No More Learning

1
1919




THE POET LI PO

(A. D. 701-762)

BY ARTHUR WALEY


INTRODUCTION

Since the Middle Ages the Chinese have been almost unanimous in
regarding Li Po as their greatest poet, and the few who have given the
first place to his contemporary Tu Fu have usually accorded the second
to Li.

One is reluctant to disregard the verdict of a people upon its own
poets. We are sometimes told by Frenchmen or Russians that Oscar Wilde
is greater than Shakespeare. We are tempted to reply that no foreigner
can be qualified to decide such a point.

Yet we do not in practice accept the judgment of other nations upon
their own literature. To most Germans Schiller is still a great poet;
but to the rest of Europe hardly one at all.

It is consoling to discover that on some Germans (Lilienkron, for
example) Schiller makes precisely the same impression as he does on
us. And similarly, if we cannot accept the current estimate of Li Po,
we have at least the satisfaction of knowing that some of China's
most celebrated writers are on our side. About A. D. 816 the poet Po
Chu-i wrote as follows (he is discussing Tu Fu as well as Li Po): "The
world acclaims Li Po as its master poet. I grant that his works show
unparalleled talent and originality, but not one in ten contains any
moral reflection or deeper meaning.

"Tu Fu's poems are very numerous; perhaps about 1,000 of them are worth
preserving.
In the art of stringing together allusions ancient and
modern and in the skill of his versification in the regular metres he
even excels Li Po. But such poems as the 'Pressgang,'[1] and such lines
as

[1] Giles, "Chinese Poetry," p. 90.

"'At the Palace Gate, the smell of wine and meat;
Out in the road, one who has frozen to death'

form only a small proportion of his whole work. "

The poet Yuan Ch? n (779-831) wrote a famous essay comparing Li Po with
Tu Fu.

"At this time," he says (_i. e. _, at the time of Tu Fu), "Li Po from
Shantung was also celebrated for his remarkable writings, and the names
of these two were often coupled together. In my judgment, as regards
impassioned vigour of style, freedom from conventional restraint, and
skill in the mere description of exterior things, his ballads and songs
are certainly worthy to rub shoulders with Fu. But in disposition of
the several parts of a poem, in carrying the balance of rhyme and tone
through a composition of several hundred or even in some cases of a
thousand words, in grandeur of inspiration combined with harmonious
rhythm and deep feeling, in emphasis of parallel clauses, in exclusion
of the vulgar or modern--in all these qualities Li is not worthy to
approach Fu's front hedge, let alone his inner chamber! "

"Subsequent writers," adds the "T'ang History" (the work in which this
essay is preserved), "have agreed with Yuan Ch? n. "

Wang An-shih (1021-1086), the great reformer of the eleventh century,
observes: "Li Po's style is swift, yet never careless; lively, yet
never informal. But his intellectual outlook was low and sordid. In
nine poems out of ten he deals with nothing but wine or women.