How Chuang Tzu’s long-lost book was discovered and excavated

This book is the first in over two thousand years to present Chuang Tzu’s stories in a coherent, accessible manner. Before now his stories have always been mixed up with other people’s writings.

If you go to the library and ask for Chuang Tzu’s book, you’ll be given a book called the Chuang Tzu. You’d be forgiven for thinking that the Chuang Tzu is by Chuang Tzu. It is not. It’s as if you asked for Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and the librarian hands you a book titled Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, but in fact the book is an anthology of nineteenth-century romantic poetry. This anthology does have Coleridge’s poem in it, but it mostly has other poems by other writers, some of them plonked right in the middle of Coleridge’s poem, and there are no headings to tell you who wrote what. Well, it’s the book you’ve been given, so you read it. And you get a lot of enjoyment from it, even if it’s a strange sort of experience. The writing style and themes seem to be inconsistent and disjointed. But you shrug and say to yourself that Coleridge is just one of those writers who’s a bit scattered in his thinking, a bit hit-and-miss in his ability.

This has been Chuang Tzu’s fate for the past two thousand years. His book lost in the Chuang Tzu, one of the greatest philosophers and literary stylists in the Asian world has been known as someone who’s a bit scattered in his thinking, a bit hit-and-miss in his ability.

How did this outrage happen?

Chuang Tzu wrote his book sometime around 300 BC. Over the following one-and-a-half centuries a body of literature developed in response to his book. At the same time, all of this material—Chuang Tzu’s writings and the other writings—began to be collected into a single book, the Chuang Tzu. Over yet more centuries the Chuang Tzu was revised and edited until we arrive at AD 300 with the Kuo Hsiang edition. When we talk about the Chuang Tzu it is this book that we’re talking about: the Kuo Hsiang edition of AD 300.

The Chuang Tzu (i.e., the Kuo Hsiang edition) is divided into three sections: the Inner Chapters (Chapters 1–7), the Outer Chapters (Chapters 8–22), and the Miscellaneous Chapters (Chapters 23–33). The general consensus among scholars has been that Chuang Tzu wrote the Inner Chapters, and possibly the occasional story in the Outer and Miscellaneous Chapters.

You’d never know this from reading the existing translations. With only one exception (which I’ll discuss in a moment) the existing translations present the entire thirty-three chapters as being by Chuang Tzu. For example, Burton Watson in the introduction to his landmark translation of 1968, The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu, notes that the Inner Chapters are ‘the product of a superbly keen and original mind’ and that the rest of the book is most likely the work of later writers. But then in the actual translation the reader is presented with a contents list of thirty-three chapters under the title ‘The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu’.

Inevitably, then, most readers think that the Chuang Tzu is by Chuang Tzu. In a similar way to how most Christians think that the Bible—that vast cacophony of conflicting voices—is a coherent book composed by a single intelligence (God), most readers think that the Chuang Tzu—a vast cacophony of conflicting voices—is a coherent book composed by a single intelligence (Chuang Tzu). Even people who know better, like Watson—they act as if the Chuang Tzu is by Chuang Tzu. The tell-tale sign that someone is doing this—and practically everyone does—is that they attribute any and all stories in the Chuang Tzu to Chuang Tzu.

If you read the Chuang Tzu as a book written by Chuang Tzu, you will end up concluding that either (a) Chuang Tzu has some moments of brilliance, but lacks a coherent vision; or (b) Chuang Tzu probably does have a coherent vision, so it must be that you lack the intelligence to behold that vision; or (c) Chuang Tzu definitely does have a coherent vision, and the genius and coherence of that vision is too sublime a thing to be grasped by mere rational analysis and that to grasp its sense one has to be wise enough to put reason aside and get in touch with one’s intuition and go along with the flow of—well, you get the idea.

Each of these conclusions is wrong. All that’s in fact happening is that you’re reading a text that neglects to identify that different bits of the text are written by different people.

Prior to me, only one translator had addressed this problem: A. C. Graham. In his landmark translation of 1981, he sorts the text into five sections: (1) Chuang Tzu’s writings, (2) material that’s similar to Chuang Tzu’s writings, (3) Primitivist material, (4) Yangist material, and (5) Syncretist material. By arranging the text in this way, Graham’s translation was the most important edition of the Chuang Tzu since the Kuo Hsiang edition itself. It was the first edition ever to identify (to attempt to identify) which bits of the Chuang Tzu are by Chuang Tzu.

Graham, however, did something strange. He took material from the Miscellaneous Chapters and inserted it into the Inner Chapters. So now I found myself looking at two different versions of Chuang Tzu’s book. Graham’s edition of the Inner Chapters, and Kuo Hsiang’s.

