Re: CHAT: Tao Te Ching translations (long-ish ;)

Andy Canivet scripsit:

> >Where shall we find a rule wise enough to know what to teach and what
> >to withhold?
Oops, that should have been "ruler", not "rule".

> Yes - 20 is another good one!  The first line of the Mitchell - "Stop
> thinking, and end your problems."   I know from personal experience that
> over-thinking can often be a bad thing.
That doesn't seem to match at all.  Are you looking at the right one?

Le Guin's rendition of #20:

20 Being different

How much difference between yes and no?
What difference between good and bad?

What the people fear
must be feared.
O desolation!
Not yet, not yet has it reached its limit!

Everybody's cheerful,
cheerful as if at a party,
or climbing a tower in springtime.
And here I sit unmoved,
clueless, like a child,
a baby too young to smile.

Forlorn, forlorn,
Like a homeless person.
Most people have plenty.
I'm the one that's poor,
a fool right through.

Ignorant, ignorant.
Most people are so bright.
I'm the one that's dull.
Most people are so keen.
I don't have the answers.
Oh, I'm desolate, at sea,
adrift, without harbor.

Everybody has something to do.
I'm the clumsy one, out of place.
I'm the different one,
for my food
is the milk of the mother.

Le Guin's comment:

The difference between yes and no, good and bad, is something only
the "bright" people, the people with the answers, can understand.
A poor stupid Taoist can't make it out.

This chapter is full of words like huang (wild, barren; famine), tun
(ignorant, chaotic), hun (dull, turbid), men (sad, puzzled, mute),
and hu (confused, obscured, vague).  They configure [good word!]
chaos, confusion, a "bewilderness" [another good word!] in which
the mind wanders without certainties, desolate, silent, awkward.
But in that milky, dim strangeness lies the way.  It can't be found
in the superficial order imposed by positive and negative opinions,
the good/bad, yes/no moralizing that denies fear and ignores mystery.

Le Guin's notes:

The standard texts ask what's the difference between wei and o, which
might be translated "yes" and "yessir".  The Ma wang tui [the newly
discovered text] has wei and ho: "yes" and "no".  THis is parallel with
th next line ("good and bad" in the standard text, "beautiful and ugly"
in the Ma wang tui).  Here's a case where the older text surely is
correct, the later ones corrupt.

In the first two lines of th second verse, the Ma wang tui text is
perfectly clear: "A person whom everyone fears ought to be feared".
The standard text is strange, obscure: "What the people fear must be
feared."  Yet the next lines follow from it as they don't from the Ma
wang tui, and after much pondering I followed the standard text.

BTW, the Thurrodowist hermit that Ramarren meets in Le Guin's early novel
_City of Illusions_ is in fact a Thoreau-Taoist.

--
John Cowan <jcowan@...>     http://www.reutershealth.com
I amar prestar aen, han mathon ne nen,    http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
han mathon ne chae, a han noston ne 'wilith.  --Galadriel, _LOTR:FOTR_