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

[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. 

* Remember you can also look at How to Read Chinese Poetry in Context.

* 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 MAY 17.** 

This is the last chapter in the Minor Odes! After this we move to the Greater Odes (three weeks) and the Odes of the Temple and the Altar (four weeks). Then, a whole new set of poems!

Comments

231. 瓠葉 - Hu Ye

[x_los]

幡幡瓠葉、采之亨之。
君子有酒、酌言嘗之。

Of the gourd leaves, waving about,
Some are taken and boiled;
[Then] the superior man, from his spirits,
Pours out a cup, and tastes it.

有兔斯首、炮之燔之。
君子有酒、酌言獻之。

There is but a single rabbit,
Baked, or roasted.
[But] the superior man, from his spirits,
Fills the cup and presents it [to his guests].

有兔斯首、燔之炙之。
君子有酒、酌言酢之。

There is but a single rabbit,
Roasted, or broiled.
[But] from the spirits of the superior man,
[His guests] fill the cup, and present it to him.

有兔斯首、燔之炮之。
君子有酒、酌言醻之。

There is but a single rabbit,
Roasted, or baked.
[But] from the spirits of the superior man,
[His guests and he] fill the cup and pledge one another.

Re: 231. 瓠葉 - Hu Ye

[x_los]

'Of the gourd leaves, waving about,
Some are taken and boiled;'

so is it that--this guy doesn't have a lot, but he knows how to do it right, and so provides for his guests as well as he can?

Re: 231. 瓠葉 - Hu Ye

[superborb]

Baike thinks it's the host's modesty and the hospitality of ordinary people.

Interestingly, the Legge translation seems to give a sense of scarcity, but the way Baike describes the gourd leaves (bitter) and the rabbit (not one of the "six animals" that should be meat dishes (pig, cattle, sheep, chicken, fish, geese), so it's not elegant) makes it seem more like it's just that the food is crude and simple? OTOH, it also glosses the rabbit as just a rabbit head, which seems like not very much food. (The vernacular uses a more general rabbit meat.)

Re: 231. 瓠葉 - Hu Ye

[llonkrebboj]

I am VERY confused about 斯首 tbh because
- reading 斯 as 'this'
有兔斯首 becomes there is this head of a rabbit
- reading 斯 as 'tear'
有兔斯首 becomes there is a torn head of a rabbit
- reading 斯 as 'white' (and baidu links back that reading to this poem LMAO)
有兔斯首 becomes there is a white head of a rabbit

Re: 231. 瓠葉 - Hu Ye

[superborb]

Yeah, Baike's gloss on that line is ⑸斯：语助词。首：头，只。一说斯首即白头，兔小者头白。So it looks like the white head reading does originate here, but how???

Re: 231. 瓠葉 - Hu Ye

[llonkrebboj]

Oooo I think that reading makes sense! Lbr, he only has wine, gourd leaves and a white headed rabbit (or the head of a rabbit? I can't tell)! But then cooks it in 3 different ways, carefully twice each. Baked in mud, roasted and then roasted again like kebab. And all this flavoured only with gourd leaf. He's a poor man for sure!

Then as for the wine, we see the party as it progresses! The guy invites everyone to have a taste, pours out again to offer, then the guests drink and return the polite guesture and the last line they drink to each other.

Just bc you're poor doesn't mean you can't have a good time.

Re: 231. 瓠葉 - Hu Ye

[x_los]

This is a really good point about it as a description of the progression of the meal, with courses and toasts made from very little.