So you filled your hands

Sailor Twain; or, The Mermaid in the Hudson is a very nifty webcomic that's still new enough that it shouldn't be hard to catch up quickly from the beginning. Today's post had this really cool thing in which the creator talked about the Chinese concept of the literati, and I just had to have it here for myself:

This is not our Western idea of an effete, cerebral, bookish type. This is the adventurer of the inner worlds, a sensuous, heroic sort of scholar, with an unseen connection to other literati of past ages.

This bond across time—more than just having a favorite author or something—this loving bond arcs across space and centuries, linking lives and minds in deep chains of feeling. In this connective way, studying the greats of the past isn’t just academic. It’s about joining them, becoming them a little, receiving from them, and even giving oneself to them, backwards through time, through art. Exciting stuff right?