tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Jul 09 07:19:12 2003
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Re: Tao Te Ching Chp. 63
- From: "Agnieszka Solska" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: Tao Te Ching Chp. 63
- Date: Wed, 09 Jul 2003 12:14:20 +0000
jImugh:
>bIvangbe'taHvIS yIvang.
>bIvumbe'taHvIS yIvum.
>
>Act without taking action.
>Work without doing work.
ja' ghunchu'wI':
>The Klingon text loses the subtle distinction between two concepts which
>appears in the English, and turns it into a simple contradiction. Consider
>instead:
>
>bIchavbe'taHvIS yIvang.
>bIta'be'taHvIS yIvum.
ghunchu'wI' chovnatlh qel DloraH:
>To me this sounds like you're telling someone to waste their time; to take
>action and >toil, but don't actually achieve anything. Just the opposite
>of the intended meaning.
jang ghunchu'wI':
>Yes, that's how I interpret the English above. Act and work, but have no
>effect.
ja' je Dlorah:
>>Just the opposite of the intended meaning.
>
>yIchav 'ach yIvangQo'.
>yIta' 'ach yIvumQo'.
>
>Achieve without taking action.
>Accomplish without toil.
DloraH chovnatlh qel ghunchu'wI':
>Interesting. I don't know the original, of course, but I read the intent or
>"work without doing work" as "expend effort without changing anything."
>Sort of along the lines of the verb {mI'}. The Klingon given by 'ISqu'
>(bIvumbe'taHvIS yIvum) is of no help here. :-)
qech potlh much 'ay'vam bI'reS.
The first line of Chapter 63, "wei wu wei", is one of the key sentences of
the whole book. It is probably the only one that is often quoted in the
original Chinese. It speaks of practicing non-action, the idea which lies at
the very heart of philosophical taoism. I'm not an expert on taoism and I
may be wrong but in the light of what I've read I'd say that a person who
practices "non-action" is not a passive bystander who literally does
nothing, nor is s/he someone who "expends effort without changing anything".
Rather s/he is a person who does not waste energy going against the natural
order of things. Because such a person lets the forces of the universe work
through them the result is that whatever needs to be done is done but
seemingly effortlessly. This is mentioned in other chapters:
Chp 37:
Tao invariably takes no action
Yet nothing is left undone.
Chp 48
Yet though nothing is done, nothing is left undone.
As stated in Chapter 17 (yet unposted), a ruler who practices non-action
will be able to make his people prosper while remaining invisible:
The best ruler is barely known to the people.
[...]
When his task is accomplished.
Everyone says: "It happened by itself."
Tao Te Ching often conveys the idea that if we don't interfere with the
natural course of events the world will put itself right:
Chp 3:
If no action is taken, there is nothing that is not right.
Chp 37:
heaven and earth become stable by themselves
Elsewhere (Chp. 57)the sage, the "master practitioner of non-action" will
say:
I take no action, yet people transform by themselves.
I refrain from meddling yet people by themselves begin to prosper.
Now, the opening lines of Chapter 63 are:
wei2 wu2 wei2"
shi4 wu2 shi4
wei2 – act, do, practice
wu2 – not, without
wei2 - act, do, practice
shi4 – be busy with, practice, do, work
affairs, matter, business, daily activities
wu2 – not, without
shi4 – be busy with, practice, do, work
affairs, matter, business, daily activities;
also: interfere(ing), meddle(ing), busy-ness
As to what they mean ... My own translation is so lame that it might help to
see what others have done:
D.C. Lau:
Do that which consists in taking no action;
Pursue that which is not meddlesome;
John Wu:
DO the Non-Ado.
Strive for the effortless.
Gia-fu Feng and Jane English:
Practice non-action.
Work without doing.
Lin Yutang
Accomplish do-nothing.
Attend to no-affairs.
Robert Henricks:
Act without acting
Serve without concern for affairs;
James Legge:
(It is the way of the Tao) to act without (thinking of) acting;
to conduct affairs without (feeling the) trouble of them;
Arthur Waley:
It acts without action, does without doing
You may be puzzled at the fact that some renditions contain imperative
sentences urging the reader to proceed in a certain way while others contain
statements which describe Tao. This is because in most of the original text
the subjects are not explicitly stated. Normally in classical Chinese the
unexpressed subject can be understood from the context or its absence
indicates that it is indefinite or impersonal. What makes Tao Te Ching
particularly challenging is that there is often very little context and it
is really up to the reader or the translator to decide not only who is
talking and what is being talked about but also whether a sentence is a
statement or a command. As a result, existing tranlations are often
drastically different in structure and in meaning.
As to how the lines are best rendered in Klingon... Having read your
comments my first thought was to buy DloraH's idea concerning the form
though not the actual words. This would give me something like:
yIvang 'ach yIvangQo'.
yIvum 'ach yIvumQo'.
This rendition would be almost as terse as the Chinese and it would use the
same word twice in each line, which is what happens in the original.
Obviously, asking the reader to simultaneously do a thing and not to do it
is absurd but – it can be argued - then this is precisely what the original
is like. The first two lines of Chapter 63 ARE self-contradictory even in
Chinese.
However, havint slept on it I decided that I want to retain the paradox but
I do not really want my translation to sound confusing and silly. So now I'm
thinking along the lines of:
yIruch 'ach yIvangQo'.
yIvum 'ach yInISQo'.
or even:
yIruch: yIvangQo'.
yIvum: yInISQo'.
Practice non-action
Be busy without busy-ness
Well, the English version needs polishing... but, hopefully, the Klingon
text is beginning to make some sense.
Satlho', 'utlhpu'. muQaHqu' qechmey bomuchta'bogh. yabwIj lupIlmoH.
'ISqu'
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