Comedy notes category selection: Chinese classical literature fine selection options annotation collection review library

Author: Hu Xiaoming
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-05-01
Features: This is a selected collection of notes. The articles collected here are mostly short, ranging from a few dozen words to five or six hundred. Such articles were particularly numerous and well-developed in ancient China, almost becoming a distinct feature of Chinese prose. In the history of Western prose literature, there is a genre called Essays. Famous representatives include French Montaigne, English Bacon, Lamb, and others. However, their Essays are quite different from the ancient Chinese notes and short essays. For example, most of their essays are longer, such as Maum's Essays which are essentially long prose pieces. Some may not be very long, but compared to what ancient Chinese writers wrote, they still feel verbose. For instance, Montaigne has an essay titled How Many Times I Have Become Not Myself, which begins with "Look, I just lost a tooth, effortlessly, without pain, this is the deadline for natural death," and goes on to describe self-portraits at the ages of twenty-five and thirty-five compared to today, discussing the "slow fading" and "growth stages, death has already begun" of life. It also mentions famous quotes from Solon, Plato, and others, with both lyrical and argumentative passages being sharp and insightful. The Chinese translation is nearly seven hundred words.