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The Book of Songs by Stephen Owen7/2/2023 ![]() This book contains Arthur Waley's translation of the bulk of the songs along with his comments. I imagine reading a song like Greensleeves in translation and without the music. Add to this the difficulty of translating lyrics, where it is almost impossible to preserve rhythm, rhyme, sound, and it doesn't surprise me that I found the English renditions rather flat. Although they arose from songs, the music has been lost. Now classed as poetry, the original versions derived from songs: folk songs, songs from rituals, ceremonial songs - some of them perhaps courtship songs with men and women singing in call and response, some of them perhaps accompanied by dance as well as music. ![]() I knew little about this prior to reading the book, and I apologize for any mistakes I've made in my comments. They are presented in the order they appeared in the classic edition known as the Mao version. These songs/poems held a huge importance in Confucianism and in Chinese literature. ![]() "The Book of Songs" is the oldest of the Chinese classics, a collection of 305 songs that date back over two thousand years to the Zhou kingdom. ![]()
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