At fifty-five he left the state of Lu. His office had risen as far as charge of punishments and trials.
For fourteen years after that he moved between states, and nowhere was he used.
On the road he was told he looked like a dog from a house of mourning. And he answered that so it was.
From the Propositions to the Man
Four parts up to here have been his words. Places where somebody asked what learning is, what ren is, what governing is, and got an answer.
From part five what comes is what actually happened to the man who went about saying those things. There is a reason for putting them in this order. Read the propositions first and you can see the life pushing back on them.
Pushing back does not mean he lived up to his own words. It means that what the world did to him while he was saying them was written down alongside.
The Frame of This Part Lies Outside The Analects
One thing has to be said in advance. Why he left Lu, and which states he passed through in what order, is not written in The Analects.
The Analects is a record of sayings. It sets down who asked what and what he answered, and mostly does not set down when or where the exchange happened.
So the events of part five come from Sima Qian’s Shiji, in its chapter on the house of Confucius, and from the Zuo Zhuan and its line of records. Sima Qian lived some four hundred years after Confucius, and among the stories he gathered are some that had already been handed down a long time.
That is why every event in this part is marked with where it comes from.
He Left at Fifty-Five
The Shiji puts his leaving of Lu at fifty-five. It records that he held the office of da si kou (大司寇) at the time.
A high post with charge of punishments and trials. Which is to say he had just reached a place where he could do something.
The book gives the circumstances too. Neighbouring Qi sent women musicians to Lu, and Ji Huanzi, who held the real power, accepted them and did not attend to government for three days. Then the meat from the sacrifice to heaven failed to reach the officers, and he left Lu.
Joining Those Two Is Also a Reading
Here is where to be careful. Both the acceptance of the musicians and his departure are in the record, but saying the first caused the second is Sima Qian’s telling.
Readings differ on the sacrificial meat too. One takes it as a sign that li had collapsed. Another takes it as a pretext that arrived just in time for a man already looking for one.
The Analects says nothing at all about the matter.
Alone Outside the East Gate of Zheng
Of the years after he left, one scene was handed down more than the rest.
When it happened has to be marked first. By the order the Shiji gives, it falls after he was held at Kuang and threatened in Song, and just before he entered Chen. It is not a scene from the year he left. This chapter puts it at the front of part five because the whole fourteen years came to be remembered by that one phrase.
The Shiji records that when he reached Zheng he and his disciples lost each other. Having lost his party, he stood alone outside the east gate of the city.
A man near sixty standing by himself in front of a strange country’s gate.
Somebody Put Him in One Line
The man of Zheng who saw him met Zigong and described what he had seen. Zigong would have been going in and out of the city looking for his teacher.
What the man said comes down the body from the top. The forehead was like Yao’s, the neck like Gao Yao’s, the shoulders like Zichan’s. Yao and Gao Yao are old names that came up in the part before, and Zichan was the chief minister of Zheng, whom anyone there would know.
Up to here it reads as praise. Then below the waist the words change. From the waist down he fell three inches short of Yu, and the weary look of him was lei lei ruo sang jia zhi gou (累累若喪家之狗), seven characters, like a dog from a house of mourning.
What the Words Meant
A dog from a house of mourning is a dog in a house where a death has come. The household is deep in grief and confusion, and nobody sees to the dog.
So the phrase carries not being looked after before it carries being hungry. Not a dog without an owner, but a dog with one whom nobody so much as glances at.
For a man going from state to state looking for a place to be used, it is hard to find a more exact word.
So It Is, So It Is
Zigong repeated what he had heard as it was. The Shiji says he told him truly. It was a place where he could have passed on the first part and left the rest out.
Hearing it, the record says, Confucius laughed openly.
And he said the shape of a man is a trifling thing. What is said about a face belongs at the far end of things. Only the answer does not stop there. On being called a dog from a house of mourning he repeats ran zai (然哉) twice. So it is, so it is.
Which Part Was He Agreeing To
Two readings part here.
One takes it as agreement about the state he was in, a man accepting how worn he must have looked. The other weighs the fact that a man who had just waved off the praise as trifling went out of his way to pick up the last part and say it twice, and reads ease in it, a man letting another’s verdict slide past.
The record has him laughing and saying it twice, and stops there. It does not settle which.
Those two characters have probably lasted for that reason.
Fourteen Years
He returned to Lu at sixty-eight, the record says. Fourteen years from the day he left.
What happened in between is in the same book. He stayed in Wei more than once, was surrounded by people at a place called Kuang, and was threatened under a tree in Song. Between Chen and Cai the food was cut off and his party lay sick. Those scenes are the chapters that follow in this part.
No state put its government in his hands.
Today, the Time of Not Being Used
There is no teaching in this chapter. No proposition and no exchange. A man stood alone outside a gate, somebody put him in one line, and he laughed and said so it was.
Yet for a reader coming from the four parts before, the scene catches differently. The man who said to raise the straight and set them above the crooked is himself set above nothing, standing in front of a gate.
Whether that fact cuts his words down or makes them heavier is for each reader to settle after part five.
The season when nothing I could do was wanted anywhere, what did I call it at the time?