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

[x_los]

Back after the Christmas/New Year break! I'd really like to get through the Book of Odes in the next months, so we can enter into our next Tang or Song offering. I'll try to be more regulated in the poem posts accordingly. 

Some notes:

* 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.

* I believe the reminder emails have stopped, so I'll seek a new service to run that. 

When the second batch of these is up and running, if you would like not to be on the list and there isn't an unsubscribe option in the email itself, please just respond 'unsubscribe' or something and I'll take you off the reminder roster.

* IF YOU HAVE FRIENDS WHO MIGHT LIKE TO JOIN or have other ideas, please let me know on this post.

* 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.

**NEXT BATCH FEB 1.**

Comments

92. 揚之水 - Yang Zhi Shui

[x_los]

揚之水、不流束楚。
終鮮兄弟、維予與女。
無信人之言、人實迋女。

The fretted waters,
Do not carry on their current a bundle of thorns.
Few are our brethren;
There are only I and you.
Do not believe what people say;
They are deceiving you.

揚之水、不流束薪。
終鮮兄弟、維予二人。
無信人之言、人實不信。

The fretted waters,
Do not carry on their current a bundle of firewood.
Few are our brethren;
There are only we two.
Do not believe what people say;
They are not to be trusted.

Re: 92. 揚之水 - Yang Zhi Shui

[aeriallon]

(if i may briefly fangirl for a bare instant this is the most jin guangyao poem ever)

Re: 92. 揚之水 - Yang Zhi Shui

[x_los]

So what do they carry? Why is it these guys against the world?

Re: 92. 揚之水 - Yang Zhi Shui

[superborb]

It IS interesting that Baidu makes brief references to these poems having been historically interpreted as no loyal ministers or men, but now everyone thinks of it straightforwardly as about a women talking to her husband refuting gossip. And like other than the one throwaway line about that, it's nearly all about the more modern interpretations?