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The Book of Songs is China's earliest collection of poems and the beginning of China's poetry traditions. The Book of Songs was called Poetry or 300 Poems in the pre-Qin period. In the Han Dynasty, Poetry was listed as a Confucian classic and thus was called Classic of Poetry. Most works in The Book of Songs were created from the early Western Zhou Dynasty to the mid Spring and Autumn Period.
The Book of Songs consists of 311 poems, and only 305 exist. All of them can be sung with music. According different types of music, poems in The Book of Songs are classified into "airs," "court hymns" and "eulogies." "Airs" are mainly folk songs created by laborers; "court hymns" including "lesser court hymns" and "major court hymns" are mainly songs for imperial court meetings and banquets created by aristocratic scholars mostly; "eulogies" are mainly songs for sacrificial ceremonies in ancestral temples also created by aristocratic scholars mostly.
The Book of Songs contains very abundant ideological contents, involving various aspects of the life of the aristocratic class and ordinary people in the society of that period. Themes include history, praise, sarcasm, love, marriage, agriculture, enlistment, etc. Crying Ospreys is a famous poem:
Merrily the ospreys cry,
On the islet in the stream.
Gentle and graceful is the girl,
A fit wife for the gentleman.
Short and long the floating water plants.
Left and right you may pluck them.
Gentle and graceful is the girl,
Awake he longs for her and in his dreams.
When the courtship has failed,
Awake he thinks of her and in his dreams.
Filled with sorrowful thoughts,
He tosses about unable to sleep.
Short and long the floating water plants,
Left and right you may gather them.
Gentle and graceful is the girl,
He'd like to wed her, the qin and se playing.
Short and long the floating water plants,
Left and right you may collect them.
Gentle and graceful is the girl,
He 'd like to marry her, bells and drums beating.
As a folk love song, it not only manifests beautiful love in the world, but also describes the beautiful course of pursuing love. This plain, refreshing, lively and refined poem full of love has been handed down from generation to generation for thousands of years with far-reaching influence. Poems in The Book of Songs such as Sandalwood Felling,.Big Rat, The Reeds and Rushes, July and Picking Fern-shoots reflect bottom-class people's hard labor and spirit of resistance, depict tragic wars of resistance against foreign enemies, or express exceedingly sad and sentimental feelings. "Thick grow the rush leaves; their white dew turns to frost. He whom I love must be somewhere along this stream." "When I left here, willows shed tear. I come back now, snow bends the bough." These are all famous lines from them handed down for thousands of years.
The Book of Songs has its salient artistic characteristics. In view of the most basic forms of expression, most texts in The Book of Songs consist of four-character sentences, and each sentence has two beats constituting the rhythm. This simple and clear form facilitated singing and spreading, and this plain artistic form of The Book of Songs directly influenced the plain style of Chinese poetry. Of course, all texts in The Book of Songs can be sung with music, thus also manifesting a strong sense of musical beauty. Tautology, alliteration, assonance, repetition, lingering charm and the use of many function words not only constitute abundant and lifelike poetic imaginations, but also show strong musical appeal.
Picture Scroll of Proceeding with Carriage, painted by Ma Hezhi in the Song Dynasty. Proceeding with Carriage is a poem in Minor Odes of the Kingdom - Decade of Lu Ming depicting the scene of the Zhou Dynasty's army returning in triumph.
Another characteristic of The Book of Songs is that true feelings are expressed directly. Many texts not only truly reflect real life of that period and express authors' thoughts and feelings naturally and straightforwardly, but also have no affected form or artificial modality. Everything is a reflection of life itself. Whether written by ordinary people or higher-class scholars, they were not created on purpose. Reality leads to a high degree of integration of the ideological connotations and artistic charm of The Book of Songs. This style of The Book of Songs also exerted far-reaching influence on poetry styles in later ages.
Another important characteristic of The Book of Songs is, just like Confucius said, "The Odes serve to stimulate the mind. They may be used for purposes of self-contemplation. They teach the art of sociability. They show how to regulate feelings of resentment. From them you learn the more immediate duty of serving one's father, and the remoter one of serving one's prince. From them we become largely acquainted with the names of birds, beasts, and plants." The first four sentences summarize multiple aspects of the value of The Book of Songs such as artistic inspiration, understanding, educational functions, satire and criticism. These aspects of the value of The Book of Songs as China's earliest collection of poems undoubtedly exerted tremendous influence on Chinese poetry creation in later ages and even the entire Chinese literature's pursuit of aesthetic value and ideological content.
What deserves special attention is that later people revealed artistic expression methods of ancient Chinese poetry with universal significance, i.e. description, metaphor and analogy, from the creation of The Book of Songs. Description refers to elaboration and parallelism; metaphor refers to comparison; analogy refers to expressing emotions through describing concrete objects and then introducing the things, thoughts and feelings that the poet wants to express through association. These three methods have different functions and characteristics but integrate with each other and interact as both cause and effect. Description, metaphor and analogy in The Book of Songs deeply influenced creation of poems and essays in later dynasties. It can be said that The Book of Songs aroused the passion for and interest in Chinese poetry creation, and nourished generations of poets.