Book 19: 《子張》 Zi Zhang
《子張》 Passage 19.15
Legge Translation (1861)
Ziyou said: "My friend Zhang can do things which are hard to be done, but yet he is not perfectly virtuous."Word by word
- 子游 zǐ yóu
Ziyou, disciple of Confucius (Yan Yan)
- 子 prefix of a courtesy name, as in 子路 and 子貢; not the title Master
- 游 second syllable of the disciple Ziyou's courtesy name
- 曰 yuē
to say, speak
- 吾 wú
my
- 友 yǒu
friend
- 張 zhāng
Zhang, courtesy-name element in 子張, the disciple Zhuansun Shi's courtesy name
- 也 yě
particle marking a pause after the topic
- 為 wéi
copula: to be, count as
Translators split between reading 為 as the main verb 'do' (難能 as its object) and as the copula 'is' (難能 as predicate).
- 難能 nán néng
hard to match, hard to emulate
- 難 difficult, hard
- 能 to be able, capable; ability
- 也 yě
final particle of assertion
- 然而 rán ér
nevertheless, but, even so
- 然 adversative adverb: yet, even so, nevertheless
- 而 conjunctive particle: and, but, yet
- 未 wèi
not yet
- 仁 rén
humaneness, moral goodness
Ren, the cardinal Confucian virtue; translators split between an inner-quality reading (humaneness, benevolence) and Ames & Rosemont's performative 'authoritative conduct'.
A text file for Anki 2.1.55 or later: File → Import. The cards go to the deck “Analects”, tagged by passage, and importing again updates them instead of adding copies.
Discussion
No one has started on this passage yet.
Start the discussion in r/analects