The Dream Pool Essays (Pinyin: Mèng Xī Bǐ Tán; Wade-Giles: Meng⁴ Hsi¹ Pi³-t'an²; Chinese: 夢溪筆談／梦溪笔谈) was an extensive book written by the Chinese polymath, scientist and statesman Shen Kuo (1031-1095) by 1088 AD, during the Song Dynasty (960-1279) of China. Although Shen was previously a highly renowned government official and military general, he compiled this enormous written work while virtually isolated on his lavish garden estate near modern-day Zhenjiang, Jiangsu province. He named the book after the name he gave to his estate, the "Dream Brook". The literal translated meaning is Brush Talks from a Dream Brook, and in his biography in the Dictionary of Scientific Biography (New York 1970-1990), Shen Kuo is quoted as saying:
Because I had only my writing brush and ink slab to converse with, I call it Brush Talks.
Read more about Dream Pool Essays: History, Recent Translations, Book Chapters of The Meng Xi Bi Tan
Famous quotes containing the words dream, pool and/or essays:
“Dream is not a revelation. If a dream affords the dreamer some light on himself, it is not the person with closed eyes who makes the discovery but the person with open eyes lucid enough to fit thoughts together. Dream—a scintillating mirage surrounded by shadows—is essentially poetry.”
—Michel Leiris (1901–1990)
“I see by the papers that you have once more stirred that pool of intellectual stagnation, the educational convention.”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)
“What are these essays but grotesque and monstrous bodies, pieced together of different members, without any definite shape, without any order, coherence, or proportion, except they be accidental?”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)