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

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* 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.**

Tags:

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From:

x_los

東門之池、可以漚麻。
彼美淑姬、可與晤歌。

The moat at the east gate,
Is fit to steep hemp in.
That beautiful, virtuous, lady,
Can respond to you in songs.

東門之池、可以漚紵。
彼美淑姬、可與晤語。

The moat at the east gate,
Is fit to steep the boehmeria in.
That beautiful, virtuous, lady,
Can respond to you in discourse.

東門之池、可以漚菅。
彼美淑姬、可與晤言。

The moat at the east gate,
Is fit to steep the rope-rush in.
That beautiful, virtuous lady,
Can respond to you in conversation.

From:

x_los

To steep these useful plants, the moat water would have to be clear and wholesome. It's adapted to many good purposes; so too is this smart and moral lady.

From:

superborb

Baike:

"moat": Baike's gloss says moat, but one source says pond

"virtuous": could mean virtuous/beautiful, one source says it means the seniority among siblings is third

"lady": a surname, one source says a nice sounding moniker for a woman

"songs": specifically referring to antiphonal songs

"boehmeria": also ramie, used to make ropes

"rope-rush": a plant like reeds, used to make straw shoes after soaked

The Mao commentary on this is, once again, about satirizing the monarch. Is any poem not? But Baike spends most time interpreting it as a love poem, where they are hard at work and they're talking and singing.

The poem has the very common pattern of the second+third stanza basically being repetitions, as in traditional folk songs.