The Banished Immortal Read online

  The Tang court had an official, known as the Harmonious Regulator (Xie lȕ lang), who was in charge of studying and refining versification. Just as social rules and official rites had been strictly standardized by then (the process had accelerated after the centralized government was established in the Qin dynasty of 221–207 BC), poetics had also become regulated—so much so that poetry began to grow overly tight and formal, enervated by strict metrical prescriptions. Many practitioners of this standardized poetry focused on technical skill and rules instead of human spirit and experience. However, this was about to change because Li Bai would soon burst onto the scene, and genius always revises the status quo.

  From the very beginning Li Bai was not fond of regulated verse—although he could produce it with virtuosity—because he was not someone who liked to be hemmed in by requirements. What he admired most were three poetic traditions: gufeng, or ancient folk poems, a kind of poetry written before the Tang dynasty without specific metric patterns or rhymes; yuefu, or folk songs, which Bai composed throughout his life; and Chuci, Songs of Chu, a body of poems composed mainly by Qu Yuan (340–278 BC).

  Gufeng is rather loose and spacious; a poem of this kind can be of any length and can express drama at its fullest and most vivid. Folk songs in the yuefu tradition had a long history prior to Bai’s time. He loved their liveliness and vitality, rooted in immediate human experience; throughout his life, he also learned from the contemporary folk songs performed in inns, taverns, and teahouses. Chuci suited Li Bai’s natural disposition and, later, his vision of the universe shaped by Daoism.

  Qu Yuan, the author of Chuci, had once been a court official in the State of Chu in charge of religious worship, but because of his dissenting political views, particularly his fervent opposition to Chu’s alliance with the aggressive Qin State, he had resigned, self-banished, and wandered the wilderness. Two decades later, his country was conquered by the State of Qin, the same enemy to which Qu Yuan had been vehemently opposed. At the news of the loss of his country, he drowned himself in the Liluo River. Ever since, people in China have observed the date of his death, May 5, as a holiday in memory of the great poet. Because zongzi, steamed glutinous rice dumplings wrapped with reed leaves, are eaten on this day, the holiday is also called Zongzi Day. Originally people believed that the dumplings would satiate the fish in the Liluo River so that the body of the drowned poet would be spared. Several other countries in East Asia also celebrate May 5 as a holiday, eating zongzi, holding dragon boat races, and putting on festive shows, although by now its origin is almost forgotten.

  What attracted Li Bai to Qu Yuan’s poetry was the celestial space in it, and he would carry on this tradition in his own work. Unlike poetry in the West, which traditionally is rooted in divine inspiration from a poetic Muse, Chinese culture has no concept of Muses, and so the poetry on the whole is chthonian by nature. Poems tend to stay within the worldly domain, focusing on human drama and experience. They do not evoke the divinity for auspices—Qu Yuan’s are a striking exception. A poem in Chuci describes his meeting with an imagined deity this way:

  浴蘭湯兮沐芳 華采衣兮若英

  靈連蜷兮既留 爛昭昭兮未央

  蹇將憺兮壽宮 與日月兮齊光

  龍駕兮帝服  聊翱遊兮周章

  靈皇皇兮既降 猋遠舉兮雲中

  覽冀洲兮有餘 橫四海兮焉窮

  思夫君兮太息 極勞心兮忡忡

  《雲中君》

  In fragrant water I bathe myself and wash my hair

  And put on clothes that shine like jade.

  I see the cloud goddess lingering as if reluctant to leave,

  Her full splendor radiating endlessly.

  Above us the Longevity Palace stands aloft,

  As glorious as the sun and the moon.

  She wears a colored gown and rides a dragon carriage

  Going back and forth through the vast sky.

  See, she is about to descend, then

  Swiftly she flies away and disappears in the clouds.

  She scans the whole of the central land below,

  Beyond which spreads the ocean in every direction.

  I am thinking of you, my goddess,

  And can’t stop sighing, laden with worries.

