Li Bai - Li Po and Tu Fu: Poems

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First published 1973

Copyright Arthur Cooper, 1973

All rights reserved

ISBN: 978-0-141-91525-8

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PENGUIN CLASSICS

Li Po (or Li TaiPo) and Tu Fu are seen by the Chinese as the two greatest poets of an age that to them, like our Renaissance, links the ancient with the modern world. The two poets were contemporaries and friends and shared a deep love of the poetry of the past, but were widely different in their own character and work. Yet they complemented one another so well that they came often to be spoken of as one, Li-Tu, who, more than any single poet, covered the whole range of human nature.

Li Po ( A.D. 70162) was born in the far west of China, and probably had some knowledge of Central Asian languages and cultures. But to his contemporaries his talent was almost supernatural, so that he hardly seemed of earthly origin at all; his verses seemed to originate in something other than the human consciousness, yet speak directly and simply to the human mind.

Tu Fu ( A.D. 71270) was born near the capital, of a family distinguished for service to the state. While Li Po seems to the Chinese to be a poet of the night and of man as a solitary animal in his dreams, Tu Fu is rather a poet of the day and of man in his other nature as a social animal. Tu Fus poems chronicle his life and times with social conscience and compassion, but also present a convincing, unselfconscious portrait of the man himself.

Shui Chein-Tung, artist and scholar, who has contributed calligraphy to this book, was, like Li Po, born in the far west of China. He is co-author with Bernard Martin of Makers of China (1972).

Arthur Cooper who was born in 1916 of Anglo-Irish parents and as a boy explored foreign languages and poetry, starting with Icelandic, later turning to Japanese and Chinese. He entered the Foreign Office in 1938, served in Hong Kong and Singapore 193942, and for several years in Australia under the British High Commission. He retired in 1968 and devoted himself to the Chinese language, especially the script, and poetry. In 1978 he published a monograph on The Creation of the Chinese Script, seeing a new look at this subject as important to the understanding of the earliest Chinese literature, especially poetry, and also to that of the evolution of human language. He died in 1988.