One of the joys of having so much time (barring the fact that most of it is spent in zombie-like stasis due to early mornings with the young baby) is that I can do some reading. I have a huge to read pile that needs some serious attention.
However, some books I don’t read from start to finish, nor will they appear in my book list. One such book is the Tao Te Ching, the Taoist text written by Lao Tzu. I’ve been reading a translation by Ursula Le Guin.
Poetry translation is immensely complex, something I tasted when translating some of Nobel prize winning poet Wislawa Szymborska’s work from Polish into English while at UCT. Of course the task was made more complex by the fact that I don’t speak Polish (nor does Le Guin speak Chinese). Another example that comes to mind is the English translation of a poem called The Afrikaans language, by J. Lion Cachet. The line Hul skel my uit vir Hotnotsmeid is translated to They curse me for a Hottentot, which I’m sure anyone who speaks both languages will agree is nowhere close, poetically. The famous Jou ma’s ‘n poes from the streets of Cape Town is also nowhere near the literal translation, Your mother’s a vagina. That phrase is untranslatable I’d say.
Le Guin’s Tao Te Ching translation is streets ahead of any others I’ve read, and she consciously undermines the image of the masculine, authoritarian Taoist sage drawn in some translations. Compare the following extracts. First, translated by Da Liu,
Can you keep the spirit and body without scattering?
Can you concentrate your mind to use breath, making it soft and quiet as an infant’s?
Can you purify your contemplation and keep it from turbulence?
Can you love the people and rule the state by nonaction?
The gate of heaven opens and closes. Can you be like the female?
Can you become enlightened and penetrate everywhere without knowledge?
Next, one by Charles Muller:
Pacifying the agitated material soul and holding to oneness:
Are you able to avoid separation?
Focusing your energy on the release of tension:
Can you be like an infant?
In purifying your insight:
Can you un-obstruct it?
Loving the people and ruling the state:
Can you avoid over-manipulation?
In opening and closing the gate of Heaven:
Can you be the female?
In illuminating the whole universe:
Can you be free of rationality?
Next, the version on Wikisource, by Legge:
When the intelligent and animal souls are held together in one embrace, they can be kept from separating. When one gives undivided attention to the (vital) breath, and brings it to the utmost degree of pliancy, he can become as a (tender) babe. When he has cleansed away the most mysterious sights (of his imagination), he can become without a flaw.
In loving the people and ruling the state, cannot he proceed without any (purpose of) action? In the opening and shutting of his gates of heaven, cannot he do so as a female bird? While his intelligence reaches in every direction, cannot he (appear to) be without knowledge?
(The Tao) produces (all things) and nourishes them; it produces them and does not claim them as its own; it does all, and yet does not boast of it; it presides over all, and yet does not control them. This is what is called ‘The mysterious Quality’ (of the Tao).
Finally, Le Guin’s version:
Can you keep your soul in your body,
hold fast to the one,
and so learn to be whole?
Can you center your energy,
be soft, tender,
and so learn to be a baby?
Can you keep the deep water still and clear,
so it reflects without blurring?
Can you love people and run things,
and do so by not doing?
Opening, closing the Gate of Heaven,
can you be like a bird with her nestlings?
Piercing bright through the cosmos,
can you know by not knowing?
Le Guin and Muller’s version are th only two I’d call poetry. The others are prose attempts at capturing the essence, but the language of poetry has its own essence, one that can’t be captured in prose, or by trying only to understand the meaning of the words. Note also the different models used to describe opening and closing the gate of heaven. Muller and Da Liu use female, Legge, female bird, while Le Guin, eye ever alert for gender bias, uses a bird with her nestlings. I can’t be sure exactly what aspect of the female Lao Tzu was highlighting (or even worse, the female bird) from the other translations. The only one that creates an image for me is Le Guin’s version, a bird with her nestlings, selfless, doing without thinking, knowing without knowing (everything I’m not when Dorje wakes up at 4 in the morning).
Translating something like the Tao Te Ching has further complications too. The passages above are usually seen to describe techniques of meditation. Da Liu, who used the word female, describes the female opening the gate of heaven as being the highest goal of Taoist meditation, when the so-called holy foetus passes through the top of the skull (not as strange as it sounds, it’s simply chi moving through the body in a particular way, and the awakening of pre-natal breathing, dormant since birth). If Lao Tzu was referring to that, then Le Guin’s translation misses the point entirely.
Seeing as I’m nowhere near the birth of any holy foetus just yet (although my son…), I’m enjoying Le Guin’s version.
As a final taste, compare Da Liu’s:
Inasmuch as I betake myself to nonaction, the people of themselves become developed
with Le Guin’s
I practice inaction, and the people look after themselves.