Pleasant
Diversion: Judging Beauty Li Yu
‘To love good food and beautiful
women is human nature.’ ‘Not to know how handsome Zidu is, is not to have yes
in one’s head.’ The sages of old chose their words carefully. The reason why
they made this point repeatedly, yet without giving offence, is that they did
not pretend that what is natural to man does not exist. If I lust after another
man’s beautiful wife or concubine, that offends his instincts; not only is the
lusting immoral, it may get me killed. If I lust after my own beautiful wife or
concubine, that conforms to my legitimate instincts: if the sages were to come
back to life, they would find in my favour, and not regard it as a transgression.
Confucius said, ‘Those who enjoy wealth and honour should behave as befits
their station in life.’ If a man who is in a position to do so does not buy one
or two concubines for his pleasure, that would be to enjoy wealth and honour
but behave as befits the poor and humble. The way of the sages was based on
human feelings; what need is there for such dissembling, such feigned purity
and frugality? But if you have a harridan for a wife, it would be sensible to
use this pretence to disguise your motives, otherwise, your partiality for a
beautiful concubine would in effect be cruelty, your tenderness might be the
very cause of her death. If that happened, you could not plead in justification
the belief that a beauty’s fate is always sad, and act as the heartless agent
of Heaven in bringing about her punishment. I am a poor scholar, and have
always been out of luck. I have not only never got near the nation’s supreme
beauties or come across heavenly perfection, even women of passable appearance
and rough and ready quality I have rarely had the good fortune to meet. That
being so, if I presume to rank women’s qualities of voice, bearing and looks,
and perorate on their singing and dancing, I will be laughed at by the veterans
of the pleasure quarters. Yet, though my score has been low, my enthusiasm is
high; though experience is lacking, the principles are easy to figure out. The
wondrous pictures our minds conceive of are more appealing than the impressions
of thos who have personally trod the primrose path. If you don’t believe me,
you can test my claim against the record of history. King Xiang of Chu was a ruler of
men. His harem was packed full of shapely females, and what he didn’t get up to
with them isn’t worth mentioning. Yet what he has come down the ages to us is
not his real exploits, but his dream of making love to the nymphs of Mount Wu,
and that is known to every soul. But where can we find the terrace where the
tryst took place? Where is the nymph’s dwelling? The legend says the nymph
turned into a floating cloud in the morning, and into drifting rain at dusk:
how can we account for that? Are there any clues we can trace, any facts we can
set out? It was all an illusion. The force of an illusion is ten times that of
fact; that is why that story lives on. If I can write down in some sort
of order things that are ten times superior to fact for people to go on, then
the secret of pleasant diversions will be open to all. If my readers wish to
investigate the source of my learning, I respectfully refer them to the story
of the King of Chu’s adventure with the nymph.
（David Pollard 译） |
