Tao Te Ching

Reviews and more on my blog: Entering the Enchanted Castle

I read this alongside the more standard Stephen Mitchell translation and they are very different. At the end a note on translations revealed that Le Guin didn't care for Mitchell's; I'd like to read some of the ones that she does recommend.

At any rate, this was the first time I read this foundational spiritual text in any form, and it was a revelation. The “Tao of” everything is so trendy nowadays, but what does that actually mean? There is so much to ponder, a profound spiritual and practical guide to life. I'll be returning to this book in some form or other, I'm sure.

Le Guin's notes on her choices as a translator and what resonates with her personally are interesting. I would tend to disagree with some of her decisions, i.e. that a passage was an interpolation to be dismissed, or that her interpretation is necessarily the right one. With a text of this depth and mysteriousness, I think we have to be cautious in approaching it out of our cynical modern consciousness. However, Le Guin does not claim that her version is definitive, and her commentary gives fascinating clues into the source which eludes precise understanding. I would love to have had more of it.