Li Bo
Li Bo, also known as Li Bai, was a prominent Chinese poet of the Tang Dynasty, celebrated for his romantic and often whimsical verses. Born into a family with a unique background, his ancestors were exiled to northwestern China, and his early life in Sichuan Province was marked by a blend of Daoist philosophy and a rejection of traditional Confucian studies. This upbringing fostered his literary talent and distinct perspective on life, leading him to explore themes of nature, love, and the intoxication of wine in his poetry.
Li Bo's poetic journey was characterized by extensive travels across China, where he mingled with fellow poets and intellectuals, securing his reputation as a legendary figure in Chinese literature. His relationship with the Tang emperor Xuanzong further elevated his status, although it also led to periods of conflict and exile. His poetry is noted for its lyrical beauty and philosophical depth, often drawing from Daoist ideals of harmony with nature and the joyous celebration of life's pleasures.
A central aspect of Li Bo’s legacy lies in his ability to capture the spirit of his time, reflecting both the hedonistic tendencies of the Tang Dynasty and a profound appreciation for the fleeting nature of existence. His death, which is steeped in myth, resonates with the themes of his work, ensuring that he remains an enduring symbol of literary genius in Chinese culture.
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Li Bo
Chinese poet
- Born: 701
- Birthplace: Xinjiang Uygur, China (now in Chinese Turkistan)
- Died: December 762
- Place of death: Dangtu, Anhwei Province, China
Li Bo’s clever, sensuous, and mystical verse has led many to consider him China’s foremost lyric poet.
Early Life
According to tradition, the ancestors of Li Bo (lee boh) had been exiled to the remote area of northwestern China (Chinese Turkistan) now known as the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region early in the seventh century. When he was about five, his father, a small businessman whose income was supplemented by his wife’s work as a washerwoman, successfully petitioned the authorities for permission to move his family to the city of Zhang Ming in Sichuan Province, a more civilized, if still decidedly provincial, community.
During their exile, Li Bo’s ancestors had intermarried with the Mongolian peoples of the northwest frontier, as a result of which he was taller and sturdier than the average Chinese, and his wide mouth and bulging eyes were also commented on in several contemporary descriptions. Li Bo’s unusual background was reflected in his schooling, for he concentrated on the study of esoteric religious and literary works rather than the prescribed Confucian classics, although he certainly read and was familiar with the latter. He became deeply interested in Daoism, a more mystical and romantic philosophy than the thoroughly practical Confucianism that dominated Chinese society at the time, and received a diploma from the Daoist master Gai Dianshi (Kao Tien-shih) in recognition of these studies. In 720, his exceptional scholastic abilities were recognized by the governor of his province, who predicted that he would become a famous poet.
After a turbulent adolescence, during which he fell in with a group of roughnecks devoted to sword fighting, Li Bo became interested in more contemplative pursuits. Between the ages of twenty and twenty-four, he lived as a recluse with a fellow student of Daoism in a remote part of Sichuan Province, there acquiring even more of a reputation for wisdom and literary ability. Now emotionally as well as intellectually mature, he resolved to broaden his horizons by seeing what the world outside his native province had to offer.
Life’s Work
Li Bo began his travels by exploring those areas of China through which the Yangtze River passed. In the central province of Hubei, he met and married Xu Xinshi (Hsu Hsin-shih), the granddaughter of a retired prime minister, in 727. Although they had several children and Xu Xinshi seems to have been a model wife, Li’s wanderlust was evidently untamed. He continued to ramble about the country, sometimes with his wife and sometimes not, visiting other poets and scholars and becoming something of a legend among his fellow intellectuals. In 735, while traveling in the northern province of Shanxi, he saved the life of the soldier Guo Ziyi (Kuo Tzu-i), who would later be pleased to return the favor when he rose to high political rank. A short time after this, Li Bo is mentioned in accounts of a celebrated group of hard-drinking men of letters, the “Six Idlers of the Bamboo Brook,” who resided in the northeastern province of Shandong.
