Known for his poems describing the life he lived in hi

1
Tang Literature and Art
Li Daozhao, Minghuang fled To Shu
Li Sixun, Sailboat and Pavilion
2
Zhou Fang, Palace Ladies Wearing Flowered
Headdresses, mid-Tang
Wu Daozi, Heavenly King Delivers Child, High
Tang
3
Tang Poetry New trend and ancient tradition

• Changed from the courtly, aesthetic tradition of
  the southern dynasties to the ancient style
  poetic tradition of the pre-Qin period of Zhou.
• Courtly, aesthetic tradition
• Form, diction, structure rigid,
• Vocabulary elegant, ornate, indirect
• Rigidity required a fixed number of syllables
  (words), the use of parallelism, the set patterns
  of tones (level vs. oblique).
• The rigid formula developed into so-called
  regulated verse (?? lu shi)

4

• Ancient style
• Form, diction, structure free and flexible
• Language simple, plain, direct
• Four periods of Tang poetry
• Early Tang (before Xuanzong)
• Wang Ji, Wang Bo, Yang Jiong, Lu Zhaoling, Luo
  Bingwang
• High Tang (Xuanzongs Period)
• Chen Ziang, Li Bo (Bai), Du Fu, Wang Wei
• Mid Tang (Post -An Lushan Rebellion)
• Late Tang (Post-Yuanhe Period)

5
Tang PoetryHigh Tang

• The civil service examination system yielded many
  talented scholar-officials, who were also
  talented poets
• Leading poets of the High Tang (713-765)
• Wang Wei (699?-761)
• Li Bai (Li Po) (701-762)
• Du Fu (Tu Fu) (712-770)

6
Wang Wei (699-761)

• Holder of the jinshi degree spent most of his
  time in Changan during his official career
• A devout Buddhist
• Styled himself Vimalakirti, or Mojie
• Also a musician and a master of Chinese painting
• Known for many of his short poems describing the
  time he lived in his country retreat surrounded
  by natural landscape

7

• Wang Weis poems express personal view of the
  world and demonstrate calm and detachment
  apparently influenced by Buddhism
• His poems tend to convey Buddhist doctrines of
  tranquility, emptiness, and the sentiment
  concerning personal enlightenment

8

• Wang Weis poems express personal view of the
  world and demonstrate calm and detachment
  apparently influenced by Buddhism
• His poems tend to convey Buddhist doctrines of
  tranquility, emptiness, and the sentiment
  concerning personal enlightenment

9
Wang Weis Poems
Wang Wei Snowed River

• Most popular
• Deer fence
• Bamboo Mile Lodge
• See Someone Off
• At My Country Home in Chung-nan
• Visiting the Temple of Accumulated Fragrance
• Wang Stream Collection

10
Bamboo Mile LodgeDeer Fence

• Alone I sit in dark bamboo,
• Strumming the lute, whistling away
• Deep woods that no one knows,
• Where a bright moon comes to shine on me
• Empty hills, no one in sight,
• Only the sound of someone talking
• Late sunlight enters the deep woods,
• Shinning over the green moss again.

11
Climb up the Hebeicity tower

• .
• Fire on shore, a lone boat spends the night,
• Fishermans houses, here evening birds return.
• Vast and empty, Heaven and Earth grow dark,
• The heart calm as the broad stream.

12
Seeing someone off

• We dismount I give you wine
• And ask, where are you off to?
• You answer, nothing goes right!---
• Back home to lie down by Southern Mountain.
• Go thenIll ask no more
• Theres no end to white clouds there.

13
Li Bai (Li Bo, 701-762)

• Probably the greatest poet in Chinese history,
  capable of gaining immediate recognition in his
  time
• Never took examination but was appointed to a
  post in the Hanlin academy by Emperor Xuanzong
• Called himself the banished immortal, he is
  known for his fondness for wine and his ability
  to improvise poems after drinking

14

• Born to what may have been a Turkish family in
  Sichuan
• Wrote the genius poems which are inimitable

15

• Characteristics of his poems
• Creative use of earlier styles and reworking of
  traditional themes
• Demonstrate an air of playfulness, hyperbole,
  fantasy, all in an effortless and spontaneous
  employment of the art of versification

16

• Many poems satirize the world of fawning and
  hypocrisy, show his rapport with nature and his
  love of wine
• Many in womans voice express womens loneliness,
  solitude, and helplessness caused by being
  abandoned

17
Li Bais Poems

• Most popular
• Ziye Song
• Bring the Wine
• Viewing the Waterfall at Mt. Lu
• Still Night Thoughts
• At Yellow Crane Tower
• Seeing a Friend Off
• Drinking Alone under the Moon.

