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

[x_los]

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.**

Comments

Re: 173. 蓼蕭 - Liao Xiao

[x_los]

So what's the dew xing bringing here?

Re: 173. 蓼蕭 - Liao Xiao

[superborb]

Baike says 露水，常被用来比喻承受的恩泽。Dew, often used as a metaphor for the receiving/bearing of favor/grace (the last words together mean 'the favor of an emperor/high official'). Later Baike adds 自古以来，阳光雨露多是皇恩浩荡的象征和比喻，而微臣小民多以草芥自比，因此，这开头两句可以是兴，也可以看作比。Since ancient times, sunshine, rain, and dew have been a symbol and metaphor for the vast and mighty imperial kindness, while the ministers and commoners compare themselves to grass; as a result, these starting two sentences can be interpreted either as xing or bi.

[Shocked that Baike is highly informative for this metaphor lol]

Re: 173. 蓼蕭 - Liao Xiao

[douqi]

Intrigued to discover that the dew = favour thing has a non-sexual meaning (sorry, my reading habits are less than refined).

Re: 173. 蓼蕭 - Liao Xiao

[x_los]

I mean we're all going to use it in fic now as both, right, I mean, it's right there--

Re: 173. 蓼蕭 - Liao Xiao

[x_los]

Man I can't believe there was a solid answer for once??