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

There is a subtle charm in the taste of tea which makes it
irresistible and capable of idealisation. Western humourists
were not slow to mingle the fragrance of their thought with
its aroma. It has not the arrogance of wine, the self-
consciousness of coffee, nor the simpering innocence of
cocoa. Already in 1711, says the Spectator: "I would therefore
in a particular manner recommend these my speculations to
all well-regulated families that set apart an hour every morning
for tea, bread and butter; and would earnestly advise them for
their good to order this paper to be punctually served up and
to be looked upon as a part of the tea-equipage." Samuel
Johnson draws his own portrait as "a hardened and shameless
tea drinker, who for twenty years diluted his meals with only
the infusion of the fascinating plant; who with tea amused the
evening, with tea solaced the midnight, and with tea welcomed
the morning."

Charles Lamb, a professed devotee, sounded the true note of Teaism
when he wrote that the greatest pleasure he knew was to do a
good action by stealth, and to have it found out by accident. For
Teaism is the art of concealing beauty that you may discover it,
of suggesting what you dare not reveal. It is the noble secret of
laughing at yourself, calmly yet thoroughly, and is thus humour
itself,--the smile of philosophy. All genuine humourists may in
this sense be called tea-philosophers,--Thackeray, for instance,
and of course, Shakespeare. The poets of the Decadence
(when was not the world in decadence?), in their protests against
materialism, have, to a certain extent, also opened the way
to Teaism. Perhaps nowadays it is our demure contemplation
of the Imperfect that the West and the East can meet in
mutual consolation.

The Taoists relate that at the great beginning of the No-Beginning,
Spirit and Matter met in mortal combat. At last the Yellow
Emperor, the Sun of Heaven, triumphed over Shuhyung, the
demon of darkness and earth. The Titan, in his death agony,
struck his head against the solar vault and shivered the blue dome
of jade into fragments. The stars lost their nests, the moon
wandered aimlessly among the wild chasms of the night. In
despair the Yellow Emperor sought far and wide for the repairer
of the Heavens. He had not to search in vain. Out of the
Eastern sea rose a queen, the divine Niuka, horn-crowned and
dragon-tailed, resplendent in her armor of fire. She welded the
five-coloured rainbow in her magic cauldron and rebuilt the
Chinese sky. But it is told that Niuka forgot to fill two tiny
crevices in the blue firmament. Thus began the dualism of
love--two souls rolling through space and never at rest until they
join together to complete the universe. Everyone has to build
anew his sky of hope and peace.