Jing Hao Mt. Lu Scroll
18
Drinking alone under the moon (1)

• Here among the flowers a single jug of wine,
• No close friends here, I pour alone
• And lifting cup to bright moon, ask it to join
  me,
• Then face my shadow, and we become three.
• .

19
Drinking aloneunder the moon (2)

• If Heaven itself did not love wine,
• Then no wine star would shine in the sky.
• And if Earth also did not have wine,
• Earth would have no such place as Wine Fountain.
• .
• If wise men and sages are already drinkers,
• What is the use of seeking gods and fairies?
• With three cups, I understand the great Way.
• With one jar, I am at one with Nature.
• .

20
Poems in Ancient Style

• Westward I climbed to Lotus Blossom Peak,
• Far in the distance I saw the bright star
• In her pale hand she held a lotus
• Stepping in emptiness, pacing pure ether.
• Her rainbow robes trailed broad sashes
• Then fluttering in wind, she rose up to Heaven.
• She invited me to climb Cloud Terrace Peak
• On high to salute Wei Shuqing, the immortal.
• .

21
Viewing the waterfall at Mountain Lu

• Sunglight streaming on Incense Stone kindles
  violet smoke
• Far off I watch the waterfall plunge to the long
  river.
• Flying water descending straight tree thousand
  feet
• Till I think the Milky Way has tumbled from the
  ninth height of Heaven

22
Still Night ThoughtsAt Yellow Crane Tower

• Moonlight in front of my bed
• I took it for frost on the ground!
• I lift my head, gaze at the bright moon
• Lower it and dream of home.
• My old friend takes leave of the west at Yellow
  Crane Tower
• In misty third-month blossoms goes downstream to
  Yangzhou
• The far-off of his lone sail disappears in the
  blue-green void,
• And all I see is the long river flowing to the
  edge of the sky.

23
Bring the Wine (Li Bai)

• Have you never seen
• The Yellow River waters
• descending from the sky,
• Racing restless toward
• the ocean, never to return?
• Have you never seen
• Bright mirrors in high halls,
• the white-haired ones lamenting,
• Their black silk of morning by
• evening turned to snow?
• If life is to have meaning,
• seize every joy you can
• Do not let the golden cask
• sit idle in the moonlight!

Guan Tong, Evening Green on Autumn Mountain
24

• Heaven gave me talents and meant them to be used
• Gold scattered by the thousand comes home to me
  again.
• Boil the mutton, roast the oxwe will be merry,
• At one bout no less than three hundred cups
• Master Cen! Scholar Danqiu
• Bring wine and no delay!
• For you Ill sing a song
• Be pleased to bend your ears and hear
• Bells and drums, food rare as jade---these arent
  worth prizing
• All I ask is to be drunk forever, never to sober
  up!

25

• Sages and worthies from antiquity
• all gone into silence
• Only the great drinkers have left a name behind.
• The prince of Chen once feasted in the Hall of
  Calm Delight
• Wine, then thousand coins a cask,
• flowed for his revelers joy.
• Why does my host tell me the money has run out?
• Buy more wine at oncemy friends have cups to be
  refilled!
• My dappled mount, my furs worth a thousand
• Call the boy, have him take them
• and barter for fine wine!
• Together well wash away ten
• thousand years of sorrow.

26
Chinese poems and their English translations
appear in London Subway as a part of the "China
in London" season. Feb. 2006. This one is by Li
Bai. Also displayed are Du Fus and Bai Juyis
poems
27
Du Fu (712-770)

• Born in a distinguished literary family but never
  passed the civil service examination after
  repeated attempts.
• Recommended to hold minor official posts not
  successful in official career
• He was imbued with strong Confucian sense of
  duty that kept him striving to serve the dynasty

Zhang Xuan, Court Ladies Preparing Newly-woven
Silk Copied in 12th by Song Huizong
28
Du Fus Poems

• Full of sincere and compassionate tone, which led
  to the epithet of Sage of Poetry bestowed on
  him in his honor.

Most popular Song of Beautiful Ladies Spring
Prospect Lovely Lady Presented to Wei Pa,
Facing Snow, Dreaming of Li Bai A Guest
Arrives, A Traveler at Night Writes His
Thoughts
29
Facing the snow

• Weeping over battle, many new ghosts,
• In sorrow reciting poems, an old man alone.
• A tumult of clouds sinks downward in sunset,
• Hard-pressed, the snow dances in whirlwinds.
• Ladle cast down, no green lees in the cup,
• The brazier lingers, fire seems crimson.
• From several provinces, now news has ceased,
• I sit here in sorrow tracing words in the air.