While engaged in his travels across the length and breadth of China, Li had begun to write the deceptively simple lyrics that posterity would consider among the finest achievements in Chinese verse. The majority of his work cannot be accurately dated, but since both his lifestyle and his literary accomplishments remained relatively constant throughout his career, determining dates is not as important as it might be for a less precocious writer.
His early interest in Daoism was one of the most significant influences on his poetry, one that has sometimes been insufficiently appreciated by Western commentators. Laozi (Lao-tzu; 604-sixth century b.c.e.) and Zhuangzi (Chuang-tzu; c. 365-290 b.c.e.), respectively the founder and the chief apostle of this philosophy, emphasized the necessity of living in harmony with the Dao, or Way, giving up the trivial concerns of conventional social life and cultivating the virtues of simplicity and directness. Withdrawal from the world was encouraged, and at their most extreme, Li’s verses take an almost sinful pride in their creator’s capacity for achieving the heights of heavenly bliss:
You ask what my soul does away in the sky,
As the poet grew older, however, these early expressions of mystical communion with inexpressible realities gave way to more down-to-earth recipes for pleasuring the soul. Just as modern-day readers buy self-help books far more frequently than the classic works of religion and philosophy, so did the people of Li Bo’s day seek practical formulas for attaining peace of mind. Thus, when Daoist recluses discovered that the drinking of wine offered a close approximation of the mental states reached through serious meditation, alcohol soon became a respectable as well as popular means of attuning the senses to the subtle harmony of nature’s underlying unities.
Li first impressed his fellow countrymen as a singer of the praises of wine, and even centuries later, he is a kind of unofficial patron saint of serious drinkers. Unlike those who drink to forget, however, Li and the recluses, musicians, poets, and vagabonds among whom he spent much of his life drank to heighten their appreciation of beauty and to loosen their tongues in the description of it. One of his most famous poems, a celebration of wine, asserts that “in life, when you are happy, you must drink your joy to the last drop.” It is in this context of the celebration of good fortune, rather than the drowning of sorrows, that his advocacy of intoxication should be understood.
This kind of joyful imbibing often figures in the various versions of how Li Bo came to meet the reigning emperor, Xuanzong (Hsüan-tsung, r. 712-756), and although the exact circumstances remain a matter of conjecture, it is known that by 742, Li Bo had become a favorite of this Daoist-oriented ruler. It is claimed that the emperor was once so taken with a poem praising the accomplishments of his government that he broke tradition by serving Li food with his own hands. On another occasion, the poet impressed him by dashing off a piece when obviously very drunk. The most famous poem he wrote at court, “Jing bing diao” (“A Song of Pure Happiness”), was inspired by the emperor’s beautiful concubine Yang Guifei (Yang Kuei-fei):
Her robe is a cloud, her face a flower;
Li seems, however, to have offended either a powerful member of the court or perhaps even the emperor himself; in 744, ordered to leave the capital, he resumed his earlier pattern of wandering about the kingdom. Shortly thereafter, he met the younger poet Du Fu, and for a period of two or three years, they traveled together, studying at remote Daoist monasteries and exchanging ideas about poetry. Du Fu seems to have functioned as a calming influence on his friend; he encouraged Li to write down his verses rather than simply declaim them to an admiring circle of drinking companions. Because the two were almost polar opposites in terms of poetry as well as personality, the friendship between them came to be held up as a symbol of how artistic ideals can transcend individual differences.
After parting from Du, Li continued on his roaming life, spending most of his time in the southern and western provinces of Jiangxi and Jiangsu. In 756, he unthinkingly accepted an invitation to the court of a prince who was using the opportunity afforded by the rebellion of the Tatar general An Lushan to assert his own dynastic claims. When this prince’s armies were defeated in 757, Li was imprisoned; he gained release only after his old friend Guo Ziyi, now the new emperor’s minister of war, interceded on his behalf.