  “THE ONE IN CLOUDS”

  Through his imagination, the poet travels freely between heaven and earth; his poetry presents an entire celestial sphere where he longs to reside. This space is superior to the mundane order of the secular world and signifies another kind of existence. Li Bai was fascinated by such a space and would ultimately inhabit it in his poetry. Considering the three poetic traditions from which he drew inspiration, Bai was very selective in forming his own poetic heritage.

  In addition to the private tutorials and his father’s homeschooling, Li Bai in his midteens also stayed in Daming Temple on Kuang Mountain, studying with the Buddhist monks there. He not only studied books but also learned the art of the sword from an older monk named Master Kong-ling. Swordsmanship would become a lifelong passion. Bai’s stay in the temple seems odd—he did not practice Buddhism and later would become a staunch Daoist. Though he dabbled in Buddhism throughout his life, he was never a serious believer, because while Buddhists were supposed to be detached from politics, his ambitions centered on a government position.

  Daoism and Confucianism have each served as the state religion in different dynasties throughout Chinese history; in Li Bai’s time, the Tang rulers held Daoism as the religion of the royal family and therefore of the country. Although Daoism has little to say about governance (it advocates joining the natural course, the way things exist, waxing and waning), the Tang rulers found prestige in associating themselves with Lao Tzu, the author of the Tao Te Ching, claiming him as their ancestor since his personal surname—Li Dan—was the same as theirs. In other eras, Confucianism—with its emphasis on the rites and decorum of officialdom and the ethical order of families and society—has been strongly linked to the state, forming the underpinnings of the bureaucratic culture. Both faiths were more secular than Buddhism, which has never been associated with a governing power, never having become a state religion.

  Li Bai’s incongruous taking of refuge in the Buddhist monastery gave rise to a myth meant to explain it. The story goes that he often ran into trouble in his teens and even killed people, so his father hid him away in the temple from time to time.7 Bai might indeed have been a problematic youth, as he later wrote in his poems that he had often fought with others. But the story of his manslaughter is written with such hyperbole that it has the ring of a fanciful boast. In several of his poems, he mentions manslaughter as a way to display his bravery and swordsmanship (attributes valued by the society at large). Lines like these are often cited as evidence: “After three cups I began to play with my sword, / Cutting down people like weeds” (“Song of a White Horse”); “Surrounded by white blades / I killed men in red dust” (“For Brother Hao, Magistrate of Xiangyang County”); and “Walking every ten steps, I cut down a man / And I didn’t stop for a thousand li” (“Song of a Knight”). One li is five hundred meters, and so here his boast of killing for “a thousand li” is an impossibility, a wild poetic exaggeration, similar to analogies in his other poems, such as “In the Yan area snowflakes fall as large as mats” and “My hair grows white, thirty thousand feet long.”

  Undoubtedly Li Bai was a hothead, impulsive and intolerant of injustice, and he might have wounded people with his sword, which he carried wherever he went, but it is unlikely that he could have continued his life with impunity if he had committed manslaughter, an extremely serious crime in the Tang dynasty. Its law states unequivocally that capital punishment is to be meted out for such an offender: “Intended manslaughter committed in a fight—to be hanged; manslaughter with a blade—to be beheaded; manslaughter w
ith a weapon in a fight, even though by accident—to be treated the same as intended manslaughter.”8 A Buddhist monastery like Daming was unlikely to harbor a murderer, and Li Bai would later travel through the central land without fear of punishment.

  Bai’s boast does seem to reflect his impulse toward destruction and crime, which is often inseparable from artistic creation. He bragged about this impulse even as he might not have been clear about how it was rooted in his being and was a source of his creative energy. Many great writers share this fascination with the dark, violent force in the human soul—Goethe in his Faust and Dostoyevsky in his great psychological novels.9 And Bai’s poetic exaggeration also reflects a broader tendency of the Chinese language in general to use wild analogies. Some of its expressions are based upon very large gestures: to describe pain, for instance, one can say that “my heart is pierced by ten thousand arrows.” In English, a more restrictive and precise language, such an analogy sounds hyperbolic, but to the Chinese ear it sounds proper and even credible. To praise a man’s capacity for alcohol, Du Fu writes that “he drinks like a long whale sucking a hundred rivers”—an impossible image, but Chinese readers take it as natural and wonderful. To describe a woman’s beauty, people will say that her looks make fish dive deeper and geese drop to the ground (as if out of shame). Li Bai’s boasts about his murderous deeds fall into this same tradition: they are not meant to reflect literal truth, but rather to impress others by highlighting his extraordinariness.

