Self as Poem

The Book of Songs (Shi Jing) begins with praise for the kings and the elite of China, but the latter two thirds of the work celebrate the travails, tribulations and accomplishments of ordinary man. Assembled over centuries, the book was for the most part compiled by the ruling monarch who would send scribes to the villages to record the songs, hymns and poems of the working people. In this way, the soul of a people was integrated into one document that became a foundational text for China and set a thought form for the Eastern mind. It provided an understanding of the role of poetry in the self’s relation to the group, and of the sanctity of the poem as a home for the self – a self that otherwise appeared regulated as part of a collective will. As David Hinton writes ‘it is a secular poetry having a direct personal voice speaking of immediate and concrete experience, and it is a poetry that functions as a window onto the inner life of a person.’ ¹