This experience was, in a way, a practical demonstration of the dangers of ignoring Daoist precepts about withdrawing from the world, and during the five years of life that remained to him, Li avoided any intrigues of this sort. He also seems to have been reconciled with his wife and children and lived a contented and because he was still in some political disgrace quiet life. After he died in 762, even old friends such as Du Fu did not hear the news until several years later. His death, according to legend, was an appropriate one for a lover of wine: Drunk in his boat on a beautiful evening, he leaned far over the side to admire his reflection in the water, fell overboard, and drowned. In a culture in which the manner of death was just as important as behavior in life, Li Bo’s passing ensured that he would achieve immortality as both legend and literary genius.
Significance
Li Bo’s poetry has been highly valued for its consummate grace and original choice of words. He wrote during a period when one of China’s most revered dynasties, the Tang (T’ang; 618-907), was at the apex of its power and prestige, and his verses seemed to catch the spirit of a self-confident and somewhat hedonistic age. He had, after all, been an intimate of the emperor himself, a fact that continued to fascinate succeeding generations as they preserved the many stories of the poet’s brash behavior toward his sovereign.
Li Bo was a sworn enemy of the mindless conformity to sterile traditions that is always a danger in highly stratified societies, but it was the pursuit of pleasure, not some quixotic and suicidal act of rebellion, that marked both his life and his work. In verses that were the literary equivalent of Daoism’s injunctions to accept the universe rather than strive to change it, he sang the delights of wine, women, and song in spontaneous language that appealed to nobles and ne’er-do-wells alike.
Li Bo is one of the great romantic figures of Chinese literature, a poet whose adventurous and idiosyncratic life seems perfectly encapsulated in his direct and unhackneyed verses. The facility with which he wrote of mundane pleasures, gently grieved over their transience, and explored the possibilities of mystical communion with transcendent reality is just as attractive today as it was during his own time. Few readers of Chinese literature have remained immune to his charm.
Bibliography
Cooper, Arthur, comp. and trans. Li Po and Tu Fu: Poems Selected and Translated with an Introduction and Notes. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1973. The translations are generally excellent, and the extensive background material on the history of Chinese poetry and literature is helpful. Li’s connection with Du Fu is usefully discussed.
Li Bo. Banished Immortal: Visions of Li T’ai-po. Translated by Sam Hamill. Fredonia, N.Y.: White Pine Press, 1987. A collection of translations of poetry by Li Bo.
Li Bo. Li Pai: Two Hundred Selected Poems. Translated by Rewi Alley. 1980. Reprint. Hong Kong: Joint Publishing, 1987. A selection of poetry by Li Bo.
Li Bo. The Selected Poems of Li Po. Translated by David Hinton. New York: New Directions, 1996. A translation of Li Bo’s poems. Includes some analysis.
Pine, Red, trans. Poems of the Masters: China’s Classic Anthology of T’ang and Sung Dynasty Verse. Port Townsend, Wash.: Copper Canyon Press, 2003. A collection of poetry from the Tang and Song Dynasties that includes the work of Li Bo. Indexes.
Seaton, J. P., and James Cryer, trans. Bright Moon, Perching Bird: Poems by Li Po and Tu Fu. Scranton, Pa.: Harper & Row, 1987. This work, part of the Wesleyan Poetry in Translation series, features the works of Li Bo and Du Fu, two Tang poets. Provides some information on Tang Dynasty poetry.
Seth, Vikram, trans. Three Chinese Poets: Translations of Poems by Wang Wei, Li Bai, and Du Fu. Boston: Faber and Faber, 1992. A collection of poems by Li Bo, Wang Wei, and Du Fu. Commentary provides useful information.
Waley, Arthur. The Poetry and Career of Li Po. 1950. Reprint. London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1979. A still-useful introduction, although Waley’s obsession with what he considers the immoral aspects of Li’s character sometimes prejudices his judgment of the poetry. Includes many translations.