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[There is no excuse for this. None. There’s already waaay too many bad translations out there. I blame the first chapter on recovering from Covid and continuing it on rereading A Wizard of Earthsea.]
Originally, this was called Laozi after its supposed author. It has two sections, labeled in the most ancient complete manuscripts “dào” (way/path) and “dé” (virtue/power) after the (rather fuzzy) focus of each part, and when, during the Han Dynasty, it was raised to the status of a classic book, it was renamed Dào Dé Jīng after those labels: Classic of the Way and of Virtue.
It is old. Like, moldy ancient old, written in the Old Chinese used a thousand years before the Tang Dynasty, passed down over centuries in multiple traditions, some of them fragmentary, until it was finally standardized in a 2nd century CE recension preserved in two commentaries. This version (used as my base text) shaved off nearly every technically omittable grammatical particle from a philosophical-slash-mystical and so already hard-to-grasp text. We know the particles were dropped, rather than omitted from the start, because of those “most ancient manuscripts”: two copies found fifty years ago in a 168 BCE tomb in Mawangdui, Hunan, both of which have them. This makes the Mawangdui versions (they’re not identical) very helpful when puzzling through compressed grammar. They also have numerous other differences from the standard version—not just variant character forms, but sometimes substituting synonyms, which are useful for teasing out which meaning of a polysemous character the ancient copyists understood, as well as phrases with significantly different meanings, belonging to different textual traditions. The most important of these last I footnote as readings from “other text(s).”
My point being, it’s stupid hard to read, let alone understand. Do not assume my version has that quality the Ancients called “accuracy.”
Regarding the form, in our best reconstructed pronunciations of Old Chinese during Laozi’s supposed era, about three-quarters of the lines rhymed—so, yeah, it’s poetry. That said, I’m not even attempting meter or rhyme, or anything verse-ish beyond line breaks. Achieving coherence is difficult enough.
As far as annotations, there’s so many ambiguities and interpretations and layered commentaries here, I can’t even. Is too much. So Imma shut up as much as possible.
Classic of the Way and of Virtue, chapters 1-9
( A way that can be described is not the constant Way. / A name that can be named is not the constant Name. )
That’s enough, more than enough, for a first installment. [Yes, ugh, I’ve got more. Stupid obsessive brain.]
Index of Chinese translations
---L.
Subject quote from Closer, The Chainsmokers feat. Halsey.
Originally, this was called Laozi after its supposed author. It has two sections, labeled in the most ancient complete manuscripts “dào” (way/path) and “dé” (virtue/power) after the (rather fuzzy) focus of each part, and when, during the Han Dynasty, it was raised to the status of a classic book, it was renamed Dào Dé Jīng after those labels: Classic of the Way and of Virtue.
It is old. Like, moldy ancient old, written in the Old Chinese used a thousand years before the Tang Dynasty, passed down over centuries in multiple traditions, some of them fragmentary, until it was finally standardized in a 2nd century CE recension preserved in two commentaries. This version (used as my base text) shaved off nearly every technically omittable grammatical particle from a philosophical-slash-mystical and so already hard-to-grasp text. We know the particles were dropped, rather than omitted from the start, because of those “most ancient manuscripts”: two copies found fifty years ago in a 168 BCE tomb in Mawangdui, Hunan, both of which have them. This makes the Mawangdui versions (they’re not identical) very helpful when puzzling through compressed grammar. They also have numerous other differences from the standard version—not just variant character forms, but sometimes substituting synonyms, which are useful for teasing out which meaning of a polysemous character the ancient copyists understood, as well as phrases with significantly different meanings, belonging to different textual traditions. The most important of these last I footnote as readings from “other text(s).”
My point being, it’s stupid hard to read, let alone understand. Do not assume my version has that quality the Ancients called “accuracy.”
Regarding the form, in our best reconstructed pronunciations of Old Chinese during Laozi’s supposed era, about three-quarters of the lines rhymed—so, yeah, it’s poetry. That said, I’m not even attempting meter or rhyme, or anything verse-ish beyond line breaks. Achieving coherence is difficult enough.
As far as annotations, there’s so many ambiguities and interpretations and layered commentaries here, I can’t even. Is too much. So Imma shut up as much as possible.
Classic of the Way and of Virtue, chapters 1-9
( A way that can be described is not the constant Way. / A name that can be named is not the constant Name. )
That’s enough, more than enough, for a first installment. [Yes, ugh, I’ve got more. Stupid obsessive brain.]
Index of Chinese translations
---L.
Subject quote from Closer, The Chainsmokers feat. Halsey.