dankodes | Shi Jing, The Book of Odes: Lessons from the states, Odes Of Shao And The South

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Shi Jing, The Book of Odes: Lessons from the states, Odes Of Shao And The South

Here's the second of the week's poetry discussion posts. Both are currently set to members only, and will be made public once we sort out privacy options for anyone who wants them.

Odes Of Shao And The South:

https://ctext.org/book-of-poetry/odes-of-shao-and-the-south, or http://wengu.tartarie.com/wg/wengu.php?l=Shijing&no=12 (On the page, this string guides you through the Shao poems: nº 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 .)

Discussion Notes:

Please drop all resources, thoughts and questions in the comment stream pertaining to the relevant poem. I'd be especially grateful for context notes on these! The general wiki entry on the Book of Odes/Classic of Poetry is a nice starting point.

General questions and fannish stuff can have their own comment threads. I'll post the next two chapters' posts next Monday, unless we end up feeling that's too soon or something. The posts will remain available to go back and comment on, if you get behind but still want to engage with them.

Que Chao

The nest is the magpie's ;
The dove dwells in it.
This young lady is going to her future home ;
A hundred carriages are meeting her.

The nest is the magpie's ;
The dove possesses it.
This young lady is going to her future home ;
A hundred carriages are escorting her.

The nest is the magpie's ;
The dove fills it.
This young lady is going to her future home ;
These hundreds of carriages complete her array.

Cai Fan

She gathers the white southernwood,
By the ponds, on the islets.
She employs it,
In the business of our prince.

She gathers the white southernwood,
Along the streams in the valleys.
She employs it,
In the temple of our prince.

With head-dress reverently rising aloft,
Early, while yet it is night, she is in the prince's temple ;
In her dead-dress, slowly retiring,
She returns to her own apartments.

Cao Chong

Yao-yao went the grass-insects,
And the hoppers sprang about.
While I do not see my lord,
My sorrowful heart is agitated.
Let me have seen him,
Let me have met him,
And my heart will then be stilled.

I ascended that hill in the south,
And gathered the turtle-foot ferns.
While I do not see my lord,
My sorrowful heart is very sad.
Let me have seen him,
Let me have met him,
And my heart will then be pleased.

I ascended that hill in the south,
And gathered the thorn-ferns.
While I do not see my lord,
My sorrowful heart is wounded with grief.
Let me have seen him,
Let me have met him,
And my heart will then be at peace.

Cai Ping

She gathers the large duckweed,
By the banks of the stream in the southern valley.
She gathers the pondweed,
In those pools left by the floods.

She deposits what she gathers,
In her square baskets and round ones
She boils it,
In her tripods and pans.

She sets forth her preparations,
Under the window in the ancestral chamber.
Who superintends the business ?
It is [this] reverent young lady.

Gan Tang

[This] umbrageous sweet pear-tree ; –
Clip it not, hew it not down.
Under it the chief of Zhou lodged.

[This] umbrageous sweet pear-tree ; –
Clip it not, break not a twig of it.
Under it the chief of Zhou rested.

[This] umbrageous sweet pear-tree ; –
Clip it not, bend not a twig of it.
Under it the chief of Zhou halted.

Xing Lu

Wet lay the dew on the path : –
Might I not [have walked there] in the early dawn ?
But I said there was [too] much dew on the path.

Who can say the sparrow has no horn ?
How else can it bore through my house ?
Who can say that you did not get me betrothed ?
How else could you have urged on this trial ?
But though you have forced me to trial,
Your ceremonies for betrothal were not sufficient.

Who can say that the rat has no molar teeth ?
How else could it bore through my wall ?
Who can say that you did not get me betrothed ?
How else could you have urged on this trial ?
But though you have forced me to trial,
I will still not follow you.

Gao Yang

[Those] lamb-skins and sheep-skins,
With their five braidings of white silk !
They have retired from the court to take their their meal ;
Easy are they and self-possesed.

[Those] lamb-skins and sheep-skins,
With their five seams wrought with white silk !
Easy are they and self-possessed ;
They have retired from the court to take their their meal.

The seams of [those] lamb-skins and sheep-skins,
The five joinings wrought with white silk !
Easy are they and self-possessed ;
They have retired to take their their meal from the court.

Yin Qi Lei

Grandly rolls the thunder,
On the south of the southern hill !
How was it he went away from this,
Not daring to take a little rest ?
My noble lord !
May he return ! May he return !

Grandly rolls the thunder,
About the sides of the southern hill !
How was it he went away from this,
Not daring to take a little rest ?
My noble lord !
May he return ! May he return !

