Book 7: 《述而》 Shu Er (Transmission)
《述而》 Passage 7.5
Legge Translation (1861)
The Master said: "Extreme is my decay. For a long time, I have not dreamed, as I was wont to do, that I saw the Duke of Zhou."Word by word
- 子曰 zǐ yuē
the Master said
- 子 the Master, a respectful title for Confucius
- 曰 said (introduces a direct quotation)
- 甚矣 shèn yǐ
exclamatory intensifier: how extremely, to a great degree
- 甚 extremely, to a great degree
- 矣 exclamatory particle marking a newly realized extreme state
The predicate 甚 is fronted before the subject-predicate clause 吾衰也 for emphatic exclamation: literally 'extreme, it is - my decline!', i.e. 'how extreme is my decline!'
- 吾 wú
first-person pronoun: I, my
- 衰 shuāi
to decline, deteriorate, grow weak
- 也 yě
final particle of assertion
- 久矣 jiǔ yǐ
exclamatory duration marker: it has been a long time
- 久 a long time
- 矣 exclamatory particle marking a state that has now come to be
- 吾 wú
first-person pronoun: I
- 不 bù
not
- 復 fù
again, once more
不復 together mean 'no longer'; several translators fold 復's sense of repetition into a 'since I last/again' phrasing rather than a discrete word.
- 夢 mèng
to dream
- 見 jiàn
to see, to encounter
- 周公 zhōu gōng
Duke of Zhou, proper name
- 周 Zhou (dynastic name)
- 公 duke, a noble title
Ji Dan (姬旦), younger brother of King Wu and regent for King Cheng, credited with the Zhou ritual order and founder of the ducal house of Lu; Confucius's model of the sage minister, which is why his absence from dreams marks decline.
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