Bai Li

“ In China every child who has studied poetry knows something about Tu Fu’s poems. Tu Fu is placed first by the Chinese because he is the greatest national poet. He expresses national feelings in a way that can be appreciated by everybody. Li T’ai-po’s poems deal chiefly with wine and women, love and sensual things, but Tu Fu’s poems are full of men and women, elderly people and children, their joy, their anguish, the hardship of the soldier, and things of that sort. In a word, Tu Fu’s poetry expresses what we ordinary men and women wish to express and cannot. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If you have the practical it does not necessarily follow that you are lacking in the spiritual. As for present-day Chinese poets, there are several famous ones in China.
Since the lecturer has raised the question whether Li T’ai-po or Tu Fu is the greater poet, I would say that the Chinese of the present day consider Tu Fu to be the greater. It strikes me as curious that European people who know something about Chinese poetry should prefer Li T’ai-po. Perhaps very few people have heard of Tu Fu. Certainly there is no translation of the most important of Tu Fu’s poems in the English language. ”

“ The guardian of the Pass leaps like a wolf on all who are not his kinsmen.
In the daytime one hides from ravening tigers and in the night from long serpents, that sharpen their fangs and lick blood, slaying men like grass. ”

“ A man may be an excellent writer and translator, and not be a poet, but to translate foreign poetry into English considerable literary gifts are required.
Mr. Paul King: All of you who have been lately in China must be struck with the extraordinary difference between the China described in these poems and the China which has come into being since the revolution. Ideas of a very practical nature have now taken possession of the people. And then, what about modern Chinese poets? Do any of us know of any? In my intercourse with the Chinese I cannot recall a modern Chinese who was a poet. ”

“ It is quite true that there are no epic poems in Chinese literature. This form of poetry has not been introduced in China, but I differ with your statement, Sir, that Chinese poetry lacks imagination. (Applause.) I could give you many instances to the contrary, though not from memory. The last speaker’s remark that the present China is different from what China is in Chinese poetry may be true, but I may well retort that the England as represented in Shakespeare is very different from the England of to-day. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ Their sorrow was deep as the waters of the Lake that go straight down a thousand miles. Dark clouds blackened the sun. Shōjō [19] howled in the mist and ghosts whistled in the rain. The queens said, “Though we speak of it we cannot mend it. High Heaven is secretly afraid to shine on our loyalty. [13] But the thunder crashes and bellows its anger, that while Yao and Shun are here they should also be crowning Yü. When a prince loses his servants, the dragon turns into a minnow. When power goes to slaves, mice change to tigers. ”

“ 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 [5] since the Han dynasty ”

“ At the feast our spirits had soared to the Nine Heavens, but before evening we were scattered like stars or rain, flying away over hills and rivers to the frontier of Ch’u. I went back to my mountain to seek my old nest, and you, too, went home, crossing the Wei Bridge.
Then your father, who was brave as leopard or tiger, became Governor of Ping-chou [39] and put down the rebel bands. ”

“ 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 [4] 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I grant that his works show unparalleled talent and originality, but not one in ten contains any moral reflection or deeper meaning.
[2]
“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.” ”

“ One or two observations occur to me in connection with the translation of this poetry into English. The two greatest reading publics are the Anglo-American and the Chinese. The Anglo-American people have produced an enormous amount of poetry which they do not often quote, and the Chinese have produced an enormous amount of poetry which, according to experts, they quote a great deal. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In 1080 Sung Min-ch’iu published the works in thirty chüan, the form in which they still exist. There are just under 1,000 poems and about sixty prose pieces.
In 1759 an annotated edition was published by Wang Ch’i, with six chüan of critical and biographical matter added to the thirty chüan of the works. ”