West Wind: Three Thousand Years of Western Beauty

Author: Cheng Bo
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-09-01
Features: He, with the vast ocean of beauty, gazes intently and rises infinite joy in his heart, thus giving birth to countless beautiful and noble thoughts and languages, gaining rich philosophical rewards. After such vigorous effort, he finally achieves a breakthrough on one day, comprehending the only all-encompassing— the that takes beauty as its object. —Plato
At noon, the sun shines brightly, and the maenads of Dionysus lie drunk on the grasslands of the Alps. At this moment, the god of day approaches and gently touches him with a laurel branch. Thus, the magic of Dionysus and music seems to burst out in all directions from the sleeping figure, igniting sparks of fantasy and poetry—this is lyric poetry, whose highest form is called tragedy and the dramatized Dionysian hymn. Beauty is the fullness of vitality. —Nietzsche
The sublime style reaches its climax like a sword suddenly unsheathed, like lightning that shatters everything it encounters, completely revealing the author's full strength in a flash. The psychological effect of the sublime is not "persuasion" but "ecstasy." —Longinus
I am a man, and when love moves me, I write down according to the command that comes from within me. —Dante
Beauty is such an order and structure among the parts of an object; due to the inherent nature of human beings, customs, or, this order and structure are suited to bring joy and satisfaction to the soul, which is the characteristic of beauty and the distinction between beauty and ugliness. Therefore, pleasure and pain are not merely the necessary companions of beauty and ugliness but also their true essence. —Hume
A poet is either nature itself or one who pursues nature—must be one of the two. The former makes him a simple poet, while the latter makes him a sentimental poet. —Schiller