The Aesthetic Essay

In foreign literature there is the so-called lunwen (treatises), which is roughly divided into two groups: the reflecting ones, piping (critical), are scientific articles. The others are jishu (descriptive) and yishuxing (artistic), they are also called meiwen (aesthetic essay). Within these texts, one can distinguish between xushi (narrative) and shuqing (lyric). But there are also many mixed texts. It seems to me, that in the field of the aesthetic essay, English literature has achieved the greatest success. For example, Joseph Addison, Charles Lamb, Robert Owen, and Nathaniel Hawthorne are all well known for their aesthetic essays. In addition, the younger generation including John Gabsworthy, George Robert Gissing, and Gilbert Keith Chesterton is elegant in writing aesthetic essays.

Reading a good treatise is just as enjoyable as reading a sanwenshi (prose-poem), because the latter accurately acts as a bridge between poetry and prose. In the three genres of pre-modern literature xu (foreword), ji (record), and shuo (explanations) one can also see forms of the aesthetic essay. But in modern literature so far aesthetical wenzhang (essay) have yet to appear. Why don't the people that shape the New Literature try to write it? In my opinion, there is a relationship between an essay's form and its content. Many ideas, that cannot be expressed in either a poem or story, can still be expressed in a treatise. Here, the word "treatise" refers to its literary form. Because of its essence, the aesthetic essay belongs to the story, and the story is nothing else but a poem. An example for this is "The guest in the evening" by Alexander Kiprin, which appeared in the New Youth. As in other works of literature, truth, simplicity and clarity are the prerequisites. We can imitate the foreign form of aesthetic essays, but we can never copy them, because we have to express our own thoughts in our own sentences. Articles similar to these were published in the rubric "On romanticism" of the Morning Post some time ago. But later (please excuse my openness) they returned to the restrictions of the old norms again. However natural they might have appeared upon a first glance, they did not show any strong vitality with their weakened, sad and sentimental styles. I hope that the aesthetical essay is encouraged to come back, and will open up a new field for the New Literature. Wouldn't that be wonderful?