Grandly rolls the thunder,
At the foot of the southern hill !
How was it he went away from this,
Not remaining a little at rest ?
My noble lord !
May he return ! May he return !

Piao You Mei

Dropping are the fruits from the plum-tree ;
There are [but] seven [tenths] of them left !
For the gentlemen who seek me,
This is the fortunate time !

Dropping are the fruits from the plum-tree ;
There are [but] three [tenths] of them left !
For the gentlemen who seek me,
Now is the time.

Dropt are the fruits from the plum-tree ;
In my shallow basket I have collected them.
Would the gentlemen who seek me
[Only] speak about it !

Xiao Xing

Small are those starlets,
Three or five of them in the east,
Swiftly by night we go ;
In the early dawn we are with the prince.
Our lot is not like hers.

Small are those starlets,
And there are Orion and the Pleiades.
Swiftly by night we go,
Carrying our coverlets and sheets.
Our lot is not like hers.

Jiang You Si

The Jiang has its branches, led from it and returning to it.
Our lady, when she was married,
Would not employ us.
She would not employ us ;
But afterwards she repented.

The Jiang has its islets.
Our lady, when she was married,
Would not let us be with her.
She would not let us be with her ;
But afterwards she repressed [such feelings].

The Jiang has the Tuo.
Our lady, when she was married,
Would not come near us
She would not come near us ;
But she blew that feeling away, and sang.

Ye You Si Jun

In the wild there is a dead antelope,
And it is wrapped up with the white grass.
There is a young lady with thoughts natural to the spring,
And a fine gentleman would lead her astray.

In the forest there are the scrubby oaks ;
In the wild there is a dead deer,
And it is bound round with the white grass.
There is a young lady like a gem.

[She says], Slowly ; gently, gently ;
Do not move my handkerchief ;
Do not make my dog bark.

He Bi Nong Yi

How great is that luxuriance,
Those flowers of the sparrow-plum !
Are they not expressive of reverence and harmony, –
The carriages of the king's daughter ?

How great is that luxuriance,
The flowers like those of the peach-tree or the plum !
[See] the grand-daughter of the tranquillizing king,
And the son of the reverent marquis !

What are used in angling ?
Silk threads formed into lines.
The son of the reverent marquis,
And the grand-daughter of the tranquillizing king !

Zou Yu

Strong and abundant grow the rushes ;
He discharges [but] one arrow at five wild boars.
Ah ! he is the Zou-yu !

Strong and abundant grow the artemisia ;
He discharges [but] one arrow at five wild boars.
Ah ! he is the Zou-yu !

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Discussion of Que Chao goes here.

I guess he's the magpie, and she's the dove, and they do not know about speciation. Is being a magpie good in this tradition? It's kinda shady in the West.

Apparently the dove is a cuckoo which also has kinda negative connotations in the West, and specifically a cuckoo who lives in magpie nests. Thus all the "magpie building the nest for the dove to live in" imagery.

Also there's a lot of controversy over how to interpret this:
1. The magpie/groom preparing a house for the dove/bride to live in. But then others say that magpies and doves are not the same species so this interpretation makes no sense
2. Magpie is abandoned wife and dove is the bride. After the abandoned wife built up the home, the dove comes to live in it, but there is no way for the abandoned wife to complain and thus it's all very tragic.
3. The magpie/dove are just some random birds and this is a poet who was a passerby and saw a wedding.

Re: Que Chao

ann712 - 2021-02-18 00:13 (UTC) - Expand

Discussion of Cai Fan goes here.

'How to Read' offers a pretty different translation of Ancient Chinese Eleanor Rigby.

C1.9
Gathering the White Artemesia
Where do I gather the white artemesia?
By the pond, by the islet.
Whether do I use it?
In the service of the ruler.

Where do I gather the white artemesia?
All down the dale.
Whether do I use it?
In the palace of the ruler.

The glossy sheen of my hair knot,
Morning and night I am in the ruler’s service.
In disheveled profusion the hair in my knot,
As I hurriedly return.

It also has some extensive analysis (p 26).

Edited 2020-10-21 14:36 (UTC)

Wow, so many possible interpretations of this poem... Baidu says either from the POV of a noble lady, a servant, or someone serving hard labor (??).

I'd be interested in reading a more in depth article about this, I think, bc I really can't parse either the poem itself or the Baidu entry

Edited 2020-10-26 00:04 (UTC)

Re: Cai Fan

ann712 - 2021-02-18 00:25 (UTC) - Expand

Discussion of Cao Chong goes here.

