John Minford interview
Just when we thought a new Sun Tzu "The Art of War" translation is not needed, retired Professor John M. Minford's masterful work proved us wrong.
Dr. Minford's curriculum vitae reads like a novel with countless works and accomplishments. Highlights include Honorary Research Fellow at Lingnan University, Chair Professor at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Chair Professor at the University of Auckland, Honorary Fellow of the Hong Kong Translation Society, and translator of a string of Chinese works too long to list here.
Candid and forthright, John Minford discusses with Sonshi.com about his thoughts regarding The Art of War. He has a refreshingly accurate perspective on the book...a perspective we believe many modern readers of Sun Tzu lack. Below is our interview with him.
Sonshi.com: Tell our readers a little bit about yourself.
Minford: As a boy I studied Latin, Greek and French at Winchester College, and went on to do Philosophy, then Chinese at Oxford University, and then later my PhD at the Australian National University in Canberra.
My first plan in life was to be a musician (pianist)-I studied piano in Vienna; but a more practical livelihood offered itself in Chinese studies/Translation. I have been a translator and teacher of Chinese/translation since 1977.
I now combine translating and growing grapes. I have always loved living in the countryside.
Sonshi.com: You are a graduate of Oxford, former professor at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and now retired with your wife in southern France. How do you see Sun Tzu being used around the world in past and today?
Minford: First and foremost, this book will always offer itself to people interested in military and strategic questions, and in conflict-resolution. More recently, of course, it has also been widely read by readers interested in business strategy and entrepreneurship.
As I make clear in my new translation, being neither a soldier nor an entrepreneur myself, I personally relate most strongly to certain Taoistic elements in the book's underlying philosophy, and much less strongly to what I see as the cunning/deception layer of thought. Unfortunately I think that many world readers glorify precisely those things in the book that I am most wary of! I am often rather skeptical of some of the applications of the book.
Sonshi.com: Your Art of War book was published late in 2002. Share with our readers what is different or better about your edition versus prior translations?
Minford: Although I studied Western philosophy before turning to Chinese studies, and although the first Chinese texts I studied in depth were philosophical-Taoist texts (the Daodejing, and the Zhuangzi), and Confucian texts (Mencius, Analects)-most of my life I have been a literary translator, working with fiction and poetry, ancient and modern. I hope that this is reflected in my translation of The Art of War.
I have done my best to capture what I see as the literary quality of this very early Chinese text. I have tried to reflect as best I can the epigrammatic, sometimes almost poetic, half-rhyming quality of the original. I have taken a lot of trouble with the language, the choice of words, the rhythms, the paragraphing. The lay-out reflects (as far as possible) the structure of the Chinese.
Sonshi.com: Your Art of War translation is very concise, even to the point of being parsimonious. We admire that because it leaves less interpretation in the rendering itself. After all, the abundance of commentaries you provided should suffice. Tell us your thoughts regarding this matter.
Minford: This is really linked to what I have just said. The original Chinese is written in a very laconic style. It is often very hard indeed to know what was meant. (This is not just my opinion!) That is why every Chinese reader reads the book with one eye on the commentaries. So I decided to keep the Classic Text really simple, concise, sometimes even puzzling. And then leave the explaining to the commentaries. Often it is the stories retold by the commentators that help us to understand what was meant. This is a traditional Chinese way of doing things.
Sonshi.com: In your book's introduction, you stated, "The Art of War is both inspirational and worrying...Each reader must negotiate this fascinating but treacherous terrain." Please explain further for our readers what you mean.
Minford: Again, I have already hinted at my position here. I am by no means a Sun Tzu fan! I came to the book with complete objectivity. In fact, it was at the suggestion of my publisher that I undertook the task. I believe the book has certain penetratingly deep insights, and that these insights derive from a widely shared body of traditional Chinese wisdom, expressed in this particular book often in memorable ways. In this respect it sometimes reminded me of the Daodejing (sometimes translated as The Way and Its Power, or the Book of Laozi).
