Analects 9.10: 子罕 (Zi Han)
Confucius and his disciples · Classical Chinese original · new English translation and commentary by Text Atlas
Overview
Book 9 presents the Master through questions about his learning, skills, character, and place in the cultural tradition. His own accounts of ordinary work and unfinished attainment stand beside his students’ admiration. Ritual decisions distinguish useful change from arrogant display, while the jade exchange joins willingness to serve with waiting for someone who recognizes worth. Images of flowing water, earthworks, growing plants, and winter trees give passing time, effort, and tested character concrete form. Praise of learners sits beside regret and warnings about unfinished growth. The later sayings ask for correction, resolve, and the ability to weigh circumstances after learning to stand firm.
Analects 9.10
顏淵喟然歎曰、仰之彌高、鑽之彌堅、瞻之在前、忽焉在後夫子循循然善誘人、博我以文、約我以禮。欲罷不能、既竭吾才、如有所立卓爾、雖欲從之、末由也已。
Yan Yuan sighed deeply and said, “The more I look up, the higher it rises; the more I bore into it, the harder it grows. I see it ahead, and suddenly it is behind. The Master guides people well, step by step. He broadens my understanding through the cultural tradition and sets bounds for me through ritual. Even if I wanted to stop, I could not. I have used all my ability, and something seems to stand towering before me. Though I want to follow, I find no way.”
Commentary
translation What rises higher Yan Yuan speaks as someone being taught by the Master. The object of looking up and boring into something is left unnamed; Legge supplies the Master’s doctrines. Keeping “it” allows the language to hold together the teaching, the teacher, and what the learner is trying to reach. After “behind,” the English starts a new sentence with “The Master”; the printed Chinese runs those clauses together.
Basis: translation-comparison
Confidence: medium
ethics Breadth and bounds 博 and 約 work in opposite directions: the cultural tradition gives breadth, while ritual gives bounds. Yan Yuan’s growing effort does not make the object of learning easy to grasp. His wish to stop and inability to stop show how the teaching draws him onward even when he reaches the limit of his present ability.
Basis: textual-inference
Confidence: medium