Status Updates From The Book of Songs: The Anci...

Finished this beautiful collection of poems, what's left now is the large post-face.

Just a few poems away from finishing the Shijing; I am almost sad, but then again I will get to re-read it.

Finished the 大雅, moving on to the 頌 section!

The "odes" proper, songs to praise a member of the elite, are startling for they present me with the type of material which would have been the germ, the original raw material, that the Iliad would later be composed out of, here presented in very raw form. Fascinating how you do not see songs to warriors but to princes who only occasional are warriors, and also to literati! What a contrast with Indo-Euro bards!

Finished the Minor Odes, moving on the the Major Odes. This apparently also concerns the epic of the Zhou people, the "birth of the nation": compare with Indo-Euro epic and the Chinese Grand Scribe's Record's. Likewise compare the multiple soldiers' laments in the Minor Odes with the Indo-Euro notion of "singing the heroes"