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* I found the best option for the weekly reminder emails, via Gmail. The external service options are more involved than our purposes require. Does anyone know anything about how to arrange an Apps Script? Basically all it has to do is tell ten people, on Saturdays, to come and get their juice/poems.
Until someone knows what to do there, I'll send out manual messages weekly. If you'd like to receive these and are not getting them, please let me know.
* If you haven't read it yet, chapter one, on tetrasyllabic shi poetry, in How to Read Chinese Poetry is hugely useful for the Book of Odes, imo.
* Remember you can also look at How to Read Chinese Poetry in Context.
* IF YOU HAVE FRIENDS WHO MIGHT LIKE TO JOIN or have other ideas, please let me know on this post.
* Every week I search the poems' English results to see if I can find any scholarship or neat bits and pop the results in Resources. Here is this week's collection.
**NEXT BATCH JUNE 14.**
ONLY 4 SHI JING WEEKS LEFT, THIS INCLUDED!
Until someone knows what to do there, I'll send out manual messages weekly. If you'd like to receive these and are not getting them, please let me know.
* If you haven't read it yet, chapter one, on tetrasyllabic shi poetry, in How to Read Chinese Poetry is hugely useful for the Book of Odes, imo.
* Remember you can also look at How to Read Chinese Poetry in Context.
* IF YOU HAVE FRIENDS WHO MIGHT LIKE TO JOIN or have other ideas, please let me know on this post.
* Every week I search the poems' English results to see if I can find any scholarship or neat bits and pop the results in Resources. Here is this week's collection.
**NEXT BATCH JUNE 14.**
ONLY 4 SHI JING WEEKS LEFT, THIS INCLUDED!
267. 維天之命 - Wei Tian Zhi Ming
維天之命、於穆不已。
於乎不顯、文王之德之純。
假以溢我、我其收之。
駿惠我文王、曾孫篤之。
The ordinances of Heaven, -
How deep are they and unintermitting!
And oh! how illustrious,
Was the singleness of the virtue of king Wen!
How does he [now] show his kindness?
We will receive [his favour],
Striving to be in accord with him, our king Wen;
And may his remotest descendant be abundantly the same!
Re: 267. 維天之命 - Wei Tian Zhi Ming
How deep are they and unintermitting!" So is this deep as in mysterious, thoughtful or arduous? How 'unintermitting'?
'singleness' odd phrasing
"And may his remotest descendant be abundantly the same!" weird way of putting 'I hope his descendants are always as cool as King Wen himself is'
Re: 267. 維天之命 - Wei Tian Zhi Ming
Looking at the word, 'singleness' seems to translate better as 'purity'.
According to Baike, this poem was composed by King Wen's grandson, King Cheng of Zhou, so. Btw King Wen was not actually King of Zhou at any point; his son King Wu was the one who did the conquering, and Wen was honoured posthumously as the founder of the Zhou Dynasty.
Re: 267. 維天之命 - Wei Tian Zhi Ming
Agree with
Baike glosses the last line as more like, "may his posterity be forever diligent/sincere"
Re: 267. 維天之命 - Wei Tian Zhi Ming
http://cccp.uchicago.edu/archive/2009BookOfOdesSymposium/2009_BookOfOdesSymposium_EdShaughnessy.pdf
"The penultimate line of the poem “Wei tian zhi ming” 維天之命 (Mao 267) of
the Zhou Song section of the Poetry reads: “Jun hui wo Wen wang” 駿惠我文王
“Greatly kind our King Wen.” Neither the Mao zhuan nor Zheng Xuan’s commentary
comments directly on the first two words here, jun hui 駿惠, which are hard to construe
in the context. In a one-sentence aside in the introductory remarks to his article on zhi 止
and zhi 之 in the Poetry, Yu noted that the compound jun zhi 畯疐 “to rule securely”
occurs in the final prayers of the Qin Gong zhong 秦公鐘 and Qin Gong gui 秦公簋
inscriptions: yi shou chun lu duo li, mei shou wu jiang, jun zhi zai wei 以受純魯多釐,眉
壽無疆,畯疐在位 “to receive pure aid and many blessings, long life without bound, and
to rule securely in position34” Another example of this usage was discovered well after
Yu was writing his study; the late Western Zhou Hu gui 簋, ostensibly composed by
Zhou Li Wang (r. 857/53-842/28), the reigning Zhou king, contains the following pair of
phrases: jun zai wei, zuo zhi zai xia 畯在位,作疐在下 “I rule in position, making secure
those below.”35 It seems clear, as Yu suggested, that “jun zhi” 畯疐”to rule securely”
was in the Western Zhou and early Spring and Autumn periods an idiomatic way of
describing a good ruler, certainly fitting for the Wen Wang of the poem “Wei tian zhi
ming.” However, it is not found in later literature, suggesting that it may have passed out
of use (and perhaps even out of understanding). If we can agree that it fits the context of
the poem “Wei tian zhi ming” better than does the easily intelligible but inappropriate jun
hui 駿惠 “greatly kind,” then we need to ask how the variation came about. Of course,
the variation between zhun 駿 “swift; great” and jun 畯 “overseer; to rule” involves only
a change of signific, and so is textually insignificant. However, the variation between hui
惠 (*wis R!) and zhi 疐 (*tits) would seem certainly to be a classic case of lectio facilior,
the substitution of a simpler and well known character for one more difficult (and perhaps,
at the time, unintelligible). This could only have happened within a written transmission
of the text of the poem."