How to Read Chinese Poetry A Guided Anthology

r e C e n t-s t y l e Sh i P oe t ry : P e n ta s y l l a biC r e gul at eD v e r s e 177

guest’s bed. / In heaven above I receive the passing wine cup.” The appearance of
the poet in the final couplet makes this reading sensible and appropriate. Here Li
Bai does not make man and nature equal companions, as Du Fu does, but elevates
man or, rather, himself above nature to the extent that he becomes an immortal
residing amid clouds and receiving a passing cup in heaven. Like Du Fu, he avails
himself of personification. But for him, personification is largely a means of turn-
ing nature into a joyful playmate. The wild geese that take away the heart’s sorrow
and the mountains that bring in the fine moon for enjoyment become his imag-
ined playmates.
As Li Bai consistently endows nature with his unique character traits, it is little
wonder that most of the personifying verbs in his poems are not those of grief
and lamentation (like “shed tears”) but depict instead energetic, sprightly, and
often magical action. In transforming nature into a playmate at his bidding, he in
effect elevates himself to the status of the creator or master of the universe. He is
not at all shy about this, and in fact speaks explicitly in the voice of the heavenly
master in a poem like “Drinking Alone Under the Moon, No. 1” (Yue xia duo zhuo
[QTS 6:182.1853]). His lively self-deification as lord of the universe is considered
by many as the hallmark of Li Bai’s greatest poems. At the very least, it sets his
poems apart from the earlier quotidian poems on roaming immortals (youxian)
and helps earn him the title of poet-immortal. Moreover, it has inspired the great
ci poems of heroic abandon by Su Shi (1037–1101) and Xin Qiji (1140–1207) (C12.2
and C12.5).
In stark contrast to Li Bai’s unabashed deification of the self, we observe a delib-
erate suppression of the self in this poem by Wang Wei:

C 8. 4

Zhongnan Mountain

Taiyi Peak approaches heaven’s capital,
2 The linked mountains extend to the edge of the sea.
White clouds, when I look back, converge,
4 The greenish haze, once I walk in to see it, disappears.
The divided regions, when seen from the middle peak, change,
6 Shaded or in the sun, the myriad valleys look different.
I wish to find lodgings for the night in a dwelling of man,
8 Across the brook calling to a woodcutter.
[QTS 4:126.1277]

終南山 (zhōng nán shān)

Tai -yi approach heaven capital 太乙近天都 (tài yĭ jìn tiān dū)
linked mountains reach sea corner 連山到海隅 (lián shān dào hăi yú)
white cloud look back behold merge 白雲徊望合 (bái yún huí wàng hé)
green haze enter see nothing 青靄入看無 (qīng ăi rù kàn wú)
divided region middle peak change 分野中峰變 (fēn yĕ zhōng fēng biàn)