Abstract
Liu Xizai attaches great importance to the relationship between the character of the author and the quality of an artwork, and generally refers the former to the latter in a metaphoric way. He distinguished three levels of artistic value in artworks and equated them to three kinds of author's character. The best character of an author is to keep the primary bound ("yuan fen"), the talented ("ying jie") comes next, and the mean and banal ("bei wei") lies at the bottom. This paper analyzes the characteristics of Liu's concept of "yuan fen" in four aspects. The first is rooted in Si-Meng School's Doctrine of Mind, reflecting the traditional Chinese philosophy of Heaven and mankind. The second is embodied in the Constant Way, which conveys the spirit of moderating the extremities with the rationalism. The third is the appreciation of integrated beauties ("jian mei"), which represents harmony between identity and difference. The fourth is that being the best has a beauty in itself and it is the natural expression of "non-doing" as the ideal aesthetic state of mind.
First Page
133
Last Page
142
Recommended Citation
Tao, Xingchuan. 2013. "On Liu Xizai's Aesthetic Concept of the Author's Primary Bound." Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art 33, (4): pp.133-142. https://tsla.researchcommons.org/journal/vol33/iss4/13
