Essays in Idleness (Tsurezuregusa)
Yoshida Kenkō · 1330
The second great zuihitsu text. 243 numbered fragments on impermanence, beauty, boredom, and the proper way to live. A Zen sensibility before Zen was a word Westerners used.
The case against
Kenkō the sage shares these pages with Kenkō the crank. For every clear-eyed fragment on impermanence there are three grumbling about parvenus, sloppy etiquette, and the decline of court manners since the good old days. The passages on women are ugly even by fourteenth-century standards, and 243 fragments with no order means the gold sits in gravel.
Essays · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
if this one calls to you, so will these →
