 |
Exemplarious translation:
文人相輕，自古而然．傅毅之於班固，伯仲之間耳，而固小之，與弟超書曰：「武仲以能屬文為蘭臺令史，下筆不能自休．」夫人善於自見，而文非一體，鮮能備善．是以各以所長，相輕所短．里語曰：「家有弊帚，享之千金．」斯不自見之患也．
常人貴遠賤近，向聲背實，又患闇於自見，謂己為賢．
夫文，本同而末異．蓋奏議宜雅，書論宜理，銘誄尚實，詩賦欲麗．此四科不同，故能之者偏也；唯通才能備其體 ．
Since oldest times, men of letters disdain each other, like Ban Gu (d. 92 AD) who usually was on good terms with Fu Yi, but scorned the latter concerning his literary works. In a letter to his brother Ban Zhao, Ban Gu wrote: "Fu Yi (Wuzhong) is just able to compose some small essays, and that was enough to become director of the imperial Lantai 'Orchid Terrace' library, but he does not know when to lay down his writing brush." Often people only look at their own strengths without considering that a writer's ability is not exhausted in one literary style. Very few writers are able to master all different literary styles, and that is the reason why most people measure other writers' weaknesses with their own strengths. A proverb says, "In your own house, even a broken broom is worth a thousand golden coins." This is just the fault of not looking at oneself from another standpoint [...]
Usually, people esteem things from far away, not the things accustomed to them, and they trust what is said without asking if it is really true. Further, most people make worries about something invisible to themselves and think themselves to be better then others.
The frame for a writing has a common character, while the content of a text is unique. Memorials and petitions (zou yi) should be elegant, letters and treatises (shu lun) should be logical and ordered, inscriptions and elegies (ming lei) should report the truth, and poems and rhapsodies (shi fu) require beauty. These four types are different to each other, and people that are expert in one of them cannot be expert in another. Only persons with universal abilites are able to master all of them.
Translated by Ulrich Theobald.
|
