Читать книгу Chinese Fables - Lak-Khee Tay-Audouard - Страница 9
ОглавлениеThe Wrong Audience
Kung-Ming I was an accomplished musician on the ch’in, the seven-string zither, the Chinese scholar’s instrument. Excellent though he was, he had one great failing: he didn’t care a snapped string about his audience and paid no attention to the response of the audience who came to hear him play.
Kung-Ming had studied the instrument in the old-school belief that it is the way to purity and harmony with the universe. To Kung-Ming playing the ch’in was meditation: he withdrew into himself, thought only lofty thoughts, and cared nothing about the effects of his music on his listeners. To enhance his purity, he often played the ch’in in a secluded pavilion or on the banks of an icy mountain stream. He best liked playing alone under a full moon on a hillside overlooking the town.
One day Kung-Ming came upon a meadow bright with sunshine and wildflowers and a brown cow grazing on clover. The scene was so sunny and peaceful that Kung-Ming was moved to bring out his ch’in, to celebrate the meadow, the sun, the brown cow. He plucked from the strings a run of sound so joyous it made his own heart sing.
The sun shone on, the meadow bloomed, the cow grazed on and did not even lift his head.
Slightly annoyed, Kung-Ming produced a series of trills and ripples like the warbling of songbirds and the burbling of brooks, sounds so beautiful he felt himself almost melt away to become one with the meadow, the hillside, the brook, the brown cow.
The sun shone on, the brook burbled on, and the brown cow continued grazing, though she twitched an ear and flicked her tail at the flies on her back.
Thoroughly annoyed, Kung-Ming struck two loud, discordant notes—Twannnggg!! Zzzinnnggg!!
“Mooooo!” lowed the cow, lifting her head to look mournfully at Kung-Ming before going back to munching grass.
“Verily I have the wrong audience,” said Kung-Ming to himself. He left the meadow a wiser musician, with an awakened appreciation of those who came to hear his music.