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

[x_los]

This is the last book in Lessons from the States! After this, we get into some fairly different material:

Minor odes of the kingdom (about 7 weeks)
Greater odes of the kingdom (3 weeks)
Odes of the temple and the altar (4 weeks)

And then we'll be talking about what we want to do next. But seriously, working through all the Lessons from the States is itself a milestone: one building-block of your Classical Education achieved.

* 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.

* In case you missed it and are interested, some people on the com are doing a Nirvana in Fire read-along here. Anyone with thoughts is welcome to chime in. 

**NEXT BATCH MARCH 22.**

Comments

155. 鸱鴞 - Chi Xiao

[x_los]

鸱鴞鸱鴞、既取我子、无毁我室。
恩斯勤斯、鬻子之闵斯。

O owl, O owl,
You have taken my young ones; -
Do not [also] destroy my nest.
With love and with toil,
I nourished them. - I am to be pitied.

迨天之未阴雨、彻彼桑土、绸缪牖户。
今女下民、或敢侮予。

Before the sky was dark with rain,
I gathered the roots of the mulberry tree,
And bound round and round my window and door.
Now ye people below,
Dare any of you despise my house?

予手拮据、予所捋荼、予所蓄租、予口卒瘏、曰予未有室家。

With my claws I tore and held.
Through the rushes which I gathered,
And all the materials I collected,
My mouth was all sore; -
I said to myself, ' I have not yet got my house complete. '

予羽谯谯、予尾翛翛、予室翘翘、风雨所漂摇、予维音哓哓。

My wings are all-injured;
My tail is all-broken;
My house is in a perilous condition;
It is tossed about in the wind and rain:
I can but cry out with this note of alarm.

Re: 155. 鸱鴞 - Chi Xiao

[x_los]

Is this the only non-human POV in the whole shi jing?

Re: 155. 鸱鴞 - Chi Xiao

[superborb]

Baike says that fables (i.e. using a protagonist from the natural world) were widely used in prose in the Warring States period, but is rare in poetry in the pre-Qin; it wasn't until the Han dynasty that it became widespread in Yuefu (a type of poem). So this is indeed rare

Re: 155. 鸱鴞 - Chi Xiao

[superborb]

The Mao commentary is that this is about how Zhou gong (Duke of Zhou) created order out of chaos and established the empire? (Historically, he was an important regent in the founding of the Zhou)