When the finest students learn of Dao
They work hard to follow it.
When the middling students learn of Dao
Now they get it, now they don’t.
When the dullest students learn of Dao 5
It makes them laugh.
Without the laughter, it wouldn’t be Dao.
And so we have long been told:
The brilliance of Dao seems dim.
The advancement of Dao seems to draw back. 10
The evenness of Dao seems odd.
The greatest purity seems tarnished.
The zenith of De seems a ravine.
The abundance of De seems not to be enough.
The firmness of De seems rickety. 15
The most real substance seems unreal.
The perfect square has no edges.
The perfect vessel comes slowly.
The perfect music is soundless.
The perfect image is formless. 20
Dao is too great to be named.
That’s what makes it best whether you’re starting or completing.
***
NOTES
lines 12 and 13: In the original, line 13 precedes line 12. I have taken the liberty of switching them here.
line 20, the perfect image: Poem 35 also references the perfect image.
COMMENTARY
Laozi’s main concern here is paradox – and the truth of paradox is a finger pointing at unity: high is low, you are me, there is here, then is now (see Introduction section IV.8). But poem 41 begins with a sly observation about responsiveness to Dao, using the idiom of the classroom. That Dao is laughable in some quarters, or that following it makes one laughable to others, can also be inferred from poems 20, 22, 28, and 35. Of course, “the fool in the eyes of the gods and the fool in the eyes of man are very different,” as Oscar Wilde observed in De Profundis.[1] But laughter there will be – a chronic condition, implied by Laozi going on to reference wisdom we have long been told. And that wisdom is a series of paradoxes characterizing Dao and De – as well as purity and reality and perfection. These paradoxes reflect the distance between how things seem to others and what they actually are. With Dao, people see what is – its dim brilliance, its odd evenness – and are confused by it. That the advancement of Dao seems to draw back is essentially a restatement of the first line of poem 40. Along with Dao’s contrary motion, introducing what’s missing in order to create balance, Laozi is also reminding us in both poems 40 and 41 that there is nowhere to go, everywhere is here. By the same token, for De to appear insufficient or fragile is understandable, being that it is the power of something that seems dim and odd! But for De to seem a ravine is high praise in light of poems 6, 15, 39, and especially 28; ravines and valleys are associated with the female principle and so are repeatedly cited in the Dao De Jing (see Introduction section IV.5). Laozi closes poem 41 with a reminder that perfection exists only where there is no substance or form, which naturally leads him to Dao, that which is nameless and always works.
FOOTNOTE
1. Oscar Wilde, De Profundis in The Soul of Man and Prison Writings. Isobel Murray, editor. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990, p. 39.
Links To:
The Classic of Dao and De by Laozi: Contents
For more on Daoism, see:
Film Dreams: Frank Capra
Music: KALW Radio Show #3, Ancient China in 20th-Century Music
Music: SFCR Radio Show #8, Daoism in Western Music, part 1
Music: SFCR Radio Show #9, Daoism in Western Music, part 2
NICOLE V. GAGNÉ 