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周作人 《美文》
外国文学里有一种所谓论文，其中大约可以分作两类。一批评的，是学术性的。二记述的，是艺术性的，又称作美文。这里边又可以分出叙事与抒情，但也很多两者夹杂的。这种美文似乎在英语国民里最为发达，如中国所熟知的爱迭生，阑姆，欧文，霍桑诸人都做有很好的美文，近时高尔斯威西，吉欣，契斯透顿也是美文的好手。读好的论文，如读散文诗，因为他实在是诗与散文中间的桥。中国古文里的序，记与说等，也可以说是美文的一类。但在现代的国语文学里，还不曾见有这类文章，治新文学的人为什么不去试试呢？我以为文章的外形与内容，的确有点关系，有许多思想，既不能作为小说，又不适于做诗，（此只就体裁上说，若论性质则美文也是小说，小说也就是诗，《新青年》上库普林作的《晚间的来客》，可为一例，）便可以用论文式去表他。他的条件，同一切文学作品一样，只是真实简明便好。
我们可以看了外国的模范做去，但是须用自己的文句与思想，不可去模仿他们。《晨报》上的浪漫谈，以前有几篇倒有点相近，但是后来（恕我直说）落了窠臼，用上多少自然现象的字面，衰弱的感伤的口气，不大有生命了。我希望大家卷土重来，给新文学开辟出一块新的土地来，岂不好么？
作品译文
The Aesthetic Essay
In foreign literature there is the so-called lunwen (treatises), which is roughly divided into two groups: the reflecting ones, piping (critical), are scientific articles. The others are jishu (descriptive) and yishuxing (artistic), they are also called meiwen (aesthetic essay). Within these texts, one can distinguish between xushi (narrative) and shuqing (lyric). But there are also many mixed texts. It seems to me, that in the field of the aesthetic essay, English literature has achieved the greatest success. For example, Joseph Addison, Charles Lamb, Robert Owen, and Nathaniel Hawthorne are all well known for their aesthetic essays. In addition, the younger generation including John Gabsworthy, George Robert Gissing, and Gilbert Keith Chesterton is elegant in writing aesthetic essays.
Reading a good treatise is just as enjoyable as reading a sanwenshi (prose-poem), because the latter accurately acts as a bridge between poetry and prose. In the three genres of pre-modern literature xu (foreword), ji (record), and shuo (explanations) one can also see forms of the aesthetic essay. But in modern literature so far aesthetical wenzhang (essay) have yet to appear. Why don’t the people that shape the New Literature try to write it? In my opinion, there is a relationship between an essay’s form and its content. Many ideas, that cannot be expressed in either a poem or story, can still be expressed in a treatise. Here, the word “treatise” refers to its literary form. Because of its essence, the aesthetic essay belongs to the story, and the story is nothing else but a poem. An example for this is “The guest in the evening” by Alexander Kiprin, which appeared in the New Youth. As in other works of literature, truth, simplicity and clarity are the prerequisites. We can imitate the foreign form of aesthetic essays, but we can never copy them, because we have to express our own thoughts in our own sentences. Articles similar to these were published in the rubric “On romanticism” of the Morning Post some time ago. But later (please excuse my openness) they returned to the restrictions of the old norms again. However natural they might have appeared upon a first glance, they did not show any strong vitality with their weakened, sad and sentimental styles. I hope that the aesthetical essay is encouraged to come back, and will open up a new field for the New Literature. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?