But I also find much in the book that is frankly unacceptable! It proposes what is to me an insidiously calculating approach to human relations, one which is directly contrary to many of the fundamental humanistic values that I uphold. All the talk is of manipulation, of using every situation to one's advantage. The consequent accumulation of personal power, and the attainment of psychological mastery, are goals in themselves. For me this is a distortion of the true Taoist vision. It is a distortion that one finds quite commonly in the literature of the late Warring States period. There is no great distance in this respect between Sunzi and Hanfeizi, the Chinese proto-fascist.
I can relate this to ways of functioning with which I am all too familiar from my close encounter with contemporary Chinese society. I spent most of the 1980s either in China, or close to China (in Hong Kong), and was obliged to come to terms with some of these darker aspects of Chinese social behaviour and thinking. You can find much of this collected in a book I edited at the time (with my friend Geremie Barmé) called Seeds of Fire. This was published in the USA by Hill & Wang, a branch of Farrar Strauss. Although at the time I had not even read Sunzi, a great deal in the book can be connected with Sunzi's way of thinking (and his descendants in Chinese culture). It is what the Chinese-American social-historian Sun Longji calls the Deep Structure of Chinese Culture. One of its products is what the Taiwan intellectual Bo Yang calls the 'Ugly Chinaman'.
So, when we read this material, by all means we should take in its insights; but I feel quite strongly that we need to keep a critical perspective. I am against any sort of uncritical reading.
Sonshi.com: You researched Father Amiot's book -- the first Western translation of The Art of War. Outstanding! What did you think about his translation and why did you decide to research it? In general, do the French read The Art of War as much as the Americans?
Minford: I was interested in Father Amiot as one of the early Jesuits in China. (The Jesuits, and their unique role in transmitting Chinese culture to the West, have long been one of my interests. I am currently working as a Story Consultant for a big Italian movie project about the early Jesuit Matteo Ricci, being produced by Mario Cotone, who did The Last Emperor and Godfather 2.)
Father Amiot's version of The Art of War is more of a re-write, and is itself based on a no longer extant Manchu version (complete with running commentary), probably created in the late 17th century for the Manchu ruling class in China. (As conquerors, the Manchus needed to understand how the Chinese thought-for very practical reasons!) Amiot (who knew that his book would be read by the French Minister in charge of Foreign Relations) goes straight to the heart of the meaning of the text, and does not scruple to find fault with Sunzi's thinking where necessary. He was after all a Christian missionary!
There is also a recent French translation (which I mention in my book) by Jean Lévi, which is excellent, very strong on commentary and philosophical interpretation. He relies heavily on the thinking of Francois Jullien, one of France's leading sinologists. Yes, the French are very interested in this book. There are several versions available in paperback.
Sonshi.com: It is extremely fascinating you subtitled your Art of War as the "book of life." We agree. Why do you believe this is true, and are there situations in life where The Art of War does not apply?
Minford: As I point out in my Introduction, the whole manner of Sunzi's book The Art of War is that of a handbook or manual for life. There are many such books in the Chinese tradition. Some deal with personal health and diet, some deal with the environment, some with physical relationships, some deal with the practice of a specific art (calligraphy, for example, or performance on the qin or Chinese lute). Among other subjects treated, The Art of War deals in a very intuitive and general (almost abstract) way with the workings of natural, human and interpersonal dynamics (the Chinese word is shi). In this respect it has great interest and value for all people and all ages.
We (in our private and public lives) so often forget to take in the bigger picture, and here Sunzi bingfa can be a salutary influence. It reminds us to look beyond the immediate details to the underlying dynamic or shape. It encourages us to focus objectively on the way things really are, before we go rushing headlong into any decision or action.
Of course, the focus of this little treatise is war, and many of the remarks have a primary concern with warfare. It was written at a time of unceasing conflict between the Warring States that made up a disintegrating China. But so much of the book can also be extended to apply to any area of human conflict, of human endeavour, or of human interaction.
The problem for me (and here I am really answering the second part of your question-where does the book not apply?), is that I still believe-foolishly?-that there is a role for altruism, for love, for sacrifice, for generous motivations that may possibly (often, in fact) not lead us to actions that will be to our advantage, but which are nonetheless admirable, and necessary for the happiness and welfare of humankind. I don't find room for this in Sunzi bingfa. That is why I wrote towards the end of my Introduction, quoting the late-Ming commonplace book, Vegetable Roots, 'Emerge from the mud untainted; understand cunning [qiao], but do not use it.'
