马西莫 • 韦尔迪基奥 | 李白《古风》论（英文）

作者简介

马西莫 • 韦尔迪基奥（Massimo Verdicchio），加拿大阿尔伯塔大学意大利文学和比较文学荣休教授， 发表过大量关于但丁、彼特拉克、贝奈戴托 • 克罗齐和欧洲文学的论文，同时还对李白、杜甫、陶渊明和李商隐等人的诗歌有专门的研究。

内容摘要：本文对李白的《古风五十九首》进行了解读，这一重要诗歌类型的目标就是重拾从前的诗歌精神。本文之中的解读沿袭了方葆珍相关研究之中的思路，作为一位专门研究李白的学者，在《追寻谪仙》这本专门研究李白诗歌的著作中，方葆珍对这一诗歌类型有十分详尽的论述。本文则主要聚焦于这一诗歌类型的主题，尤其是其中的永生主题，同时还讨论了李白同陶渊明的关系。就此而言，李白的《古风》是其现代性的最佳体现。

关键词：李白；《古风》；陶渊明；方葆珍；寓言；现代性

Li Bai on Ancient Airs

Gufeng #1

How long since the “Elegantiae” were composed – 

And, with my demise, who then shall carry on?

The airs of the kings, given over to withered creeping vines, 

And the Warring States: overgrown with brambles and thorns.

……………………………………….  

I am determined to condense and retell,

The brilliance [my writings] emit will illuminate a thousand springtimes. 

Should an aspiring sage establish himself,

I will stop writing when the “unicorn is caught.” (Li Bai, Gufeng #1) 

Paula M. Varsano in her study of Li Bai, Tracking the Banished Immortal, raises the issue of the fifty-nine ancient-style poems and their “prominent and isolated position accorded to the Gufeng (Ancient Airs) grouped together in the second juan of the collection” (Varsano 141). According to her, these poems hardly get the recognition they deserve with the exception of the above quoted poem which is “judged important less for its poetic quality than for its handy summary of what many readers take to be Li Bo’s own critical bent. It offers the only instance of extended overt literary criticism in his entire works” (Varsano 142). While some critics believe that the Gufeng are not among Li Bai’s most successful poems, there are those who “celebrate these poems as the essence of all Li Bo’s work” (Varsano 142). Especially those critics in the late Ming dynasty who bestowed upon these poems the status of “a kind of poetic signature” (Varsano 143).

Varsano poses the question of what defines this “signature.” She answers it by pointing out that the early editors qualified these poems as “articulations of intent: a mix of declarative statement, allusion, and allegory employed by the poet to convey the most urgent and profound feelings” (Varsano 143). These poems evoke the process of natural, unpremeditated poetic creation encoded in the Shijing, and the Confucian allegorical exegesis, and “effectively identify the Gufeng as the purest embodiment of Li Bo’s fidelity to ancient authenticity” (Varsano 143). They acknowledge that the Gufeng aspires to ancient “authenticity” but they also tend to gloss over the way Li Bai uses these ancient signs and his attitude towards them. However, Varsano disagrees. According to her Li Bai is neither continuing the poetics of   the ancients nor parodying it. In her view, the Gufeng manifests, if not revives, “the ideal of ancientness through the representation of the poetic act in all its blatant repetitiveness” (Varsano 144).

To disclaim any possibility that Li Bai meant to imitate the ancients, Varsano quotes Gufeng #35 where the poet raises the problem of literary imitation and takes his distance from it:

The homely girl imitated Xi Shi furrowing her brows, Returned home and stunned neighbors all around.

The lad from Shouling lost his natural gait.

Convulsing with laughter the folk of Handan. (Varsano 147)

In her explanation Varsano points out that the “homely girl” lacks not only Xi Shi’s “innate and artless beauty” but lacks most of all “the heartsickness behind her frown.” The “homely girl” could imitate Xi Shi on the surface but not her inner self: her artless beauty and her heartsickness. She observes that: “this poor girl embodies the imitator who is not only unable to reproduce the desired effect, but incapable of perceiving its source” (Varsano 147). Perceiving its source is, for Varsano, the way to establish continuity between present and past that would guarantee the poem its authenticity and make valid its imitation. However, this is precisely what is not possible and what makes imitation not a viable literary mode of representation.

