Poetry, Ritual, Music

The song or poem that moved you when you were young: can it still move you now?

Original

子曰：「興於詩，立於禮，成於樂。」

In plain words

Confucius said: “Be stirred by poetry. Take your stand through ritual. Be made whole by music.”

Key words

興xīngTo rouse, to revive: waking up feelings that had gone to sleep.
思無邪sī wú xiéConfucius' one-line summary of the Odes. 思 is a filler word and 邪 means “veering”: nothing false, all genuine feeling.
成chéngTo complete: music brings everything into harmony, and a life is made whole.

Reading it step by step

We have read “not a vessel” and “at play in the arts.” So what did Confucius actually teach with? This line gives the order: poetry, ritual, music.

First: “stirred by poetry” means waking real feeling. 兴 is to rouse or revive. Confucius summed up all three hundred Odes in one phrase: 思无邪. It is often rendered “no impure thoughts,” but the Odes are folk songs and temple hymns, not philosophy. Besides, whose thoughts? The authors'? Most of these songs have no author we know. The editor's? Then what has it to do with us? The reader's?

Must your thoughts be inspected before you're allowed to read? The phrase comes from an ode about horses running straight without veering; 思 is just a filler sound. Confucius borrows it to say: every one of these poems comes from genuine feeling, nothing faked. Once we enter adult life, our sincerity gets worn down. Reading poetry wakes up the clear emotion we had when we were young.

Second: “take your stand through ritual” means feeling needs measure. Emotion alone is not enough. Of the first ode, Confucius said: “Joyful but not wanton, sorrowful but not harmful.” Ruan Ji, a free spirit of a later age who scorned ritual, went on drinking and eating meat after his mother died, as if he didn't care; at the final farewell he let out one cry and coughed up blood. Grief forced down hurts the one who holds it.

Yet when Yan Hui died, Confucius wept so hard that his students said it was too much. “If not for him, then for whom?” Measure isn't a quota set from outside. It is feeling in its right proportion. Ritual teaches how to stand among people, how to speak, how to treat them. Confucius told his son: “If you don't study the Odes, you'll have nothing to say,” and “If you don't study ritual, you'll have nowhere to stand.” Poetry gives you something to say; ritual gives you a place to stand.

Third: “made whole by music” means completion in harmony. Music puts different sounds together, lets them answer each other, and resolves them into harmony. A life is the same: feelings, rules and duties are finally tuned into one unhurried whole. Confucius sang and played all his life, even in danger. Passing through Kuang, he was mistaken for Yang Hu, who had once oppressed the town: the student driving his carriage had driven for Yang Hu before.

A crowd surrounded them and the students panicked; Confucius took out his qin and sang. As the story was later told, the people outside began to wonder: could Yang Hu play like that? They asked around, found they had the wrong man, and an armed officer came in to apologise and let them go. A life is completed not in sternness, but in harmony.

stirred by poetrywake real feeling

stand by ritualfeeling with measure

whole through musiccompleted in harmony

Sincerity → measure → harmony

Bring it home. At twenty, a poem or a song could make you cry. At forty, with the calendar full, do you remember that feeling? Confucius' order is practical: first recover real feeling, then learn measure, then let your days have a melody.

Tonight, pick one poem or song you loved when you were young. Read it, or listen to it, slowly and alone.

One line to carry

Recover feeling, learn measure, then give your days a melody.

Today's question

Write down a poem or song that moved you when you were young. What did it wake in you? Is that feeling still there?

Quick check

When Confucius summed up the Odes as 思无邪, what did he mainly mean?

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III · The Beauty of a Cultured Life — Poetry, ritual, music and the joy of living

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