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'Li Bai' or 'Li Po' () (
701-
762) was a
Chinese poet. Called the 'Poet Immortal', Li Bai is often regarded, along with
Du Fu, as one of the two greatest poets in
China's literary history. Approximately 1,100 of his poems remain today. The first translations in a Western language were published in 1862 by in his ''Poésies de l'Époque des Thang''.
[1] The English-speaking world was introduced to Li Bai's works by a
Herbert Allen Giles publication ''History of Chinese Literature'' (1901) and through the very liberal
translations of
Japanese versions of his poems made by
Ezra Pound.
[2]
Li Bai is best known for the extravagant imagination and striking
Taoist imagery in his poetry, as well as for his great love for
liquor. Like
Du Fu, he spent much of his life travelling, although in his case it was because his wealth allowed him to, rather than because his poverty forced him. He is said to have drowned in the
Yangtze River, having fallen from his boat while drunkenly trying to embrace the reflection of the moon.
Biography
Li Bai's birthplace is uncertain, but one candidate is
Suyab in
Central Asia (near modern-day
Tokmok,
Kyrgyzstan).
[3] However his family had originally dwelled in what is now southeastern
Gansu [4], and later moved to Jiangyou, near modern
Chengdu in
Sichuan province, when he was five years old. At the age of ten, his formal education started. Among various schools of classical Chinese philosophies,
Taoism was deepest influence, as demonstrated by his compositions. In 720, he was interviewed by Governor Su Ting, who considered him a genius. Though he expressed the wish to become an official, he could not be bothered to sit for the
Chinese civil service examination. Perhaps he considered taking the examination below his dignity. Instead, beginning at age twenty-five, he travelled around China, enjoying wine and leading a carefree life: very much contrary to the prevailing ideas of a proper
Confucian gentleman. His personality fascinated the aristocrats and common people alike, and he was introduced to the Emperor
Xuanzong around
742.
In 725, when he was twenty-five years old, Li Bai sailed down the Yangtze River all the way to Weiyang (Yangzhou) and Jinling (Nanjing). During the first year of his trip, he met celebrities and gave away much of his wealth to needy friends. He then turned back to the central southern China, and met Xu Yushi, the retired prime minister, married his daughter, and settled down in Anlu, Hubei.
In 730, Li Bai stayed in the Zhongnan Mountain near the capital Chang'an (Xi'an), and tried but failed to secure a position. Hence, he sailed down the Yellow River, stopped by Luoyang, followed by a visit to Taiyuan before he went home.
In 740, he moved to Shangdong. In 742, he traveled to Zhejiang and befriended a Taoist priest. In the same year, he travelled with his friend to the capital. Poet He Zhizhang called Li Bai "the god dismissed from the Heaven" after their initial meeting, and thus the epithet of "the Poem-God". Consequently, he was interviewed by the emperor (Li Longji, but commonly known by his posthumous title
Xuanzong), who personally prepared soup for him, and gave him a post at the
Hanlin Academy, which served to provide scholarly expertise and poetry for the Emperor. When the emperor ordered Li Bai to the palace, he was drunk, but he improvised on the spot and produced fascinating love poems alluding to the romance between the emperor and Yang Guifei, the favorite concubine. Once, Li Bai was drunk and asked Gao Lishi, the most powerful eunuch in the palace, to take off his boots in front of the emperor. Gao was offended and managed to persuade Yang Guifei to stop the emperor from naming Li Bai for a prominent position. Li Bai gave up hope thereafter and resigned from the academy.
Thereafter he wandered throughout China for the rest of his life. He met
Du Fu in the autumn of
744, and again the following year. These were the only occasions on which they met, but the friendship remained particularly important for the starstruck Du Fu (a dozen of his poems to or about Li Bai survive, compared to only one by Li Bai to Du Fu). At the time of the
An Lushan Rebellion he became involved in a subsidiary revolt against the Emperor, although the extent to which this was voluntary is unclear. The failure of the rebellion resulted in his exile to Yelang. He was pardoned before the exile journey was complete.
