dankodes | Shi Jing, The Book of Odes: Minor Odes of the Kingdom, Decade of Baihua

I know this is a short week and that doing it on its own will not speed us through the Minor Odes, but given that the poems are longer in this section, Baihua's five felt too bulky to tack on to either side (to make one of those batches a kind of awkward 14-15 medium sized poems).

* 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 APRIL 5.**

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

南有嘉魚、烝然罩罩。
君子有酒、嘉賓式燕以樂。

In the south is the barbel,
And, in multitudes, they are taken under baskets.
The host has spirits,
On which his admirable guests feast with him joyfully.

南有嘉魚、烝然汕汕。
君子有酒、嘉賓式燕以衎。

In the south is the barbel,
And, in multitudes, they are taken with wicker nets.
The host has spirits,
On which his admirable guests feast with him, delighted.

南有樛木、甘瓠纍之。
君子有酒、嘉賓式燕綏之。

In the south are trees with curved drooping branches,
And the sweet gourds cling to them.
The host has spirits,
On which his admirable guests feast with him cheerfully.

翩翩者鵻、烝然來思。
君子有酒、嘉賓式燕又思。

The Filial doves keep flying about,
Coming in multitudes.
The host has spirits,
On which his admirable guests feast with him again and again.

We GET it, there's an open bar!

Those filial not actually doves are back

The juxtaposition of the birds being captured and the guests drinking is fairly threatening?

So the spirits here are a drink? (My first time reading through I was unhelpfully picturing ghosts because my brain is silly like that)

Yeah, 酒 just means 'alcohol, generic' but often a kind of millet/sorghum spirit called Baijiu. Not here, though, since apparently something like modern baijiu wasn't invented until the Tang Dynasty, I've just found out by googling, and since we're pre-Han back here I'd take a wild guess that we're working with something wine-like.

Thank you! This very helpful!

I'm increasingly tempted to think these are veiled threats. Like I haven't read any scholarship about these two - I like to have a stab at poetry by myself first - but I was just reading this like, whew, what the fuck is this translation Mr Legge

Can I do better? AbsoLUTELY NOT but I just have some Questions, like,

南有嘉魚、烝然罩罩。
君子有酒、嘉賓式燕以樂。

In the south is Jiayu*
Hundreds of fish in a trap
The host serves wine
Honoured guests accordingly feast and are happy

*this is a pun bc the name Jiayu contains the character 'fish'

And then the rest of the poem just describes....different ways of luring your guests into a trap? And then there's doves, which probably has different meaning in ancient China.

Baidu, it turns out, disagrees with me and thinks this poem is about having fun eating and drinking. If I'm right somehow, it'd be because this poem relies on a lot of double meanings, like 綏 which apparently can mean 'peace and happiness' but also 'MAKE peaceful'.

Baike glosses the jiayu as 'beautiful fish' and its vernacular translation has it as 'fresh fish' so I don't think Jiayu is meant as a location specifically? (Though ofc it may be)

Glad baike calls out the similarity to 170, because wow, same xing of fish+water to symbolize the generosity of the host and harmony of their relationship.

Baike also says the gourds clinging to the trees is a metaphor for the close relationship of family/friends reuniting. And the discussion of the doves may suggest that the guests are starting to discuss hunting after the banquet.

Shi Jing, The Book of Odes: Minor Odes of the Kingdom, Decade of Baihua

171. 南有嘉魚 - Nan You Jia Yu

Re: 171. 南有嘉魚 - Nan You Jia Yu

Re: 171. 南有嘉魚 - Nan You Jia Yu

Re: 171. 南有嘉魚 - Nan You Jia Yu

Re: 171. 南有嘉魚 - Nan You Jia Yu

Re: 171. 南有嘉魚 - Nan You Jia Yu

Re: 171. 南有嘉魚 - Nan You Jia Yu

Re: 171. 南有嘉魚 - Nan You Jia Yu