Arthur Waley

“ In the evening flakes of snow!
Snatch the joys of life as they come and use them to the fill;
Do not leave the silver cup idly glinting at the moon.
The things Heaven made
Man was meant to use;
A thousand guilders scattered to the wind may come back again.
Roast mutton and sliced beef will only taste well
If you drink with them at one sitting three hundred cups.
Master Ts'ēn Ts'an,
Doctor Tan-ch'iu,
Here is wine: do not stop drinking,
But listen, please, and I will sing you a song.
Bells and drums and fine food, what are they to me,
Who only want to get drunk and never again be sober? ”

“ Personally I believe that this passion for Nature worked more favourably on literature than on painting. The typical Zen picture, dashed off in a moment of exaltation—perhaps a moonlit river expressed in three blurs and a flourish—belongs rather to the art of calligraphy than to that of painting.
In his more elaborate depictions of nature the Zen artist is led by his love of nature into that common pitfall of lovers—sentimentality. The forms of Nature tend with him to function not as forms but as symbols. ”

“ My wife and children in the Tartars' land I have fruitlessly deserted.
When I fell among Tartars and was taken prisoner, I pined for the land of Han:
Now that I am back in the land of Han, they have turned me into a Tartar.
Had I but known what my fate would be, I would not have started home!
For the two lands, so wide apart, are alike in the sorrow they bring.
⁠⁠Tartar prisoners in chains!
Of all the sorrows of all the prisoners mine is the hardest to bear!
Never in the world has so great a wrong befallen the lot of man,—
A Han heart and a Han tongue set in the body of a Turk. ”

“ The stage-wait necessitated by the change of costume and mask is filled in by an interminable sayer of short lines, with the same number of feet, each line detached from the next as if the speaker were going from one afterthought to another. He is a bystander—perhaps a shepherd in one play and a fisherman in another—who knows something, and dilates on it to fill in time. The musicians lay aside their drums. Everybody just waits. Up sweeps the curtain, and with the re-entry of the revealed personage comes the intenser and quicker second part for which the slow first part was a preparation. ”

“ I fear I shall never return from my westward wandering; the way is steep and the rocks cannot be climbed.
Sometimes the voice of a bird calls among the ancient trees—a male calling to its wife, up and down through the woods. Sometimes a nightingale sings to the moon, weary of empty hills.
It would be easier to climb to Heaven than to walk the Szechwan Road; and those who hear the tale of it turn pale with fear.
Between the hill-tops and the sky there is not a cubit's space. ”

“ Art was regarded as a kind of Zen, as a delving down into the Buddha that each of us unknowingly carries within him, as Benjamin carried Joseph’s cup in his sack. Through Zen we annihilate Time and see the Universe not split up into myriad fragments, but in its primal unity. Unless, says the Zen æsthetician, the artist’s work is imbued with this vision of the subjective, non-phenomenal aspect of life, his productions will be mere toys. ”

“ Sometimes I sweep the flagstones of the terrace;
Sometimes, in the wind, I raise my cup and drink.
The flower-branches screen my head from the sun;
The flower-buds fall down into my lap.
Alone drinking, alone singing my songs
I do not notice that the moon is level with the steps.
The people of Pa do not care for flowers;
All the spring no one has come to look. ”

“ My new province is a land of bamboo-groves:
Their shoots in spring fill the valleys and hills.
The mountain woodman cuts an armful of them
And brings them down to sell at the early market.
Things are cheap in proportion as they are common;
For two farthings, I buy a whole bundle.
I put the shoots in a great earthen pot
And heat them up along with boiling rice.
The purple nodules broken,— like an old brocade ”

“ ANGEL.
No, no. Doubt is for mortals;
In heaven is no deceit.
HAKURYŌ.
I am ashamed. Look, I give back the robe.
(He gives it to her and she takes it in both hands.)
ANGEL.
The heavenly lady puts on her garment,
She dances the dance of the Rainbow Skirt, of the Robe of Feathers.
HAKURYŌ.
The sky-robe flutters; it yields to the wind.
ANGEL.
Sleeve like a flower wet with rain ...
HAKURYŌ.
The first dance is over.
ANGEL.
Shall I dance?
CHORUS.
The dance of Suruga, with music of the East? ”

“ If a bird light here, its soul forthwith departs.
Warm springs
Pour from cloudy pools
And hot smoke issues between the rocks.
The sun and moon are perpetually obscured:
The rain and dew never stay dry.
There are red serpents a hundred feet long,
And black snakes ten girths round.
The sand-spitters shoot their poison at the sunbeams:
The flying insects are ill with the shifting glare.
The hungry monkeys dare not come down to eat:
The morning birds dare not set out to fly.
At the Ching river many die of poison:
Crossing the Lu one is lucky if one is only ill. ”

“ Of fishes and prawns sodden in the rain the smell fills my nostrils;
With the stings of insects that come with the fog, my whole body is sore.
I am growing old, time flies, and my short span runs out,
While I sit in a boat at Chiu-k'ou, wasting ten days! ”