Sonshi.com: Do you have any upcoming projects you are working on or already completed?
Minford: As a matter of fact, I have just completed two long and exhausting projects! One has been the translation of an enormously long Martial Arts novel by the Hong Kong author Louis Cha (Jin Yong), called The Deer and the Cauldron. The third volume of my translation (altogether the novel in English is nearly 2000 pages long!) finally appeared from Oxford University Press in the first part of this year (2003). It has taken over ten years to complete.
The other project, one that took up a large part of last year, was the writing of a full year-course for the Open University of Hong Kong called 'Culture and Translation'. This is the first time I have tried my hand at writing for Distance Learning. Actually I used examples from The Art of War in that course.
Right now I'm finishing the revision of another translation for Penguin Classics, a collection of Chinese Tales of the Supernatural from the early 18th century, by the brilliant writer in that genre Pu Songling. And at the same time I am working (with my friend Joseph Lau) on the second volume of a big anthology called Classical Chinese Literature (volume 1, over 1200 pages long, came out three years ago from Columbia UP in New York, and Chinese University Press in Hong Kong).
Sonshi.com: Is there a classical work you always wanted to translate but never got around to?
Minford: I have always wanted to do a new version of the extraordinary I Ching, the Book of Changes. That is the book that fascinates me most of all. It is one of the main books that got me into Chinese in the first place. Even more than Sunzi, this is a true Book of Life. There is definitely room for a lively new version, one that goes back to the divination roots of the text, and puts the commentary tradition in its proper context, for our time. Maybe one day...
Sonshi.com: How is retired life? Do you miss teaching and research activities?
Minford: I have always wanted to live as I do now, deep in the countryside, with my own piece of land (I have an old farmhouse and about ten acres of vineyards, mostly on remote hilltops). But yes, there is a price to pay for the life-style and the isolation. The research and translation carries on, in my study; but yes, I do sometimes miss the contact with other people, especially with students.
[End of interview]
Dr. Minford's curriculum vitae reads like a novel with countless works and accomplishments. Highlights include Honorary Research Fellow at Lingnan University, Chair Professor at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Chair Professor at the University of Auckland, Honorary Fellow of the Hong Kong Translation Society, and translator of a string of Chinese works too long to list here.
Candid and forthright, John Minford discusses with Sonshi.com about his thoughts regarding The Art of War. He has a refreshingly accurate perspective on the book...a perspective we believe many modern readers of Sun Tzu lack. Below is our interview with him.
Sonshi.com: Tell our readers a little bit about yourself.
Minford: As a boy I studied Latin, Greek and French at Winchester College, and went on to do Philosophy, then Chinese at Oxford University, and then later my PhD at the Australian National University in Canberra.
My first plan in life was to be a musician (pianist)-I studied piano in Vienna; but a more practical livelihood offered itself in Chinese studies/Translation. I have been a translator and teacher of Chinese/translation since 1977.
I now combine translating and growing grapes. I have always loved living in the countryside.
Sonshi.com: You are a graduate of Oxford, former professor at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and now retired with your wife in southern France. How do you see Sun Tzu being used around the world in past and today?
Minford: First and foremost, this book will always offer itself to people interested in military and strategic questions, and in conflict-resolution. More recently, of course, it has also been widely read by readers interested in business strategy and entrepreneurship.
As I make clear in my new translation, being neither a soldier nor an entrepreneur myself, I personally relate most strongly to certain Taoistic elements in the book's underlying philosophy, and much less strongly to what I see as the cunning/deception layer of thought. Unfortunately I think that many world readers glorify precisely those things in the book that I am most wary of! I am often rather skeptical of some of the applications of the book.
Sonshi.com: Your Art of War book was published late in 2002. Share with our readers what is different or better about your edition versus prior translations?
Minford: Although I studied Western philosophy before turning to Chinese studies, and although the first Chinese texts I studied in depth were philosophical-Taoist texts (the Daodejing, and the Zhuangzi), and Confucian texts (Mencius, Analects)-most of my life I have been a literary translator, working with fiction and poetry, ancient and modern. I hope that this is reflected in my translation of The Art of War.
I have done my best to capture what I see as the literary quality of this very early Chinese text. I have tried to reflect as best I can the epigrammatic, sometimes almost poetic, half-rhyming quality of the original. I have taken a lot of trouble with the language, the choice of words, the rhythms, the paragraphing. The lay-out reflects (as far as possible) the structure of the Chinese.
Sonshi.com: Your Art of War translation is very concise, even to the point of being parsimonious. We admire that because it leaves less interpretation in the rendering itself. After all, the abundance of commentaries you provided should suffice. Tell us your thoughts regarding this matter.
Minford: This is really linked to what I have just said. The original Chinese is written in a very laconic style. It is often very hard indeed to know what was meant. (This is not just my opinion!) That is why every Chinese reader reads the book with one eye on the commentaries. So I decided to keep the Classic Text really simple, concise, sometimes even puzzling. And then leave the explaining to the commentaries. Often it is the stories retold by the commentators that help us to understand what was meant. This is a traditional Chinese way of doing things.
Sonshi.com: In your book's introduction, you stated, "The Art of War is both inspirational and worrying...Each reader must negotiate this fascinating but treacherous terrain." Please explain further for our readers what you mean.
Minford: Again, I have already hinted at my position here. I am by no means a Sun Tzu fan! I came to the book with complete objectivity. In fact, it was at the suggestion of my publisher that I undertook the task. I believe the book has certain penetratingly deep insights, and that these insights derive from a widely shared body of traditional Chinese wisdom, expressed in this particular book often in memorable ways. In this respect it sometimes reminded me of the Daodejing (sometimes translated as The Way and Its Power, or the Book of Laozi).
But I also find much in the book that is frankly unacceptable! It proposes what is to me an insidiously calculating approach to human relations, one which is directly contrary to many of the fundamental humanistic values that I uphold. All the talk is of manipulation, of using every situation to one's advantage. The consequent accumulation of personal power, and the attainment of psychological mastery, are goals in themselves. For me this is a distortion of the true Taoist vision. It is a distortion that one finds quite commonly in the literature of the late Warring States period. There is no great distance in this respect between Sunzi and Hanfeizi, the Chinese proto-fascist.
I can relate this to ways of functioning with which I am all too familiar from my close encounter with contemporary Chinese society. I spent most of the 1980s either in China, or close to China (in Hong Kong), and was obliged to come to terms with some of these darker aspects of Chinese social behaviour and thinking. You can find much of this collected in a book I edited at the time (with my friend Geremie Barmé) called Seeds of Fire. This was published in the USA by Hill & Wang, a branch of Farrar Strauss. Although at the time I had not even read Sunzi, a great deal in the book can be connected with Sunzi's way of thinking (and his descendants in Chinese culture). It is what the Chinese-American social-historian Sun Longji calls the Deep Structure of Chinese Culture. One of its products is what the Taiwan intellectual Bo Yang calls the 'Ugly Chinaman'.
So, when we read this material, by all means we should take in its insights; but I feel quite strongly that we need to keep a critical perspective. I am against any sort of uncritical reading.
Sonshi.com: You researched Father Amiot's book -- the first Western translation of The Art of War. Outstanding! What did you think about his translation and why did you decide to research it? In general, do the French read The Art of War as much as the Americans?
Minford: I was interested in Father Amiot as one of the early Jesuits in China. (The Jesuits, and their unique role in transmitting Chinese culture to the West, have long been one of my interests. I am currently working as a Story Consultant for a big Italian movie project about the early Jesuit Matteo Ricci, being produced by Mario Cotone, who did The Last Emperor and Godfather 2.)
Father Amiot's version of The Art of War is more of a re-write, and is itself based on a no longer extant Manchu version (complete with running commentary), probably created in the late 17th century for the Manchu ruling class in China. (As conquerors, the Manchus needed to understand how the Chinese thought-for very practical reasons!) Amiot (who knew that his book would be read by the French Minister in charge of Foreign Relations) goes straight to the heart of the meaning of the text, and does not scruple to find fault with Sunzi's thinking where necessary. He was after all a Christian missionary!
There is also a recent French translation (which I mention in my book) by Jean Lévi, which is excellent, very strong on commentary and philosophical interpretation. He relies heavily on the thinking of Francois Jullien, one of France's leading sinologists. Yes, the French are very interested in this book. There are several versions available in paperback.
Sonshi.com: It is extremely fascinating you subtitled your Art of War as the "book of life." We agree. Why do you believe this is true, and are there situations in life where The Art of War does not apply?
Minford: As I point out in my Introduction, the whole manner of Sunzi's book The Art of War is that of a handbook or manual for life. There are many such books in the Chinese tradition. Some deal with personal health and diet, some deal with the environment, some with physical relationships, some deal with the practice of a specific art (calligraphy, for example, or performance on the qin or Chinese lute). Among other subjects treated, The Art of War deals in a very intuitive and general (almost abstract) way with the workings of natural, human and interpersonal dynamics (the Chinese word is shi). In this respect it has great interest and value for all people and all ages.
We (in our private and public lives) so often forget to take in the bigger picture, and here Sunzi bingfa can be a salutary influence. It reminds us to look beyond the immediate details to the underlying dynamic or shape. It encourages us to focus objectively on the way things really are, before we go rushing headlong into any decision or action.
Of course, the focus of this little treatise is war, and many of the remarks have a primary concern with warfare. It was written at a time of unceasing conflict between the Warring States that made up a disintegrating China. But so much of the book can also be extended to apply to any area of human conflict, of human endeavour, or of human interaction.
The problem for me (and here I am really answering the second part of your question-where does the book not apply?), is that I still believe-foolishly?-that there is a role for altruism, for love, for sacrifice, for generous motivations that may possibly (often, in fact) not lead us to actions that will be to our advantage, but which are nonetheless admirable, and necessary for the happiness and welfare of humankind. I don't find room for this in Sunzi bingfa. That is why I wrote towards the end of my Introduction, quoting the late-Ming commonplace book, Vegetable Roots, 'Emerge from the mud untainted; understand cunning [qiao], but do not use it.'
Sonshi.com: Do you have any upcoming projects you are working on or already completed?
Minford: As a matter of fact, I have just completed two long and exhausting projects! One has been the translation of an enormously long Martial Arts novel by the Hong Kong author Louis Cha (Jin Yong), called The Deer and the Cauldron. The third volume of my translation (altogether the novel in English is nearly 2000 pages long!) finally appeared from Oxford University Press in the first part of this year (2003). It has taken over ten years to complete.
The other project, one that took up a large part of last year, was the writing of a full year-course for the Open University of Hong Kong called 'Culture and Translation'. This is the first time I have tried my hand at writing for Distance Learning. Actually I used examples from The Art of War in that course.
Right now I'm finishing the revision of another translation for Penguin Classics, a collection of Chinese Tales of the Supernatural from the early 18th century, by the brilliant writer in that genre Pu Songling. And at the same time I am working (with my friend Joseph Lau) on the second volume of a big anthology called Classical Chinese Literature (volume 1, over 1200 pages long, came out three years ago from Columbia UP in New York, and Chinese University Press in Hong Kong).
Sonshi.com: Is there a classical work you always wanted to translate but never got around to?
Minford: I have always wanted to do a new version of the extraordinary I Ching, the Book of Changes. That is the book that fascinates me most of all. It is one of the main books that got me into Chinese in the first place. Even more than Sunzi, this is a true Book of Life. There is definitely room for a lively new version, one that goes back to the divination roots of the text, and puts the commentary tradition in its proper context, for our time. Maybe one day...
Sonshi.com: How is retired life? Do you miss teaching and research activities?
Minford: I have always wanted to live as I do now, deep in the countryside, with my own piece of land (I have an old farmhouse and about ten acres of vineyards, mostly on remote hilltops). But yes, there is a price to pay for the life-style and the isolation. The research and translation carries on, in my study; but yes, I do sometimes miss the contact with other people, especially with students.
[End of interview]