Yì (亦)
When we left off last time, I provocatively left you with an excerpt from Chapter 3 in which Lâozî proclaims:
breeding—like a gentleman holding a fountain pen making something happen—
that is to say, this particular grown man with a hairpin and public courtesy name…
“firing arrows from the mouth—sure” as the sun, daily
—now this is cooking!—
the husk of the initial protective bud casing—the sepal— but not really the true inner flower of
daring—lightly hitting ears on both sides of the head—
efforting—like lifting up an elephant,
—yes, that too, vagina!—
I didn’t even begin to address the meaning of that line because I figured you may have been as distracted as I was by the “exclamatory particle” at the end! Before you decide whether or not I was being dramatic, I wanted to tell you how I came up with these words and, while I’m at it, get into all of Lâozî’s different “interjections.”
So let’s start with the phrase that began this discussion. The thirteenth line of Chapter 3 ends with the character yê (也). Here’s the way this character was drawn in the Spring and Autumn Bronze Inscription script that Lâozî probably used:
This pictogram has been seen as female genitalia, an ancient funnel, a wash basin. Actually some linguists think it was an early version of another character, 匜, that means vessel and sounds kind of similar (yí). Its original Shang Oracle Bone Script character looked like this:
Um. I did not make this up or draw this and neither did the 6th grade boy down the street. Like most of the images I use here, it’s courtesy of the Richard Sears website that so graciously has put gazillions of bronze inscription, oracle, and seal characters’ images into the public domain from original sources. And I’m really starting to think some of these old characters are rather earthy indeed.
Back to our yê character. It’s what’s known as an “emphatic final particle.” Humans have always had these little words we use at the end of a sentence for emphasis, man! Those words just vary over location and time. Each new generation seems to like to use their own emphatic final particle, dude! Lâozî just happened to choose vagina, b$#@&! Sorry. I’m just pointing out that in modern times some of our emphatic final particles also are gender-specific and even crude. You can think of many more examples, I’m sure. Lâozî uses this one— yê—in four other locations throughout these 37 chapters of the Dào. I see no reason not to paint a picture of this character’s image just as accurately as I’ve been trying to do with the others. This character’s modern translations are also, too, as well; neither, either; indeed. Most Dào translators just leave it out, but why? It spices up and humanizes the text, for sure. My translation is:
—yes, that too, vagina!
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Lâozî uses other emphatic particles as well. As we also saw above and even back in Chapter 1, Lâozî sometimes interjects in the middle of a sentence or list. For example, zhê (者) occurs—get this!—43 times in the first 37 chapters! Dào translators often ignore this as well, but I think it’s important to know what Lâozî thought was worthing emphasizing. Zhê is used to pause after a term and indicate that you’re about to define it. It can be translated as this. It’s hard to track down its etymology, but I’ve read that its pictogram was the original character either for boiling (煮) or for sugarcane (蔗). I originally included the sugarcane in my translation but later removed it simply because when I look at these two characters, the latter doesn’t look so much like the zhê character. Those four marks below both characters ( 灬) show fire, like that under a cook pot, so I just made a judgement call that boiling is the common part of these definitions and translate it as:
—now this is cooking!
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Lâozî also uses the exclamation xī or xí 30 times in the Dào. The modern character 兮 looks very much like the old Western Zhou Bronze Inscription:
Some etymologists say the bottom part of this character is a picture of a tree with a fork in it, 丂 (kâo):
The additional two upper marks are then thought to be fine branches, perhaps to conjure up the sound produced by wind blowing through the tree. In some places 兮 and the words descended from it are said to have meant breath, exhale, sigh, yell, call out, air, wind, or the howling sound of wind. But now they’re usually translated as particles like oh, in, at, on. This character’s usually just left out by Dào translators, though some (like Gia-fu Feng and Jane English) translate it as “Oh.” My version is:
Oh! A breath, like wind through tree branches!
Actually, yet another of Lâozî’s interjections is one of the words descended from that same wind-in-the-trees character. “Hū” even sounds like the very sound it describes and is drawn with a couple extra branches: 乎. Translators mostly seem to agree that Lâozî uses this as a “speculative” or “interrogative particle.” It basically turns a sentence into a question, you know? On many of the nine occasions it’s used in the first 37 chapters, translators turn it into can you, is it possible, how true is that, or what can __ do?” Of course, sometimes, they just leave it out. I incorporate the onomatopoeia as well as the questioning sense in my translation everywhere it appears:
~
—pah, can you?!
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In the last third of the Dào, a completely different kind of exclamation’s introduced and used 7 times. Yì (亦) looked like this back in Lâozî’s time:
Yes, that’s a picture of a person with water falling from their armpits! It’s the original form of the modern character for armpit, but as time went on, this character itself came to mean also, too, likewise; only; already; and although. As far as I can tell, Dào translators completely ignore this word when it appears or at least they fold it into the sentence in such a way that I can’t pick it out. But I can’t ignore such an image, so I translate it as:
—both armpits sweat this too!
It adds a little excitement everywhere it appears, and I think Lâozî intended that! Why else draw someone sweating?
I think that’s it for interjections—phew! Next time we can get back to where we were in Chapter 3, learning about how the traditional version of breeding civilians is breeding this particular man: sure as the sun.
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The Dào of Lâozî 