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

141. 墓門 - Mu Men

[x_los]

墓門有棘、斧以斯之。
夫也不良、國人知之。
知而不已、誰昔然矣。

At the gate to the tombs there are jujube trees; -
They should be cut away with an axe.
That man is not good,
And the people of the State know it.
They know it, but he does not give over; -
Long time has it been thus with him.

墓門有梅、有鴞萃止。
夫也不良、歌以訊之。
訊予不顧、顛倒思予。

At the gate to the tombs there are plum trees;
And there are owls collecting on them.
That man is not good,
And I sing [this song] to admonish him.
I admonish him, but he will not regard me; -
When he is overthrown, he will think of me.

Re: 141. 墓門 - Mu Men

[x_los]

oh my god I? love this poem? So the trees are clogging up the way to the tomb because this guy doesn't take care of things and do fit rituals. Common people think he isn't shit, but he doesn't change or relinquish power. The poet criticises him, but he doesn't care--he'll care when he's IN HELL, THOUGH.

Re: 141. 墓門 - Mu Men

[x_los]

and/or this guy is like the clogging trees, preying on soil corpses nourish

Re: 141. 墓門 - Mu Men

[ann712]

The bastard doesn’t even collect the ripe plums!

Re: 141. 墓門 - Mu Men

[douqi]

This may, for once, legit be about criticising a bad ruler, according to baidu.

Re: 141. 墓門 - Mu Men

[superborb]

Baike: "tombs": baike's gloss says tombs, but one source says Chen country's city gates [lol]

"plum trees": one source said this was once "thorn" but there was a mis-copy bc the characters look similar

"owl": to the ancients, owls were evil birds

According to Mao's commentary, this was written about Chen Tuo, son of Chen Wen gong during the Spring and Autumn period. (This guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chen_Tuo) However, during the Song dynasty, this interpretation became challenged.