Mournful and ancient regrets
Posted by Nick Milne on October 16, 2009
The Letters of Note blog, devoted to the wider dissemination of all manner of interesting letters, postcards, notes and so on from both today and ages past, has a scan and a translation of a thousand-year-old form letter from China – a form letter – in which the author expresses his regrets for a previous night’s drunken foolishness. It’s pretty delightful:
Yesterday, having drunk too much, I was intoxicated as to pass all bounds; but none of the rude and coarse language I used was uttered in a conscious state. The next morning, after hearing others speak on the subject, I realised what had happened, whereupon I was overwhelmed with confusion and ready to sink into the earth with shame.
Be sure to check it out in situ. The scan is quite beautiful, and there’s a link to other material of a similar nature recovered from a stash of documents originally produced by the ancient Dunhuang Bureau of Etiquette
