By ARTHUR WALEY
A Paper read before the China Society at the School of Oriental Studieson November 21, 1918
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1919
THE POET LI PO
(A.D. 701-762)
By Arthur Waley
Since the Middle Ages the Chinese have been almostunanimous in regarding Li Po as their greatest poet, andthe few who have given the first place to his contemporaryTu Fu have usually accorded the second to Li.
One is reluctant to disregard the verdict of a people uponits own poets. We are sometimes told by Frenchmen orRussians that Oscar Wilde is greater than Shakespeare.We are tempted to reply that no foreigner can be qualifiedto decide such a point.
Yet we do not in practice accept the judgment of othernations upon their own literature. To most GermansSchiller is still a great poet; but to the rest of Europehardly one at all.
It is consoling to discover that on some Germans(Lilienkron, for example) Schiller makes precisely thesame impression as he does on us. And similarly, if wecannot accept the current estimate of Li Po, we have atleast the satisfaction of knowing that some of China’s mostcelebrated writers are on our side. About A.D. 816 the poetPo Chü-i wrote as follows (he is discussing Tu Fu as wellas 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 ordeeper meaning.
“Tu Fu’s poems are very numerous; perhaps about 1,000of them are worth preserving. In the art of stringingtogether allusions ancient and modern and in the skill of hisversification in the regular metres he even excels Li Po.But such poems as the ‘Pressgang,’[1] and such lines as
form only a small proportion of his whole work.”
The poet Yüan Chēn (779-831) wrote a famous essaycomparing Li Po with Tu Fu.
“At this time,” he says (i.e., at the time of Tu Fu), “LiPo from Shantung was also celebrated for his remarkablewritings, and the names of these two were often coupledtogether. In my judgment, as regards impassioned vigourof style, freedom from conventional restraint, and skill inthe mere description of exterior things, his ballads and songsare certainly worthy to rub shoulders with Fu. But indisposition of the several parts of a poem, in carrying thebalance of rhyme and tone through a composition of severalhundred or even in some cases of a thousand words, ingrandeur of inspiration combined with harmonious rhythmand deep feeling, in emphasis of parallel clauses, in exclusionof the vulgar or modern—in all these qualities Li isnot worthy to approach Fu’s front hedge, let alone hisinner chamber!”
“Subsequent writers,” adds the “T’ang History” (thework in which this essay is preserved), “have agreed withYüan Chēn.”
Wang An-shih (1021-1086), the great reformer of theeleventh century, observes: “Li Po’s style is swift, yetne