Part poetry, part paradox, always stirring and profound, Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching
has been inspiring readers since it was written over two thousand years
ago. This masterpiece is also one of the most frequently translated
books in all of history, in part because the multiple meanings of the
Chinese characters make it impossible to translate into a Western
language in a strictly literal way. For this reason, many translations
are either too loosely interpretive or are too overloaded with notes,
thereby losing the clarity of the terse poetry found in the original
Chinese.
The extraordinary strength of Sam Hamill’s translation
is that it has captured the poetry of Lao Tzu’s original without
sacrificing the resonance of the text’s many meanings and possible
interpretations. The result is a beautiful and deeply meditative
rendering, one that is a delight to read over and over again.
Accompanying
Sam Hamill’s translation are seventeen Chinese characters brushed by
one of the great masters of calligraphy, Kazuaki Tanahashi. Hamill
provides a comment for each character, giving the reader a fuller sense
of the richness of the original text and insight into the process of
translation itself.