Essay
緣緣堂隨筆
Not translated into English
Feng Zikai · 1931
Synopsis
Twenty texts written between 1925 and 1930. The author takes as his subjects, according to China Writer, small, ordinary things of life. In “Graduellement”, often studied, he observes that the slowness of change prevents people from seeing their lives pass and their burden grow heavier, and, as a Buddhist, urges them to seize the time that remains and to live with humility. The book bears the name of the house the author had chosen for himself before even building it.
Context
The collection was published in January 1931 by Kaiming, in Shanghai. Its title is the name the author had given to his home in 1926: according to China Writer, the monk Hongyi had him draw lots twice from characters rolled into balls, and the same character, yuan, came out both times. The house was only built in 1933, in his native town, and Japanese troops burned it in 1938; the author said that it had had its soul before its body. In the 1940s, the sinologist Yoshikawa Kōjirō made the book known in Japan.
Who it is for
Short texts, to be read separately; a selection of the author's essays has existed in French since 2010.
Prizes and reception
Yoshikawa Kōjirō held its author to be the true artist of modern China, according to a journal of the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
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