Varsano’s second example is the lad from Shouling which illustrates the dangers of imitation which “go beyond mere failure to self-annihilation” (Varsano 147).  “Attempting   to be what you are not, or doing what does not come naturally (which amounts to the same thing), is futile, and results in the loss of everything — of all that is natural. Such frauds are not merely failures. They cease to exist” (Varsano 147). For Varsano, the issue amounts to deciding what kind of “ancient” mode Li Bai intended, especially when he gave the title of “Gufeng” (Ancient Airs) to the first poem, which had never been done before. “By giving the poem the title of Gufeng (Ancient Airs),” she writes, “in qualifying as ‘ancient’ the very thing he would pretend to sustain, gives the lie to any pretended innocence” (Varsano 148). What is more, “Even if the title is not of Li Bo’s choosing, his explicit Confucius-like stance vis à vis the past announces a similar mastery and distance” (Varsano 148). Accordingly, we have in the Gufeng the solution to the “inescapable paradox posed by all fugu aspirations” (Varsano 148). We have “neither imitation nor continuation” and Li Bai is able to imitate the ancients by eluding the failures of either the homely girl and the lad from Shouling. He neither subverts naturalness nor compromises the necessary and undeniable difference between model and copy (Varsano 148).

The way that Li Bai accomplishes the imitation of the ancients is by the use of “quotation.” Relying on Genette’s notion of “transtextualité” and his distinction between “hypotexte” and “hypertexte”, Varsano opts for a definition of quotation as “intertextuality” which promises “the continued isolation and objectification of the inserted text” (Varsano 149). The technique makes possible for Li Bai to appropriate past texts while asserting their distinctness. Furthermore, Genette, with the help of Riffaterre, shows that all transtextual practice, including quotation, “begins the initial identification of an existing recognizable idiom to be transported into the newer work” (Varsano 149). Thus, it is not so much the use of quotation that is at stake as “the nature of the elements identified as idioms for citation” (Varsano 149). Among the most common are bi (comparison) and Qu Yuan (allusion).

The use of bi (comparison), was recognized during the Tang dynasty as one of the defining characteristics of the “Ancient” style. A poet formulating a comparison selects an object found in the natural or historical world, “then writes of that object so that it indirectly expresses the poet’s response to some thing or event that he has encountered” (Varsano 150). “The object selected for comparison need not be present at the moments of the poem’s inception, but is offered as a projected representation of an already existing feeling” (Varsano 150). In the Tang dynasty, comparison became associated with political allegory: “[it] suggested a particular type of poetic motivation — the motivation to disguise rather than convey meaning” (Varsano 151).

Li Bai’s use of comparison in the Gufeng is not traditional. He does not use the technique of comparison as much as he quotes comparisons that have already appeared in the works of earlier poets. Li Bai recycled quotations and integrated them in his work. Varsano’s example is Gufeng #40 probably written on the eve of Li Bai’s departure from the capital and written to his benefactor He Zhizhang. The poem, according to Varsano, is “a good example of a poem constructed essentially of quoted comparisons” (Varsano 152). The poem is so smoothly put together that one would never know they were quotations:

Gufeng #40

When the phoenix is hungry, he’ll not peck at grain, 

But only feed upon pearls of jade.

Unthinkable that he’d join common fowl

To battle with sharpened claw for a single meal! 

At dawn he calls from a tree on Mount Kunlun;

At twilight sips at the rapids at the foot of Mount Dizhu. To fly home he must follow a long ocean byway,

He is cold, sleeping alone under frosty skies. 

By chance he meets up with Wangzi Jin,

And they join in friendship at the green clouds’ edge. 

But before Wang’s benevolence can be repaid,

Moved by their parting, he sighs deeply in vain. (Varsano 153)

The language of the poem, she writes, is “crystal clear” (Varsano 153). It joins two compatible allusions in a predictable narrative: the phoenix encounters a sympathetic friend then feels the sorrow of separation. It obviously alludes to Li Bai’s pain at leaving He Zhizhang. In appearance, the poem seems to be a typical occasional parting poem, but what   is beautiful in this poem is Li’s insertion of familiar allusions as quotations. In this case the quote is from Ruan Ji’s Yonghuai #79, a story of loneliness of the misunderstood statesman (Varsano 155).