  AWAY FROM HOME

  Li Bai’s father was impressed by his son’s imaginative poems. Many visitors to their home praised the poems as well, but Li Ke could see that Bai lacked the life experience necessary to produce truly original work: his verses were derivative, more like exceptional exercises. Without original experience, he would not be able to develop his poetic singularity, so his father gave him a generous allowance and allowed him to travel locally to see the landscapes and the people and customs of the region. Traditionally, for one’s education, travel was regarded as equally important as the study of books. An ancient adage says that one must read ten thousand books and travel ten thousand miles to become an educated man. So in his late teens Li Bai began to roam the neighboring counties and towns.

  Most Li Bai chronologies, such as the ones compiled by An Qi and Yu Xianhao, specify 718 as the first time he left home. One day in the spring he took a boat down the Fu River and reached Zi Prefecture, whose administrative center was in the seat of Chang County, a commercial hub in northern Sichuan. The town’s marketplace stretched along the riverside. But Bai did not stay in Chang County for long, because his interests lay elsewhere. He had heard of an extraordinary man living in Changping Mountain, just north of the town, and he wanted to pay him a visit. The man, Zhao Rui (659?–742?), was to play a major role in Li Bai’s development. Zhao was widely known as an erudite recluse; he lived in a cave on a cliff with his wife and children. He came from a renowned family and was well versed in classics. In his youth, he had studied hard for the civil-service examination, only to fail it time and again. Finally he gave up and returned home to write his own work, titled Long and Short Scriptures, a minor classic of pragmatic philosophy that is also called The Reversed Scriptures. He despised the canon of Confucian classics, on which he had wasted many years studying for the civil-service examination, so he positioned his own book as an antithetical text. He lived and thought like someone who had existed a millennium prior, in the time of the Warring States (475–221 BC). Most of his views were derived from the Legalist thinkers of the violent period, such as Han Feizi, Shang Yang, and others. Zhao was also an expert in swordsmanship. As his reputation grew, he was repeatedly invited by the central government to serve in the capital, but he refused to leave Changping Mountain.

  When Li Bai arrived, the Zhaos received him with caution, unsure of his intentions. But Bai was greatly impressed by Zhao Rui’s ability to be at home in the wilderness. According to Bai’s own words,1 Zhao had befriended more than a thousand birds of various kinds, and called many of them by the names he had given them. When he beckoned them, stretching out his hands, the birds would land on his arms. They flew around him and ate from his palms without hesitation. His connection with the birds indicated that he was extraordinarily accomplished in Daoism, which stresses being one with nature.

  Zhao Rui gave Bai a volume of Long and Short Scriptures, hand-copied by his wife, the bound paper still in the form of a manuscript. Li Bai was struck by the views and the eloquence of the writing and implored the recluse to accept him as his student. Zhao and his wife were in turn impressed with Bai’s sincerity and enthusiasm. For a seventeen-year-old, he also had a commanding physical presence: from Bai’s writings, we know that he was nearly six feet tall2 and had strong bone structure, fierce eyes, and a stout nose. He spoke in a clear, deep voice. His thoughts were bold and his mind quick in responding to questions.

  So Zhao Rui took him on as a student, and Li Bai began to study under the master’s guidance. The focus of the lessons was largely political. Zhao’s Long and Short Scriptures is a book of stratagems, tactics, and practices in the political arena, containing such chapters as “The Ruler’s Virtues,” “The Courtier’s Behavior,” “Ways of Dominance,” “The Imperial Reign,” “Army Training,” “Failure and Success,” “War Strategies,” even “Physiognomy.” It is not concerned with right and wrong or good and evil. It teaches how to persuade, to conquer, to govern, and to rule.

