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

In a message dated 06/20/2002 05.16.24 AM, jcowan@REUTERSHEALTH.COM writes:

>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.
>
    Jonathan Star's verbatim translation of Verse 20:

The difference between a formal "yes"
    and a casual "yeah" - how slight!
The difference between knowing the Truth
    and not knowing it - how great!

Must I fear what others fear?
Should I fear desolation
    when there is abundance?
Should I fear darkness
    when that light is shining everywhere?
Nonsense!
The people of this world are steeped in their merrymaking
    as if gorging at a great feast
    or watching the sights of springtime
Yet here I sit, without a sign,
    staring blank-eyed like a child

I am but a guest in this world
While others rush about to get things done
    I accept what is offered
Oh, my mind is like that of a fool
    aloof to the clamor of life around me
Everyone seems so bright and alive
    with the sharp distinctions of day
I appear dark and dull
    with the blending of differences by night

I am drifting like an ocean, floating like the high winds
Everyone is so rooted in this world
    yet I have no place to rest my head
Indeed I am different. . . .
    I have no treasure but the Eternal Mother
    I have no food but what comes from her breast

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

Hanuman Zhang

"the sloth is a chinese poet upsidedown" --- jack kerouac {1922-69}
--------------------------------------------------

    "There is no reason for the poet to be limited to words, and in fact the
poet is most poetic when inventing languages. Hence the concept of the poet
as 'language designer'."  - O. B. Hardison, Jr.

    "La poésie date d' aujour d'hui."  (Poetry dates from today)
    "La poésie est en jeu." (Poetry is in play)
                - Blaise Cendrars