The Analects is easily one of the most influential works ever written. That statement can largely be defended simply when one considers the overwhelming importance that the text has held in educational curricula throughout East Asia for several centuries. But its influence reaches far beyond this. Phrases from the Analects have been quoted and reworked in countless stories, poems, and plays in East Asia for over two millennia, and have now become embedded as idioms in common speech. Few texts have become so deeply ingrained in the ways countless people have lived their everyday lives.
All of this may sound somewhat surprising to an English-speaking reader. The historical significance of the text would certainly not be in question, but the fact that the text has been so vibrant for so many people may seem more than a little bizarre. For many readers of the Analects in English, the text seems, well, deadening. And much of that, I would argue, comes from the way the text has been translated.
To begin with an obvious point: many of the English translations have been more than a little clunky, losing the rhythmic phrasings that have made so many of the utterances so powerful and so memorable. It is hardly easy to imagine the English versions of these utterances becoming common idioms to be referenced and quoted in everyday speech.
But the problem goes beyond the awkwardness of the English. At least as important has been the lack of any sense of life in the text at all.
Take, for example, the humor and the sense of joy that is so crucial to the portrait of Confucius in the Analects. Confucius is often described in the text as joyous, but there has been little in the English translations that conveys anything of the sort. (My students often ask if such references to Confucius’ joyousness should be taken as ironic, given that the Confucius one finds in English translations is utterly lacking in any sense of joy—or just about any emotion whatsoever.)
And the lifelessness went beyond even Confucius. The personalities of the other characters in the text rarely shone through. Lost as well, therefore, were the complex relationships that animated the text. And, perhaps most devastatingly, women seemed to be either absent entirely or looked down upon within a purely male discourse. Almost all of the pronouns in the English translations of the text are “he” and “his,” and among the greatest things one can possibly hope for is to be deemed a proper “gentleman.”
The result of this are translations that have seemed divorced from the complexities of life, with little emotion, no humor, and certainly no concern for women. What we had instead were simply one platitude after another, uttered by a rather boring and often self-righteous figure. And many of these platitudes seemed rather, well, dull. It is easy for one’s eyes to glaze over going through passage after passage of not terribly profound statements, waiting for a sentence or two that seems to be more philosophically powerful. Not surprisingly, those few philosophically-sounding sentences, taken completely out of context, have tended to be the ones that end up being quoted over and over again in the English-speaking world. The rest of the utterances are quickly forgotten. The Analects in short, has read in translation as a rather dull remnant of a long-gone, purely male world.
All of which raises the question—often asked by students reading the text in English—of how in the world such a lifeless text could have had the impact it did.
But here is a key answer: this is simply not how the text reads in the original. The Analects is a text of relationships, of people with complex personalities interacting with each other in everyday situations. Yes, at the center of these relationships is Confucius. But Confucius is hardly an utterer of platitudes. He is indeed portrayed as a joyous figure, incredibly attuned to these relationships and beautifully sensing how, in the most mundane of situations, to make a statement or gesture that will alter those relationships for the better—how to allude to a story, quote a line of poetry, move his body in a way that will shift the emotions of those around him and alter the mood of the situation. Far from being platitudes, his utterances are grounded in common situations, in a web of personalities, and the reader learns by seeing Confucius in action. When one finds oneself in comparable situations, these phrases become lenses through which one rethinks one’s emotional responses or become idioms one can reference to others. It is a text that operates in the realm of human relationships, and it comes to life precisely by being brought into our own relationships. And, yes, these relationships most certainly include women. Those who have only read the text in English will be stunned to hear that classical Chinese is gender-neutral: the endless “he” and “his,” the constant references to being a proper “gentleman”—all of this is a product of translation.
This is why Erin Cline’s translation is so crucial. Cline is someone who has not only been reading and teaching the Analects for years; she is someone who lives it. Anyone who has had the great joy (a very Analects term) to see Erin Cline teach, watch her interact with colleagues, and witness her play with her children senses the degree to which she embodies the spirit of the text. She is deeply committed to helping those around her precisely by sensing the complexities of human relationships, the ways we can train our emotional responses to others, and the ways we can inspire those around us to do the same. And she has brought this sensibility to her translation. This is a translation that brings the original to life, allowing the reader to see the same level of human complexity and joyousness that renders the original so captivating. We see the personalities, we see the relationships, and we sense the power of Confucius’s utterances, all rendered in a colloquial English that provides the same rhythmic strength and memorable power of the original. Crucial too is the fact that Cline renders the text in gender-inclusive language, discarding as well the bizarrely misogynistic turns of phrase that English translations since the nineteenth century have embraced.
Like Emily Wilson’s translation of the Odyssey, Erin Cline’s translation of the Analects allows the reader to see the emotional depth of the original and sense why the work became so embedded in the everyday lives of countless generations. Finally we have an English translation that will allow readers to do the same.
