逸詩・多薪

Yìshī · Duō Xīn 逸詩・多薪

Lost Ode — “Much Firewood” (modern editorial title from the opening words; 逸詩 = lost ode not in the received Mǎo canon)

(anonymous; excavated bamboo manuscript, no attributable author)

About the work

Duō Xīn 多薪 is the companion lost ode to Jiāojiāo Míng Niǎo 交交鳴鳥 KR2p0044 in 馬承源 Mǎ Chéngyuán ed., 《上海博物館藏戰國楚竹書》 vol. 4, Shànghǎi gǔjí chūbǎnshè 上海古籍出版社, 2004. It comprises approximately 3 bamboo strips in three stanzas. The poem uses the xìng 興 device (analogical parallelism from natural phenomena to human relations) — comparing different types of firewood to different types of human companions — to celebrate the bond of brothers (xiōng jí dì 兄及弟). It was not included in the received 305-ode Mǎo canon.

Abstract

Each of the three stanzas of Duō Xīn follows the same structure: an abundance of firewood (duō xīn 多薪) is less valuable than a specific type of plant or tree; many people are less reliable than the bond of brothers. The three comparisons are:

1. “Much firewood — none like the chestnut and hazel (lì zhēn 栗榛); many people — none like my two selves [=we two brothers] alone” (xiōng jí dì sī, xiǎn wǒ èr rén 兄及弟斯，鮮我二人).
2. “Much firewood — none like the bulrush (huàn wěi 萑葦); many people, many people — none like brothers.”
3. “Much firewood — none like southernwood and fleabane (xiāo píng 蕭荓); many people, many people — none like those born together [=siblings].”

Significance and comparison with the received Shī. The poem’s theme — the brotherhood bond as the most reliable of all human bonds — is closely related to themes in received Shī poems such as Cháng Dì 棠棣 (Xiǎoyǎ 小雅), which celebrates fraternal solidarity in military contexts. The use of firewood as a ranking device for human bonds is a rhetorical approach that has no close counterpart in the received Shī but is characteristic of Warring States proverbial wisdom literature. Together with Jiāojiāo Míng Niǎo KR2p0044, Duō Xīn provides rare direct evidence of the oral/compositional tradition from which the Shī canon was assembled.

Translations and research

• 馬承源 ed., 《上海博物館藏戰國楚竹書》 vol. 4, Shànghǎi gǔjí chūbǎnshè, 2004 — editio princeps.
• Zhōu Fèngwǔ 周鳳五, philological notes on the 上博四 lost odes (Jianbo network, 2004).
• Kern, Martin. “Early Chinese Literature, Beginnings through Western Han.” In The Cambridge History of Chinese Literature, vol. 1. CUP, 2010 — contextual framework for the pre-Hàn ode tradition.

Links

• Wikipedia (Shanghai Museum bamboo texts): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Museum_bamboo_texts