Analects 6.23: 雍也 (Yong Ye)
Confucius and his disciples · Classical Chinese original · new English translation and commentary by Text Atlas
Overview
Book 6 asks how character becomes visible in governing, learning, giving, and answering other people. Judgments of practical ability sit beside a refusal of office. Yan Hui’s love of learning, steadiness in humaneness, and joy under hardship are framed by grief at his early death. The short sayings test relations between substance and refinement, knowledge and delight, reverence and distance. The closing exchange moves from the achievement of helping the people on a vast scale to a nearby method of humaneness: using one’s own desire for a firm footing and progress to help others find theirs.
Analects 6.23
子曰、觚不觚、觚哉觚哉。
The Master said, “A gu cup that is no gu cup—can it be a gu? Can it be a gu?”
Commentary
translation When a cup loses its name Gu is kept as the name of the cup because the repeated name is the point of the protest. Legge describes a cornered vessel that has lost its corners. The Chinese says only that the gu is no longer a gu; it does not identify the changed feature. The repeated exclamation presses the mismatch between an object’s name and what it has become.
Basis: translation-comparison
Confidence: medium