Seven Poems by Li Bai
translated by Ad Blankestijn
(1) Drinking Alone under the Moon
Among the flowers, a jug of wine,
I drink alone - no friend is near,
I raise the cup, invite the bright moon,
plus Shadow, that makes three of us.
Moon doesn't know how to drink,
and Shadow just follows me around.
With Moon and Shadow as my improvised companions,
I make merry in the spirit of spring.
I sing - Moon swings back and forth,
I dance - Shadow flickers and scatters.
When I'm sober, we have fun together,
When I'm drunk, we each go our own way.
Joining forever in a journey free of emotion,
We'll meet over there in the Milky Way.
花間一壺酒，獨酌無相親。
舉杯邀明月，對影成三人。
月既不解飲，影徒隨我身。
暫伴月將影，行樂須及春。
我歌月徘徊，我舞影零亂。
醒時同交歡，醉後各分散。
永結無情遊，相期邈雲漢。
(2) On Visiting a Daoist Master in the Daitian Mountains
and Not Finding Him
A dog barks by the roaring stream,
Heavy dew lies on the peach blossoms.
Deep in the forest, sometimes a deer is seen,
At noon by the stream, no temple bell can be heard.
Wild bamboos cut through the green mist,
Flying cascades hang from the blue peak.
No one knows where the Master has gone.
Disappointed, I lean against the pines.
犬吠水聲中
桃花帶雨濃
樹深時見鹿
溪午不聞鐘
野竹分青靄
飛泉掛碧峰
無人知所去
愁倚兩三松
(3) Complaint on the Jade Steps
The long night drenches her gauze socks.
She lets down the crystal curtain,
through which she gazes at the full moon.
玉階生白露，夜久侵羅襪。
却下水晶簾，玲瓏望秋月。
(4) Question and Answer in the Mountain
You ask why I dwell in these blue mountains.
I smile and don't answer, my heart is at peace.
Peach blossoms float calmly on the flowing water,
Here is another world, not that of ordinary beings.
問余何意棲碧山，笑而不答心自閒。
桃花流水窅然去，別有天地非人間。
(5) At night in a temple in the mountains
From the tower, a hundred feet high,
I can pluck the stars with my hand.
I dare not speak in a loud voice
for fear of disturbing those in heaven.
危楼高百尺，手可摘星辰。
不敢高声语，恐惊天上人。
(6) Relaxation
While I was drinking, night came unnoticed,
Flowers fell on my dress.
Drunk, I step on the moon in the stream,
There are no birds and hardly any people.
對酒不覺暝
落花盈我衣
醉起步溪月
鳥還人亦稀
(7) Quiet Night Thoughts
The moonlight falls in front of my bed,
It almost looks like frost on the floor.
I look up and stare at the moon,
I bow my head and think of home.
床前明月光，疑是地上霜，
舉頭望明月，低頭思故鄉。
[Li Bai, by Liang Kai]
The Chinese poet Li Bai (Li Taibai, 701 - 762) is often considered one of the two most important poets in Chinese literary history, along with Du Fu. More than 900 of his poems have survived to this day.
Li Bai was born in the southwestern province of Sichuan, probably into a family of merchants from Central Asia (i.e., non-Han ancestors). In the aristocratic Tang society, Li Bai's background stood in the way of a normal career in the civil service. As a result, his life was not very stable. Not only because of his social position, but also because of his extravagant lifestyle, Li Bai was an exception among the poets of his time. In his poetry, however, he exaggerated his eccentricity in order to attract the attention of potential sponsors. Throughout his life, he wandered around China in search of a new patron. Li Bai devoted himself to Daoist studies and also received some minor initiations. In 742, he was appointed by Emperor Xuanzong as a member of the Forest of Brushes (Hanlin), at that time an informal office for scribes, court poets, fortune tellers, and jesters. But Li's success was never lasting, and in 744 he had to leave Changan again. In 755, Li Bai happened to be in southeastern China, where he entered the service of a rebellious prince during the An Lushan Rebellion. This resulted in a brief banishment when authority was restored. He died shortly after his pardon.
