Faint are those little stars, 2 Three and five of them in the east. Hurriedly mid the night we go, 4 In morning and at night we are in the palace— Really people’s lots are not the same!
6 Faint are those little stars, Of Orion and the Pleiades. 8 Hurriedly mid the night we go, Carrying our coverlets and sheets— 10 Really people’s lots are not similar!
The xing (a ective image) that opens this poem is also a bi (comparison), linking the stars to lower-ranking palace women. In the growing light of dawn—which may symbolize the waking of the ruler’s favorite—these three and ve “stars” grow ever fainter. Why not three or four stars? The answer is that these three and ve stars are those in ancient Chinese constellations comparable with our Orion and the Pleiades, the stars that remain visible the longest in the winter’s morning sky. This unusual trope allows the rst stanza to link to the second, where the meta- phor becomes clearer. The theme of this song is similar to the meaning of the ancient Chinese saying “The hungry sing of their food, the labored sing of their service.” The persona here laments her lower status, which makes it impossible for her to attend her lord for the entire night, as the main wife would. Thus she and her fellow court ladies hurry about. The image of these women with the cover- lets and sheets draped on their shoulders suggests both the canopy of the sky (in the appearance of the women) and the hierarchy of the palace women themselves (seen in their hardship). The prosody of this poem is regular except for the “extra” fth line in each stanza, perhaps lending emphasis to the plaint of the nal lines, an emphasis heightened by the rhyme scheme ababb, acacc.
There is a second, relatively common reading of this poem that identi es the persona as a low-ranking courtier (a member of the shi, or petit nobility) who scur- ries to be on time for the dawn audience, his own star obscured by the higher- ranking grandees of the court. Indeed, many traditional poems have been inter- preted variously as political or love songs. Yet the coverlets and sheets argue of love here, and the entire poem bears some resemblance to Sappho’s (late seventh–early sixth century b.C.e.) fragment no. 34:6
Stars around the lovely moon Hide their gleaming beauty away Whenever she at the full sheds Over the earth her radiant glow.
Although once again a Greek fragment offers us no context, the juxtaposition of some central female figure (the moon) to her subordinate women (the stars around her) is not unlike the situation in “Little Stars.” "
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Re: Xiao Xing
Date: 2020-10-21 03:02 pm (UTC)"Little Stars
Faint are those little stars,
2 Three and five of them in the east.
Hurriedly mid the night we go,
4 In morning and at night we are in the palace—
Really people’s lots are not the same!
6 Faint are those little stars,
Of Orion and the Pleiades.
8 Hurriedly mid the night we go,
Carrying our coverlets and sheets—
10 Really people’s lots are not similar!
The xing (a ective image) that opens this poem is also a bi (comparison), linking the stars to lower-ranking palace women. In the growing light of dawn—which may symbolize the waking of the ruler’s favorite—these three and ve “stars” grow ever fainter. Why not three or four stars? The answer is that these three and ve stars are those in ancient Chinese constellations comparable with our Orion and the Pleiades, the stars that remain visible the longest in the winter’s morning sky. This unusual trope allows the rst stanza to link to the second, where the meta- phor becomes clearer. The theme of this song is similar to the meaning of the ancient Chinese saying “The hungry sing of their food, the labored sing of their service.” The persona here laments her lower status, which makes it impossible for her to attend her lord for the entire night, as the main wife would. Thus she and her fellow court ladies hurry about. The image of these women with the cover- lets and sheets draped on their shoulders suggests both the canopy of the sky (in the appearance of the women) and the hierarchy of the palace women themselves (seen in their hardship). The prosody of this poem is regular except for the “extra” fth line in each stanza, perhaps lending emphasis to the plaint of the nal lines, an emphasis heightened by the rhyme scheme ababb, acacc.
There is a second, relatively common reading of this poem that identi es the persona as a low-ranking courtier (a member of the shi, or petit nobility) who scur- ries to be on time for the dawn audience, his own star obscured by the higher- ranking grandees of the court. Indeed, many traditional poems have been inter- preted variously as political or love songs. Yet the coverlets and sheets argue of love here, and the entire poem bears some resemblance to Sappho’s (late seventh–early sixth century b.C.e.) fragment no. 34:6
Stars around the lovely moon
Hide their gleaming beauty away Whenever she at the full sheds
Over the earth her radiant glow.
Although once again a Greek fragment offers us no context, the juxtaposition of some central female figure (the moon) to her subordinate women (the stars around her) is not unlike the situation in “Little Stars.” "