dankodes | Shi Jing, The Book of Odes: Lessons from the States, Odes Of Yong

First off, THANK YOU for your email and poem responses this week! Please do check out each others' thoughts in the comments. There's some fun stuff to build off of, and it's less intimidating to offer up some thoughts if we're having a conversation. I'm looking forward to getting into these this evening.

Some notes:

* Two members asked for weekly email reminders on Saturday, so I've figured out how to set that up. If you did NOT get an email yesterday, I haven't got you on the list. If you'd like to be on the list, please let me know!

If you would like *not* to be on the list, let's see whether the first Automated Email on Saturday has an unsubscribe option? If it doesn't, please just respond 'unsubscribe' or something and I'll take you off the reminder.

* One member asked that we do a classic Tang collection right after this one, for something a bit more modern and approachable (she phrased it as the difference between Chaucer and Shakespeare). Unless there are objections, I'm very happy to jump forward in time--we can always circle back to danker parts later if/when we feel like it, and Tang is regarded as some very good shit.

* If you have further ideas, please let me know on this post.

* IF YOU HAVE FRIENDS WHO MIGHT LIKE TO JOIN, please also let me know on this post. I think we're getting to a more stable point, where a handful of additional commenters would be welcome?

* 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.

Thank you!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Saved you an embarrassing google: I don't think it's the same Wei? That's 魏 .

"A great officer has gone, over the hills and through the rivers;
But my heart is full of sorrow." gone to condole with Wei? Gone from the world? (Is this referring to Wei? The Yellow River is sometimes a euphemism for death in Chinese tradition, I think?)

Interesting, I think this female PoV is supposed to last for the whole of the poem. Is that speaker an artistic pose, or is this a female poet? Why do the people of Xu blame her? Are we meant to read this as self-justifying, or honest? It feels a bit, to me, like Hamlet's “I loved Ophelia. Forty thousand brothers could not, with all their quantity of love, make up my sum”, which is always kind of suspect.

Yeah, there's a question of if she was going to do this heroic thing, why didn't she? What stopped her? Was it lack of help? Or was she just too late?

And I think it definitely means "gone from the world"

We know the actual poet! https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E8%AE%B8%E7%A9%86%E5%A4%AB%E4%BA%BA/945238 Xu Mu furen. Baidu says this is about patriotism (for once, for her natal family / country of Wei) -- Official from Xu country was sent to prevent her from going back to Wei, and she is upset at him and her husband.

I skimmed the baidu article for her, and it notes that after she wrote this poem to denounce the Xu country officials, she did return to Wei and helped restore the country.

oh wow, thanks for looking this up!

Here's the wiki article on her, which calls her the first recorded female poet of Chinese history.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Xu_Mu

Shi Jing, The Book of Odes: Lessons from the States, Odes Of Yong

Re: 54. 載馳 - Zai Chi

Re: 54. 載馳 - Zai Chi

Re: 54. 載馳 - Zai Chi

Re: 54. 載馳 - Zai Chi

Re: 54. 載馳 - Zai Chi

Re: 54. 載馳 - Zai Chi