Book 9: 《子罕》 Zi Han (Seldom Spoke)
《子罕》 Passage 9.8
Legge Translation (1861)
The Master said: "Am I indeed possessed of knowledge? I am not knowing. But if a mean person, who appears quite empty-like, ask anything of me, I set it forth from one end to the other, and exhaust it."Word by word
- 子曰 zǐ yuē
the Master said
- 子 the Master, a respectful title for Confucius
- 曰 said, spoke (introduces a quotation)
- 吾 wú
I, me (first-person pronoun)
- 有 yǒu
to have, possess
Roberts fuses this with the following 知 into the single adjective 'knowledgeable'.
- 知 zhī
knowledge, wisdom
- 乎哉 hū zāi
emphatic interrogative-exclamatory final particles
- 乎 interrogative final particle
- 哉 exclamatory particle intensifying a question
Legge's 'indeed' reflects the intensifying force of 哉.
- 無 wú
not, to lack
- 知 zhī
knowledge
- 也 yě
final particle of assertion
- 有 yǒu
existential verb: there is, there was
English introduces the new referent with an indefinite article or a conditional clause rather than an explicit existential verb.
- 鄙夫 bǐ fū
rustic fellow, uneducated commoner
- 鄙 rustic, uncultivated, of low station
- 夫 man, fellow
- 問 wèn
to ask, question
- 於 yú
preposition marking the person addressed: to, of
- 我 wǒ
me (first-person object pronoun)
- 空空如也 kōng kōng rú yě
utterly empty, at a complete loss, mind blank
- 空 empty, vacant (first of a reduplicated pair)
- 空 empty, vacant (second of a reduplicated pair, intensifying)
- 如 suffix marking a descriptive state: -like, as if
- 也 final particle completing a descriptive expression
whose mind is empty is disputed: 孔安國 (其意空空然) and 朱熹 (空空，無知貌) apply it to the rustic questioner, as Legge and Peimin Ni do, while Slingerland, Ames & Rosemont, Lau and Chin apply it to Confucius himself. Watson's 'with all sincerity' follows the reading 空空 = 悾悾, guileless; Roberts drops the clause.
- 我 wǒ
I (first-person subject pronoun)
- 叩 kòu
to strike at, probe closely, investigate thoroughly
- 其 qí
its, referring back to the question just asked
- 兩端 liǎng duān
the two ends, extremes (of a question)
- 兩 two, both
- 端 end, extremity
Roberts renders the concrete spatial image abstractly, as the two sides of an argument.
- 而 ér
and, and then
- 竭 jié
to exhaust, get to the very bottom of (a question)
- 焉 yān
final particle functioning as resumptive object pronoun: it, thereby
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