Let’s picture the Inner Chapters as an old English manor. Graham’s edition of the Inner Chapters, then, is an old English manor, and Kuo Hsiang’s edition is another. Looking at these manors, in each case I had the sense that I was seeing a grand structure, while simultaneously feeling that the building was a strange sort of rambling hodgepodge of a thing. I kept gazing at these manors, trying to make sense of my conflicting feelings. For years I gazed. I walked the perimeters. I wandered in and out of the numerous rooms. And then, eventually, I saw. What I was looking at was an original, elegant building that had had, over the centuries, one ill-conceived extension after another added onto it. An extra wing here. An additional room there. A piece of furniture inserted here. The original building was still there, elegant and intact, but it was hidden by these later additions.

This is a new way of seeing the Inner Chapters. There are people who say that the Inner Chapters are an elegant work of art, and others who say they’re a rambling hodgepodge of a thing, but none who say they are both. Might it be that each of these opposite responses is a failure to properly resolve a conflict that we all experience; that each of these responses, instead of genuinely resolving this conflict, merely resolves the tension by pushing out of awareness one half of the experience?

Let’s consider each response, each side of the tension.

~

Let’s start with the view that the Inner Chapters are a beautifully crafted work of art.

Shuen-Fu Lin notes that ‘Chinese literary scholars through the ages have admired the unity and structure of the Inner Chapters,’ and that ‘there is a subtle kind of “inner logic” in the unfolding of ideas running through [the Inner Chapters].’ What Lin and the literary scholars are seeing, I propose, is the original building. But if so, how is it that Lin and the literary scholars don’t see the bits that to my eyes are distracting and confusing additions?

One possibility is that these people do see that some parts of the Inner Chapters are incongruous, but they ignore these bits, allowing their focus to land elsewhere. We noted above how Watson saw the Inner Chapters as being ‘the product of a superbly keen and original mind.’ More fully, what he wrote was: the Inner Chapters ‘are certainly in the main the product of a superbly keen and original mind, though they may contain brief interpolations by other hands.’ Here we see Watson acknowledging that there are incongruous bits. But having done so he promptly skips on to other matters. He completely neglects to identify which bits are incongruous, and the whole issue vanishes into thin air.

Another possibility is that these people begin with the assumption that the Inner Chapters are a coherent whole, and they then make it so. I myself did this at first. It is an easy thing to do. All that it requires is a bit of creative intelligence and a lazy willingness to join the dots between different ideas without worrying too much about whether or not this dot-joining really makes sense. A tell-tale sign that someone is doing this is their saying something along the lines of, ‘Chuang Tzu is a cheeky, provocative writer who at different times intentionally adopts different literary styles and philosophical views, so we can never edit out bits of the text on literary or philosophical grounds,’ or, ‘Chuang Tzu intentionally bamboozles our reason, so we must never use reason to judge that some bits of the Inner Chapters are out of place.’ These are circular arguments. They assume that Chuang Tzu wrote the Inner Chapters and then say, therefore Chuang Tzu wrote the Inner Chapters.

To these people I say: If you’re willing to use reason to determine that Chuang Tzu wrote the Inner Chapters, but not the Miscellaneous and Outer Chapters, why stop there? Why not use that very same reason to determine whether Chuang Tzu wrote this bit of the Inner Chapters, but not that bit?

Does Chuang Tzu adopt different literary styles? Well, were we to take an anthology of modern poetry and attribute it to a single author, we would find ourselves saying that this author adopts different literary styles. And we would be mistaken. True, there are writers who adopt different styles and who do so to good effect. The novelist Peter Carey is an example. But Peter Carey’s different styles are all of a style that is recognisable as being Peter Carey’s, and as being distinct from, say, Jane Austen’s. Each of these writers has a distinct voice. Also, any one of Peter Carey’s novels is written in a coherent style. Each of his novels has internal coherence.

Does Chuang Tzu adopt conflicting philosophical views? This calls to mind Walt Whitman’s famous quip, ‘Do I contradict myself? Very well then … I contradict myself. I am large … I contain multitudes.’ But of course Whitman does not in fact contradict himself. The very meaning of his quip is that his view coherently transcends the merely apparent contradictions that some people might see between this and that statement in his writing. And we who get his meaning do see the coherence. We do not ramble incoherently about the profound coherence of Whitman’s incoherence!

I agree that Chuang Tzu makes use of a variety of literary styles, and that one of his agendas is to put reason in its place. But philosophical and literary genius does not produce writing that is confused and inelegant. Works of philosophical and literary genius are coherent and elegant.

