The Tang Poet Li Po (~700-721 C.E.)
Childhood
- born on the outskirts of
- his family was thought to be exiles from
- He started reading at age 6 and by 10 he mastered the Confucian books Odes and History.
Adulthood
- 721 he got married to an ex-minister's grand daughter
- At 30, he was not successful as a poet and his wife got fed up with him and left him with their children
- After being
left by his wife, he became one of the “Six Idlers of the
- 742 he went to Changan and was employed by Emperor Xuanzong as a poet
Political Downfall
- One day Li Po was summoned to write poems about the beautiful Yang Guifei, but he was drunk. Court attendants threw water in his face to sober him up and then he wrote three poems about Yang Guifei. A eunuch, who had been embarrassed by tending to a drunk Li Po in the past, convinced Yang Guifei that he had made fun of her in one of the poems about her.
- Around the age of 45, he received a Daoist diploma
- In 755,
he fled the city of
- Joined the staff of Li Ling, Prince of Yung, until he was overthrown
- Li Po was imprisoned and sentence to death, but then banished to S.E. China.
- He died in 762. Legend has it, he drowned trying to embrace the reflection of the moon in a lake—he was drunk.
His Poetry
- He was a romanticist by European standards
- He was a lover of nature
- Often called anti-Confucian because he lacked Confucian ethics
- Talks vividly about his love for wine and women
- Free Spirit
IN
THE QUIET NIGHT
So bright a gleam on the foot of my bed --
Could there have been a frost already?
Lifting myself to look, I found that it was moonlight.
Sinking back again, I thought suddenly of home.
DRINKING
ALONE WITH THE MOON
From a pot of wine among the flowers
I drank alone. There was no one with me --
Till, raising my cup, I asked the bright moon
To bring me my shadow and make us three.
Alas, the moon was unable to drink
And my shadow tagged me vacantly;
But still for a while I had these friends
To cheer me through the end of spring....
I sang. The moon encouraged me.
I danced. My shadow tumbled after.
As long as I knew, we were boon companions.
And then I was drunk, and we lost one another.
...Shall goodwill ever be secure?
I watch the long road of the
Lady Yang Guifei At the Imperial Feast of the Peony—II
She is the flowering branch of the peony,
Richly-laden with honeydew.
Hers is the charm of the vanished fairy,
That broke the heart of the dreamer king
In the old legend of the Cloud and the Rain.
Pray, who in the palace of the Han
Could be likened unto her,
Save the lady, Flying Swallow, newly-dressed
In all her loveliness?
(This is the poem that the eunuch, Gao Lishih, said was a satire comparing Yang Guifei to the adulterous Han consort, Flying Swallow.)