Books

The Analects of Confucius
By Leys, Simon
1997/10 - W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
0393316998 - Trade Paper
Our Price $12.95

In this terse, brilliant translation, scholar Pierre Ryckmans (under the pseudonym Simon Leys) restores the human dimension to Confucius--who emerges as a full-blooded character with a passion for politics and a devotion to the ideals of a civilization he saw in decline. This volume provides new readers the perfect introduction to a classic work.

Publisher
No other book in the entire history of the world has exerted a greater influence on a larger number of people over a longer period of time than this slim volume. The spiritual cornerstone of the most populous and oldest living civilization on Earth, the Analects has inspired the Chinese and all the peoples of East Asia with its affirmation of a humanist ethics. As the Gospels are to Jesus, the Analects is the only place where we can encounter the real, living Confucius. In this gem-like translation by Simon Leys, Confucius speaks with clarity and brilliance. He emerges as a man of great passion and many enthusiasms, a man of bold action whose true vocation is politics. Confucius (551-479 B.C.) lived in an age of acute cultural and political crisis. Many of his observations mark a world sinking into violence and barbarity. Unable to obtain the leading political role he sought, he endeavored to reform society and salvage civilization through ethical debate, defining for ages to come the public mission of the intellectual.

Library Journal
Simon Leys is the pseudonym of Pierre Ryckmans (Chinese studies, Univ. of Sydney), who tells us in the foreword that he uses a literary pen name because his intention here was to produce a "writer's translation." In fact, this well-crafted translation of Confucius departs only in subtle ways from other distinguished translations to which Leys gives due credit, such as that by Arthur Waley (1938) and D.C. Lau (1979). When his reading is in any way unusual or when he has added to the text, he discloses his rationale fully in the notes. Leys draws parallels between Confucius and thinkers more familiar to Westerners, from Heraclitus to Emerson. He also allows himself to editorialize when a passage strikes a certain chord in him, bringing a fresh, contemporary reading to what might otherwise be an obscure Chinese concept. Scholars of Chinese may quibble over some of the nuances of translation, but it is the opinions set forth in Leys's notes that will spark lively debate. Recommended for academic collections and other collections in need of a good translation of this classic work. --Mark Woodhouse, Elmira Coll. Lib., N.Y.

Jonathan Spence - The New York Review of Books
Because of the central role of the Analects in Chinese culture over more than two millenia, Western missionaries and scholars have frequently tried to translate the work. . . . Simon Leys is the latest contender in the lists, and he is a subtle and elegant one. He clearly loves the task, and is drawn to Confucius as both man and thinker. . . . Leys's translations are clear and elegant. . . . But the elegance and clarity also reflect his point of view, his attempt to make the Analects not just timeless, but timely for ourselves in our current predicaments. It is here that the fascinating exercise of evaluating the political and emotional weight of words must be undertaken.

Publisher's Weekly
Because they offer diverse and sometimes diametrically opposite meanings, the words of Chinese classics are as likely to reflect the prejudices of the translator as the are to exhibit scholarly rigor. This volume is no exception. The publisher's biography of Leys calls him "an astringent observer," and such observations are readily apparent in Leys's sometimes bad-tempered and occasionally ill-judged glosses on a thinker whom he clearly believes would have agreed with him that late 20th-century culture is undergoing the same chaotic moral crisis as 6th-century B.C. China. While the translations are often elegant, and Leys's endnotes offer a few telling examinations of the vagaries and subtleties of translating the Analects, Leys is too often diverted from the Analects by barely relevant citations from European writers and his own digs at other translators of Confucius. Furthermore, neither the introduction nor the endnotes adequately place Confucius in historical context, making the book strangely vague about Confucius's impact on his time and people.