LONDON.- A remarkable collection of handwritten notes by Chairman Mao, of the utmost rarity on the international market, will be offered for sale for the first time at Sotheby's on 11 July 2017. Dating from 1975, they reveal Mao’s continuing interest in and engagement with Classical Chinese Literature, a constant love throughout his life, even as his heath declined in his final years.

The unique manuscript notes are the fruits of meetings between Mao and Di Lu, a classical Chinese scholar from Mao's native Hunan, in the final year of his life.

With failing sight and increasing difficulty in articulating words, he had begun to find himself cut off from the cultural traditions that held such deep meaning to him. Thus, The Party Central Committee was tasked with finding someone who could read classical works to Mao, and Di Lu was brought to see Mao.

Following their first meeting, during which Di had difficulty understanding what Mao was saying, she asked him to write his thoughts into a notepad to ease communication, and she also made her own notes of the conversation.

Not surprisingly, his attention is mostly focused on the intersection of poetry and politics. He quotes approvingly from the Tang poet Bai Juyi on the moral necessity of the poet to describe contemporary society, and praises Du Fu as the poet saint of his generation for his concern over the plight of common people (although he has nothing but contempt for his tendency to, in Mao's words, cry like a baby at every opportunity).

He dismisses the glib claim made in a Han dynasty poem ('Ling Du Fu') that panegyrics are not written for weak rulers. His favourite poet of the Tang dynasty was Li Bai, and he drew Di's attention to lines from 'Difficulty of the Shu Road' which he sees as having particular political resonance.

From the collection of Di Lu’s family, the notes will appear in the Sotheby’s London sale of “English Literature, History, Children’s Books and Illustrations” on 11th July with an estimate of £60,000-80,000*.

Mao’s passion for Literature
Mao's love of poetry was kindled during his adolescence at Dongshan Upper Primary school in his native Hunan in the years before the Xinhai Revolution. A voracious reader, Mao's first employment on arrival in Beijing in 1918 was as an assistant at Peking University Library, where the librarian was the early Chinese Communist Li Dazhao.

Mao even had especially large pockets made for his military jacket so that he could always have a book with him. Compatriots recalled that in the desperate period of 1927-28 when Mao was with the Red Army in Jinggangshan, rare moments of calm would be spent discussing poetry with comrades such as Zhu De and Chen Yi.

He was himself a capable poet, although the authorship of some of the works attributed to him in his lifetime has been disputed. As early as 1917 he was writing poetry when he spent a month of the summer on a walking tour of Hunan, begging food and lodging. He continued to write through the long years of war: his most famous poem, 'Snow', is said to have been written on his first aeroplane flight, travelling to meet Chiang Kai-shek after the Japanese surrender in 1945.