Returned Thought
Yesterday, I had my Comparative Literature class led by a couple of Chinese grad students as our prof is gone this week. We just so happen to be studying Chinese literature at the time, and yesterday was our chance to go over Li Pai and the Tang dynasty. During their introductory portion the two grad students introduced the Tang dynasty as not only the greatest period of Chinese literary history but also the greatest single literary period in the world.
So is this the truth, or are the Chinese simply taught this from an early age in their country's schools? This is interesting as shit to me. I am apt to go with the latter, but not because I think that any Eurocentric period is any better than the Tang dynasty. I think this simply because I doubt that anyone can claim that any one period is the greatest of all time. Call me wishy-washy or noncommittal, but I just don't think it is so.
Let me know.
Lately I have been having some trouble getting most of my reading done. Not that I am overworked or any such thing (although I am busy, and I like to whine about it), but I am busy with a couple of other books.
Some might remember my slight obsession with Wendell Berry last year...and it's back. I picked up a couple of his books the other day. A collection of his agrarian essays, The Art of the Commonplace, and a collection of his Sabbath poems (you know, written on the Sabbath) that spans from '79 to '97, A Timbered Choir. I haven't gotten into the essays yet, although I have read a few of them before in a different collection. But the books of poems is making me feel all happy overall but sad for the end of the growing season.
I also picked up a farming book by Gene Logsdon, All Flesh Is Grass. This is basically the how-to and why-you-should book of pasture farming. Oodles of useful information and an indictment of our current agricultural system. None of it is too new to me, but it gives more facts to back up the ideas than I previously had, and it has an ungodly amount of logic too.
Okay, back to the schoolwork. Actually, I am going to read some more about sheep farming.
Peace.
posted by Logan Clark at 9/26/2006 07:28:00 PM
3 Comments:
We read "A Passionate Shepard to his Love" for Poetry Writing class and had to write pastoral poems. I don't think mine was very good but it made me think of you. You would be a good pastoral poet.
Anyway. Life is uneventful. Sounds exciting for you though.
10:29 AM
Yeah, I wrote a ten-pager about that poem and a couple of responses to it when I was going to SCSU. I am currently just reading more modern pastorals before I really committ to the writing of them. I am chickenshit.
7:04 AM
hmm. by the way you should read Japanese by Spring by Ishmael Reed...its about multiculturalism in the college setting and it's really pretty hilarious. Your thoughts about China being the center of the world made me think of it even though China and Japan hate each other. Incidentally, I've been reading the fiction of Sui Sin Far for my Immigration and American Culture class. I like her.
10:28 AM
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