A NOTE ON THE CHINESE POEMS TRANSLATED BY ARTHUR WALEY[1]
By Joseph Hergesheimer
It is the special province of poetry, as of charming women, to delight rather than afford the more material benefits. Nothing could be vainer than putting either of them to the rude uses of life; they are the essence of aristocracy; and the in difference, the contempt really, with which the mass of people regard poetic measures, and conversely, the disdain of charm for the whole common body of opinion, show clearly the wide separation between prosaic fact and fancy. The former has the allegiance of the mob, as it should, since, without imaginative sensibility, the mechanical process of existence is a stupid multiplication of similar instincts; while fancy, poetry, beauty, the properties of delicate minds and aspirations, are, by the very qualities necessary to their being, limited to a select few.
There were ages, long submerged now by the obliterating tide of progress, when poetry was, generally, a force in men's lives; and then, as well, women's beauty was held above their mere animality; but the levelling democracy of Christian religions, lending a new power to the resentment and suspicions of congregations of the inferior, ended perhaps for ever reigns of distinction. Yet, ironically, while sects vanished over night and fanatics were denied even the final distinction of martyrdom, while great empires sank leaving no ripple on the surface of memory, stray lines of wanton poetry, the record of lovely bodies, remained imperishable.
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- ↑ See Bibliography.
