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

233. 苕之華 - Tiao Zhi Hua

[x_los]

苕之華、芸其黃矣。
心之憂矣、維其傷矣。

The flowers of the bignonia,
Are of a deep yellow.
My heart is sad;
I feel its wound.

苕之華、其葉青青。
知我如此、不如無生。

The flowers of the bignonia [are gone],
[There are only] its leaves all-green.
If I had known it would be thus with me,
I had better not have been born.

牂羊墳首、三星在罶。
人可以食、鮮可以飽。

The ewes have large heads;
The Three stars are [seen] in the fish-trap.
If some men can get enough to eat,
Few can get their fill.

Re: 233. 苕之華 - Tiao Zhi Hua

[x_los]

these are the weirdest xings yet, in the whole damn book

Re: 233. 苕之華 - Tiao Zhi Hua

[superborb]

Baike:

This is lamenting in barren years, people starving, while plants can live unrestrained lives. [??? If the plants are thriving, wouldn't people be able to eat them, surely the plants are also dying, as the flowers are all dead.] The ewe has a big head because it's so thin, there are only stars but no fish in the water. There also is a cannibalism accusation for lack of food to eat.

Re: 233. 苕之華 - Tiao Zhi Hua

[vorvayne]

Feat. Some CHOICES re translation. Getting to the point where I deeply need a half decent classical chinese dictionary, especially for the plant names because. Bignonia?? Really? What the fuck is a Bignonia: google doesn't really know. Pleco suggests 苕 is a sort of yam, which would make sense, but idk. I have some etymology stuff but need a better fast gloss to see if I'm on a half decent track.

Anyway on the other hand if it IS bignonia, apparently some of those are toxic to livestock, so I'd guess if there aren't any livestock people don't bother to weed them?

知我如此, 不如無生

Literal gloss here is easy:

"know I like this, better that not live"

So like - to be fair that's hard to render in English.

"If I'd known life would be like this, I'd rather not have been born."

I wonder where the last two lines are coming from? I do see the cannibalism thing there: 人可以食，鮮可以飽

Sortof like "people can eat, [but] few can eat their fill" but also, "people can be used as feed..." maybe.

鮮 as "few" is new to me and a bit of a weird extension from its other meanings but that's classical Chinese for you.

Ohhh on baidu they have the 苕 as "campsis grandiflora" which maybe does elucidate things: "Campsis grandiflora prefers moist, nutrient-rich soil and a position with full sun and support to climb. The dark green leaves have serrated edges." (Wikipedia)

Maybe an implication that SOMEONE is getting the nutrient rich soil and good conditions, but it isn't the people in the poem? This makes more sense if you follow me and - as much as I've read of it - baidu RE the second verse, where there's no implication that the flowers are gone, it's just that thing we've now read a hundred times where you describe different aspects of a plant to vaguely hint at your subject.