An interesting question of interpretation and translation arises when considering the first hexagram that I threw for this trip: number 27. Minford, in his Bronze Age Oracle section, renders the hexagram as “breasts” while Rutt, in his Zhouyi, translates it as “molars.”
“the corners of the mouth (providing nourishment),” or “nourishing” (huang) or open quotation “jaws of it all” (Hinton). Today the character 頤 / 颐 yí in a literary context means “chin, cheek” as a noun or “to “nourish” or “take good care of one’s health” (Pleco).
Note on blog posts: Like all aspects of n Lines & Changing, these posts are incomplete. Moving forward, these and future posts will provide additional documentation on algorithmic walks, psychogeography, urban geography, digital and aleatoric poetry and poetics, ecopoetry and poetics, the history and use of the I Ching/Book of Changes/易经, related research, and more — including reflection on what it means to do such work in the shadow of the question of the Anthropocene.
Additional posts will document talks, performances and events as well as the use of walking algorithms and aleatoric (chance-based) compositional methods in creative writing workshops.
Pujiang Park boy with red slider
“The breast is a machine that produces milk, and the mouth a machine coupled to it.”
— Deleuze & Guattari, “The Desiring-Machines,” Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Lane, Hurley & Seem (1)
Base (9):
Put your secret tortoise shells away: observe our molars hanging in display.
DISASTROUS
— Richard Rutt (Zhouyi: The Book of Changes)
Nine in the First Place
The Magic Turtle
Is forsaken.
Moving breasts
Are contemplated.
Calamity.
— John Minford “Bronze Age Oracle with Commentary” I Ching: the Essential Translation of the Ancient Chinese Oracle and the Book of Wisdom
An interesting question of interpretation and translation arises when considering the first hexagram that I threw for this trip: number 27. Minford, in his Bronze Age Oracle section, renders the hexagram as “breasts” while Rutt, in his Zhouyi, translates it as “molars.”
“the corners of the mouth (providing nourishment),” or “nourishing” (huang) or open quotation “jaws of it all” (Hinton). Today the character 頤 / 颐 yí in a literary context means “chin, cheek” as a noun or “to “nourish” or “take good care of one’s health” (Pleco).
Minford explains his move thusly:
Breasts
JUDGMENT
Auspicious Augury.
Breasts
Are contemplated;
Substance is sought
For the mouth.
This Hexagram Name has been understood to refer to the jawbones of Sacrificial Animals hung in a Temple and examined for the purposes of Divination, or to the dewlaps (loose folds of skin hanging from the throat) of live animals destined for Sacrifice. In early times, various animals—dogs, pigs, sheep, oxen, buffaloes—and their bones were used for both Sacrifice and Divination. Indeed, their use for Divination may possibly have evolved from accidental cracks caused when they were burned in Sacrifice. Certain commentators concentrate on the condition of the teeth. Others emphasize that which is “within the jaw”—i.e., nourishment. Liu Dajun believes the Hexagram has to do with scrutinizing the face—in other words, Divination through phrenology. The old graph for the Hexagram Name (as found mainly in Bronze Inscriptions) is usually taken to be a picture of the jaw, perhaps with whiskers. A recent reinterpretation, however, which I find most attractive, and which I follow, sees the graph as a picture of a mother’s breasts and the head of an infant feeding, suckling. This turns the entire Hexagram into a series of mantic observations of breast-feeding. This admittedly speculative reading also leads very naturally to the later understanding of the Hexagram as “nourishment.”
