$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Stephen Delong', '[')url=http://hawk.fab2.albany.edu/sidebar/sidebar.htm]LINK:
Despite its high visibility, I have not been able to authenticate "May you live in interesting times" as an ancient Chinese curse. [/url]
PeakOil is You
Origin of Curse: May you live in interesting times
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Origin of Curse: May you live in interesting times
by Carlhole » Wed 01 Mar 2006, 06:08:49
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('source', '.')..although Jung did write about alchemy, Golden Flower really does not touch on the subject very much, if at all. So I sent e-mail to several Jung discussion groups and listservs, including the Newsgroup alt.psychology.jung, asking if any devotees knew of another work in which he discussed the curse. Nothing.
Dead end.
Then, on March 31, 1998, Keith Henson, who was cited in Biased Journalism as the source of the second phrase in the longer forms of the curse -- "and attract the attention of important people" -- sent me a message:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Henson', 'I') happened to find a very early reference to the "curse" in a collection of stories by Eric Frank Russell, Somewhere a Voice, Penguin Books, 1968, a reprint from Denis Dobson Ltd, 1965, which in turn is a reprint from U-Turn, a story in Astounding Science Fiction, April, 1950. . . .
So, the "curse" goes back to at least 1950. This use also explains why it is so well known in the SF community--Russell was very well thought of as an author. It is just possible that this is the origin of this saying, though since Russell is long dead, it might be hard to show.
A day or two later, there I was in Special Collections at the University Library looking at "U-Turn" by Duncan H. Munro, a pseudonym for Eric Frank Russell. Mind you, I wasn't simply looking at a microform image or even a bound volume. I was holding the original, unbound April 1950 issue of Astounding Science Fiction in my hand. It had been recently donated in that state. Astounding.
As for the curse itself, it is on page 137. The main character of "U-Turn," Mason, has opted for assisted suicide to escape a regimented life in which Venus and Mars are civilized, life on the Moon is spent safely underground, and wild animals in Earth's jungles are as harmless as if they were artificial. We learn at the end of the story that Mason has correctly surmised that the death chamber to which he voluntarily goes is actually a Star Trek-like transporter which will irreversibly send him where he really wants to go -- to the current human frontier, Callisto, one of the moons of Jupiter -- assuming he is among the small fraction of those who survive the dissociation and reassociation process of the device. But before that, while one of the bureaucrats processes his "death wish," Mason complains about the order, regulation, and control under which everyone is forced to live:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Duncan H. Munro in U-Turn', 'F')or centuries the Chinese used an ancient curse: "May you live in interesting times!" It isn't a curse any more. It's a blessing. We're scientific and civilized. We've got so many rights and liberties and freedoms that one can yearn for chains for the sheer pleasure of busting them and shaking them off. Reckon life would be more livable if there were any chains left to bust.
- Carlhole
