Some remarks on Chinese aesthetics in modern literature. Echoes and reflections of the Dao

Abstract

For a majority of academics on Chinese Cultureat least until the times of Dr. Sun Yat-Sen the issue of aesthetics presents itself as a labyrinth in the metaphoric and in the temporal sense as well.The Argentinian erudite and writer Jorge Luis Borges aptly poses such matter in his celebrated tale “The garden of divergent paths” which is also located in China in the city of QingDao. Borges presents a fictional writer Ts’uiPên who avoids the mere mention of the concept of Time through his incomplete novel precisely to reveal that this missing notion is all that matters.An immediate parallel with the paramount novel “The Scholars” by Wu Jingzi arouses to the mind of the present author, especially when he recalls that the real Chinese title of the book is “The Unofficial History of the Forest of Scholars” stressing the fact that lives are trees that happen in a sort of imaginary forest or natural labyrinth.