CivilWar’s Reviews > The Book of Songs: The Ancient Chinese Classic of Poetry > Status Update

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.

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!