  In ancient Chinese politics, there is a term for this kind of thinker and practitioner: zongheng jia (strategists). Some of those ancient men were top advisers to state rulers, and their efforts shaped the fates of the countries they served. Yet unlike most other classical texts of this sort, Long and Short Scriptures has never been put into practice. On the whole it is anachronistic and derivative—its views reveal their origins in the works of the master statesmen of the Warring States period. Zhao’s ideas emphasize the absolute power of the sovereign and the need for effective force. Such theories apply only to a society in chaos that needs a powerful ruler to restore order and hold a country together. But by the eighth century, the Tang dynasty had reached its peak, the political order was firmly established, and there was no need for the application of Zhao’s outdated ideas.

  Nonetheless, Li Bai embraced Zhao Rui’s ideas unconditionally and began to view himself as an aspiring master statesman whose position should ultimately be next to the emperor. By studying with Zhao Rui, he wandered in his mind back to the time of a millennium before, dreaming of ancient heroes and their glorious deeds. For both men, the greatest course in life was to perform important political acts and then return home or simply to nature, living out a quiet, reclusive life. Despite the forty-year gap between them, they were similar in many ways.

  Zhao taught Li Bai practical subjects too—military tactics, agriculture, medicine. Together they practiced swordsmanship, calligraphy, and musical instruments. Sometimes Zhao assigned Li Bai arithmetic problems, so that he could learn some of the basic skills needed in the organizing and managing of government affairs. Of course, poetry was a major subject for them as well. In this Li Bai excelled. In response to the topics assigned by his teacher, he would compose poems in his mind rapidly and with ease. Unlike other poets, some of whom would spend days on a line, Bai could create poems effortlessly, his lines full of verve and exuberance. Usually he would recite his compositions and later commit some of them to paper. On occasion he wrote them out directly. There was always an improvisational air to his poetry. Every so often his compositions would take on such momentum that he couldn’t stop, allowing a poem to run into a second and even a third. Later he would have to undo the entangled piece and divide it into individual poems.

  Both Zhao Rui and his wife were accomplished Daoists, and their practice reinforced Bai’s. As a religion, Daoism emphasizes the Dao as the primal force or principle of the universe. It exists everywhere and permeates everything and
every life. From this force emanates the process, Yun, which can be roughly defined as vicissitudes of fortune. Everything has its Yun: rising and falling, waxing and waning, existence and disappearance. Daoists believe that life is limited and there is no afterlife. What humans, Daoist practitioners, can do is try to prolong the life they have. From this concept arises the pursuit of longevity. One must expend the body and the mind as little as possible so that their vitality can be conserved and stretched to the maximum. This is why Daoism stresses the way of nature, which is something the Daoist must follow and strive to join.

  From the need for longevity came the art of making immortality pills, which many accomplished Daoists have attempted to master. But because there was no set formula or standard process of producing the pills in ancient times, practitioners would travel in search of Daoist masters to learn the secret from them directly. In a dark irony, such pills were often poisonous and many people ruined their health by consuming them. Now Bai was here to study the religion and its practice with Zhao Rui, including the preparation of the immortality pills.

  Soon birds would land on Bai’s arms too, and he also would feed them directly from his hands. Some locals, after witnessing the teacher’s and student’s acts of communing with birds, volunteered to recommend them to the regional government so that they might be given official posts. The governor of the prefecture came to visit them, and after seeing their ornithological feat and conversing with them, he decided to recommend them to his superiors for civil service. Zhao Rui and Li Bai declined the offer. Their precise reasons aren’t known, but most likely they believed it wasn’t yet time to leave the mountain. They had an eye on more consequential positions and were reluctant to strive among petty officials for the rest of their lives. A prefecture, consisting of a handful of counties, was too small for their vision of serving and shaping an entire country.