Episode 01 · Bei Feng · Ji Gu · c. 700 BCE
The Soldier's Vow
Ink, drums and one red seal. Made entirely in code.
The words you already know
执子之手，与子偕老。
I will hold your hand. I will grow old with you.
You have read these words before. Tattooed on strangers' arms. Engraved on wedding jade. But it was not written for a wedding. It was written at war, twenty-seven centuries ago, by a soldier of the state of Bei who never came home.
The poem, whole
击鼓其镗，踊跃用兵。
土国城漕，我独南行。
Drums beat. Weapons rise.
Some stayed home to build walls. He was sent south.
从孙子仲，平陈与宋。
不我以归，忧心有忡。
Three years with General Sun Zizhong,
keeping two rival states from each other.
Leave denied. Home unreachable.
爰居爰处？爰丧其马？
于以求之？于林之下。
One night he woke alone. Even his horse was gone.
He went looking for it under the forest trees.
The old commentators say the horse is the man.
死生契阔，与子成说。
执子之手，与子偕老。
In life, in death, however far apart, we swore an oath.
I will hold your hand. I will grow old with you.
于嗟阔兮，不我活兮！
于嗟洵兮，不我信兮！
We are so far apart,
I will not live to keep it.
诗经·邶风·击鼓 · anonymous, c. 700 BCE · translation ours
Then the poem turns
The familiar reading
A soldier remembers the vow he made his wife, and knows he will never come home to keep it. The oldest love line in the world, and it ends in despair.
The other reading
Some scholars read it differently: the vow was spoken to the soldier marching beside him. Not a wedding promise at all, but a comrade's oath, made on the way to war.
Either way, the words survive. Every wedding that speaks them stands on a battlefield twenty-seven centuries old.
The series
This is the Book of Songs. Three hundred and five poems, older than Rome. Love, war, complaint, feasts. One poem at a time.
Episode 02 is on the inkstone. New films arrive as they dry.