Innocence Blog

"You've hit it exactly!" said Dai-yu. "As a matter of fact even the language isn't of primary importance. The really important things are the ideas that lie behind the words. If the ideas that lie behind it are genuine, there's no need to embellish the language for the poem to be a good one. That's what they mean when they talk about 'not letting the words harm the meaning'."

Cao Xueqin

From The Story of the Stone, Vol. II
(translated by David Hawkes)