Pu Songling

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).

With time
And my love of hoarding,
The matter sent me by friends
From the four corners
Has grown into a pile.

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 told
      I have made a book.
      With time
      And my love of hoarding,
      The matter sent me by friends
      From the four corners
      Has 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

• Encyclopedic article on Pu Songling on Wikipedia