Exploring the Three Hundred Poems: A Reprint of Key Academic Works of the 20th Century

Author: Zhu Dongrun
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2007-01-01
Features: The Spirit of the Time in the Compilation of the Three Hundred Poems is an additional essay to the Four Discourses on Reading Poetry. It was written in 1946, the year after the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japan. An important textual research in the article points out that the famous historical story of Wu Jiji's visit to Lu to observe the Zhou music in Zhan Gong 29th Year of the Zuo Zhuan is unreliable. Furthermore, based on the record of Zheng's Six Ministers entertaining Han Xuanzi in the suburbs in Zhao Gong 16th Year of the Zuo Zhuan, where Han Xuanzi did not know the Zheng poems and specially asked the Six Ministers to recite poems "to understand the intentions of Zheng," it is concluded that the Three Hundred Poems had not yet become a standardized text until that year. According to Confucius' mention of "the Three Hundred Poems," the compilation date of the Book of Songs is determined to be between the visit of Han Xuanzi to Zheng and Confucius' mature years. When this book was completed, the spirit of the time, as described in the Gongyang Zhuan in the 16th Year of Gonggong, was: "Internally, its own country; externally, the Four Seas; internally, the Four Seas; externally, the barbarian tribes." This was an era of high nationalism, where the mission of the time was to pursue the unity of the tribes of the Four Seas and resist the invasion of other tribes. The compilation of the Book of Songs reflects this spirit of the time. This is a macroscopic interpretation of the Book of Songs with a strong sense of history. The text says: "Only after understanding the Three Hundred Poems can we know why Chinese poets are full of suffering yet also possess a strong spirit, and why the Chinese, despite constantly suffering from foreign hardships, ultimately remain an unconquered nation." Here, what we read is not only history but also the author's contemporary emotions.