The Moon Pool

Mountains. It is not a secret that throughout his lifespan Li Bai was a devoted Daoist and a member of a few small groups of Chinese poets and freethinkers. As one of the greatest poets of the Tang-period China (618-907 CE), he had the commitment to traditional poetic forms, taking them to the new heights. Together with Du Fu (712–770) he was a romantic and the most prominent figure in the flourishing of Chinese poetry during the 'Golden Age' of China famously known with the so-called "Three Wonders" (san-jue) of Tang referred to Li Bai’s poetry, Pei Min’s swordsmanship and Zhang Xu’s calligraphy performed in the 'kuang-cao' or wild cursive script.

  Li Bai was also engaged in some other activities, such as taming wild birds and fencing under the direction of his master, General Pei Min who transmitted his precious 'soaring dragon sword' method (teng-long jian) to the poet, adding some closely guarded secrets to his arsenal of the sword techniques. He loved riding, hunting, travelling, aiding the poor or oppressed by means of both money and warm shoulder of a friend. Eventually, Li Bai seems to have become quite proficient in the martial arts. According to his autobiographical confession, which both testifies to and also helps to illustrate the wildlife that the poet led in his youth when he was fifteen, he was fond of swordplay and with that art he challenged quite a few great men.

  Before he was twenty, Li Bai had fought and killed several opponents, apparently for reasons of chivalry, in accordance with the knight-errant tradition "you-xia" or dueling.

  In 720, he was interviewed by Governor Su Ting who considered him a genius. Although he expressed the wish to become an official, he never took the civil service examination to become a ranking officer. The reason why he never took what would seem to have been the logical step toward his stated desire apparently was for some personal reasons of the freethinker.

  At age 24 he left home for a period of wandering, after which he married and lived with his wife’s family in Anlu (present-day Hubei province). He had already begun to write poems, some of which he showed to various officials in the vain hope of becoming employed as a secretary. During the first year of his wandering, he met celebrities and gave away much of his wealth to needy friends. By perhaps 740, he moved to Rencheng city in Shandong province. It was at that time that he became one of the group members known as the "Six Idlers of the Bamboo Brook," an informal group of like-minded individuals dedicated to literature and wine, including Kong Chao Fu, Han Chun, Pei Zheng, Zhang Shu Ming and Tao Mian who lived on Mount Chulaishan and were constantly dead drunk.

  Li Bai wandered about the area of Zhejiang and Jiangsu, eventually making friends with Wu Yun, the venerable Daoist priest who in 742 was summoned by the emperor to attend the imperial court where his praise of Li Bai as a poet was great. Wu Yun's praise of Li Bai led Emperor Xuan-zong (born Li Long Ji and also known as Emperor Ming-huang) to summon Li Bai to the court in Chang'an. After another nomadic period, he arrived at Chang’an (present-day Xi'an), the Tang capital, hoping to be given a post at court. No official post was forthcoming, but he was accepted into a group of distinguished court poets. Li Bai's personality fascinated the aristocrats and common people alike, including another Daoist and poet by the name of He Zhi Zhang who bestowed upon him the name of Immortal Exiled from Heaven. After an initial audience when Li Bai was questioned about his political views, the emperor was so impressed that he held a big banquet in his honour. Eventually, the emperor employed him as a translator, as Li Bai knew at least one Asian (non-Chinese) language. Then Emperor Ming-Huang gave him a post at the Hanlin Academy that served to provide scholarly expertise and poetry for the imperial court. Leaping ahead, it is good to mention here that if, as some people haste to conclude, Li Bai's aim was drunkenness itself, he would stick to his position at the imperial court for doing this in comfort under the emperor's auspices, but he didn't.

  One day, when the emperor was sitting in the Pavilion of Aloes Wood, he had a sudden stirring of heart and wanted Li Bai to write a song expressive of his blue mood. When Li Bai entered in obedience to the summons, he was so drunk that the courtiers were obliged to dab his face with water. When in a short while he came to his senses a little bit, he seized a brush and, without any visible efforts, wrote a composition of flawless gracefulness. The emperor was so pleased with Li Bai’s talent that whenever he was feasting or drinking he always had the poet to wait upon him.