The poem ends with two allusions, placed in a dialogic relation, which invites a rereading. In Varsano’s reading this encounter allows a lyrical poignancy that not only retains the integrity of the myth but also allows Li Bai to actively intervene in the poem. “His presence now plainly inscribed in the poem, Li Bo can openly merge with the phoenix in the final line and sigh that futile but irrepressible sigh, de rigueur in so many of the parting poems of the age” (Varsano 156). She also quotes Gufeng #33 (Varsano 156-57) as another case where Li Bai “inserts himself into the narration as an eyewitness of the flight of this divine animal that began life as a piece of quoted text from distant antiquity” (Varsano 157, italics mine). As in Gufeng #40, we have “a quotation that is linked to the present through a bit of elaboration that might be a latter-day poet’s best chance of returning to antiquity” (Varsano 157, italics mine). In the Gufeng, Li Bai “retroactively establishes a worthy, ancient tradition. Then he positions himself as its latter-day and eminently spontaneous and true heir” (Varsano 158).

Varsano’s claims for Li Bai in these Gufeng, and, in particular #40, of an identity of Li Bai and the phoenix does not seem to stand up at a closer reading. It is clear, first of all, that the phoenix is not only a mythic creature but a fiction, a figure which when hungry does not feed on grain as the rest of the animals but on “pearls of jade.” It is “unthinkable,” writes Li Bai, that the phoenix would do battle with the common fowl. The meeting with Wangzi Jin, and their subsequent parting, certainly recalls the parting of friends, which might have been the initial pretext, and the only meaning, in a lesser poet. In Li Bai, however, the issue is more complex.

The identity of Wangzi Ji is explained by Varsano but not its importance. In the Daoist classic Liexian Zhuan (Biographies of Eminent Immortals), he is described as having the unique talent of being able to imitate the cry of the phoenix on his flute (sheng), for which reason he was made an immortal. (Varsano 153) In other words the phoenix and Wangzi Ji stand to each other in a complex relation of identity and difference. Wangzi Ji’s imitation of the phoenix’ cry puts into question the very possibility of imitation since the phoenix is a mythic figure. The poem states, on the one hand, the possibility of imitating the Ancients as Wangzi Ji imitated the phoenix’ cry,  but also its impossibility since nobody has ever heard  the Phoenix’ cry, and nobody knows what it sounds like. The two can exist side by side, “in friendship,” but any possibility of imitation is “in vain”: “Moved by their parting, he sighs deeply, in vain.” One can agree with Varsano that the “he” is both the phoenix and Li Bai but not in the sense that the poet “retroactively establishes a worthy, ancient tradition.” This is impossible. Any attempt “to position himself as its latter-day and eminently spontaneous and true heir,” as Varsano claims, is “in vain.”

Beside “bi” (comparison), the other defining characteristic of the “ancient style,” during the Tang period, is Qu Yuan. “Qu Yuan’s presence lends Li Bo’s ‘Ancient Airs’ moral legitimacy and authenticity” (Varsano 166). Qu Yuan, in Varsano’s account, is “the unambiguously wronged, misunderstood-but-loyal minister in search of a discerning sovereign” (Varsano 166).  However Qu’s “spirit-journey” is not at stake here.  Li Bai seems to engage, instead, Qu’s “fu-like rhapsodic descriptions” (Varsano 167). Qu Yuan, and the broader Chuci tradition of which he was a part, provided Li Bai with his preferred sources of quotations. Li Bai’s qualitative transformation of ancient texts can best be observed in his use of three sets of Chuci-related images and tropes: nature imagery, as we have seen in Gufeng #16, “climbing high,” and “immortality-related” imagery.

By quoting lush imagery similar to Qu Yuan’s comparisons but prevented to be read as such, Li Bai, according to Varsano, not only draws the line between ‘ancient’ authenticity and recent-style artifice, but “he allows them to collide,” as we can see in Gufeng #52:

Verdant springtime runs with the reckless rapids; 

Crimson-bright summer swiftly eddies past.

It’s unbearable to see the autumn tumbleweeds 

Wheel aimlessly, nowhere to light.

The illumined breeze of clearing skies destroys the orchid, White dew spatters the tender bean shoots.

