Daodejing

Absolutely wonderful! A favorite I will read again and again. ( )

Going to take a bit more reading to make sense of it all, but there are some great sections. Amongst others, I like "Prudence", "Immateriality", "Know your weakness", "Not knowing" and "Stay Flexible".

Mmmm, it seems it might be nice to read a different translation - the one by Stephen Mitchell feels more eloquent and natural. ( )

The path into the light seems dark,
the path forward seems to go back,
the direct path seems long,
true power seems weak,
true purity seems tarnished,
true steadfastness seems changeable,
true clarity seems obscure,
the greatest care seems unsophisticated,
the greatest love seems indifferent,
the greatest wisdom seems childish. ( )

I'm pretty frustrated with the Goodreads interface for this kind of thing. I have read over two dozen translations of the Tao Te Ching, with wildly different opinions of some different translations. Considering some of them are so bad they completely misrepresent the work itself in a way that would confound any attempt of most readers to derive any value from it, and my opinions range from one star ratings up to five, there's no good way to really represent my perspective on this work in all its translations on Goodreads, because it applies my rating to one of them to others I have not intentionally selected as read at times, and it is difficult at times to get Goodreads to find a specific version. Sometimes, if someone reads my review of one of them, it will be the review that, for me, applies to others as well even if I have wildly different opinions on the others or haven't read those others at all, according to the Goodreads interface.

This is, frankly, just completely ridiculous.

Thus far, in my life, the best complete, natural language translation I have read is Stephen Mitchell's. It captures the spirit of the work better than any other I have read; a couple phrases seem poorly adapted (e.g. reference to trucks), but the worst problems are extremely minor, and easily identified and ignored. Witter Bynner's is close in some respects, but it feels like the author is trying too hard, and just leaves me wishing for Stephen Mitchell's translation.

The worst so far is John Bright-Fey's, which is so weirdly overwrought and off the point that it seems to lack any meaningful value whatsoever. It purports to make clear, but only obscures with overuse of self-important phrasing and far too much explanation. It calls to mind several phrases, borrowed from my memory of several different translations (but not John Bright-Fey's): He who speaks does not know; he who knows does not speak. The tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao.

Victor H. Mair's translation contains a lot of scholarly value, but even as he speaks of how he sought to present the most literal and authentic translation of one of the oldest copies ever discovered, his own translation notes discuss the many possible meanings of some characters that show me there is a particular perspective he brings to it that perhaps colors the intended meaning in ways I think Stephen Mitchell deftly avoids.

Thomas Cleary's is so obviously laden with personal biases that it left me feeling a little dirty.

A host of other translations have passed through my hands, but for all the times I've read other translations, I have re-read Stephen Mitchell's at least as many times. I keep returning to it. It is the topmost five-star translation I've read. If you must pick only one, pick his. It can be found as a full text online, and extremely cheap, used, pocket-size editions are available for dirt-cheap prices on Amazon. Give it a whirl. ( )

After many readings, and after reading many other translations of the Tao Te Ching, this is still my favorite. I return to read it again every few years, and find that it serves as an excellent recentering of my perspective. The translation presented by Stephen Mitchell does a remarkable job of capturing the essence of what I love about this philosophical classic, and those two whom I recommend it who take the time to read it always have good things to say about it. One notable reaction to it was from a barista at what is, at the time of this writing, my favorite coffee shop: she told me she found the message of the Tao Te Ching to describe "a beautiful way to think about life" (paraphrased from memory), which put a smile on my face. It truly is exactly that, though of course no words can adequately capture the entirety of it so succinctly. "The tao that can be told is not the eternal tao," of course.

There are instances here and there where some bit of phrasing is not quite as perfect as its counterpart in another translation, of course -- including what I quoted above, where I find myself drawn more to a common translation of the statement as "The way that can be spoken is not the true Way." The most particularly jarring phrasing in Mitchell's translation is deep into it where he "updates" things for modern technology: "When a country is in harmony with the Tao, the factories make trucks and tractors. When a country goes counter to the Tao, warheads are stockpiled outside the cities." I find such attempts to update things within an ancient classic ill-advised, in part because the implications of the statement may be subtly altered by the differing relationships between tools of life and war in the distant past and those in the present age, but more importantly the updated imagery strikes a discordant note of anachronism within the otherwise elegant representation of the book's themes. Taken as a whole, though, the effort of Mitchell's translation is obviously focused on the essential wisdom of the Tao Te Ching distinct from individual modern political biases, attempts to leverage modern cultural connotation in ways that skew the intrinsic meaning of the work, and other problems that litter many other translations.

The wisdom within the work can be detected in any of the many translations I have read, but the work of doing so is quite effortless in Mitchell's translation relative to others, and for that more than anything else it has long been, and continues to be, my favorite.

(review updated 2015-07-05)

I read the pocket edition of the Stephen Mitchell translation, including all the author's notes in the back, and found them rather illuminating. The brief moments where something did not come of quite right for me in the translation, as a part of the larger whole, turned out to all be in "chapters" where Mitchell's notes indicate he "took liberties" with the translations. While those sections might have benefited from a little bit of poetic license, I felt he took it just a smidgen farther than would be ideal in a couple of cases.

The process of re-reading, then going through again with the notes (effectively reading the book itself twice this time and the notes once during the second read-through), gave me more to think about than in previous readings of the book, and I loved it. Even the imperfection of human filters in the form of translators offers some insight into the deeper meanings of the text, and the translation notes included in the pocket edition increases the transparency of the translation.

(above section 2017-11-10) ( )