  Li Bai wrote several poems about the emperor's beautiful and beloved Yang Gui Fei, the favourite consort. A story, probably spurious, circulates about his relationships during this period. Once, while drunk, he had gotten his shoes muddy, and Gao Li Shi, the most politically powerful eunuch in the palace, was asked to assist in the removal of the shoes in front of the emperor. Eunuch Gao took offense at being asked to perform such a menial service and later managed to persuade Yang Gui Fei to take offense at Li Bai's poems concerning her. At the persuasion of Yang Gui Fei and Gao Li Shi, the emperor reluctantly but politely, and with wealthy gifts of gold and silver, sent the poet away from the court.

  After leaving the court, Li Bai formally became a Daoist, making his home in Shandong, but wandering far and wide for the next ten years, writing poems. Once he went by boat with Cui Zong Zhi from Bianshi town to Nanking. He wore his embroidered court cloak and sat as proudly in the boat as though he were the ruler of the universe.

  Thus, in the autumn of 744, he began his wanderings again. Much of his life is reflected in his poetry: places which he visited, friends whom he saw off on journeys to distant locations perhaps never to meet again, his own dream-like imaginations embroidered with shamanistic overtones, current events of which he had news of, descriptions sliced from nature in a timeless moment of poetry and so on. However, of particular importance are the changes in the times through which he lived. His early poetry took place in the context of internal peace and prosperity in the Golden Age Empire of Tang dynasty under the reign of an emperor who actively promoted and participated in the arts. This all changed suddenly and shockingly, beginning with the rebellion of General An Lu Shan when all of the northern China came to be devastated by local wars and famine. Li Bai's poetry as well takes on new tones and qualities. The emperor eventually fled to Sichuan and abdicated. During the confusion, the crown prince opportunely declared himself emperor and head of the government.

  In 756, Li Bai became unofficial poet laureate and staff adviser to the military expedition of Prince Lin of Yong, Emperor Ming-Huang's 16th son who was far from the top of the primogeniture list, yet named to share the imperial power as a general after the old emperor had abdicated. The prince was soon accused of intending to establish an independent kingdom and was executed. Li Bai was arrested and imprisoned at Jiujiang. In the summer of 758 he was banished to Yelang; before he arrived there, he benefited from a general amnesty. He had only gotten as far as Wushan when the good news of his pardon caught up with him in 759. He returned to the Eastern China where he died in a relative’s house, though popular legend says that he drowned when, sitting drunk in a boat, he tried to seize the moon’s reflection in the water. The truth may be that he contracted his last illness as the result of falling into the water while drunk. The actual cause appears to have been natural enough, although perhaps related to his lifestyle of a pilgrim and freethinker. Nevertheless, the legend has a place in Chinese literature and mythological culture, which frequently reflects what lies beyond biographical facts and events recorded in annals.

  Afterwards, the new Emperor Dai-Zong (reigned 762-779) named Li Bai the "Registrar of the Left Commandant's Office." It happened in 762; when the imperial edict arrived in Dangtu, Anhui province, the poet, at age 61, became critically ill and his health would not allow him to fulfil the imperial assignment. His last years were devoted to the deep study of Daoism. It's good to say of a mysterious figure mentioned in his poems by the name of High Priest of Peihai in Shandong from whom the poet received an initiation into the Daoist proficiency in 746.

  Li Bai was a romantic in his view of life and poetry. Around a thousand poems attr
ibuted to him are extant, and thirty-four of his poems are included in the "Anthology of Three Hundred Tang Poems," which was first published in the 18th century. In the same century, translations of his works began to appear in Europe; however, only a few of them have been translated into English. The selected poems were models for celebrating the pleasures of friendship, the scenes of Nature, solitude and the joys of drinking wine. Among the most famous are "Drinking Alone under the Moon," "A Quiet Night Thoughts" and "How I Was Waking from Drinking Bout in a Spring Day" retranslated below. In the West, multi-lingual translations of Li Bai's poems continue to be made at different levels of interpretation; fortunately, the Old School of Sinology gives way to the new trends, and Li Bai's poetry has even taken on a new legendary aspect, including the tales of a true meaning of his drunkenness and chivalry. Li Bai has become a favourite among translators for his seemingly simple style. Later translations are too numerous to discuss here, but an extensive selection of Li Bai's poems translated by various scholars can be