I’ve been a student of the Tao Te Ching for most of my adult life. I probably was first made aware of it in a comparative religion course in college; then I picked up the Gia-Fu Feng/Jane English translation that came out in 1972 – an oversize paperback with atmospheric black-and-white nature photos enhancing the text – and became more interested. Today it is the book to which I turn when I realize that I’ve gotten carried away with worries about the world.
Reputed to be more widely translated than any book except the Bible, the TTC presents a challenge to newcomers and aficionados alike: which version is best? Over the years I’ve accumulated more than fifty editions, reflecting my quest to get to the heart of this inspirational but enigmatic book. Consequently, when I feel the need to pull one off the shelf I have to pause.
There seem to be three basic approaches to publishing the TTC: poetic, meditative, and scholarly. Editions of the former generally run straight through the text’s 81 chapters and are intended to be read for their inspirational value; those of a meditative bent interrupt this flow with passages on each chapter’s meaning or implications; the scholarly versions comment on issues regarding provenance, translation, and context. I sense that most people prefer the poetic, and the ongoing popularity of the Feng/English and Stephen Mitchell editions bears this out. The meditative (e.g. that of self-help guru Wayne Dyer) I take with a grain of salt, since they generally tend to serve the author’s agenda.
But I lean toward the scholarly versions, since I’d like some indication from the translator that their modern English conveys the sense of the original Chinese – otherwise, I’d suspect I could be reading Lao Tzu’s thoughts second-hand, like some Cliff Notes edition or the novelization of a movie. This suspicion is borne out by the observations of some commentators that with the poetic and meditative versions – especially where the author isn’t even translating directly but working from other translations – you’re getting not necessarily what the text means but rather what the modern author wants it to mean. Consider one piece of on-line advice, to simply see how the translator has rendered the opening lines; then compare.
Reputed to be more widely translated than any book except the Bible, the TTC presents a challenge to newcomers and aficionados alike: which version is best? Over the years I’ve accumulated more than fifty editions, reflecting my quest to get to the heart of this inspirational but enigmatic book. Consequently, when I feel the need to pull one off the shelf I have to pause.
There seem to be three basic approaches to publishing the TTC: poetic, meditative, and scholarly. Editions of the former generally run straight through the text’s 81 chapters and are intended to be read for their inspirational value; those of a meditative bent interrupt this flow with passages on each chapter’s meaning or implications; the scholarly versions comment on issues regarding provenance, translation, and context. I sense that most people prefer the poetic, and the ongoing popularity of the Feng/English and Stephen Mitchell editions bears this out. The meditative (e.g. that of self-help guru Wayne Dyer) I take with a grain of salt, since they generally tend to serve the author’s agenda.
But I lean toward the scholarly versions, since I’d like some indication from the translator that their modern English conveys the sense of the original Chinese – otherwise, I’d suspect I could be reading Lao Tzu’s thoughts second-hand, like some Cliff Notes edition or the novelization of a movie. This suspicion is borne out by the observations of some commentators that with the poetic and meditative versions – especially where the author isn’t even translating directly but working from other translations – you’re getting not necessarily what the text means but rather what the modern author wants it to mean. Consider one piece of on-line advice, to simply see how the translator has rendered the opening lines; then compare.
Of all of the editions currently available, the one that I most often return to is by Ellen Chen. A first-hand translation by an American scholar of Chinese, it not only provides corroboration for word choice, it also offers thoughtful yet meaty commentary – no New Age niceties here – to allow one to meditate on the meaning of each passage. The only criticisms of it that I’ve come across have to do with its less than poetic flow, which may be why I prefer it. Professor Chen has chosen to treat the TTC as a work to be explored, to tease out its meaning rather than to paraphrase it in purplish prose.Chen’s Tao Te Ching was published in 1989 by Paragon House, a small independent publisher whose distribution networks may not be as far-reaching as those of larger New York houses that have published more popular versions, with the result that it may not be available in a lot of stores. (I also think the cover design has done the book a disservice, and attracting browsers in stores has a lot to do with sales needed to keep a book in stock.) But it’s worth seeking out – and to anyone who stumbles on this blog, I commend it wholeheartedly.
Another volume lacks commentary but is of value for a different reason. Tao Te Ching: The Definitive Edition by Jonathan Star earns its subtitle by virtue of providing a character-by-character translation, enabling you to “tao it yourself.” This approach has been taken before in a couple of other books (The Book of Lao Tzu by Yi Wu, now out of print, and The Gate of all Marvelous Things by Gregory Richter), but Star goes a step further by presenting a range of possible meanings for each ideogram, thus offering some insight into how so many different translations have come about. It’s an eye-opening look at this classic, but may be best appreciated by obsessives like me.
Remember the guy in the end-zone seats at football games holding up the “John 3:16” sign? I always wanted to hold up one that read “TTC: XX” for my favorite chapter of the Tao Te Ching. This little book is the best medicine I know for quieting the mind. In times like these, it comes in handy.
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