"tboft11" - читать интересную книгу автора (Okakura Kakuzo)

Mankind has done worse. In the worship of Bacchus, we
have sacrificed too freely; and we have even transfigured
the gory image of Mars. Why not consecrate ourselves to
the queen of the Camelias, and revel in the warm stream
of sympathy that flows from her altar? In the liquid amber
within the ivory-porcelain, the initiated may touch the sweet
reticence of Confucius, the piquancy of Laotse, and the
ethereal aroma of Sakyamuni himself.

Those who cannot feel the littleness of great things in
themselves are apt to overlook the greatness of little things
in others. The average Westerner, in his sleek complacency,
will see in the tea ceremony but another instance of the
thousand and one oddities which constitute the quaintness
and childishness of the East to him. He was wont to regard
Japan as barbarous while she indulged in the gentle arts of
peace: he calls her civilised since she began to commit
wholesale slaughter on Manchurian battlefields. Much
comment has been given lately to the Code of the Samurai,
--the Art of Death which makes our soldiers exult in self-
sacrifice; but scarcely any attention has been drawn to
Teaism, which represents so much of our Art of Life.
Fain would we remain barbarians, if our claim to civilisation
were to be based on the gruesome glory of war. Fain
would we await the time when due respect shall be paid to
our art and ideals.

When will the West understand, or try to understand, the
East? We Asiatics are often appalled by the curious web
of facts and fancies which has been woven concerning us.
We are pictured as living on the perfume of the lotus, if not
on mice and cockroaches. It is either impotent fanaticism or
else abject voluptuousness. Indian spirituality has been
derided as ignorance, Chinese sobriety as stupidity, Japanese
patriotism as the result of fatalism. It has been said that we
are less sensible to pain and wounds on account of the
callousness of our nervous organisation!

Why not amuse yourselves at our expense? Asia returns the
compliment. There would be further food for merriment if
you were to know all that we have imagined and written
about you. All the glamour of the perspective is there, all the
unconscious homage of wonder, all the silent resentment of
the new and undefined. You have been loaded with virtues
too refined to be envied, and accused of crimes too
picturesque to be condemned. Our writers in the past--the
wise men who knew--informed us that you had bushy tails
somewhere hidden in your garments, and often dined off a
fricassee of newborn babes! Nay, we had something worse
against you: we used to think you the most impracticable