Pu Songling

thumb|With timeAnd my love of hoarding,The matter sent me by friendsFrom the four cornersHas grown into a pile. Pu Songling (Chinese: 蒲松齡; 5 June 1640 – 25 February 1715) was a Qing Dynasty Chinese writer, best known as the author of Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio (Liaozhai zhiyi). Quotes Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio (1740) My talents are not those of Kan Pao, elegant explorer of the records of the Gods; I am rather animated by the spirit of Su Tung-P'o, who loved to hear men speak of the supernatural. I get people to commit what they tell me to writing, and subsequently I dress it up in the form of a story; thus in the lapse of time my friends from all quarters have supplied me with quantities of material, which, from my habit of collecting, has grown into a vast pile. "Author's Own Record", trans. Herbert Allen Giles in Gems of Chinese Literature (1922), p. 235 Variant translation: Of tales toldI have made a book.With timeAnd my love of hoarding,The matter sent me by friendsFrom the four cornersHas grown into a pile. "Author's Preface", lines 26–32, trans. John Minford in Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio (Penguin, 2006), pp. 30–31 How foolish men are, to see nothing but beauty in what is clearly evil! [...] Heaven's Way has its inexorable justice, but some mortals remain foolish and never see the light! "The Painted Skin", trans. John Minford in Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio (Penguin, 2006), p. 521 Quotes about Pu Songling One striking difference between many of Pu Song-ling's literary ghost stories and their Western counterparts is the frequent undercurrent of whimsy and humor, found precisely in the conjunction of the ordinary and the supernatural, the domestic and demonic. Stephen Owen, An Anthology of Chinese Literature: Beginnings to 1911 (1996), p. 1103 External links Category:1640 births Category:1715 deaths Category:Short story writers from China