Finally, Daizong named Li Bai the Registrar of the Left Commandant's office in 762. When the imperial edict arrived in Dangtu,
Anhui, Li Bai was already dead. According to legend, he was drowned attempting to embrace the moon's reflection in a river. In reality, Li Bai committed suicide as evidenced by his farewell poem.
Simon Elegant novelized Li Bai's life in his 1997 work, ''A Floating Life''.
[5]
Poetry
Over a thousand poems are attributed to him, but the authenticity of many of these is uncertain. He is best known for his ''
yue fu'' poems, which are intense and often
fantastic. He is often associated with
Taoism: there is a strong element of this in his works, both in the sentiments they express and in their spontaneous tone. Nevertheless, his gufeng ("ancient airs") might adopt the perspective of the Confucian moralist.
Much like the genius of
Mozart there exist many legends on how effortlessly Li Bai composed his poetry; he was said to be able to compose at an astounding speed, without correction. His favorite form is the ''jueju'' (five- or seven-character
quatrain), of which he composed some 160 pieces. Li Bai's use of language is not as erudite as Du Fu's but impresses equally through his extravagance of imagination and a direct correlation of his free-spirited persona with the reader. Li Bai's interactions with nature, friendship, his love of wine and his acute observations of life inform his best poems. Some, like ''Changgan xing'' (translated by
Ezra Pound as ,
2 record the hardships or emotions of common people. He also wrote a number of very oblique, allusive poems on women.
In his poems, Li Bai tried to avoid the use of obscure vocabularies and historical references. Unlike other ancient Chinese poets such as Du Fu, Li Bai had no need to prove himself to the public; instead, he can afford to concentrate on communicating his genuine feelings to the readers. As a result, his poems flow spontaneously and effortlessly, like the river running to the ocean – it is simply unstoppable. His ability to create extraordinary out of ordinary is an unusual gift among his contemporaries, and was most likely the reason why he was considered the "Poem-God". The spontaneity of his language combined with the extravagance of his imagination distinguished Li Bai from any other poets in the Chinese history. Li Bai's interactions with nature, friendship, his love of wine and his acute observations of life inform his best poems.
As one of the many followers of Lao Zi and a practitioner of Taoism in Tang Dynasty (Xuanzong included) and, above all, a free-spirited person, Li Bai paid no respect to Confucius and his ideology. Consequently, he is often attacked by the Neo-Confucian "moralists" from Song Dynasty until today. Among the common people in China, however, La Bai is unquestionably the most beloved figure in Chinese poetry.
One of Li Bai's most famous poems is ''Drinking Alone by Moonlight'' (月下獨酌, pinyin: Yuè Xià Dú Zhuó), which is a good example of some of the most famous aspects of his poetry -- a very spontaneous poem, full of natural imagery and
anthropomorphism. Li Bai actually wrote several poems with the same title;
Arthur Waley's version of the most famous reads:
[6]
:花間一壺酒。 ''A cup of wine, under the flowering trees;''
:獨酌無相親。 ''I drink alone, for no friend is near.''
:舉杯邀明月。 ''Raising my cup I beckon the bright moon,''
:對影成三人。 ''For he, with my shadow, will make three men.''
:月既不解飲。 ''The moon, alas, is no drinker of wine;''
:影徒隨我身。 ''Listless, my shadow creeps about at my side.''
:暫伴月將影。 ''Yet with the moon as friend and the shadow as slave''
:行樂須及春。 ''I must make merry before the Spring is spent.''
:我歌月徘徊。 ''To the songs I sing the moon flickers her beams;''
:我舞影零亂。 ''In the dance I weave my shadow tangles and breaks.''
:醒時同交歡。 ''While we were sober, three shared the fun;''
:醉後各分散。 ''Now we are drunk, each goes his way.''