The Fair One will not wait for me,

Though grass and tree wither day by day. (Varsano 169)

In Varsano’s view the nature depicted in the poem “resists being read as simple comparison” (Varsano 170). What she finds most effective “and affecting” is Li Bai’s “vivid rendering of time’s passage, as though it could be seized by the human eye” (Varsano 170). Yet, this pacific description of nature is not without its dark aspects. The autumn tumbleweeds that “Wheel(s) aimlessly” is said to be “unbearable to see, nowhere to light.” The “illumined breeze” destroys the orchid. The dew “spatters” the bean shoots. The final couplet ends with  a resigned remark that “The Fair One will not wait for me/ Though grass and tree wither day by day.” The passage of time from season to season does not mention the last season’s winter, which is the season where everything withers and dies. However winter is present everywhere: in the aimless wheeling of the tumbleweed, in the destruction of the orchid and the spattered bean shoots, as well as in the withering of the grass and the trees. The poem announces death everywhere, indirectly, in the apparent joys and pleasures of the seasons that precede winter. The passing of time announces the arrival of death, anticipated and not yet seen, but present in everything that withers.

As natural as this landscape may appear to Varsano, this is an artificial and literary scenery, “constructed entirely of literary expressions” (Varsano 170). The nature of this constructed scene is not symbolic, however, since it  is  not derived from fugu aesthetics,  as Varsano tells us, but from another aesthetics that she does not specify, but describes as “closely associated with a poetics he purports to be longing to escape” (Varsano 170). What this aesthetics may be that Li Bai, or Varsano, long to escape is not clear but since the ancient fugu is associated with an aesthetic of the symbol, this “other” aesthetics must be allegorical. In fact, if the scenery of Gufeng #52 appears to be naturalistic but is, instead, a literary or rhetorical construct, we are not dealing with a symbolic representation of reality but with an allegorical one, which Varsano cannot make herself to state and, probably, longs to escape.

Since the themes and the objectives of the Gufeng as a whole are shared by all the 59 Gufeng of the series, a reading of one Gufeng must necessarily be supplied by another. In the case of Gufeng #52, Varsano calls on Gufeng #38, which also borrows Qu Yuan’s nature imagery:

Gufeng #38

A solitary orchid grows in a secluded garden, 

As common weeds conspire to submerge it. 

Though basking in the rays of springtime sun, 

It still grieves at the high autumn moon.

Flying frost came early whispering, 

Green luxuriance feared an imminent end. 

Without the gust of a fresh wind,

For whom would it put forth such fragrance? (Varsano 171)

Gufeng #38 retains most of the elements of Gufeng #52. We have a similar natural description of spring and autumn but also the sense of the arrival of winter with its “Flying frost,” and the “imminent end” of the “Green luxuriance.” When the poem is understood as another rhetorical or literary construct, or an allegory, the literary reference is clearer. It does not have much to do with Qu Yuan, as Varsano believes. In the history of Chinese poetry there is only one poet which the orchid symbolizes: Tao Yuanming or Tao Qian. The lines “A solitary orchid grows in a secluded garden,/ As common weeds conspire to submerge it” is a reference to Tao Yuanming’s “Twenty poems about drinking” and, specifically, to number 17 where the dire living conditions of Tao Yuanming are symbolized by a “hidden orchid” choking among the weeds. The beautiful orchid can only be recognized when a “liberating cleansing breeze” arrives to release its perfume and one can tell the rare plant from the weeds. This is the liberating breeze of Tao’s poetry which alone identifies and separates him from the others.” The reference in Gufeng #38 is almost verbatim a reference to Tao’s poem #17.

The connection to Tao Yuanming also explains the desperate cry for help of the last two lines:

Without the gust of a fresh wind,

For whom would it put forth such fragrance?

As Tao points out in his poem, only when “a liberating cleansing breeze” releases its perfume can we differentiate the orchid from the weeds around it, his poetry from the others. Li Bai’s question in the final couplet is a reference to Tao  and his poetry. Without “the gust  of a fresh wind” of his poetry, the fragrance which enables to tell the difference between the orchid from the weeds, how will we ever be able to tell the difference between his poetry and that of his imitators, good poetry from bad poetry? How can we tell the difference between the “Ancient Airs” and its modern imitations? Between the poetry of the past and Li Bai’s? This is the question.