How to Read makes this comment on Cao Chong:

"in contrast to those in the feng section (airs) that are read as love poems in which junzi is interpreted as “lordly man” (“Cao chong” [Insects in the Grass, Mao no. 14], for example)."

It's kind of reminiscent of the upcoming 'Mulberries in the Lowlands".

MORE locust imagery. I can see that the specific things being picked are to represent the passage of time, but do they have other meanings?

I was startled when the Baidu summary mentions that at the end of stanza one the narrator meets the husband in her dreams and 聊以自慰, which google translate turned into "masturbates"?! I /think/ this is an incorrect translation and the whole idiom means "to find relief in"; the latter part only carries the meaning of masturbate. However, when discussing the word 覯 at the end of the stanza, it says it means "meet" but also that one source points to the pun of 媾, which means... copulate. So maybe masturbation /is/ meant.

Edited 2020-10-26 00:40 (UTC)

Discussion of Cai Ping goes here.

How to Read has this to say:

"Gathering the Duckweed
Where can I gather the duckweed? 2
On the banks of the southern dale.
Where can I gather the water grasses?
4 In those rainwater pools along the paths.
Where can I deposit them?
6 In baskets square and round,
In cauldrons and pans.
8 And sing in a chorus of warbling.
Where can I o er them?
10 Beneath the window of the ancestral shrine?
Who will represent the spirits?
12 There is a reverent, unmarried maid.

This poem is also tied to the ritual of marriage (according to the “Hun yi” [Mean- ing of Marriage] chapter of the Li ji [Record of Rituals]). Three months before the marriage is to take place, the prospective bride is instructed at the family’s ances- tral shrine in how she is expected to speak and act in her new setting as a wife. At the culmination of her lessons, sacri ces of sh, duckweed, and water grasses are o ered. The question-and-answer form of the poem re ects that of the more formal catechism the girl has underdone at the ancestral shrine (perhaps re ected in the balanced rhyme scheme aabb / xcxc / xdxd). The rst stanza depicts where the bride-to-be should search for the sacri cial plants; the second, how to prepare them; and the third, where to position them. The shi referred to in the penultimate line is the person who impersonates the ancestors in sacri ces: here the young woman who is to be married. The poem seems not to be sung by her, but about her, perhaps by the women who picked duckweed or other plants regularly."

Re: Cai Ping

superborb - 2020-10-26 00:51 (UTC) - Expand

Discussion of Gan Tang goes here.

"Umbrageous
1a : affording shade. b : spotted with shadows. 2 : inclined to take offense easily."

I guess this poem is like, wow Shaogong was so cool and so perfect so we will praise and protect this TREE where he once rested TOO. Is this supposed to be... deeper???

Discussion of Xing Lu goes here.

'Who can say the sparrow has no horn ?' presumably anyone who's ever seen a sparrow?

So is this a jilted girl who was told her marriage ceremonies were sufficient when in fact, they were sketchy?

Re: Xing Lu

superborb - 2020-10-26 01:16 (UTC) - Expand

I sort of got the impression that Xiang Lu felt he/she was pressured into some sort of betrothal but wasn’t having any of it. Strong sense of self assertion and refusal to conform to accepted rules/expectations/rituals. Repetition of trials is interesting. Does it mean the same as it would to an English reader? The sparrow and rat invade the poet’s personal space . Be interested to know what they represent.

Discussion of Gao Yang goes here.

Getting a sense of a very specific tier of court official being mocked?

Re: Gao Yang

superborb - 2020-10-26 01:21 (UTC) - Expand

Discussion of Yin Qi Lei goes here.

This sounds a lot more like a folk song than the rest of the poems in this chapter. (The last chapter had a lot more "folk song" like poems than this one seemed to.)

Kind of getting echos of "Ru Fen" here, with the husband called away on gov't business and the wife at home wanting him to come back.

Discussion of Piao You Mei goes here.

So is this paralleled/modelled after a market girl selling wares and a girl trying to get married? Get it while it's (still) hot?

Re: Piao You Mei

superborb - 2020-10-26 01:36 (UTC) - Expand

Discussion of Xiao Xing goes here.

Per How to Read:

"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.” "

Re: Xiao Xing

superborb - 2020-10-26 01:50 (UTC) - Expand

Discussion of Jiang You Si goes here.

How to Read offers a wildly different interpretation:

The River Has Branches
The River has branches that leave and return— 2
When this person returned home,
He did not take me, 4
He did not take me,
And afterward he will regret it!

