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

[x_los]

* 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.**

Comments

185. 祈父 - Qi Fu

[x_los]

祈父、予王之爪牙。
胡轉予于恤、靡所止居。

Minister of war,
We are the claws and teeth of the king.
Why have you rolled us into this sorrow,
So that we have no abiding place?

祈父、予王之爪士。
胡轉予于恤、靡所底止。

Minister of war,
We are the taloned soldiers of the king.
Why have you rolled us into this sorrow,
So that there is no end [of our toils]?

祈父、亶不聰。
胡轉予于恤、有母之尸饔。

Minister of war,
You have indeed acted without discrimination.
Why have you rolled us into this sorrow,
So that our mothers have to do all the labour of cooking?

Re: 185. 祈父 - Qi Fu

[x_los]

Rolled is an odd choice of words

What do the mothers and cooking have to do with anything?

Re: 185. 祈父 - Qi Fu

[ann712]

What do mothers and cooking have to do with anything?

Perhaps chefs were targeted for enrolment in the war effort?

Rolled- something to do with the movement of war wagons transporting them to the front line? Like rolling stock for trains?

Re: 185. 祈父 - Qi Fu

[x_los]

Yeah I could see rolled as just like--the practically correct word for their movement, perhaps

Re: 185. 祈父 - Qi Fu

[criminal_negligee]

Agreed on 'rolled' being an unusual choice here - I think I like it though, it's rather evocative.

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: 185. 祈父 - Qi Fu

[x_los]

Maybe! Interesting gender implication tho, that otherwise they'd be helping out with meal prep.

Re: 185. 祈父 - Qi Fu

[superborb]

Baike tidbits:
"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: 185. 祈父 - Qi Fu

[x_los]

Huh so that last line must be quite ambiguous, or multivalent, to have such disparate readings.