Autumn Water Studio Discusses Jin Ping Mei

Author: Tian Xiaofei
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-01-01
Features: Qiu Shui (Yuwen Qiu Shui, author's pen name, editor's note) discusses The Golden Lotus, urging readers to see the compassion in the illustrated editions. Rather than being a compassion that belongs to moral instruction, it is a compassion that belongs to literature. Even the fallen characters are endowed with a poetic touch of humanity; no character possesses a non-human perfection, offering us an absolute standard for judgment. We still make moral judgments about the characters in the book—the novel demands that we do so—but our merciless judgments are often softened by fleeting moments of human innocence, moments that force us beyond judgment and toward a kind of sympathy hovering at the edge of compassion.