honour and very different from the rest of mankind. As to the position of a certain august personage i. But when those who are of lower degree chance to rise in the world and assume an aspect of arrogance, though they may think themselves grand, it is very regrettable.
Now there is no life so undesirable as that of a priest.