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

174. 湛露 - Zhan Lu

[x_los]

湛湛露斯、匪陽不晞。
厭厭夜飲、不醉無歸。

Heavy lies the dew;
Nothing but the sun can dry it.
Happily and long into the night we drink; -
Till all are drunk, there is no retiring.

湛湛露斯、在彼豐草。
厭厭夜飲、在宗載考。

Heavy lies the dew;
On that luxuriant grass.
Happily and long into the night we drink.
In the honoured apartment we complete our carousal.

湛湛露斯、在彼杞棘。
顯允君子、莫不令德。

Heavy lies the dew;
On those willows and jujube trees.
Distinguished and true are my noble guests, -
Every one of excellent virtue.

其桐其椅、其實離離。
豈弟君子、莫不令儀。

From the Tong and the Yi,
Their fruit hangs down.
Happy and self-possessed are my noble guests, -
Every one of them of excellent deportment.

Re: 174. 湛露 - Zhan Lu

[x_los]

'From the Tong and the Yi,
Their fruit hangs down.'

what's this about?

Re: 174. 湛露 - Zhan Lu

[vorvayne]

Both kinds of tree, looks like.桐 tong and 椅 yi, the latter which now means chair probably bc chairs were made of it a lot, I guess?

Re: 174. 湛露 - Zhan Lu

[superborb]

Baike: this is the emperor performing a musical composition in front of his feudal vassals. Also a lot of context about how Lu Wen gong hosted a banquet and wrote poems when Ning Wuzi of Wei country came to visit, but then Ning Wuzi didn't respond with thanks or a poem, and when questioned, said that he thought Lu Wen gong was just practicing. Because this is a poem the emperor plays to his vassals, so he didn't dare accept such a big gift? I'm not sure what this means or if I'm totally misunderstanding something.

There's also apparently a lot of controversy over if the princes/vassals in the banquet have the same surname or not.

The grasses and trees might be metaphors for bloodlines and relatives, but more likely for moral character. (Some of the terms are homonyms or sound similar to various virtues.) And again the dew is the favor of the king.