Book 5: 《公冶長》 Gong Ye Chang
《公冶長》 Passage 5.5
Legge Translation (1861)
Some one said: "Yong is truly virtuous, but he is not ready with his tongue."The Master said: "What is the good of being ready with the tongue? They who encounter men with smartnesses of speech for the most part procure themselves hatred. I know not whether he be truly virtuous, but why should he show readiness of the tongue?"
Word by word
- 或曰 huò yuē
someone said
- 或 someone, some one (indefinite pronoun)
- 曰 to say, said
- 雍 yōng
Yong (Ran Yong, courtesy name Zhonggong), a disciple of Confucius
Slingerland uses the courtesy name Zhonggong rather than the given name Yong; Lau spells it Yung.
- 也 yě
topic-marking pause particle following a name or subject
- 仁 rén
benevolent, humane
Translators diverge sharply on 仁 here: most read benevolence or humaneness (Peimin Ni's 'human-hearted' and Legge's 'virtuous' are close variants), while Ames & Rosemont's 'authoritative person' reflects a distinct process-oriented reading.
- 而 ér
contrastive conjunction: but, yet
- 不 bù
not
- 佞 nìng
glib, smooth-tongued, superficially eloquent in speech
佞 names a facile, persuasive manner of speech sometimes prized in argument; Confucius treats it here as a defect, not a virtue.
- 子曰 zǐ yuē
the Master said
- 子 master, teacher, here referring to Confucius
- 曰 to say, said
- 焉 yān
rhetorical interrogative: what, why (implying the answer 'nothing')
焉用 is a fixed rhetorical pattern, 'what use/need is there for...', that expects a negative answer.
- 用 yòng
use, need, purpose
- 佞 nìng
glib, smooth-tongued, superficially eloquent in speech
- 禦人 yù rén
to meet, respond to people (in speech)
- 禦 to confront, withstand, counter an opponent in argument
- 人 people, others
- 以 yǐ
by means of, with
- 口給 kǒu jǐ
glib tongue, ready repartee, verbal cleverness in retort
- 口 mouth
- 給 ready supply of words, glib and quick in retort
口給 is a classical binome, literally 'mouth' plus 'well-supplied', denoting an ever-ready flow of words.
- 屢 lǚ
frequently, often, repeatedly
- 憎 zēng
to be hated, resented, detested
- 於 yú
preposition marking the agent of a passive action: by, from
- 人 rén
people, others
- 不知 bù zhī
to not know, be uncertain whether
- 不 not
- 知 to know, be certain of
Most translators fuse the negation and the verb into a single idiom ('cannot say', 'don't know'), so 不 and 知 are glossed together rather than as separable words.
- 其 qí
his, referring to Yong (third-person possessive pronoun)
- 仁 rén
benevolent, humane
The same split recurs as at the passage's first verdict on 仁.
- 焉 yān
rhetorical interrogative: what, why (implying the answer 'nothing')
- 用 yòng
use, need, purpose
- 佞 nìng
glib, smooth-tongued, superficially eloquent in speech
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