Southern People Weekly features cartoon animals acting out quotations from Baltasar Gracián’s The Art of Worldly Wisdom in every issue. Here’s two newlywed rabbits depicting #210: “Know how to play the Card of Truth”:
‘Tis dangerous, yet a good man cannot avoid speaking it. But great skill is needed here: the most expert doctors of the soul pay great attention to the means of sweetening the pill of truth….with the same truth it can flatter one and fell another to the ground. Matters of to-day should be treated as if they were long past.
The image is by Bu Hua (卜桦), an artist who came to prominence for her Flash animations. These illustrations come from The Book of Wisdom II; the first volume used characters from Journey to the West to depict Gracián’s maxims.
See Bu Hua’s website for more illustrations and animations.
- Gracian translation from Joseph Jacobs (1892)
- Earlier on Danwei: Zhu Deyong in Sanlian