30
My Thatched Roof Is Ruined by the Autumn
Windtr. B. Watson

• .
• If I could get a mansion with a thousand, ten
  thousand rooms,
• It would be A great shelter for all the worlds
  scholars, together in joy.
• Solid as a mountain, the elements could not move
  it.
• Oh! If I could see this house before me,
• I'd happily freeze to death in my broken hut!

31
Thinking of Li Bai at the End of the Skytr. D.
Hawkes

• Cold wind rises at the end of the sky,
• What thoughts occupy the gentleman's mind?
• What time will the wild goose come?
• The rivers and lakes are full of autumns waters.
• Literature and worldly success are opposed,
• Demons exult in human failure.
• Talk together with the hated poet,
• Throw a poem into Miluo river.

32
Presented to Wei Ba (by Du Fu)

• Life is not made for meetings
• like stars at opposite ends of the sky we move.
• What night is it, then, tonight,
• When we can share the light of this lamp?
• Youthhow long did it last?
• The two of us grey-headed now,
• We ask about old friendshalf are ghosts
• Cries of unbelief stab the heart.
• Who would have thought?twenty years
• And once again I enter your house.

33

• You werent married when I left you
• Now suddenly a whole row of boys and girls
• Merrily greeting their fathers friend,
• Asking me what places Ive been.
• Before I finished answering,
• You send the boys to set out wine and a meal,
• Spring scallions cut in night rain,
• New cooked rice mixed with yellow millet.
• Meetings are rare enough, you say
• Pour the wine till weve downed ten cups!
• But ten cups do not make me drunk
• Your steadfast love is what moves me now.
• Tomorrow hills and ranges will part us,
• The wide world coming between us again.

34
Du Fus poem decorating Londons underground
35
Yan Liben The Audience, Early Tang Taizong gave
an audience to Tibetan envoys
36
Han Gan, Night-shining White, High Tang
37
Paradise of Amitabha, Buddha, Late 9th century,
cave 17, Dunhuang,
Pure Land Transformation, Dunhuang, Tang
38
Huang Quan, Sketch of Rare Bird Scroll Five
Dynasties
39
Han Huang (mid-Tang), Five Oxen, NPM, Beijing
40
Poets and Poetry

• Many poets were scholars, courtiers or statesmen.
• emperors and minister could be poets.
• Women wrote poems and some became eminent
  poetessesXue Tao (768-832), Li Jilan (high
  Tang), Yu Xuanji (late Tang)
• Poetry enriched intellectual discourse
• Poetry writing was regarded as the most
  important communication skill

41

• Poetry became a vocation worthy of devoting ones
  life time to it
• Poetic style of a poet is identified with the
  poets personality
• The poet suffers making poems became celebrated
• Poets dedicated to this vocation in the way that
  ascetic monks devoted to austerity
• Bitter chanting, (?? ku yín), which celebrated
  painstaking composition, became their greatest
  virtue.
• Poetry as a learned craft found its expression
  in the poets obsession, or even addiction, to
  the art of versification

42
Going out East GatebyMengJiao

• .
• During my life Ive woven
• A thousand poems in the diction of the Great
  Odes.
• My road is as though spun from a silkworm,
• Round and round as my twisted, knotted guts.

43
Poets and Poetry Anthologies

• Poets exchanged poems to sing harmony with
  (?? chàng hè ) one another.
• Their poems were put together into anthologies
• Collection of an individual poets verses
  emerged, often can be used to study the poets
  career and literary accomplishment.

44
Writing on the Bookcase of my Collected Works
Bai Juyi(Bo Juyi)

• I broke up a cypress to make a bookcase,
• The case sturdy, the cypress strong.
• Whose collection is stored there?
• The heading says Bo Letian Juyi
• My lifetimes capital/inheritance in in writing
• From childhood to old age.
• Seventy scrolls from beginning to end,
• In size, three thousand pieces.
• I know well that at last they will be scattered,
• But I cannot bear to rashly throw them away
• I can only entrust it to my daughter
• To keep and pass on to my grandchild.

45

• .
• Eyes deeper than the Xiang rivers,
• A nose higher than the Hua mountain.
• Page 168. By Lu Yanmeng (???)

Presented to Huyus Daughter in A Banquet