No More Learning

1050-1110), accepted by the Chinese
as one of their greatest writers, says with reference to Li's poetry:
"The quest for unusual expressions is in itself a literary disease. It
was, indeed, this fashion which caused the decay which set in after the
Chien-an period (_i. e. _, at the beginning of the third century A. D. ). "

To these native strictures very little need be added. No one who reads
much of Li's poetry in the original can fail to notice the two defects
which are emphasized by the Sung critics. The long poems are often
ill-constructed. Where, for example, he wishes to convey an impression
of horror he is apt to exhaust himself in the first quatrain, and the
rest of the poem is a network of straggling repetitions. Very few of
these longer poems have been translated. The second defect, his lack
of variety, is one which would only strike those who have read a large
number of his poems. Translators have naturally made their selections
as varied as possible, so that many of those who know the poet only in
translation might feel inclined to defend him on this score. According
to Wang An-shih, his two subjects are wine and women. The second does
not, of course, imply love-poetry, but sentiments put into the mouths
of deserted wives and concubines.
Such themes are always felt by the
Chinese to be in part allegorical, the deserted lady symbolizing the
minister whose counsels a wicked monarch will not heed.

Such poems form the dullest section of Chinese poetry, and are
certainly frequent in Li's works. But his most monotonous feature
is the mechanical recurrence of certain reflections about the
impermanence of human things, as opposed to the immutability of Nature.
Probably about half the poems contain some reference to the fact that
rivers do not return to their sources, while man changes hour by hour.

The obsession of impermanence has often been sublimated into great
mystic poetry. In Li Po it results only in endless restatement of
obvious facts.

It has, I think, been generally realized that his strength lies not
in the content, but in the form of his poetry. Above all, he was a
song-writer. Most of the pieces translated previously and most of those
I am going to read to-day are songs, not poems. It is noteworthy that
his tombstone bore the inscription, "His skill lay in the writing of
archaic songs. " His immediate predecessors had carried to the highest
refinement the art of writing in elaborate patterns of tone. In
Li's whole works there are said to be only nine poems in the strict
seven-character metre. Most of his familiar short poems are in the old
style, which neglects the formal arrangement of tones. The value of his
poetry lay in beauty of words, not in beauty of thought. Unfortunately
no one either here or in China can appreciate the music of his verse,
for we do not know how Chinese was pronounced in the eighth century.
Even to the modern Chinese, his poetry exists more for the eye than for
the ear.