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Po, LiWe have 1 book for this author.
Li Bai or Li Po (Chinese: 李白; Pinyin: Lǐ Bái) (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 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 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's 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 gave him 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. 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. Perhaps he considered taking the examination below his dignity. 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 the 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), 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 the soup for him, and gave him a post at the Hanlin Academy, which served to provide a source of 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 the 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 the 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] PoetryOver 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 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 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]
InfluenceLi 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 The River Merchant's Wife: A Letter, 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 Hans Bethge, 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
Bibliography
External linksOnline translations (some with original Chinese, pronunciation, and literal translation):
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