Emily Wilson’s review of Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster movie version of the Odyssey is entitled “An Uncomplicated Man”—a reference to her groundbreaking and nuanced translation of the opening line of the epic poem: “Tell me about a complicated man.”
There are many good reasons to study ancient texts. I am particularly interested in those works that capture the complexity of human life in ways that have abiding value today. This is one of the things that the Odyssey and the Analects—which I recently translated—have in common. The Analects insists that you can become a better person—but it focuses on the arduousness and difficulty of that process as it occurs within each of us, and how specific relationships and practices, both large and small, can help us along the way.
It also paints a picture of Kongzi (Confucius), and the complicated man he was. It is the most influential record of his teachings, but it also devotes considerable space to describing him. This is why the first chapter in my translation contains the passages that describe Kongzi as a person. It is the first translation to reorganize the text thematically and to use gender-neutral language throughout—decisions that I argue are both faithful to traditional Confucian ways of reading and interpreting the text and which also make the text more accessible to modern readers.
My chapter on women in the Analects is particularly important because my translation corrects a number of inaccuracies concerning women and gender in the text that have been perpetuated in previous translations. I am the first translator of the Analects to give special attention to the one named woman in the Analects (Nanzi) and to discuss her story in detail. She lived a complicated life, was married to a complicated man (Duke Ling of Wei), and, I argue, commentators and translators have tended to underestimate how complicated Kongzi was, in their attempts to understand his interactions with her.
Analects 6.28 says that Kongzi visited Nanzi but his disciple Zilu was unhappy about it. In response, Kongzi said, “If I have done anything wrong, may Tian repudiate me!” Tian, often translated as “heaven,” refers to the quasi-personal entity or force that in some ways governs the world and that gave Kongzi the mission of teaching about the Way (the virtues, values, and rituals that he advocates). His response is a decisive rejection of his disciple’s suggestion that he was wrong to meet with Nanzi, as he invites Tian to punish him if he has done anything wrong.
In seeking to explain why Kongzi’s disciple disapproved of Nanzi, the vast majority of traditional commentators and translators have followed the view that she was a “woman of ill repute,” or an adulterer. Many of them suggest that Kongzi had to meet with her as a matter of ritual propriety, because it was customary to meet with the wives of rulers when arriving in any state.
I believe they are wrong. First, the suggestion that Kongzi was a rote follower of ritual is to present him as a very uncomplicated man, with a very unsophisticated view of ritual, when nothing could be further from the truth. The view of ritual that is presented in the Analects is rich and textured. Kongzi discusses times when it is permissible to amend or suspend rituals, and times when it is unacceptable to make such changes (9.3). He also discusses the importance of having the right sorts of feelings, thoughts, attitudes, and intentions when we practice rituals, stating that we might as well not perform a ritual at all if we do not have the right emotions and motives (3.12, 17.21).
The text also does not present Kongzi as someone who acted on rumors, and I argue that we have good reasons to question the claim that Nanzi was an adulterer at all. There are a few early Chinese texts that describe Nanzi’s story in varying detail, and other texts that tell us about her husband and son, too. One says that she had an affair with a man who was renowned for his good looks; his attractiveness is even mentioned in the Analects (6.16). Another text states that Nanzi’s husband invited this man to court in order to gratify his wife. That, of course, would be puzzling were it not for a stunning detail: Nanzi’s husband was one of the earliest documented figures in Chinese history to be in a same-sex relationship. He is described as being in relationships with men, and his relationship with one of them is the origin of the Chinese phrase yutao 餘桃 “the bitten peach,” a byword for male homosexuality.
An appreciation for these details casts new light on Nanzi’s story when we read the Analects. If her husband essentially played matchmaker for her in an attempt to make his wife happy in ways he could not, she is hardly blameworthy. But there are further questions I explore in my translation, as well. Some commentaries appear to have conflated Nanzi with another woman (the wife of another duke) who had an affair with the same man, which raises the question of whether there is any truth to the claim that there was an affair at all. Additionally, the Analects describes Nanzi’s husband as being an incompetent ruler (14.19). If Nanzi had taken meetings with men (like Kongzi, and her rumored lover) in order to try to help govern the state, this would have been viewed as highly inappropriate for a woman, and it probably would have made people more likely to slander her, or at least to believe unflattering rumors about her. No previous translation of the Analects has taken these details into account.
For his part, Kongzi makes clear in the Analects the importance of judging people by their conduct and our own experience with them, as opposed to rumors or the things people say (for example 2.9, 2.10, 5.10). The text tells us, “He didn’t have preconceived ideas or foregone conclusions, [and] he wasn’t overly certain of himself” (9.4). We seldom know the whole story when it comes to other people’s lives, and not being overly certain of ourselves is essential to becoming better people; Kongzi says, “If you don’t ask yourself, ‘What should I do? How should I do it?’—I really don’t know what to do with you!” (15.16) He also insists that our character is always being formed. The term li 厲, meaning “whetstone,” as well as “to grind or sharpen,” is used to tell us that Kongzi “had warmth but [also made those around him] sharper; he was awe-inspiring but not intimidating” (7.38). He also understood that we all make mistakes and misjudge situations. For Kongzi, “To make a mistake and not change—this is what it really means to make a mistake” (15.30).
When it comes to the complexity of human lives, one of the elements of the Analects that I love is its ability to home in on our psychological complexity. It tells us to be “fully present” at rituals, understanding that we are often absent in mind and heart from where we are, which prevents us from experiencing life in ways that help us to flourish. Our lives are fuller, and we become healthier and happier, when we are fully present in times of both joy and sorrow: when we spend time with those we love, and when we grieve the loss of loved ones (3.12).
For her part, Wilson concludes her review of Nolan by pointing out that “in a time of declining literacy and the ‘death of the humanities’,” The Odyssey is generating interest in ancient texts, and however one judges the details of his film adaptation, this is a real achievement. “Perhaps the film will persuade a few college administrators not to cut their literature, language, and history departments. Nolan, who studied English at University College London—where students still study The Odyssey as a first year ‘foundational text’—is doing his best to get the general public reading again, and I am grateful.”
One of the things Wilson is pointing out is that we ought to have more faith in the contemporary value of reading ancient texts. We also ought to celebrate works that encourage wider audiences to read ancient texts. This is the most fundamental aim of my translation of the Analects (and the aim of my publisher, Liveright, whose catalog features works “that define and redefine our culture, and that continue to provoke interest and inspire readers around the world”). For, like the Odyssey, the Analects has enduring lessons for us about the complicated nature of human lives.
