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    The Poet Li Po A.D. 701-762
    The Poet Li Po A.D. 701-762
    The Poet Li Po A.D. 701-762
    Ebook79 pages43 minutes

    The Poet Li Po A.D. 701-762

    By Bai Li and Arthur Waley

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    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateNov 26, 2013
    The Poet Li Po A.D. 701-762

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      Book preview

      The Poet Li Po A.D. 701-762 - Bai Li

      The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Poet Li Po, by Arthur Waley and Bai Li

      This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

      almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or

      re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

      with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

      Title: The Poet Li Po

             A.D. 701-762

      Author: Arthur Waley

              Bai Li

      Release Date: July 21, 2013 [EBook #43274]

      Language: English

      *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE POET LI PO ***

      Produced by Henry Flower and the Online Distributed

      Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was

      produced from images generously made available by The

      Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)

      The cover image was produced by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

      THE POET LI PO

      A.D. 701-762

      By ARTHUR WALEY

      A Paper read before the China Society at the School of Oriental Studies on November 21, 1918

      EAST AND WEST, LTD.

      3, VICTORIA STREET, LONDON, S.W. 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 Chü-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

      "‘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 Yüan Chēn (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

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