Abstract

The Zhuangzi is known as a literary masterpiece as well as a philosophical monument. The philosophical power of this book is linked to its original way to play with language and phrases, which makes the Zhuangzi a constant challenge for readers and translators. Due to the fact that, in China, the Zhuangzi has been continuously read and commented, the exegetical literature is as large as it is diverse and contradictory. For modern readers, those commentaries could appear as a tremendous mass of secondary literature, a subsequent production which sometime, however, seems to be unrelated to the Zhuangzi’s problems. In order to understand the Zhuangzi, a reader can then choose to refer only to the text itself, using modern editions or translations. For the translator, however, the problem is not that simple. Some among the classical commentaries, indeed, shape and influence our very access to the Zhuangzi. Because of their role in the textual transmission and considering the fact they are our primary resources for semantical analysis, it is highly difficult for a translator to leave aside those commentaries. This paper aims to stress the translator’s reliance to the exegetical literature. This paper presents two case studies, showing how Cheng Xuanying 成玄英 subcommentary, or Lu Deming 陸德明 philological glosses, both written during the Tang dynasty, are, for many expressions from the Zhuangzi, the cornerstone of the translators’ work. Through those case studies and through the comparison of several modern translations of the Zhuangzi, our purpose is to draw the outlines of a philosophical reflexion about the usefulness of the exegetical tradition in the study and the translation of the Zhuangzi.