The Banished Immortal

by Ha Jin

  One day Bai wrote a poem for her. Not knowing her name, he called her Miss Lu. It reads:

  魯女東窗下 海榴世所稀

  珊瑚映綠水 未足比光輝

  清香隨風發 落日好鳥歸

  願爲東南枝 低舉拂羅衣

  無由一攀折 引領望金扉

  《詠鄰女東窗海石榴》

  Under Miss Lu’s window

  Grows a bush of rare pomegranate flowers.

  Coral in green water

  Cannot match them in glory and brilliance.

  Fresh fragrance comes with the breeze

  And birds return to them after sunset.

  I would like to become the branches

  That bend to caress your silk dress.

  Having no chance to pick a flower,

  I can only gaze at your golden door.

  “PRAISING THE POMEGRANATE FLOWERS UNDER THE WINDOW OF MY FEMALE NEIGHBOR”

  The tone here is deliberately ambiguous; he might be flirting with her or genuinely eager to know her. The poem was completed, but he couldn’t hand it to her directly, so it is said he attached it to an arrow and shot it toward her house. But the arrow flew across into her neighbor’s yard, which belonged to an old Confucianist. The man had been hostile to Li Bai ever since Bai had written the poem ridiculing the local pedants. Now, after reading Bai’s poem, he was outraged anew and shared the verse with other Confucianists. Soon Li Bai became a target of condemnation once again. In those scholars’ eyes, he was a libertine, seducing women of good family without hesitation. To make matters worse, the young woman turned out to be already engaged, though her fiancé was essentially absent—he had been away on business for years and she had heard no word from him. Nonetheless, the Confucianists were ready to drive Bai out of town.

  Bai’s cousin Li Yi could not intervene on his behalf, despite his official position in Shanfu County’s administration. Yi was merely a secretary and an accountant in the magistrate’s office, of modest rank and unable to protect Bai in such a scandal. Bai turned to his friend Pei Zhongkan for help. The young man knew how influential those local scholars could be, so he urged Bai to join his hermitic friends at Julai Mountain for a time to give the Confucianists the impression that he had become intimidated and left town. Bai followed Zhongkan’s advice and spent his days with the other members of the Bamboo Creek Hermits. Meanwhile, his young friend managed to dissuade the Confucianists from going after him any further. But soon Bai grew restless again and sneaked back home. To his disappointment, his neighbor Miss Lu had moved.

  Throughout his life, Bai formed domestic relationships with four women: his first wife, two other women in Lu who lived with him and helped him raise his children, and his second wife. We have little information on the two Lu women, and the basic details about them are derived from Wei Hao’s introduction to Li Bai’s collected writings: “In the beginning he married Xu, who gave birth to a girl and a boy, who was named Ming-yue Nu, and the girl died soon after she was married. Then Bai joined Liu, who left him. Then he joined a woman of Lu, who gave birth to a son named Poli. Finally he married Zong.” What is interesting in this passage is the distinction between the words “married” and “joined.” By “joined” Wei means cohabitation without marriage. People tended to call such a woman a “concubine,” but in Li Bai’s case such a union was made mainly for the practical reason that his household was in need of a woman’s care. The unmarried woman who joined him was more like a partner than a lover.

  In fact, bringing a woman into his family without marrying her might have been the most reasonable solution for him. By Tang law, any man older than twenty and any woman over fifteen who had lost their spouses and passed the mourning period were required to apply for another union with a person of the opposite sex so that the new couple could live together legally. In other words, widowers and widows were urged to get married or united with others to form new households. When a local official was evaluated for his achievements, an increased number of such unions in the area under his charge would be a significant factor, because more intact households meant more stability and eventually an increase of population. Furthermore, the government did not recognize the ownership of land by women, who would therefore not pay taxes on any property under their auspices. If a man brought a woman into his household, he would benefit from her property without incurring extra taxes, and if a woman joined a man, her life would become more secure. People were motivated, therefore, to live together after they had lost their spouses. All this meant that it would be almost impossible for Bai to stay single for long.2

  Because of this, after the loss of his wife, Bai’s friends and neighbors urged him to find a woman who could help him maintain the home and raise his children. He agreed, and soon they found a suitable young woman, a commoner named Liu. Although we don’t know much about her, quite a bit has been imagined and speculated. From Bai’s poetry, there are a few things we do know for certain. She seems to have been worldly and practical: she most likely agreed to live with Bai because he was a minor celebrity and a man of learning. Lu Prefecture was an area where people respected books—knowledge was associated with potential power and wealth. Li Bai also had his acres of farmland, and from those was able to provide a decent home. Then, too, he was a physically attractive prospect, strong and handsome.

  Although Li Bai and Liu were a good match for domestic partnership, the relationship never progressed to marriage, because her station was not appropriately high enough for Bai. We should keep in mind that his first wife had been a granddaughter of a chancellor; his second wife, whom he married years later, would be a daughter of another chancellor. It is clear that Bai, with his distinct sense of class, preferred a wife from a wealthy and renowned family.

  But Liu seemed to have expected more than Bai could give—she was soon disappointed by his drinking and by the debts he accumulated at taverns and wineshops. To make matters worse, with her maintaining the household he could afford to travel more, and became absent from the home for extended periods. She often blamed him for his idleness and for his failure to earn money for the family. Ignoring her, he continued to go out with his friends for long stretches of time. Unlike his late first wife, Liu did not appreciate Bai’s poetry—given her modest background, she may even have been illiterate.

