Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Line by Line - Verse 25, Line 9

Making an effort (further) to give it a name I call it The Great.
~ James Legge translation, from The Sacred Books of the East, 1891 ~

For lack of a better word, I call it great.
~ Gia-fu Feng and Jane English translation, published by Vintage Books, 1989 ~

Forced to describe it, I call it great
~ Derek Lin translation, from Tao Te Ching: Annotated & Explained, published by SkyLight Paths, 2006 ~

What's it like?
I can tell you this much: it's great.
~ Ron Hogan rendition, from Beatrice.com, 2004 ~
I like the way Derek Lin and Feng & English translate this line. Both underscore the point that words fail to desribe that which cannot be fully comprehended.

What we're trying to define is so broad, so vast and so elemental to every aspect of this life that we know that it boggles the human mind. There really is no way possible to paint a picture of this basic facet of existence. Consequently, calling it "great" is about as far as we can go.

To view the Index page for this series to see what you may have missed or would like to read again, go here.

3 comments:

  1. Stephen Mitchell translates:
    For lack of a better name, I call it the Tao.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Or maybe that's line 7-8.

    SM later writes,

    "The Tao is great."

    ReplyDelete
  3. Yes, that was the line for yesterday's post.

    ReplyDelete

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