Chuang Tzu via Thomas Merton — 2009.12.15

Thomas Merton

The Way of Chuang Tzu (莊子).

Published by New Directions

(by Mclelland & Stewart, Ltd. in Canada), 1969.

ISBN: 0-8112-0103-1

(Excerpts and references refer to The Texts of Taoism translated by James Legge.)

This book was a nice little find in a used book store man years ago. I grabbed it in my ongoing effort at collecting, serendipitously, translations/versions of Chuang Tzu's works. When I first looked at it, I thought it was okay, and gave it three stars (out of five).

Today I re-visited it, and am delighted by it! I will now upgrade this to a full five stars.

☆☆☆☆☆

I either forgot or skipped past Merton's introduction, which, today, I thoroughly enjoyed.

For example:

…

[My] 'readings' [of Chuang Tzu] are not attempts at faithful reproduction but ventures in personal and spiritual interpretation. Inevitably, any rendering of Chuang Tzu is bound to be very personal. Though, from the point of view of scholarship, I am not even a dwarf sitting on the shoulders of these giants, and though not all my renderings can even qualify as 'poetry,' I believe that a certain type of reader will enjoy my intuitive approach to a thinker who is subtle, funny, provocative, and not easy to get at (9).

And:

This book is not intended to prove anything or to convince anyone of anything that s/he does not want to hear about in the first place. In other words, it is not a new apologetic subtlety ... in which Christian rabbits will suddenly appear by magic out of a Taoist hat.

I simply like Chuang Tzu because he is what he is and I feel no need to justify this liking to myself or to anyone else. He is far too great to need any apologies from me (10).

And some of the excerpts are delightful. Okay, so that is not so much a product of Merton, but of the genius of Chuang Tzu. Today, for some reason, from the many delightful bits, this is the one that prompted me to blog it:

Three Friends [vi.11]

There were three friends

Discussing life.

One said:

'Can men live together

And know nothing of it?

Work together

And produce nothing?

Can they fly around in space

And forget to exist

World without end?'

The three friends looked at each other

And burst out laughing.

They had no explanation.

Thus they were better friends than before

… (54).

Part of my enjoyment comes, likely, because it echoes of one of my favourite all time poems by Robert Francis:

Waxwings

Four Tao philosophers as cedar waxwings

chat on a February berrybush

in sun, and I am one.

Such merriment and such sobriety –

the small wild fruit on the tall stalk –

was this not always my true style?

Above an elegance of snow, beneath

a silk-blue sky a brotherhood of four

birds. Can you mistake us?

To sun, to feast, and to converse

and all together – for this I have abandoned

all my other lives (139).

From News of the Universe: Poems of Twofold Consciousness, ed by Robert Bly. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1980.

Then, even more delightfully, is that the ending reminds me of the pivotal scene in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, when Feste, Sir Toby Belch and Andrew Aguecheek are carousing to the annoyance of the point precise Malvolio (2.3). In both cases an embodiment of formality is castigated by the living carousing on the sadness of life!

Here's Chuang Tzu:

…

Then one friend died.

Confucius

Sent a disciple to help the other two

Chant his obsequies.

The disciple found that the one friend

had composed a song.

While the other played a lute,

They sang:

'Hey, Sung Hu!

Where'd you go?

Hey, Sung Hu!

Where'd you go?

You have gone

Where you really were.

And we are here –

Damn it! We are here!'

Then the disciple of Confucius burst in on them and

Exclaimed: 'May I inquire where you found this in the

Rubrics of obsequies,

This frivolous caroling in the presence of the departed?'

The two friends looked at each other and laughed:

'Poor fellow,' they said, 'he doesn't know the new liturgy! (54).

Now for Shakespeare, from Twelfth Night, 2.3. Feste sings a supposed song of love because Sir Andrew Aguecheek 'cares not for good life.'

O mistress mine, where are you roaming?

O, stay and hear; your true love's coming,

That can sing both high and low:

Trip no further, pretty sweeting;

Journeys end in lovers meeting,

Every wise man's son doth know.

What is love? 'tis not hereafter;

Present mirth hath present laughter;

What's to come is still unsure:

In delay there lies no plenty;

Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty,

Youth's a stuff will not endure.

Sir Toby Belch reacts to this sad song with a cry to life:

But shall we make the welkin dance indeed? shall we

rouse the night-owl in a catch that will draw three

souls out of one weaver? shall we do that?

And then proceeds to bang pots and pans and sing with his two friends until the unctuous Malvolio comes down to stop them.

And, like Sung Lu's friends castigating the officious disciple of Confucius, Sir Toby snaps at Malvolio:

Out o' tune, sir: ye lie. Art [thou] any more than a

steward? Dost thou think, because thou art

virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?

And, I hadn't made the association between Chuang Tzu and Shakespeare in quite this way before, even though I have long thought of Shakespeare as the best Taoist writing in English for many years. And today I realized that that correspondence extends to the naming jokes in this play,which have a great affinity to the naming jokes with which Chuang Tzu riddled his stories.