Analects 5.21: 公冶長 (Gongye Chang)
Confucius and his disciples · Classical Chinese original · new English translation and commentary by Text Atlas
Overview
Book 5 tests judgments of people against their conduct. The Master praises particular abilities and virtues while repeatedly withholding the larger judgment of humaneness. Marriage choices, public service, friendship, speech, and learning supply different kinds of evidence. Several exchanges expose a distance between what someone says or wants and what they can do; Zai Yu’s conduct even changes the Master’s way of judging. Near the end, the teacher and his companions state their own aspirations. The closing sayings turn assessment inward, toward recognizing faults and continuing to love learning.
Analects 5.21
子在陳曰、歸與歸與、吾黨之小子狂簡、斐然成章、不知所以裁之。
While in Chen, the Master said, “Let us go home! Let us go home! Our young people are ambitious and careless of detail. Their accomplishments form a splendid pattern, but they do not know how to cut it to shape.”
Commentary
translation Accomplishment awaiting shape The young people belong to the Master’s own circle or community. 成章 gives their accomplishment the image of a formed pattern; 裁 supplies cutting or shaping. 簡 suggests roughness or carelessness of detail; the cutting image then supplies the refinement their accomplishment still needs. Like Legge, this English takes the young people as those who do not know how to shape it. The Chinese leaves the subject unstated; taking the Master as that subject would make the closing admission his uncertainty about guiding them.
Basis: translation-comparison
Confidence: medium