Gate of All Marvelous Things : A Guide to Reading the Tao Te Ching

By Gregory C. Richter

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• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1891688006
• ISBN13: 9781891688003
• Release Date: May 1998
• Publisher: China Books & Periodicals
• Length: 150 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.8" x 0.3" x 10.8"

Customer Reviews

An invaluable tool for those studying Classical Chinese.

Readers who are unfamiliar with Classical Chinese are sometimes frankly puzzled as to why different translators, working on the same text, can come up with such widely differing translations. But to fully understand why this can happen, it would of course be necessary to learn Chinese. Basically it has to do with the fact that the grammar of Ancient Chinese is as yet imperfectly understood. Another important reason is that the Chinese character or graph cannot really be equated with an English 'word' - they're very different animals. English words can change their form, as in 'run, runs, running, ran,' but graphs have a fixed form and can't do this. Additionally, graphs will often have a far wider range of meanings than English words. This makes for a language with richer connotations. It's a beautiful language and I don't think that anyone who may be thinking of taking it up will be sorry if they do. Everyone should have at least a little Chinese. Even a little can provide a lot of fun.One of the reasons I've always loved Classical Chinese is because it's an extremely concise and powerful language, a language of great masculine vigor, and one of the first things I look for in any translation from Classical Chinese is a comparable economy and energy. Some people don't seem to understand this, and I think it's because they fail to realize that words, besides expressing meaning, can also serve to limit meaning, especially in grammatically fussy Indo-European languages such as English where sentences are intended to convey as precise a meaning as possible and in doing so can become (as mine are here) rather wordy.But ancient Chinese writing isn't like this. Rather than attempting to narrow and delimit meaning, and to pin us down to something particular and explicit, it aims instead to open and expand our understanding. In other words, although it can look deceptively simple, it is in fact richly suggestive, rich in implications. And this rich suggestiveness will generate many different meanings in the minds of different readers. Proof of this can readily be found by anyone who takes the trouble to compare a few translations of the Tao Te Ching. Those who cannot consult the actual Chinese text will, as I've mentioned, often find themselves puzzled by these differences. What they fail to understand is that, whereas the English ideal is to express one and one thing only, the Chinese strategy is to express many meanings simultaneously. And this is where Professor Gregory C. Richter's text comes in.Professor Richter has provided an invaluable service to all who are interested in Classical Chinese. Whether you only want to check up on an occasional passage of the Tao Te Ching, or whether you want to learn Chinese inductively by memorizing an actual text, or whether you are taking a formal course and simply want some supplementary study material, or whether you are just plain curious, Richter's text will prove invaluable. Not only has he

language study book, not philosophy

This is better for studying the original language than for understanding the philosophy (other translations are more poetic) but useful for those students of ancient Chinese wanting to taste the original language of the time.

good text

Good approach to studying the Tao--I am learning the original Chinese meanings, and expanding my knowledge of this masterpiece of world thought.

A Valuable Resource

If you want to understand the Tao Te Ching, I think it is essential to know the original Chinese. I'm not a scholar of ancient Chinese, but going through the text line by line, character by character, has helped me greatly. The glosses on the text are straightforward and clear, and are enabling me to write my own version. I recommend this book for those interested in going a little deeper into one of the great documents in Chinese (and world) philosophy.

Richter fills a 50+ year gap for serious students of Laozi.

By providing an interliner format of: Chinese characters, their corresponding pinyin, and a one-word definition for each (tied together by a literal yet readable translation), GATE gives English-speaking students access to all resource materials keyed to pinyin -- while surreptitiously teaching grammar and vocabulary in the process.