Home Ursula K. Le Guin Chapter 1

Ursula K. Le Guin

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The way you can go isn’t the real way. The name you can say isn’t the real name.

Heaven and earth begin in the unnamed: name’s the mother of the ten thousand things.

So the unwanted soul sees what’s hidden, and the ever-wanting soul sees only what it wants.

Two things, one origin, but different in name, whose identity is mystery. Mystery of all mysteries! The door to the hidden.

Note UKLG: A satisfactory translation of this chapter is, I believe, perfectly impossible. It contains the book. I think of it as the Aleph, in Borges’s story: if you can see it rightly, it contains everything.

Continue reading from this chapter in the full translation.