Li Bai

Li Bai
Liang Kai's Li Bai Strolling (detail), early 13th century
Born	701 Sui Ye, Tang dynasty, China. Today's Tokmok
Died	762 Dangtu
Occupation	Poet
Nationality	Chinese
Writing period	Tang dynasty, Shanxi Province, China

Li Bai or Li Po (Chinese: 李白; pinyin: Lǐ Bái, or, Lǐ Bó) (701 – 762) was a Chinese poet. He was part of the group of Chinese scholars called the "Eight Immortals of the Wine Cup" in a poem by fellow poet Du Fu. 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 Marquis d'Hervey de Saint-Denys 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 liberal, but poetically influential, 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, famously but untruly, to have drowned in the Yangtze River, having fallen from his boat while drunkenly trying to embrace the reflection of the moon.

Name Variants

Li (李) is the family name, or surname. His given name is written with a Chinese character (白), which is romanized variously as Po, Bo, Bai, Pai, and other variants. Even in Hanyu Pinyin, there is ambiguity, as Bái is the common variant and Bó the literary variant (and thus presumably closer to the original pronunciation). His style name, also known as courtesy name, was Tài Bó (太白), literally "Great White," a reference to the planet Venus. Thus, combining the family name with the style name, we get variants such as Li Tai Bo, Li Tai Pai, and so on. He also may be known by the pseudonym Qinglianjushi (青莲居士), meaning Retired Scholar of the Azure Lotus. Furthermore, he has the nicknames Poet Transcendant (詩仙) and Poet Knight-Errant (詩俠). In works derived through Japanese, he is sometimes known as Ri Haku. All of these variants, and more, with or without hyphenation, have been historically attested to. The original pronunciation of Li Bo is not known for sure, and can only be guessed at through linguistic reconstruction of Middle Chinese.

Biography

Some believe that Li Bai's birthplace is Chu, Kazakhstan while another candidate is Suiye (Chinese: 碎叶城; pinyin: Suìyè Chéng) in Central Asia (near modern-day Tokmok, Kyrgyzstan).^[3] However, his family had originally dwelt 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 the 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 traveled around China, enjoying liquor 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 central southern China, 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. He sailed down the Yellow River, stopped by Luoyang, and visited Taiyuan before going home.

In 740, he moved to Shandong. In 742, he traveled to Zhejiang and befriended a Taoist priest. The same year, he traveled with his friend to the capital. Poet He Zhizhang called Li Bai "the Transcendent dismissed from the Heaven" after their initial meeting, and thus the epithet of "the Poet Transcendant". 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. The actual circumstances of his death are unknown, however in the preface to the first collection of his poetry assembled (posthumously) by his cousin Li Yongbin, it appears he died of sickness brought on by age and hardship during travel(due to his recent exile).

Poetry

The only surviving calligraphy in Li Bo's own handwriting.

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 and "Jinti shi" 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 heavily favored gufeng forms due to their stylistic freedom (ui.e. yuefu) as well as the jueju form (five- or seven-character quatrain), of which he composed some 160 pieces. Li Bai's use of language impresses through his extravagance of imagination and a direct communication 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 The River Merchant's Wife: A Letter,^[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 words 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 could afford to concentrate on communicating his genuine feelings to the readers. His ability to create extraordinary out of ordinary was an unusual gift among his contemporaries, and was most likely the reason why he was considered the "Poem-God". The fact that his Chinese nickname was "詩仙" (shīxiān, which translates literally into transcendent/immortal of poetry) should itself prove it. The spontaneity of his language combined with the extravagance of his imagination distinguished Li Bai from any other poets in the Chinese history.

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 has often been attacked by the Neo-Confucian "moralists," ever since the Song Dynasty. Among the common people in China, however, Li 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:^[5]

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 her, with my shadow, will make three people.

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 their way.

永結無情遊。 May we long share our eternal friendship,

相期邈雲漢。 And meet at last on the Cloudy River of the sky.

Influence

Li Bai is influential in the West partly due to Ezra Pound's versions of some of his poems in the collection Cathay,^[2] such as The River Merchant's Wife: A Letter. The ideas underlying them had a profound impact in shaping American Imagist and Modernist poetry through the 20th Century. Also, Gustav Mahler integrated four of Li Bai's works in his symphonic song cycle Das Lied von der Erde. These were in a free German translation by Hans Bethge, published in an anthology called Die chinesische Flöte (The Chinese Flute), ^[6] 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.^[7]

Simon Elegant novelized Li Bai's life in his 1997 work, A Floating Life.^[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.

See also

• Modernist poetry in English

References

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 .
• Holyoak, K. (translator) (2007). Facing the Moon: Poems of Li Bai and Du Fu. (Durham, NH: Oyster River Press). ISBN 978-1-882291-04-5.
• Seth, V. (translator) (1992). Three Chinese Poets: Translations of Poems by Wang Wei, Li Bai, and Du Fu. (London: Faber & Faber). ISBN 0-571-16653-9.
• Varsano, Paula M. (2003). "Tracking the Banished Immortal: The Poetry of Li Bo and its Critical Reception" (University of Hawaii Press, 2003). ISBN 978-0824825737
• Waley, Arthur (1950). The poetry and career of Li Po (MacMillan Co., New York, 1950). ASIN B0006ASTS4.
• Weinberger, Eliot. The New Directions Anthology of Classical Chinese Poetry. (New York: New Directions Publishing Corporation, 2004). ISBN 0-8112-1605-5. Introduction, with translations by William Carlos Williams, Ezra Pound, Kenneth Rexroth, Gary Snyder, and David Hinton.

External links

Find more about Li Bai on Wikipedia's sister projects:

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Online free encyclopedia about Li Bai in Chinese:

• baike.baidu.com
• zh.wikipedia.org

Online translations (some with original Chinese, pronunciation, and literal translation):

• www.cscs.umich.edu
• afpc.asso.fr
• Li Bai: Poems Extensive collection of Li Bai poems in English
• Spanish Translations: Li Bai Poetry (Li Po) by Raúl Racedo, Argentina.
• New English translations of Li Po with traditional characters in Zone Magazine.
• www.chinese-poems.com 20 Li Bai poems, in Chinese using simplified and traditional characters and pinyin, with literal and literary English translations by Mark Alexander.
• etext.lib.virginia.edu 34 Li Bai poems, in Chinese with English translation by Witter Bynner, from the Three Hundred Tang Poems anthology.
• 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.
• Das Lied von der Erde: The Literary Changes – synopsis of original Chinese poems, Bethge's translations and Mahler's changes
• Profile Variety of translations of Li Bai's poetry by a range of translators, along with photographs of geographical sites relevant to his life.