Biography Of Li Po 525v29

Biography of Li Po

Li Bai's birthplace is Chu, Kazakhstan. Another candidate is Suiye in Central Asia (near modernday Tokmok, Kyrgyzstan). However his family had originally dwelt in what is now southeastern Gansu , and later moved to Jiangyou, near modern Chengdu in Sichuan province, when he was five years old. At the age of ten, his formal education started. Among various schools of classical Chinese philosophies, Taoism was the deepest influence, as demonstrated by his compositions. In 720, he was interviewed by Governor Su Ting, who considered him a genius. Though he expressed the wish to become an official, he could not be bothered to sit for the Chinese civil service examination. Perhaps he considered taking the examination below his dignity. Instead, beginning at age twenty-five, he travelled around China, enjoying liquor and leading a carefree life: very much contrary to the prevailing ideas of a proper Confucian gentleman. His personality fascinated the aristocrats and common people alike, and he was introduced to the Emperor Xuanzong around 742.

In 725, when he was twenty-five years old, Li Bai sailed down the Yangtze River all the way to Weiyang (Yangzhou) and Jinling (Nanjing). During the first year of his trip, he met celebrities and gave away much of his wealth to needy friends. He then turned back to central southern China, met Xu Yushi, the retired prime minister, married his daughter, and settled down in Anlu, Hubei. In 730, Li Bai stayed in the Zhongnan Mountain near the capital Chang'an (Xi'an), and tried but failed to secure a position. He sailed down the Yellow River, stopped by Luoyang, and visited Taiyuan before going home. In 740, he moved to Shangdong. In 742, he traveled to Zhejiang and befriended a Taoist priest. The same year, he traveled with his friend to the capital. Poet He Zhizhang called Li Bai "the god dismissed from the Heaven" after their initial meeting, and thus the epithet of "the PoemGod". Consequently, he was interviewed by the emperor (Li Longji, but commonly known by his posthumous title Xuanzong), who personally prepared soup for him, and gave him a post at the Hanlin Academy, which served to provide scholarly expertise and poetry for the Emperor. When the emperor ordered Li Bai to the palace, he was drunk, but he improvised on the spot and

produced fascinating love poems alluding to the romance between the emperor and Yang Guifei, the favorite concubine. Once, Li Bai was drunk and asked Gao Lishi, the most powerful eunuch in the palace, to take off his boots in front of the emperor. Gao was offended and managed to persuade Yang Guifei to stop the emperor from naming Li Bai for a prominent position. Li Bai gave up hope thereafter and resigned from the academy. Thereafter he wandered throughout China for the rest of his life. He met Du Fu in the autumn of 744, and again the following year. These were the only occasions on which they met, but the friendship remained particularly important for the starstruck Du Fu (a dozen of his poems to or about Li Bai survive, compared to only one by Li Bai to Du Fu). At the time of the An Lushan Rebellion he became involved in a subsidiary revolt against the Emperor, although the extent to which this was voluntary is unclear. The failure of the rebellion resulted in his exile to Yelang. He was pardoned before the exile journey was complete. Finally, Daizong named Li Bai the Registrar of the Left Commandant's office in 762. When the imperial edict arrived in Dangtu, Anhui, Li Bai was already dead. According to legend, he was drowned attempting to embrace the moon's reflection in a river. In reality, Li Bai committed suicide as evidenced by his farewell poem. Li Po (about 701-762 CE) was a native of Sezchaun, China. While still in his teens, he retired to mountains in the north of the province to live with a religious recluse by the name of Tunyen-tzu. The two of them were said to keep strange birds as pets. Li Po later traveled down the Yangtze to Yun-meng, a town north of the river and Tung-ting Lake, where he married. From then on his occupation became that of a wandering poet. Throughout his life he produced an abundance of poems on many different subjects—particularly nature, wine, friendship, solitude, and the age of time. He has since become recognized by many as the greatest of a highly talented array of Tang poets. He stayed for a few years in various places, traveled extensively, and became for a time one of the Six Idlers of the Bamboo Valley, who celebrated wine and song in the mountains of Chu-lai. All this did not provide a satisfactory existence for his first wife, who left him with their two children. He appears to have married three times. Li Po entered the capital, Chang-an, in about 742 and his poetry found great favor at the imperial court. However, court plotters found a way of demonstrating that one of his poems was a malicious satire. Li Po found it prudent to retire to the mountains again, and then wandered around China for about ten years, becoming involved in a major revolt. He was imprisoned under sentence of death, which was commuted to perpetual banishment to the southwest region of the empire. He had a strong imagination that was easily set off by music and wine, both of which received praise in his poetry. He became a Taoist and some of his poetry, such as Chuang Tzu And The Butterfly, reflects this. At the same time, he remained a poet who caught the nuances of the human experience of nature and of human friendship. He was a close friend of the poet Du Fu, to whom he addressed the following lines: Here! is this you on the top of Fan-kuo Mountain,

Wearing a huge hat in the noon-day sun? How thin, how wretchedly thin, you have grown! You must have been suffering from poetry again. In the poems presented here, the picture screen was owned by a Buddhist friend; the Wu-shan peaks are along the Yangtze gorges; the elfin maid is transformed by day into a cloud. The rabbit in the moon mentioned in a later poem is part of Chinese folklore—it is said to be pounding out the elixir of life.

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Essay preview University Degree Wordsworth Li Po as a Taoist Is Li Po just a drunken poet or a true Taoist? Li Po shows many Taoist characteristics through his poetry. Taoist ideas such as mediation, simpler ways of life, mediation, virtue, immortality and an aversion to fighting. Li Po lived in the country, and lead a very simple life, which is a Taoist characteristic. As seen in Chapter 80 of Lao Tzu, a small farming community with a simple lifestyle is preferable to city living with a central figure. Li Po embraces this ideal in his poem "Clear Wet Dawn." It shows

how he takes pleasure in simple, everyday things like flowers that look "tear-streaked" or a even simple fish pond (Five T'Ang Poets 53). He is not concerned with the judgements, or even the companionship of others; a reflection of a true Taoist. Other examples of his fascination of simple things are abundant in his other poems. For example, "High in the Mountains, I Fail to Find the Wise old Man", shows appreciation for nature rather than metropolis life when Li Po writes "rain-filled peach blossoms shower me as I walk" (Five T'Ang Poets 66). He seems to truly reject the lifestyle of 'jade and gold' described in Chapter 9 of Lao Tzu. He also appears to advocate simplicity in "Conversations Among Mountains". When asked why he lives in the mountains, Li Po response is "I smile can't answer I am completely at peace" (Five T'Ang Poets 69). It is obvious that Li Po finds his peace living in the mountains, not living in the luxury of a city, and hence truly living the simple life described by The Way. The impact of this attitude has emphasized the importance of nature in his poems. For Example, in "Goodbye at the River" Li Po decides not to "skim home past islands burning with flowers banks crowed with willows" and instead decides "I think I'll go sit on that big rock and fish"(Five T'Ang Poets 64). Another characteristic of the Tao that Li Po has adopted and introduced into his poetry, is the idea of meditation. http://www.markedbyteachers.com/university-degree/linguistics-classics-and-related-subjects/li-po-asa-taoist.html