6 The River has channels ’tween its islets—
When this person returned home,
8 He would not be close to me,
He would not be close to me,
10 And afterward he will be troubled by it!

The River has the Tuo tributary— 12
When this person returned home,
He did not stop by to see me,
He did not stop by to see me,
His wailing will become my song.

Line 1 of this poem, along with its variants (lines 6 and 11), has been identi ed as a xing. It also functions as a comparison (bi), linking the lover, who is often absent, to the River (the ancient name of the Yangtze River), which has branches that wan- der o from the main channel. Perhaps the wayward lover is a merchant. Each stanza of the poem is in trimeter until the nal line, which reverts to tetrameter. Yet even these nal lines break on the particle ye, yielding a 3:1 rhythm, the nal syllable constituting a kind of exclamation: “And afterward . . . regret!” and so on. If the nal lines are scanned so, in performing the poem there seems to be great potential for controlling the audience. The listeners would have empathized with the persona and hoped that her unfaithful mate would somehow be punished. If the singer stressed the ye (which, as a particle, would normally be unstressed), if he or she held this word longer before revealing to the audience the negative e ects on the unfaithful lover, the power of the poetic justice would have increased with this suspense. The nal line of the third stanza would thereby reveal the ultimate surprise: that the errant lover’s anguish would become the plot for a song—this song. Although the emotions weigh down the reader, the e ect of rhyming nearly every line (axaaa, bxbbb, cxccc) lightens the mood and prepares for the almost mocking closing line.

Structurally, there is here, too, a kind of incremental repetition. In the rst stanza, although branches of the river depart from the main channel, they return. In contrast, the lover seems to have left for good. His initial emotion will be merely regret. In the second stanza, the many channels between the islets may suggest the lover’s coursing between more than one love interest. Because of this, he did not even try to soften his departure with a nal rendezvous. This, the persona tells us, will cause him more anguish even than leaving her. Finally, in the last stanza, there is a suggestion that the river has joined with someone else (as the Tuo joins the River) and that he did not even stop by to see his former lover before leaving. As a result, his anguish will someday cause him to wail, a sorrow that the persona promises to put to song. The more he demonstrates his coldness toward her, the more she wants to believe he will eventually su er. The force of this reading lies in the contrast between the reality of the rst four lines of each stanza and the singer’s fantasy in the nal lines.

This poem has also been interpreted as the lament of a young female relative of a bride who has left the relative behind as the bride headed o to be married (line 2 of each stanza could also be read, “She has gone to be married,” as in “Tao yao”). It was a common practice for a bride to take along several young women of her family, who became the husband’s secondary wives or concubines.

Re: Jiang You Si

superborb - 2020-10-26 01:59 (UTC) - Expand

Discussion of Ye You Si Jun goes here.

'There is a young lady with thoughts natural to the spring,
And a fine gentleman would lead her astray.'

from sexy

'In the forest there are the scrubby oaks ;
In the wild there is a dead deer,'

to absolutely not sexy

Re: Ye You Si Jun

superborb - 2020-10-26 02:07 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Ye You Si Jun

ann712 - 2021-02-17 17:38 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Ye You Si Jun

ann712 - 2021-02-17 17:43 (UTC) - Expand

Discussion of He Bi Nong Yi goes here.

'What are used in angling ?
Silk threads formed into lines.
The son of the reverent marquis,
And the grand-daughter of the tranquillizing king !'

we get it, you think it's a good marriage

Re: He Bi Nong Yi

superborb - 2020-10-26 02:11 (UTC) - Expand

Discussion of Zou Yu goes here.

'He discharges [but] one arrow at five wild boars.'

Thanks, pre-Qin poet. I will steal this quote for a fic, as you no doubt intended.

Also, I don't think this is how archery works. Like, what is he doing.

Que Chao

Re: Que Chao

Re: Que Chao

Cai Fan

Re: Cai Fan

Re: Cai Fan

Cao Chong

Re: Cao Chong

Re: Cao Chong

Cai Ping

Re: Cai Ping

Gan Tang

Re: Gan Tang

Re: Gan Tang

Xing Lu

Re: Xing Lu

Re: Xing Lu

Gao Yang

Re: Gao Yang

Yin Qi Lei

Re: Yin Qi Lei

Piao You Mei

Re: Piao You Mei

Xiao Xing

Re: Xiao Xing

Jiang You Si

Re: Jiang You Si

Ye You Si Jun

Re: Ye You Si Jun

He Bi Nong Yi

Re: He Bi Nong Yi

Zou Yu

Re: Zou Yu