Praised as "a transcendent banished from heaven," Li Bai avoided the strict rules of modern poetry and wrote mainly in the style of old poems (gutaishi), giving the impression of great spontaneity. He was fond of exaggeration. Common themes are wine (he is the most alcoholic poet in Chinese literature!) and the moon. Other themes are farewells from friends (as in Wang Wei's poetry) and dream journeys with fantastic imagery. In the West, Li Bai has been seen as a romantic rebel who fights against society, a view that is certainly incorrect, as it attributes 19th-century Western cultural concepts to an 8th-century Chinese poet. But even in China, Li Bai's life is the stuff of legend: he is said to have drowned while drunkenly trying to catch the moon's reflection in the river (a story no doubt inspired by Poem 6 above).
In China, Li Bai lives on in many forms and places. His texts adorn many monuments, old and new, and his poems are taught in schools. In the West, Ezra Pound and Hans Bethge translated several of his poems, and through Bethge's very free translations he also became part of Gustav Mahler's "Das Lied von der Erde. More reliable early translations were made by the English Sinologist Arthur Waley, who also wrote a short biography of the poet.
[Emperor Xuanzong watching Li Bai write a poem (17th c. print)]
Notes on the poems
Poem 1: Wine in Li Bai's time was not made from grapes, but from rice, like Japanese sake. Li Bai sees wine as a means to forget his troubles and also to realize the mystical ecstasy of being one with the Way. The word "drunk" (zui) in his poetry does not mean "intoxicated," but rather "intoxicated with wine," being spiritually carried away from one's normal concerns. Another point to note is that drinking alone (as here) was unusual, as the ancient Chinese tended to be sociable drinkers, drinking mainly with friends or at parties. So Li Bai creates his own companions in this poem...
The moon in this and other poems is on the one hand a Buddhist symbol, especially its reflection in the water (representing enlightenment and the One Buddha nature present in all of existence), and on the other hand, with its constant waxing and waning, a symbol of the cycle of nature.
Poem 2: "Trying to visit a recluse in his mountain retreat, but not finding him" was a common theme in Tang Poetry - we also encountered it in the poetry of Jia Dao (No 21 of this series, Tang Poetry). The difference is that Li Bai was particularly interested in Daoism, and here visits a Daoist recluse.
[Drunken Li Bai, by Su Liupeng]
Poem 3: The steps are not really made of jade, of course, but of marble ("jade" is often used as an epithet for something very beautiful, like a woman's skin). The "crystal curtain" is a kind of roll-up beaded curtain with rock crystals. The stairs lead to the women's section of the Imperial Palace, where a concubine waits all night in vain for a visit from the emperor. In other words, this poem is part of a long tradition of "neglected women," women who are out of favor. Since the time of Qu Yuan, neglected women can stand for neglected officials (which makes this slightly erotic poetry seem moralistic), but to me this poem is more virtuosity than virtue, no more than a very able variation on an old theme-after all, Li Bai was never a real official.
Poem 4: An imaginary visitor urges the poet, who is a hermit: Wouldn't it be better to promote his interests in society? The answer is only a smile, with a contented mood. The peach blossoms floating on the river recall Tao Yuanming's famous fable of "Peach Blossom Spring": a fisherman accidentally discovers a utopia where people live an ideal existence in harmony with nature, unaware of the outside world for centuries. But after he returns to his village and tells others about his discovery, he can no longer find his way back to this idyllic haven. Li Bai implies that he lives in such an idyllic place.
Poem 5: A very original idea of what it means to be in a monastery on a mountaintop.
Poem 6: Li Bai's most drunken poem.
Poem 7: This is probably the most famous Chinese poem ever written, reflecting the nostalgia of a traveler away from home. For Chinese living away from home, especially overseas Chinese, it is the most apt expression of their feelings. Many generations of Chinese children have learned it by heart.
Other translations and studies:
- At Project Gutenberg from More Translations From The Chinese by Arthur Waley, 1919 (includes six titles of poems by Li Po).
- Cooper, Arthur (1973). Li Po and Tu Fu: Poems Selected and Translated with an Introduction and Notes (Penguin Classics, 1973). ISBN 978-0-14-044272-4.
- Watson, Burton (1971). Chinese Lyricism: Shih Poetry from the Second to the Twelfth Century. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-231-03464-4
Illustrations:
Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons