Currently reading
Taiga?s True Views: The Language of Landscape Painting in Eighteenth-Century Japan by Melinda Takeuchi (1994-06-01)
The History of England, Vol 2
The History of Scepticism: From Savonarola to Bayle
Cicero: On Moral Ends (Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy)
Das Goldene Vlies: Dramatisches Gedicht in Drei Abteilungen
Euripides IV: Rhesus / The Suppliant Women / Orestes / Iphigenia in Aulis
Notes from Underground & The Double
The World of Thought in Ancient China
The Last Generation of the Roman Republic
The Legend of Gold and Other Stories
Calligraphy and Poem by Huang Tingjian
Huang Tingjian (1045－1105)
Two Poems on Playing Chess Presented to Ren Gongjian (first poem)
By chance we've no government business and the guests have retired;
We armchair strategists compare our wits in a game of chess.
Our minds are spider webs floating through the empyrean's void,
Our bodies, moulted cicada shells, cast off on a withered branch.
"One-eyed" like the King of Xiandong, we willingly perish in battle;
Our chess "empire" is divided in two, and we can both hold out forever.
Who says that we humans always worry about time's onslaught?
We don't even know that Orion is dipping and the moon set long ago!
(translation by J.D. Schmidt, Stone Lake: The Poetry of Fan Chengda)