Li Bai (, L? Bái or L? Bó; lived 701 — 762), formerly known in the West by the transliteration Li Po, was a major Chinese poet. He is regarded as one of the greatest poets in China's Tang period, which is often considered China's "golden age" of poetry. 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. Approximately 1,100 poems attributed to Li Bai remain today., including thirty-four in the popular anthology, Three Hundred Tang Poems.
Li Bai travelled extensively "looking for patrons", became well known for his consumption of wine, served for brief periods under the emperor, and made his living through his poetry. He died from illness.
In China, his poem "Quiet Night Thoughts", reflecting a nostalgia of a traveller away from home, has been widely "memorized by school children and quoted by adults".
In the West his influences include many translations, adaptations, and much inspiration.
Li is the family name, or surname. His given name is written with a Chinese character ( ?), 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 Bai (??), 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 Bai, Li Tai'p'o, and so on. He also may be known by the pseudonym Qinglianjushi (????), meaning Retired Scholar of the Azure Lotus. Furthermore, he has the nicknames Poet Transcendent (??) and Poet Knight-Errant (??). 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 his name can be reconstructed, not with certitude but based upon extensive scholarly linguistic analysis of Middle Chinese. Based upon a succession of such work of Bernhard Karlgren and Samuel Martin, and revised by Yale's Hugh M. Stimson the Tang Dynasty era pronunciation was L? Bhæk.
The year of Li Bai's birth is known to be 701, however the location where is uncertain. Apparently, his family had originally dwelt in what is now southeastern Gansu. The evidence suggests that during the Sui Dynasty, during the 610's, his ancestors, most likely as the result of some act of crime, were forced to relocate "incognito" from their home in what is now Gansu to some location further west. Some believe that Li Bai's birthplace is Suiye () in Central Asia (near modern-day Tokmok, Kyrgyzstan). In 705, when Li Bai was four years old, his father secretly moved his family to Sichuan, near Chengdu, where he spent his childhood.
The young Li read quite extensively, including Confucian classics such as The Classic of Poetry and the Classic of History , as well as various astrological and metaphysical materials which the Confucians eschewed. He also engaged in other activities, such as taming wild birds and sword play. Apparently, he became accomplished in the martial arts:
Before twenty years of age he had killed, apparently for reasons of chivalry, several men.
In 720, he was interviewed by Governor Su Ting, who considered him a genius. Though he expressed the wish to become an official, he never took the Chinese civil service examination. Some speculate that he considered taking the examination below his dignity. However, it is more likely that he did not possess the proper social connections or heritage required for sponsorship to sit for the examinations.
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.
In 725, when he was in his mid-twenties, 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 the Taoist Wu Yun. The same year, he traveled with his friend to the capital.
Li Bai eventually made it to Chang'an and met the emperor of China.
His personality fascinated the aristocrats and common people alike, and he was introduced to the Emperor Xuanzong around 742. 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. A dozen of Du Fu's poems to or about Li Bai survive, while only one from Li Bai to Du Fu remains. 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. It is said Chinese poet Li Po died after falling from his boat, and drowned trying to embrace the reflection of the moon in the Yangtze River.
Over a thousand poems are attributed to him, but the authenticity of many of these is uncertain. He is best known for the "[i]ndividuality, spontaneity and fantasy" of his poems, particularly the yue fu poems and "shi" poems. 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.
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.
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. The English-speaking world was introduced to Li Bai's works by a Herbert Allen Giles publication History of Chinese Literature (1901)
Li Bai's poem Drinking Alone by Moonlight (, pinyin: Yuè Xià Dú Zhuó), translated by Arthur Waley, reads:
A pot of wine, under the flowering trees;
I drink alone, for no friend is near.
Raising my cup I beckon the bright moon,
For her, with my shadow, will make three people.
The moon, alas, is no drinker of wine;
Listless, my shadow creeps about at my side.
Yet with the moon as friend and the shadow as slave
I must make merry before the Spring is spent.
To the songs I sing the moon flickers her beams;
In the dance I weave my shadow tangles and breaks.
Li Bai is influential in the West partly due to Ezra Pound's versions of some of his poems in the collection Cathay. 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 A Letter, record the hardships or emotions of common people. An example of the liberal, but poetically influential, translations, or adaptations, of Japanese versions of his poems made, largely based on the work of Ernest Fenollosa and professors Mori and Ariga.
Li Bai's poetry was immensely influential in his own time, as well as for subsequent generations in China. His influence has also been demonstrated in the immediate geographical area of Chinese cultural influence, being known as Ri Haku in Japan. This influence continues even today. Examples range from poetry to painting and to literature.
In his own lifetime, during his many wanderings and while he was attending court in Chang'an, met and parted from various contemporary poets. These meetings and separations were a typical occasion for versification in the tradition of the literate Chinese of the time, a prime example being his relationship with Du Fu.
After his lifetime, his influence continued to grow. Some four centuries later, during the Song Dynasty, for example, just in the case of his poem that is sometimes translated "Drinking Alone Beneath the Moon", the poet Yang Wanli wrote a whole poem alluding to it (and to two other Li Bai poems), in the same Oldstyle Poetry form. In the Twentieth century, Li Bai even influenced the poetry of the long time leader of China, Mao Zedong.
Influence west
The ideas underlying Li Bai's poetry 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 (The Chinese Flute),
Bethge based his version on the pioneering translation into French by Saint-Denys. 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.
Simon Elegant novelized Li Bai's life in his 1997 work, A Floating Life. Li Bai appears (under a fictional name) as a major character in Guy Gavriel Kay's Under Heaven, a fantasy novel set in Tang Dynasty China. 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.
