Customer Reviews

Zhuangzi: The Essential Writings with Selections from Traditional Commentaries

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For those who find inspiration in Chuang Tzu, this translation of the text and the commentaries which have accompanied it from its original canonization to this day are a real treat. The translation of the text itself shows a true symapthy with its intended message. For those of us non-scholars of ancient Chinese, the commentaries provide a whole new dimenision of insight into the often obscure meanings of Chuang Tzu's work. In you enjoy Chuang Tzu, much pleasure awaits you here.

This is now the best version on the market. It combines accuracy and fluency. I have been tracking through it along with Watson and Graham, and I think it is the one I will work with. The only slight reservation I have is that one misses the Graham introductions "placing" the later chapters in their philosophical contexts: but the very extensive footnoted commentaries throughout the text make up for this. Really, this version is all any but the most devoted student will need. The selections are appropriate, with the bonus of some early commentaries. Hackett strikes again!!!

This translation easly surpasses all others in print, even though scholars will still, I'm sure, refer to the AC Graham version (I will). Ziporyn has translated into current American English with style and clarity while preserving enough of the Classical Chinese cast of the text to make this a translation for scholars as well as students. I appreciate too how he has varied the translation of key terms with footnotes in romanized Chinese, so we can appreciate the dexterity of the translator's art as well as the one sustained Chinese term. Especially valuable in this edition are the superb commentaries which give significant new insight into the passages, especially for me Guo Xiang, Wang Fuzhi, and Shi Deqing. I used this text for the first time in a discussion class at Shimer College this past semester; our discussions reached a level of maturity and insight early in the course as great or greater than we achieved in a whole semester in other years. Clearly, I recommend it highly!