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

187. 黃鳥 - Huang Niao

[x_los]

黃鳥黃鳥。
無集于穀。
無啄我粟。
此邦之人。
不我肯穀。
言旋言歸。
復我邦族。

Yellow bird, yellow bird,
Do not settle on the broussonetias,
Do not eat my paddy.
The people of this country,
Are not willing to treat me well.
I will return, I will go back,
Back to my country and kin.

黃鳥黃鳥。
無集于桑。
無啄我粱。
此邦之人。
不可與明。
言旋言歸。
復我諸兄。

Yellow bird, yellow bird,
Do not settle on the mulberry trees,
Do not eat my maize.
The people of this country,
Will not let me come to an understanding with them.
I will return, I will go back,
Back to my brethren.

黃鳥黃鳥。
無集于栩。
無啄我黍。
此邦之人。
不可與處。
言旋言歸。
復我諸父。

Yellow bird, yellow bird,
Do not settle on the oaks,
Do not eat my grand millet.
The people of this country,
I cannot dwell with.
I will return, I will go back,
Back to my uncles.

Re: 187. 黃鳥 - Huang Niao

[x_los]

Spurned bride or under appreciated official? It's nearly always one of them...

Re: 187. 黃鳥 - Huang Niao

[forestofglory]

What is being translated as "Maize"? It can't possible be Zea mays! Seem like an odd translation choice.

Re: 187. 黃鳥 - Huang Niao

[criminal_negligee]

I'm not completely sure, but in that line "無啄我粱" I think it's the final character, 粱, being translated as "maize." I looked it up on wiktionary and got these definitions -

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: 187. 黃鳥 - Huang Niao

[forestofglory]

Thank you!

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: 187. 黃鳥 - Huang Niao

[superborb]

Baike: Refugees (exiles?) yearning to return home. The society was in disarray in the final years of Zhou Xuan wang. The yellow bird (Eurasian siskin) is a metaphor for the exploiting class who don't work but eat.

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: 187. 黃鳥 - Huang Niao

[x_los]

Isn't this the second fucking one called yellow bird.