*****

The other two topoi that characterize the “Ancient Airs” are “Climbing High” and “Becoming immortal.” “Climbing High,” or “Climbing a Tower,” is also a favorite topos of Du Fu, which Varsano does not mention. She mentions Wang Can (177-217) and his fu, “Deng lou fu” (Climbing the Tower) (Varsano175). The poet ascends a tower or a mountain, looks at the landscape before him and reflects on his impermanence or on the ills of the world. “Climbing high poems relate the effect of landscape upon memory, both actual and anticipated. They trace (and occasionally enact) the movement from viewed landscape to inspired emotion and poetic memory” (Varsano 175-76). However, “as the individual poem progresses…the difficulty of distinguishing between perceived and remembered landscape becomes ever more acute” (Varsano 176). She introduces Li Bai’s Gufeng #39 as an example of this kind of poem which, according to her, is an imitation of Ruan Ji’s Yonghuai #15 (See Varsano 176). Ruan Ji relates how when he was young he loved poems and history. One day he “Climbed on high and looked outward toward those in my thoughts [poets and writers].” He reflects that after they are dead they are soon forgotten and poetic glory eventually vanishes: “Where are their names and glory to be found?” His conclusion to his newly found awareness is tragic,” I sobbed, sobbed, overcome by self-scorn.” In this poem the landscape has almost disappeared. Ruan has reversed the process from ancient texts to the landscape where he hopes to find the authors of those texts, but only finds them in their “grave mounds.” For Varsano, Ruan’s poem “demonstrates that climbing high was already, first and foremost,  a literary act,” (Varsano 177) and that Li Bai’s take on Ruan confirms the essential literariness of the act of “climbing high,” through quotations:

I climb high, and gaze upon the four seas; 

How vast and endless the earth and sky! 

Frost cloaks all things autumnal,

Winds whip the great wilderness cold. 

Blossoms of glory — waters flowing east; 

Life’s events — successions of ocean waves.

The white sun is obscured by dusk’s colored rays. 

Floating clouds with no sure end.

Swallows and sparrows now nest in pawlonia trees, 

While phoenixes must perch among the brambles. 

To “Return Home” once again!

On my sword I strum, “The Road is Hard.”

On close reading, there seems to be little of Ruan’s poem in Li Bai’s poem which consists of a landscape whereas Li Bai’s vision of the world is allegorized in the oceans and in the clouds before him, as “Life’s events, in successions of ocean waves.” As in the previous case of the orchid and the weeds of Gufeng #38, the contrast here is between the swallows and the sparrows who nest in the privileged “pawlonia trees” while phoenixes, the recipients of true poetry, “must perch among the brambles.” It is this inequality which brings to mind, once again, Tao Yuanming and his decision to “Return Home.” Li Bai’s desire to “Return Home,” as Tao did, is almost an impossibility as “The Road is Hard.” Li Bai is not just quoting his poem, as Varsano claims, and inviting the reader, “To picture him, in that quoted landscape” (Varsano 178). Li Bai identifies with Tao in a similar situation except that where the latter had the strength and the conviction to “Return Home,” in Li Bai’s  case to take the road back is   an impossibility. Unlike Ruan’s vision, when Li Bai climbs the Tower he doesn’t see “grave mounds” but only Tao Yuanming whose poetic glory has not vanished. Although Li Bai shares a similar fate with Tao, as he gazes the vast expanse from his high position, he realizes the overwhelming distance that separates fim from Tao, and the impossibility to leave the world as he did.

*****

The “immortality” topos is the next most important element in the Gufeng, and the most controversial because of the quarrel over how to understand Li Bai as an “immortal.” Varsano herself has called him one in the title of her work, “The banished Immortal.” I refer to her discussion of the controversy (179-184), and move on to examine her first example of Gufeng #7 “an elegant, coherent, and visually exciting, recounting of a quick glimpse of the immortal An Qi”, which also invokes the Chuci tradition (Varsano 185):

Gufeng #7

Among wanderers, there is an immortal astride a crane, Flying, flying to mount the Supreme Purity.

He lifts his voice among the emerald clouds, 

And utters his own name: An Qi.

Two by two, children of white jade 

Play on pairs of purple phoenix flutes.

Their fleeting shadows suddenly gone from view, 

A gust of wind returns their heavenly sound.

I lift my head to gaze at them afar; 

They are as wispy as the shooting stars. 