Yes, we must take great care before deciding that this or that bit of the Inner Chapters is not the work of Chuang Tzu. But when we see incongruity, we must not ignore it. To ignore incongruity in the Inner Chapters is to do a great disservice to both ourselves and Chuang Tzu. Let’s entertain the possibility that the incongruity is the result of our poor understanding. In that case we owe it to ourselves to acknowledge the incongruity—indeed, to highlight it—and to then get to work to improve our understanding. Alternatively, let’s entertain the possibility that the incongruity is the result of extraneous text having been added to Chuang Tzu’s book. In that case we owe it to Chuang Tzu to acknowledge the incongruity, to correctly determine that the incongruity is the result of extraneous text having been added to his, and to then remove the extraneous text. There are no easy, formulaic answers here. Each sentence, each paragraph, each story must be argued on its merits. Far from mindlessly putting our reason aside, these tasks require us to use the very best of our reason.

~

Let’s now consider the other side of our felt tension: the view that the Inner Chapters is a rambling hodgepodge of a thing.

Martin Palmer, in the introduction to his 2007 translation, The Book of Chuang Tzu, says that ‘trying to read Chuang Tzu sequentially is a mistake. The text is a collection, not a developing argument.’ Graham paints a starker picture. His view is that although the Inner Chapters contain material that is ‘homogenous in thought and style’, the material is a ‘hotchpotch’ of ‘discontinuous episodes’, ‘disjointed pieces’, ‘fragmented’ passages. The text is in places ‘scrappy’ and ‘badly damaged’, scrapings from ‘the bottom of the barrel’. Graham accounts for the hotchpotch by surmising that Chuang Tzu just wrote standalone pieces and that it was a later editor who, searching through the relics of Chuang Tzu’s literary remains, arranged these pieces under seven themes (the seven chapter-titles of the Inner Chapters).

How is it, then, that Palmer and Graham don’t see that the Inner Chapters is a beautifully crafted work of art?

The answer is obvious enough. They correctly see that much of the Inner Chapters contains material that is disjointed and incongruous, and this disjointed, incongruous material prevents them from seeing that among this material there exists a congruous structure.

To restore what he sees as fragmented, scrappy, badly damaged text, Graham adds text from the Miscellaneous Chapters. In doing so, he makes matters worse. Ah, what a difficult task we restorationists undertake once we resolve to fix what has been corrupted. What scope there is for error and disagreement. No wonder so few dare embark on this task! (There have been several translations since Graham’s. Not one of them takes up the baton from Graham. Not one of them attempts to present the reader with Chuang Tzu’s words.) So for all that I disagree with some of Graham’s amendments, I applaud him for making them. He did not shy from the experience of incongruity. He stepped up to the mark and did his honest best to do something to resolve it. He did the thing that must be done.

~

Let’s recap.

Everyone sees the Inner Chapters as being the centrepiece of the Chuang Tzu, as being a collection of writings that are both philosophically profound and stylistically remarkable. Some people see the Inner Chapters as being a structured, elegant work of art. Others see them as being something of a hodgepodge, a collection of writings that are for the most part brilliant but which are in places stylistically and philosophically at odds with the major part of itself. My view is that this tension is best resolved by seeing that the Inner Chapters contain a coherent, elegant book, a book that is obscured by the presence of extraneous material.

And so I carefully remove the extraneous material and reveal the coherence and elegance of Chuang Tzu’s original book.

I don’t flag in the translation when I’ve omitted text, but you will find all of the omitted text in an appendix at the end of the book, and I’ve formatted that section so that it is easy to locate where the text has been omitted from.

Along with each bit of omitted text, I provide my reasons for omitting the text. Basically, I omit material that I judge is not homogenous in thought and style with the remaining material, and which obscures the coherent structure and meaning of the remaining material. Of course, the devil—and the truth—is in the detail. I provide that detail with the omitted material at the end of the book.

~

What to call Chuang Tzu’s book?

We don’t know what title Chuang Tzu gave his book.

We can’t call his book the Inner Chapters. The book that Chuang Tzu wrote was not a subsection of some later editor’s anthology.

We can’t call his book the Chuang Tzu. Apart from being a lame title, it has already been taken.

In a moment of inspiration the title The Cicada and the Bird popped into my brain. (Why the cicada and the bird? I explain that here.) I think this is a great title, but not everyone agrees with me and it has the further downside of being my title, not Chuang Tzu’s.

We have no option but to take his book as it has come to us: untitled. To refer to this untitled book we can call it, simply, Chuang Tzu’s book.

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