Gems of Chinese Literature/Preface
What work nobler than transplanting foreign thought?
―Carlyle.
A second edition of this book has been long overdue, blocked, like many other enterprises, by the war. Its aim will be found fully set forth in the extract, given below, from the preface to the first edition. That edition has been carefully revised, and by many additional translations has been doubled in size and brought down to the present day. Short biographical notices will now be found with all the authors quoted, whose names have further been given in an English-Chinese index, as a means of easy identification by students. Poems have been omitted; they are to appear in a separate volume.
HERBERT A. GILES
December, 1922
The present volume is a venture in a new direction. English readers will search in vain for any work leading to an acquaintanceship, however slight, with the general literature of China. Dr. Legge's colossal labours have indeed placed the canonical books of Confucianism within easy reach of the curious; but the immense bulk of Chinese authorship is still virgin soil and remains to be efficiently explored.
I have therefore ventured to offer an instalment of short extracts from the works of the most famous writers of all ages, upon which time has set an approving seal. These are chronologically arranged, and cover a period extending from 550 B.C. to A.D. 1650―two thousand two hundred years. Short biographical and dynastic notices will be found scattered through the volume in their proper places; also such brief foot-notes as seemed to me necessary to the occasion.
"Untold treasures," says Professor G. von der Gabelentz, "lie hidden in the rich lodes of Chinese literature." Now without committing myself to exaggeration or misdirection as to the practical value of these treasures, I dare assert that the old pride, arrogance, and exclusiveness of the Chinese are readily intelligible to any one who has faithfully examined the literature of China and hung over the burning words of her great writers. I do not flatter myself that all the extracts given will be of equal interest to all readers. I have not catered for any particular taste, but have striven to supply a small handbook of Chinese literature, as complete as circumstances would permit.
In the process of translation I have kept verbal accuracy steadily in view, so that the work may be available to students of Chinese in one sense as a key. But with due regard to the requirements of a general public, impatient of long strings of unpronounceable names and of allusions which for the most part would be shorn of all meaning and point, I have eliminated these, wherever it was possible to do so without obscuring or otherwise interfering with the leading idea in the text. I have also been compelled sometimes to expand and sometimes to compress;―on the one hand, by an extreme grammatical terseness, intelligible enough in the original; on the other, by a redundancy of expression, which, while offering wide scope for literary tours de force (compare Psalm cxix.), contrasts strangely with the verbal condensation aforesaid. It must however always be borne in mind that translators are but traitors at the best, and that translations may be moonlight and water while the originals are sunlight and wine.
H. A. G.