I want to dine on” golden-light grass,”

My life enduring as long as heaven itself.

In the last two lines of the poem Li Bai expresses his wish to become an immortal by “dining” on An Qi’s “golden-light grass,” which would make him an immortal. The next Gufeng #19 on “Immortality” is more problematic:

Gufeng #19

To the West, I mounted Lotus Blossom Mountain, 

And, away in the distance, spied Shining Star.

Her white-silk hand held a hibiscus flower;

Pacing the void, she trod upon the Supreme Purity. 

From her cloud-robes trailed a broad sash,

Which wafted behind as she ascended to heaven. 

She invited me to climb Cloud Terrace Peak, 

And there pay homage to Wei Shuqing.

In a flash, off with her I went,

Riding a wild swan to mount the purple dark. 

Below, I saw the river of Luoyang,

And hordes of Tartar soldiers swarming across the land. Spilt blood coated the grasses of the field;

Wolves and jackals, all sporting official’s caps.

While critics have had no trouble considering this poem as one of two best immortality poems that deserve the name, the last four lines have created uncertainty as to what they mean: whether it is a criticism of the emperor, or a reference to the An Lushan rebellion, or   to internecine struggles within the court (Varsano 190). The reference to Wei Shuqing has perplexed the critics. Wei’s  story is that he was an immortal who went to the Emperor Wu   of the Han dynasty to instruct him in the Dao. However, the emperor did not treat him with respect he was due and Wei  took umbrage and never returned. Critics have debated as to    the meaning of this episode and whether it is meant to refer to the mistreatment he suffered from the emperor. (See Varsano’s  full discussion of the controversy, 190-194) The problem  is augmented by the fact that critics believe that Li Bai wanted to be an immortal, as he often stated in many poems, so Gufeng #19 could just be a poem about immortality.

The ending is what is most problematic to reconcile with the rest of the poem, which Varsano, together with other critics, view as “an abrupt and inconclusive ending” (Varasano 194). They cannot reconcile the fact that these apparent immortality poems may be a device  to make a political statement which would be considered inappropriate. Li Bai’s “climb” with Shining Star to “pay homage to Wei Shuqing” as a metaphor for gaining immortality makes possible a view “below,” which appears to be intentional and critical. The view not only evokes the chaos of war with “hordes of Tartar soldiers swarming across the land” and “Spilt blood coated the grasses of the field,” but it also reveals itself to be a political allegory, not unlike we read in Du Fu’s poetry, of “Wolves and jackals, all sporting official’s caps.” 

Other Gufeng seem to be more within the accepted line of the topos. “These poems,” writes Varsano, “not only depict visually arresting meetings with known Daoists or mythic immortals, but tend to display an internal imagistic and narrative consistency that seems to render allegorical interpretation superfluous” (Varsano 194-95). One such poem is Gufeng #5:

How lush and verdant is Taibai Mountain! 

Stars rise and thickly cluster above.

Separated from heaven by a mere hundred li — 

So remote it is cut off from the world.

In its midst, a raven-haired elder,

Cloaked in clouds, reposing on the snow of pines. 

He does not laugh, does not speak,

Silently resides in a cliff’s cave. 

I come and meet this True Man,

Kneel, my back straight, asking for the precious prescript. 

With a broad smile, baring jade-white teeth,

He bestows upon me the alchemical method. 

From deep in his bones the words issue forth,

Then, extending his body, he’s already gone like lightning. 

Upward I gaze, but cannot reach him,

Suddenly the five passions burn. 

I shall prepare the cinnabar elixir,

And quit forever the men of this world.

