Did you ever start a book, even though you were pretty sure the content would fly over your head, because you were curious about the prose style?
I just finished The Analects of Confucius, and, sure enough, my yellow "remember this pearl of wisdom" hi-liter got a hell of a lot less use while I was reading it than my orange "chop this into song lyrics" hi-liter.
Like most works of Chinese literature, an extensively annotated one that has in turn been re-annotated for an English audience is essential to get anything out of them. No one has read this stuff without footnotes in 1500 years.
Now I'm baffled and annoyed that I somehow ended up with an edition that has no annotations, introductory notes, glossary, or even the translator's name.
It was so easy to avoid these types of problems back in the "brick-and-mortar bookstore" era. :sicko-wistful:
Did you ever start a book, even though you were pretty sure the content would fly over your head, because you were curious about the prose style?
I just finished The Analects of Confucius, and, sure enough, my yellow "remember this pearl of wisdom" hi-liter got a hell of a lot less use while I was reading it than my orange "chop this into song lyrics" hi-liter.
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deleted by creator
Like most works of Chinese literature, an extensively annotated one that has in turn been re-annotated for an English audience is essential to get anything out of them. No one has read this stuff without footnotes in 1500 years.
Now I'm baffled and annoyed that I somehow ended up with an edition that has no annotations, introductory notes, glossary, or even the translator's name.
It was so easy to avoid these types of problems back in the "brick-and-mortar bookstore" era. :sicko-wistful: