Zhuangzi translation and commentary

仲尼適楚，出於林中，見痀僂者承蜩，猶掇之也。仲尼曰：「子巧乎？有道邪？」

曰：「我有道也。五六月累丸，二而不墜，則失者錙銖；累三而不墜，則失者十一；累五而不墜，猶掇之也。

吾處身也若厥株拘，吾執臂也若槁木之枝，雖天地之大，萬物之多，而唯蜩翼之知。吾不反不側，不以萬物易蜩之翼，何為而不得！」

孔子顧謂弟子曰：「用志不分，乃凝於神，其痀僂丈人之謂乎！」[a]

On the way to Chu, Confucius emerged from a forest and saw a hunchback plucking cicadas out of the air on the end of a gummed stick as easily as if he were picking them up off the ground. Confucius said, "Are you just getting lucky or is there a way to do that?"

He said, "I have a way. For five or six months, I juggle balls. When I can juggle two without dropping, the cicadas I miss will be small change. When I can juggle three without dropping, then I'll only miss one in ten. When I can juggle five without dropping, it's like picking them up off the ground.

"I set my body like an old trunk and hold my arm like a dried branch. Despite the size of the world and number of things in it, I know only the cicada wings. I don't turn this way or lean that. Nothing can replace those cicadas' wings. How could I not catch them?"

Confucius glanced back at his disciples and said, "This old hunch-backed fellow is exactly what I meant by 'undivided attention and congealed spirit'!" [1]

[1] The usual translation of this story has the old man catching the cicadas on the end of a gummed stick and then using it to practice by balancing balls. However, there is no mention of a stick in the original text; it first appears in the commentary of Guo Xiang (d. 312 CE). And the word translated as “balance” is vague: 累 lèi normally means to tire or entangle. In the case of tiles, it means "to set." Another problem is that balancing five balls on the end of a stick is at least as spectacular, if not more so, than catching cicadas. Why isn’t the story just about that? There seems to be a disproportion between the training and the task. While one hesitates to go against the commentators, especially one so eminent as Guo Xiang, I offer this alternative stick-less version to demonstrate the variety of readings that are possible.

The reason for the old man catching cicadas is another question. There is a tension between the knack stories, which emphasize efficiency and efficacy, and the theme of uselessness, which celebrates the opposite. It seems possible that the cicada catcher could be the one example in the text of a truly pointless skill. Though much is made in the surrounding literature of their seasonal singing and shedding, I can find no explanation for why anyone would want to catch cicadas. It seems plausible that they might have been kept as pets or used in medicines, but there is no confirmation of it in this period. The commentators all agree in defining 蜩 tiáo, the word used here, as 蟬 chán, both of which mean "cicada." The 蟬冠 was a ceremonial cap decorated with cicada wings in use as early as the Han Dynasty, but there is no mention of such a thing in the literature before that. There is one passing reference to their use as food in the Nei Ze section of the Liji, along with bees and lichens—hardly top shelf fare. So, the "Why?" of the old man's behavior remains as much a mystery as the "How?"