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dankodes* 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.
* One of our members is doing posts on the foundations and development of wuxia. Worth checking out!
**NEXT BATCH APRIL 19.**
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.
* One of our members is doing posts on the foundations and development of wuxia. Worth checking out!
**NEXT BATCH APRIL 19.**
Re: 190. 無羊 - Wu Yang
Re: 191. 節南山 - Jie Nan Shan
Re: 185. 祈父 - Qi Fu
I wonder if the line about mothers and cooking is a sort of shorthand for the difficulties the families at home will face with the soldiers off to war and unable to help with the day-to-day life of the family?
Re: 187. 黃鳥 - Huang Niao
1. good varieties of millet; millet in general
2. exquisite staple food
So it seems your instinct is right. Maybe it was just an aesthetic choice to contrast with the last stanza? Or another possibility is that a suggested English translation for "粱" was the word "corn," which just refers to any local staple crop for most of the world, but which is equated with 'maize' in North America and Australia/NZ. So it went 粱 -> "corn" (unspecified) -> "maize" (US/CAN/AUS/NZ).
Re: 194. 雨無正 - Yu Wu Zheng
As for the last, I'm not sure. Maybe the gist of it is "I helped you in the past, but now you won't help me in my time of need." ?
Re: 187. 黃鳥 - Huang Niao
I guess someone could have been trying to translate "corn" and not very aware of basic culinary history. Clearly not someone who has to deal with people yelling about potatoes in fantasy. (Corn and potatoes are both new world foods that wouldn't have existed in China at the time the poem was written)
Re: 185. 祈父 - Qi Fu
"claws and teeth of the king": This term is now derogatory [dictionary says pawn, lackey]
"So that our mothers have to do all the labour of cooking?" baike's vernacular says "Our mothers at home have no food to eat"
"rolled" is an interesting choice! The word means "to revolve, to turn, to circle about".
The context for the poem is satire on Zhou Xuan wang (again). Normally the capital guards don't get sent to the front line, but in this case they were, so they are unhappy.
An alternate interpretation for the last line is that the mother has died while the soldier was away, so the food is an offering.
Re: 186. 白駒 - Bai Ju
So predictably, Mao's commentary thinks this is to satirize how Zhou Xuan wang couldn't keep the sages in his court.
The couplet (sentence?), according to baike, is the host being like, don't go live in seclusion. Because it was troubled times, and the guest didn't want to work for the court or to disobey, so the only solution was to go into seclusion.
Re: 187. 黃鳥 - Huang Niao
vvv weird for Legge to translate sorghum to maize?? Baike gives the additional gloss of "a kind of millet/grain. One source says refined rice"
Re: 188. 我行其野 - Wo Xing Qi Ye
"Fetid tree": Ailanthus altissima / tree of heaven [a very stinky tree]. An untalented tree, a metaphor for trusting the wrong person
"Sheep's foot": A perennial herbaceous plant, known as sheep's hoof vegetable, similar to radish, kind of slippery in texture, eating too much gives you diarrhea
"Pokeweed": A perennial climbing plant, has flowers, white roots, can be steamed and eaten, so in a year of famine used as food.
The "men superior to woman" tradition in ancient China creates this prominent motif of abandoned women literature. Baike discusses some of the historical interpretations that are all about politics...
Re: 189. 斯干 - Si Gan
Baike glosses the tiles as ceramic spindles. The word used literally means roof tile. I've also now learned the word for spindle, which is inconveniently not a word in my usual dictionary...
"It will be theirs neither to do wrong nor to do good.": Baike's vernacular translation for this line is "I wish for her to not make trouble nor be improper". The gloss says indicates women should not discuss family quarrels or gossip. I think Legge's translation comes from the fact that a literal translation of the line in modern Chinese would be 'not incorrect, not rites', and he interpreted 'rites' as 'to do good', but Baike's gloss on the word is homonym to 'to discuss'.
Re: 189. 斯干 - Si Gan
The reason the sons sleep on the bed and daughters on the ground is "yang high, yin low". (Patriarchy >:( ). Baike specifically says: "Men are superior to women, and their treatment and the expectations on them are different. This is a reflection on the customs and consciouness of the time, and lets future generations understand those values."
