He studied calligraphy, and he failed. He studied swordsmanship, and he failed. He studied morals and ethics, and he failed. He studied literature, and he failed. He studied Taoism, Buddhism, farming, and gardening and he failed in all. He could only let himself be called a wastrel, a good-for-nothing, a misfit, a dull-witted pedant, a sleepyhead, or a damned old fogy.Mutatis mutandis, de me fabula narratur.
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
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Wednesday, May 18, 2022
A Failure
Chang Tai (1597-1684?), "An Epitaph for Myself" (excerpt), in Vignettes from the Late Ming: A Hsiao-p'in Anthology. Translated with Annotations and an Introduction by Yang Ye (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1999), p. 100: