Il libro dei mutamenti
- Lingua:
- inglese
- Traduzione:
- James Legge
- Stato:
- Opera completa
- Autorialità:
- Anonima o composita
- Stato del testo:
- Testo pulito
- Estensione:
- ~160.000 parole · 762 passi
Cita quest'opera
- APAI Ching. (n.d.). Il libro dei mutamenti. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/it/works/i-ching/the-i-ching-book-of-changes
- MLAI Ching. "Il libro dei mutamenti." SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/it/works/i-ching/the-i-ching-book-of-changes.
- ChicagoI Ching. Il libro dei mutamenti. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/it/works/i-ching/the-i-ching-book-of-changes.
Di che cosa tratta
Il «Libro dei mutamenti», il testo più antico del canone cinese: sessantaquattro figure di sei linee, ciascuna col suo responso, usate insieme come oracolo e come libro di sapienza.
Contesto e storia
Lo strato più antico sono i brevi responsi, dell'epoca Zhou occidentale, verso il IX secolo a.C., e costituiscono un manuale di divinazione. Ciò che ne fece uno dei Cinque Classici sono le «Dieci ali», commenti aggiunti secoli dopo e attribuiti dalla tradizione a Confucio, che vi leggono una cosmologia: il mutamento come alternanza di yin e yang, ogni figura come un momento di un processo. Così lo stesso libro è insieme oracolo e filosofia del tempo, e le due letture convivono da duemila anni. Ha segnato tutto il pensiero cinese posteriore, e la traduzione tedesca di Richard Wilhelm lo introdusse in Europa con una prefazione di Jung.
Contesto editoriale, non una fonte citabile: a differenza dei passi dell'opera, questi dati non si possono verificare sul corpus.
I wrote out a translation of the Yi King, embracing both the Text and the Appendixes, in 1854 and 1855; and have to acknowledge that when the manuscript was completed, I knew very little about the scope and method of the book. I laid the volumes containing the result of my labour aside, and hoped, believed indeed, that the light would by and by dawn and that I should one day get hold of a clue that would guide me to a knowledge of the mysterious classic. Before that day came, the translation was soaked, in 1870, for more than a month in water of the Red Sea. By dint of careful manipulation it was recovered so as to be still legible ; but it was not till 1874 that I began to be able to give to the book the prolonged attention necessary to make it reveal its secrets. Then for the first time I got hold, as I believe, of the clue, and found that my toil of twenty years before was of no service at all. What had tended more than anything else to hide the nature of the book from my earlier studies was the way in which, with the Text, ordinarily and, as I think, correctly ascribed to king Wan and his son Tan, there are interspersed, under each hexagram, the portions of the Appendixes I, II, and IV relating to it. The student at first thinks this an advantage. He believes that all the Appendixes were written by Confucius, and combine with the Text to form one harmonious work ; and he is glad to have the sentiments of ‘the three sages’ brought together. But I now perceived that the composition of the Text and of the Appendixes, allowing the Confucian authorship of the latter, was separated by’ about 700 years, and that their subject-matter was often incongruous. My first step towards a right understanding of the Yi was to study the Text by itself and as complete in itself. It was easy to X1V PREFACE. do this because the imperial edition of 1715, with all its critical apparatus, keeps the Text and the Appendixes separate.