I am-- surprised at the first line of the Baike background: 这是一首祝贺西周奴隶主贵族宫室落成的歌辞。This is a song to celebrate completion of the palaces of the Western Zhou slave owning nobility.
Anyway, the specific King of Zhou that it's about seems uncertain. There's also some debate over if celebrating the completion of the palace also comes with sacrificing animals to the ancestors.
Re: 190. 無羊 - Wu Yang
"victims": sacrificial animals
"abundant provision": prepare [tools]. I am really not sure where Legge gets that line from lol
"With their large faggots, and smaller branches,": 'with' is 'take', 'large faggots' is 'coarse firewood', 'smaller branches' is 'thin firewood'
"And with their prey of birds and beasts.": this is literally 'male and female', which baike glosses with "flying is called male/female", meaning hunting birds
"Vigorous and strong,": very carefully and prudent in appearance, indicating the sheep are afraid of separating from their flock
"Of multitudes": locusts. Ancient people believed locusts turned to fish. During droughts they'd become locusts and in favorable weather, fishes
The tortoise-and-serpent flags are for the outskirts with few people; the falcon flags for provinces with many people
Re: 191. 節南山 - Jie Nan Shan
There was controversy over if it was to satirize the king or Yin, but Baike's final word is that it is a pointless debate lol. It is exposing the corruption and evil of BOTH.
Re: 192. 正月 - Zheng Yue
"Their good words are [only] from the mouth;
Their bad words are [only] from the mouth." Buried in the discussion, Baike says this is saying how people are glib in speech and wear an ingratiating expression (an idiom), jealous and envious. I guess it's basically saying that people will use the same mouth to say both nice and vicious things?
"crow": omen about the Zhou dynasty. The whole two phrases mean the Zhou dynasty is losing the mandate of heaven
The vernacular translation of the line "There are [only] large faggots and small branches in it." is 粗细只能当柴烧 thick or thin, can only be used as firewood. I'm having trouble parsing what it says about this line in the discussion 此诗批评最高当权者亲小人, which means "this poem criticizes the villains that are the highest authorities", but does not seem to... fully connect to the line?
efts is presumably Legge's translation of lizards, which baike informs me that ancient people thought both snakes and lizards were poisonous. It's a standard poisonous animal metaphor for bad people.
I think the fish metaphor is like, there is nowhere to hide themselves? Baike doesn't say anything more about it.
"Mean-like, those have their houses;
Abjects, they will have their emoluments.": The vernacular translation is 卑鄙小人有华屋，庸劣之徒有米谷。Contemptible nasty people have splendid houses, superficial people have rice and grain.
Re: 193. 十月之交 - Shi Yue Zi Jiao
Re: 193. 十月之交 - Shi Yue Zi Jiao
Anyway, Baike notes that although there was someone who thought it was about some other king, it's usually considered to be about Zhou You wang. The solar eclipse mentioned here was on Sept 6, 776 BC, the earliest recorded solar eclipse.
The natural disasters were occurring in the northern Shaanxi region, which is the birthplace of the Zhou people so was considered to be a serious warning to the people about the harmful governance of Zhou You wang.
Re: 185. 祈父 - Qi Fu
Re: 185. 祈父 - Qi Fu
Re: 194. 雨無正 - Yu Wu Zheng
Also, the king is Bad and Evil so the second to last stanza is lamenting that if the minister is righteous, he'll offend the king, but if he's taking the crooked path, his friends will be offended.
Re: 185. 祈父 - Qi Fu
Re: 186. 白駒 - Bai Ju
*filthy description of sex*
Mao Commentary: yeah, so by 'keeping my come deep inside you', we believe the poet was describing the way a generous king would retain good ministers, as opposed to the 'facial slut', who drove scholars into hermitage by offering superficial acknowledg--
Never change, Mao commentary.
Ah, that ending DOES make more sense, ty.
Re: 187. 黃鳥 - Huang Niao
Re: 188. 我行其野 - Wo Xing Qi Ye
Re: 192. 正月 - Zheng Yue