:永結無情遊。 ''May we long share our odd, inanimate feast,''
:相期邈雲漢。 ''And meet at last on the Cloudy River of the sky.''
Influence
Li Bai is known in the West partly due to
Ezra Pound's versions of some of his poems in the collection ''Cathay'',
2 such as , and also due to
Gustav Mahler's integration of four of his works in his symphonic work ''
Das Lied von der Erde''. These were in a German translation by , published in an anthology called ''Die chinesische Flöte'' (''The Chinese Flute''),
[7]
Bethge based his version on the pioneering translation into French by Saint-Denys.
1 There is another striking musical setting of Li Po's verse by the American composer
Harry Partch, whose ''Seventeen Lyrics by Li Po'' for intoning voice and Adapted Viola (an instrument of Partch's own invention) are based on the texts in ''The Works of Li Po, the Chinese Poet'' translated by Shigeyoshi Obata.
[8]
A crater on the planet
Mercury has been named after him.
In both versions of
Epcot's
Circle-Vision 360° film in the China pavilion, Li Bai serves as the narrator and guide of the film.
References
1.
D'Hervey de Saint-Denys (1862). ''Poésies de l'Époque des Thang'' (Amyot, Paris). See Minford, John and Lau, Joseph S. M. (2000)). ''Classic Chinese Literature'' (Columbia University Press) ISBN 978-0231096768.
2. Pound, Ezra (1915). ''Cathay'' (Elkin Mathews, London). ASIN B00085NWJI.
3. Zhongguo fu li hui, Chung-kuo fu li hui. ''China Reconstructs''. China Welfare Institute, 1989. Page 58.
4. Two accounts given by contemporaries Li Yangbing (Preface to the Thatched Cottage Collection) and Fan Chuanzheng (Tang's Zuo Sheyi Hanlin Xueshi Li Gong's Xin Mubei Bingxu) stated that his family was originally from what is now southeastern Gansu, as in the Xin Tangshu 215.
5. Elegant, Simon (1997). ''A Floating Life'' (Ecco Press, ). ISBN 978-0880015592
6. Waley, Arthur (1919). ''More Translations from the Chinese'' (Alfred A. Knopf, New York), pp. 27-28. Li Bai wrote 3 poems with the same name; Waley published translations of all three.
7. Bethge, Hans (2001). ''Die Chinesische Flöte'' (YinYang Media Verlag, Kelkheim, Germany). ISBN 978-3980679954. Re-issue of the 1907 edition (Insel Verlag, Leipzig).
8. Obata, Shigeyoshi (1923). ''The Works of Li Po, the Chinese Poet'' (J. M. Dent & Co, ). ASIN B000KL7LXI.
Bibliography
★ Cooper, Arthur (1973). ''Li Po and Tu Fu: Poems Selected and Translated with an Introduction and Notes'' (Penguin Classics, 1973). ISBN 978-0140442724 .
★ Hinton, David (1998). ''The Selected Poems of Li Po'' (Anvil Press Poetry, 1998). ISBN 978-0856462917 .
★ Waley, Arthur (1950). ''The poetry and career of Li Po'' (MacMillan Co., New York, 1950). ASIN B0006ASTS4 .
External links
Online translations (some with original Chinese, pronunciation, and literal translation):
★
www.chinese-poems.com
★
etext.lib.virgina.edu
★
www.cscs.umich.edu
★
afpc.asso.fr
★
Complete text of '''Cathay''', the Ezra Pound/
Ernest Fenollosa translations of poems principally by Li Po (J., Rihaku) together with public domain recordings (MP3) of the same.
★ "
Li Bai drinking alone (with the moon, his shadow, & 32 translators)" is a comprehensive collection of translations of this poem by an anonymous blogger. Retrieved April 15, 2007.
★
27 Recordings of "Drinking Alone by Moonlight," from the
LibriVox website. Retrieved July 1, 2007.
★
Spanish Translations of the Poetry of Li Bai(Li Po) by Raúl Racedo, Argentina.
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