Book 9: 《子罕》 Zi Han (Seldom Spoke)
《子罕》 Passage 9.9
Legge Translation (1861)
The Master said: "The Feng bird does not come; the river sends forth no map: — it is all over with me!"Word by word
- 子曰 zǐ yuē
the Master said
- 子 the Master, polite title for Confucius
- 曰 said, spoke
- 鳳鳥 fèng niǎo
phoenix, mythical bird whose appearance omens a sage-king's reign
- 鳳 phoenix, mythical bird that is an omen of a sage-king's reign
- 鳥 bird
In Zhou-Confucian lore the phoenix's appearance and the River Chart's emergence heralded a sage-king's reign; Confucius laments that neither omen appears in his own time.
- 不 bù
not, negation adverb
- 至 zhì
arrive, appear, come
- 河 hé
the (Yellow) River
- 不 bù
not, negation adverb
- 出 chū
emerge, come forth, issue
- 圖 tú
chart, diagram, map
The River Chart (河圖) was a legendary diagram said to emerge from the Yellow River as an omen granted to a virtuous ruler.
- 吾 wú
I, me
- 已矣 yǐ yǐ
it is over, finished, hopeless
- 已 finished, over, at an end
- 矣 perfective particle marking a completed or realized state
已矣夫 is a stock expression of resignation: 'it is over, alas!'
- 夫 fú
final particle of lament: alas!
Slingerland, Watson, and Chin read 夫 here as inducing a rhetorical question, 'is it not?'; Legge, Peimin Ni, Roberts, Ames & Rosemont, and Lau treat it as a plain sigh of exclamation with no separate word.
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