It is easy to see why this Gufeng #5 is more acceptable as an immortality poem.  It has  all the elements that could be imagined to  get  instruction from another immortal on  how  to become immortal. However, the irony of the poem is missed when instead of a possible immortal it is the “True Man” who gives instruction and that the poet’s desire, after he prepares the “cinnabar elixir,” is not to become an immortal but to “quit forever the men of this world,” which is not the same thing as becoming an immortal. The reference does not seem to be an implied criticism of “men,” as in the Gufeng #19, but a possible parody of the True Man’s method to become an immortal since the “cinnabar elixir” is a concoction, as    we know from history, which caused the death of many emperors who wanted to become immortal. So the ending can still be read as an ironic twist on this method of becoming immortal. As Hu Zhenheng wrote, quoted by Varsano, Li Bai did not believe in immortality  as a viable pursuit. There are at least three Gufeng that “actively ridicule that practice.” We could add Gufeng #5 to that list and there may be many more because Li Bai appears to be very careful in disguising his “political” poems as immortality poems. Hu Zhenheng went    on to say that “consultation of the current 60 poem collection of the Gufeng [reveals that] twelve of them relate [to themes of] immortality. In nine of these, [Li Bai] speaks of himself as a wondering immortal; in the other three, he mocks those who focus on the search for immortality” (Varsano 196-97). Varsano quotes Gufeng #4, as the companion to #5, to point out Li Bai’s “vivid portrayal of immortal visions and celestial journeys” (201)

Gufeng #4

The phoenix flies 9,000 ren,

Five colors patterned in a jewel like brocade.

Carrying the letter in its beak — returned home — mission unfulfilled, 

And penetrated, in vain, the kingdoms of Zhou and Qin.

In one flight, cut across the four seas,

In its haven, it’s never known a neighbor. 

I concoct the “purple river-chariot” —

One thousand years plunged in the dust of this world. Medicinal herbs encrust the seas and mountains,

I gather alchemical lead on the banks of Green River. And then I climb Hightower Mountain,

Lift my head to gaze at true immortals. 

Winged mounts dissolved in fleeting shadows, 

Gust-borne chariots lost in an eddying whirl.

Still I fear that the cinnabar nectar is delayed — 

That my heart’s desire will not unfold.

In vain the hair in the mirror turns to frost, 

I am ashamed before the crane-riding one.

Where do they bloom — the peach and plum? 

Those flowers are not of my springtime!

I ought simply to go to that princely abode,

And consort, a long time, with the immortal Han Zhong.

Varsano believes that the poem is a veritable immortality poem and that “Li Bo’s desire to consort with immortals is simply an expression of his desire to live forever, to abandon all pretense to the role of unrecognized worthy” (Varsano 202). In her view, Li Bai, “manifested throughout his writings an irresistible affinity for the world inhabited by immortals, for the promise that their existence held for him as a mortal and as a poet” (Varsano 203). To believe otherwise is to allegorize the poem and to misunderstand “both the nature of the poet and of the religion [Taoism] … in question” (Varsano 203).

On the other hand, to read Gufeng #4 as promoting Li Bo’s views on immortality is also to misunderstand the poem, and, perhaps, Li Bai’s intentions. How to interpret, for instance, that the letter the phoenix is carrying in its beak is returned, and that its mission is unfulfilled? How to understand that the kingdoms of Zhou and Qin were penetrated in vain; that it has never known a neighbor? These unfulfilled tasks cover the first eight lines of the poem, which Varsano does not discuss, before Li Bai goes off gathering alchemical lead on the banks of the Green River. And who are the “true immortals” that the poet gazes at when he lifts his head on Hightower Mountain? Could Tao Yuanming be one of the immortals? He is often considered to be one, in which case we are dealing with poetic immortality and not with a desire for longevity. The rest of the poem, which recounts Li Bai’s experience to become    an “immortal” is not very positive. He fears that “the cinnabar is delayed,” that his heart’s desire “will not unfold.” His hair is turning to frost, and he feels ashamed. Are these simply references to the poet’s “own imminent senescence and death,” as Varsano indicates? (Varsano 202)

The final couplet points to a decision taken by Li Bai: “I ought simply to go to that princely abode, / And consort, a long time, with the immortal Han Zhong.” Li Bo states that this is something he “ought to do” but whether this is something that he will do or can be realized is another question. Given the “slim” chances of consorting with an immortal this     is either pure fancy, or another way to say that his end is imminent, as Varsano suggests. In any case, the poem leaves the possibility of a resolution in suspension; and, least of all,   the possibility that the poet desires to become an immortal. There is not just one kind of immortal, a poet can also be an immortal, like Tao Yuanming. Li Bai did not need cinnabar to become immortal. He was “immortal” by his right of being a great poet.  He is immortal as  he believed Tao Yuanming to be immortal. Li Bai still lives today, many centuries later, every time we read him, however we read him. For us he will always be a “true immortal,” and not a “banished” immortal.

