Mr. Deng Yizhe's Complete Works

Author: Deng Yizhe
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 1998-04-01
Features: Deng Yizhe was born in 1892, styled Shucun, and came from Huaining, Anhui. He was the fifth-generation descendant of Deng Shiru, a renowned master of art, calligrapher, and seal carver during the Qing Dynasty. With a deep family heritage in art and having studied abroad for many years, he possessed profound knowledge in both Eastern and Western traditions. In 1923, he became a professor at the Philosophy Department of Peking University and published a series of extraordinary articles in publications like the Morning News Supplement, leading to the widespread saying in academia at the time, "Southern Zong and Northern Deng," which compared Deng Yizhe with Zong Baihua. However, Deng Yizhe was not the type of scholar who churned out numerous articles and books. Instead, he was meticulous, deeply contemplative, and frugal with his words, so his vast knowledge ultimately crystallized into only a handful of books and a limited number of articles. This may leave readers somewhat disappointed, but precisely for this reason, The Complete Works of Deng Yizhe, which includes gems like Viewing the Great in the Small, Vivid Spirit, Exploring the Principles of Painting, Comprehensive Interpretation of the Six Principles of Painting, The Schools and Evolution of Chinese Painting, Appreciation of Calligraphy, and Poetry and History, though only a modest 500,000 words, appears exceptionally profound, striking, and enduring, winning widespread admiration from readers.
Deng Yizhe (1892–1973), from Huaining, Anhui, was the fifth-generation descendant of Deng Shiru, a celebrated calligrapher and seal carver of the Qing Dynasty. In the 1920s, Deng Yizhe and Zong Baihua were both renowned in the literary circles of the North and South, earning them the moniker "Southern Zong and Northern Deng." In the early 1950s, during the nationwide reorganization of higher education institutions, both Deng and Zong came to Peking University to teach alongside Zhu Guangqian, becoming the three distinguished aesthetics professors of the university. All three were founders of modern Chinese aesthetics—Deng and Zhu were both from Anhui, while Zong was a "half-Anhui person." For this reason, we have long included the publication of their complete works in our publishing plans. After Zhu's complete works were published, we began compiling Zong's, and now that Zong's are also out, we have started planning for Deng's. Zong's complete works consist of four volumes, totaling approximately two million words, with over a million words being newly compiled from his lecture notes, personal records, and unpublished works, all of which are being published for the first time. Deng had long taught aesthetics and art history at Tsinghua University and Peking University, so it is certain that he too left behind a vast amount of lecture notes, records, and unpublished works.