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
[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 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 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 Yüan Chēn.”
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.”
In the “Yü Yin Ts’ung Hua,” Hu Tzŭ (_circa_ 1120) says: “Wang An-shih,
in enumerating China’s four greatest poets, put Li Po fourth on the
list. Many vulgar people expressed surprise, but Wang replied: ‘The
reason why vulgar people find Li Po’s poetry congenial is that it is
easy to enjoy. His intellectual outlook was mean and sordid, and out of
ten poems nine deal with wine or women; nevertheless, the abundance of
his talent makes it impossible to leave him out of account.’”
Finally Huang T’ing-chien (A.D. 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.
The last point to which I shall refer is the extreme allusiveness of
his poems. This characteristic, common to most Chinese poetry, is
carried to an extreme point in the fifty-nine Old Style poems with
which the works begin. Not only do they bristle with the names of
historical personages, but almost every phrase is borrowed from some
classic. One is tempted to quarrel with Wang An-shih’s statement that
people liked the poems because they were easy to enjoy. No modern could
understand them without pages of commentary to each poem. But Chinese
poetry, with a few exceptions, has been written on this principle
since the Han dynasty; one poet alone, Po Chü-i, broke through the
restraints of pedantry, erasing every expression that his charwoman
could not understand.
Translators have naturally avoided the most allusive poems and have
omitted or generalized such allusions as occurred. They have frequently
failed to recognize allusions as such, and have mistranslated them
accordingly, often turning proper names into romantic sentiments.
Li’s reputation, like all success, is due partly to accident. After
suffering a temporary eclipse during the Sung dynasty, he came back
into favour in the sixteenth century, when most of the popular
anthologies were made. These compilations devote an inordinate space
to his works, and he has been held in corresponding esteem by a public
whose knowledge of poetry is chiefly confined to anthologies.
Serious literary criticism has been dead in China since that time, and
the valuations then made are still accepted.
Like Miss Havisham’s clock, which stopped at twenty to nine on her
wedding-day, the clock of Chinese esteem stopped at Li Po centuries
ago, and has stuck there ever since.
But I venture to surmise that if a dozen representative English poets
could read Chinese poetry in the original, they would none of them give
either the first or second place to Li Po.