To conclude I would like to return to the first Gufeng with which I started out, whose title indicates the genre. I will quote it again:

Gufeng #1

How long since the “Elegantiae” were composed – 

And, with my demise, who then shall carry on?

The airs of the kings: given over to withered creeping vines, 

And the Warring States: overgrown with brambles and thorns.

……………………………………….  

I am determined to condense and retell,

The brilliance [my writings] emit will illuminate a thousand springtimes. 

Should an aspiring sage establish himself,

I will stop writing when the “unicorn is caught.” (Li Bai, Gufeng #1) 

As the introductory Gufeng to Varsano’s discussion of “Ancient Airs” the poem gets very little attention from her. This poem not only sums up Li Bo’s poetic method in the genre but also his attitude toward the ancients which is “to condense and retell.” As Varsano has pointed out, we are not dealing with a simple imitation of past “airs” but with a “retelling” of them which “will illuminate a thousand springtimes,” not only because of the “brilliance” of his writing but because no one can ever hope to improve on them: “with my demise, who then shall carry on?” This is a rhetorical question to which the answer is: no one. The impossibility is made more emphatic in the last lines where the possibility of a “sage,” a poet or a wise man, who could improve on his Gufeng is compared to a “unicorn,” a mythic animal which   is synonymous with “non-existent: “Should an aspiring sage establish himself, / I will stop writing when the “unicorn is caught.” Since the unicorn will never be caught, because it does not exist, Li Bai will not stop writing. After him there will be no one to take his place or to better him.

Critics are used to Li Bai’s boasting of his brilliance, though they do believe he was a great poet, and a great writer of Gufeng. However, his claim of being (an immortal) poet have always gone unheeded or investigated. Scholars tend to pay more attention to the commentators of the past than to examine the poems in the present. This is the case with Gufeng #1, which Varsano quotes omitting two lines probably because they are irrelevant to her purpose:

The airs of the kings: given over to withered creeping vines, 

And the Warring States: overgrown with brambles and thorns.

The historical reference is to the warring States, when the Dukes rebelled against the Zhou king and took on the title of “kings”: “The air of kings.” The Warring States marked the end of the Zhou dynasty and the beginning of a united China under a Qin Emperor. Li Bai’s reference to the “Elegantiae”, the Shijing, or The book of Odes, was written during the Zhou Dynasty, which ended with the Warring States. Li Bai’s attitude toward these events, which altered, radically, the history and culture of China, which he describes as “overgrown with brambles and thorns,” was negative and pessimistic. The poems he attempts “to condense and retell” belong to this period marked by chaos and corruption. The attempt to “retell” these “Ancient Airs” in the present do not amount to either an imitation or to a condensed version. Whatever Li Bai attempts to “reproduce” will always be thwarted by the events of the Warring States and will always be marked by the impossibility of ever condensing or retelling the “Elegantiae.”

Gufeng #1, brief as it is, is exemplary of Li Bai’s poetic method, which is not mimetic but allegorical, and characterizes the poetic mode of all the poems in the Gufeng collection. But allegory is not  meant the  Confucian allegory that characterizes the Shijing. Allegory,  as exemplified by Gufeng #1 and by the other poems in the genre, is defined by the way the poem, which in principle claims to be the retelling and the condensing of the “Elegantiae” of the past, also define the impossibility to do so. Between The “Ancient Airs” and Li Bai there is the disruption of the event of the Warring States. This monumental event, which radically altered the history of China also subverted, at the level of poetry, the possibility of ever reproducing the pure and spontaneous original poetry of the Shijing, or the “Elegantiae.” Gufeng #1, which can be taken as representative of the other fifty-nine Gufeng, is a hybrid poem, a mixture of ancient and modern, and neither ancient or modern. The Gufeng are allegories   that narrate the impossibility of ever overcoming the historical abyss that separates the poet from his ancient poetic origins, the Gufeng from the Shijing. This characteristic defines the modernity of these poems and of Li Bai’s poetry in general, which is the reason why Li Bai is an immortal. Varsano is correct in replacing the two lines describing the event of the Warring States with dots (…) because those dots are what separates Li Bai’s poetry from the “Elegantia” and which makes it modern.

END

马西莫 • 韦尔迪基奥，李白《古风》论（英文），《外国语文研究》2020年第5期。为适应微信风格，删除了注释。

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