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

[x_los]

* 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.

* 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 MARCH 8.**

Comments

138. 衡門 - Heng Men

[x_los]

衡門之下、可以棲遲。
泌之洋洋、可以樂飢。

Beneath my door made of cross pieces of wood,
I can rest at my leisure;
By the wimpling stream from my fountain,
I can joy amid my hunger.

豈其食魚、必河之魴。
豈其取妻、必齊之姜。

Why, in eating fish;
Must we have bream from the He?
Why, in taking a wife,
Must we have a Jiang of Qi?

豈其食魚、必河之鯉。
豈其取妻、必宋之子。

Why, in eating fish;
Must we have carp from the He?
Why, in taking a wife,
Must we have a Zi of Song?

Re: 138. 衡門 - Heng Men

[x_los]

You could have a simple relationship with someone in humble circumstances and enjoy domestic felicity, you don't need these very socially advantageous matches, 'the best of the best'?

Re: 138. 衡門 - Heng Men

[ann712]

Knocking those M&S adverts!

Re: 138. 衡門 - Heng Men

[superborb]

Baike: The xing is unusually not at the beginning of the poem, but before the discussion.

The "cross pieces of wood" means the house is simple/crude. Normally 衡 means to weigh/measure, but baike says this is 横 (homonym) which means horizontal. One source says it means the city gates

"my fountain": this may be the name of a spring in Chen country, but could just be a general name instead of a specific reference.

"hunger": often in the Shijing, the word hunger means sexual desire. One source says in ancient times, sexual desire was often called hunger, as a set idiom. [A cross cultural idiom if so lol]

The He is the Yellow River

The interpretation Baike spends the most time explicating is indeed that of a love poem, basically saying that a humble life is a joy. [The following I'm not sure if I'm reading 100% correctly since it's very dense] It also says some historical interpretations are to help/encourage the monarch; a hermit happy by themself; men and women having meetings for sex.