Themista's Blog

From The Importance of Living, by Lin Yutang (1937):

Thus chastened in spirit, quiet in mind and surrounded by proper company, one is fit to enjoy tea. For tea is invented for quiet company as wine is invented for a noisy party. There is something in the nature of tea that leads us into a world of quiet contemplation of life. It would be as disastrous to drink tea with babies crying around, or with loud-voiced women or politics-talking men, as to pick tea on a rainy or a cloudy day. Picked at early dawn on a clear day, when the morning air on mountain top was clear and thin, and the fragrance of dews was still upon the leaves, tea is still associated with the fragrance and refinement of the magic dew in its enjoyment. With the Taoist insistence upon return to nature, and with its conception that the universe is kept alive by the interplay of the male and female forces, the dew actually stands for the “juice of heaven and earth” when the two principles are united at night, and the idea is current that the dew is a magic food, fine and clear and ethereal, and any man or beast who drinks enough of it stands a good chance of being immortal. De Quincey says quite correctly that tea “will always be the favorite beverage of the intellectual,” but the Chinese seem to go further and associate it with the highminded recluse.

From Oriental Secrets of Graceful Living (1963) by Boye de Mente:

SHINMIRI (Sheen-me-ree)—Another word that is laden with a serene type of sadness is shinmiri. A completely colloquial term known and used by all Japanese, shinmiri refers to a type of atmosphere that is charged with intimate tranquility and sad contentment, and is characteristic of traditional life in Japan. The idea of passing time alone, austerely, while letting one’s mind dwell on nostalgic events of the past, or giving up the hectic life of the city for a quiet, rustic type of existence in some isolated countryside, is not unique to Japan. But no other people crave it like the Japanese. As a result of this craving, the Japanese attempt to create the atmosphere of shinmiri in their surroundings, their music and their literature. Rain is often one of the most important ingredients of a shinmiri atmosphere. An afternoon spent sitting quietly in a Japanese style room that looks out over a garden which is being pelted by a late fall rain is certain to be flooded by a strong sense of shinmiri.

A Chinese Garden of Serenity, Epigrams from the Ming Dynasty ‘Discourses on Vegetable Roots’ (1959), translated by Chao Tze-chiang:

When a man of insight appreciates the music of a lyre, calligraphy, poetry, or painting, he nurtures his mind with them; but a worldly man delights only in their physical appeals. When a noble-minded man appreciates mountains, rivers, clouds, or other natural objects, he develops his wisdom with them; but a vulgar man finds pleasure only in their apparent splendor. So we know that things have no fixed attribute. Whether they are noble or ignoble depends upon one’s understanding.

Walter Pater on Giorgione in The Renaissance (1873):

Now it is part of the ideality of the highest sort of dramatic poetry, that it presents us with a kind of profoundly significant and animated instants, a mere gesture, a look, a smile, perhaps—some brief and wholly concrete moment—into which, however, all the motives, all the interests and effects of a long history, have condensed themselves, and which seem to absorb past and future in an intense consciousness of the present. Such ideal instants the school of Giorgione selects, with its admirable tact, from that feverish, tumultuously coloured world of the old citizens of Venice—exquisite pauses in time, in which, arrested thus, we seem to be spectators of all the fulness of existence, and which are like some consummate extract or quintessence of life.

From Proust and Santayana (1937) by Van Meter Ames:

“To live aesthetically does not involve literally following the example of Santayana or anyone else who has a sense of beauty. It does not require living abroad or in an ivory tower. It does not necessarily mean devoting oneself to the fine arts or to the society of artists; nor does it involve the artificialities often practiced by “aesthetes.” Aesthetic is simply appreciative living, with awareness of lights and shadows, textures and tensions. It is living religiously without religion, with a sense of awe and gratitude; with inner joy, in the senses and the mind, in the revelation of the mystery and majesty of the universe; it means welcoming the sun of each succeeding day, the stars of each new night; responding to friends, wondering at their otherness and nearness; and ever marveling at being alive, being oneself, or dreaming.”