Other Records of Note

Of everything in this treatise, this is the part I have most enjoyed writing, because it concerns books.

There are two histories Your Grace must have in hand before the rest of this treatise will be of much use. The first is Samarskand and the ancient world, which is where the present Empire comes from, and also where it draws most of its romantic ideas about itself. The second is the history of Singhapura, its growth and its blunders. I have written up both here, drawn from the Seven Great Classics, with such commentary as seems useful.

I urge Your Grace to find time for the Classics themselves. I do not recommend them for their prose. Among Singhapura’s nobility, familiarity with the Classics is taken as a mark of breeding, and unfamiliarity as a mark of the opposite. Students and noble families hold contests of quotation and call-and-reply, and the same passages are cited in the law courts and in serious political argument.

The people who hold power in Singhapura speak to one another in these books. A ruler who cannot follow the conversation is at the mercy of those who can.

I have added the Modern Classics for two reasons. They tell the truth of their worlds more plainly than the official record does, and several of their authors were suppressed or exiled for it. They are also a great deal more enjoyable than the older works, and a reader drawn on by interest remembers more than one who reads from duty. If Your Grace begins with these and finds her way from them to the Seven Great Classics, they will have done their work.

Last, there is a short section on books banned in Singhapura. People everywhere tend to celebrate the same things, but what a people fears is its own, and far more revealing. I would advise Your Grace to see whether copies can be had.

Folio XVIII · The World According to Art

Transcribed by Victor Konara