Gems of Chinese Literature/Huang T‘ing-chien-Commonplace
HSI K‘ANG’S[1] verses are at once vigorous and purely beautiful, without a vestige of commonplace about them. Every student of the poetic art should know them thoroughly, and thus bring the author into his mind’s eye.
Those who are sunk in the cares and anxieties of this world’s strife, even by a passing glance would gain therefrom enough to clear away some pecks of the cobwebs of mortality. How much more they who penetrate further and seize each hidden meaning and enjoy its flavour to the full! Therefore, my nephew, I send you these poems for family reading, that you may cleanse your heart and solace a weary hour by their perusal.
As I recently observed to my own young people, the true hero should be many-sided, but he must not be commonplace. It is impossible to cure that. Upon which, one of them asked by what characteristics this absence of the commonplace was distinguished. “It is hard to say,” I replied. “A man who is not commonplace is, under ordinary circumstances, much like other people. But he who at moments of great trial does not flinch―he is not commonplace.”
A hero may exist in his generation, either as a man of action or as a man of retirement; he may be inflexible or he may be of gentler mould. In any case, the above test gives the truest estimate of his value.
- ↑ A famous painter, poet, and philosopher of the third century of our era. As a student of alchemy, he managed to offend one of the Imperial princes and was denounced as a dangerous person. He was ultimately put to death as a magician and a heretic.