  Understandably, the two of them didn’t get along. Bai soon couldn’t stand her anymore. Later in a poem he expressed his anger: “That woman is loud as a shrieking magpie. / That woman is vulgar and stupid like a desperate wren. / I am honest and feel at ease / And wouldn’t say more about this.” This was very strong language—no other poet would say something so unflattering about their spouse or partner. As its title suggests—“Poem for My Friend to Counter Slander”—Li Bai was enraged because the young woman might have bad-mouthed him behind his back. Yet, for the sake of his children, he most likely tried his best to live with her, and there are moments in his poems when he seemed earnestly to attempt to understand her. In some verses he even spoke from her point of view. She must have felt lonely, insecure, deserted, like “flowers soundlessly dropped in moss.” In “A Lament of the Leaving Woman,” he speaks in her voice: “In the ancient days there were deserted women, / Who all had somewhere to go. / Today I am leaving you, / But where can I head from here? / My age has been growing with the years. / A cheap concubine, how long can I last?…/ Where can I stay for long? / Who would build a life together with me?” He seemed to understand that she was entitled to leave him if the situation did not improve.

  In spite of her unhappiness with Bai, Liu did accompany him on his travels south to the land of Wu (modern southern Jiangsu, northern Zhejiang, and southern Anhui). Soon after they arrived, it is said that the woman abandoned him and eloped with a merchant to the seacoast. This might also explain Bai’s outrage in his poem to “counter slander.”

&
nbsp; After Liu left, Li Bai took in another woman, known as “the woman of Lu,” so that she could take care of his children and maintain the household.

  All Li Bai biographers agree that in the late summer of 742, as he was traveling alone in the area around Mount Tai, Bai received an official letter in a large red envelope, which summoned him to the capital to serve at court. He was stunned but then realized how this had taken place. His friend Yuan Danqiu had once promised him to look for an opportunity for him in the palace, but Bai had never dreamed that the emperor would invite him to the palace personally. Now he had to return to Xiaqiu where his home was, about fifty miles away in the southwest, to say goodbye to his children and make arrangements for their care while he served in Chang’an. After arriving home, still full of ebullience, he wrote a poem that recorded his exultation and his reunion with his daughter and son:

  白酒新熟山中歸 黃雞啄黍秋正肥

  呼童烹雞酌白酒 兒女嬉笑牽人衣

  高歌取醉欲自慰 起舞落日爭光輝

  遊說萬乘苦不早 著鞭跨馬涉遠道

  會稽愚婦輕買臣 餘亦辭家西入秦

  仰天大笑出門去 我輩豈是蓬蒿人

  《南陵別兒童入京》

  When I return from the mountain

  White liquor is just ripe in the brewery

  And yellow chickens, all fat,

  Are picking up grains in the autumn light.

  I call the servant boy to cook a chicken

  And take a jar of the white liquor

  As my children are frolicking around me,

  Pulling the hems of my robe.

  I sing and drink to comfort myself,

  Then dance to outshine the sunset.

  Having traveled far and met powerful lords,

  Now is the time to spur my horse for a long road.

  The stupid woman used to mock her man,

  But now I am going to Chang’an in the west.

  Laughing loud with my head thrown back,

  I walk out the front gate. How can a man

  Like myself stay in the weeds for too long?

  “SAYING FAREWELL TO MY CHILDREN IN NANLING BEFORE I SET OUT FOR THE CAPITAL”

  “The stupid woman” here could only refer to Liu, who had been unable to imagine that Li Bai would ascend to “heaven” in one great leap, clearing all the obstacles of the bureaucracy to serve the emperor himself.

  Now his arrangement with the woman of Lu would become permanent. For his children, Bai would need her to stay in his household while he was away in the capital. Wei Hao calls the woman of Lu fu, a word that implies she had married before and was likely a widow. For a woman in such circumstances, joining Li Bai’s family presented a good opportunity, particularly now that his fortunes had turned and he was heading to Chang’an. We have no record stating exactly when their cohabitation began, but given the need for a caretaker, we can surmise that he must have taken in the woman of Lu after Liu had jilted him. This woman differed greatly from the previous one; she faithfully took care of the children and his estates during his absences. Above all, Bai seemed to trust her.3

  By the fall of 742, Li Bai was already the talk of the country—his official summons to court had been sent from the emperor personally, an exceedingly rare honor. Several explanations have been proposed as to why His Majesty granted Bai such a favor. Li Bai’s fame as a poet had evidently spread far enough to reach the palace, and the admirers and friends he had made through his endless travels were eager to help him. Among his advocates was a court poet, He Zhizhang (659–744), who was the first to praise Bai as a “Banished Immortal.” The old court poet had come upon Bai’s “Tune of Ravens’ Perch,” and after reading it, sighed that the poem would make ghosts and gods weep. Despite several allusions in the lines that reduce the transparency of the poetry somewhat, it is a deeply unsettling poem, even in translation:

  姑蘇臺上烏棲時 吳王宮裏醉西施

  吳歌楚舞歡未畢 青山欲銜半邊日

  銀箭金壺漏水多 起看秋月墜江波

  東方漸高奈樂何

  《烏棲曲》

  When ravens perch on Gusu Terrace,

  The beauty, Xishi, gets drunk in Wu Palace.

  Wu songs and Chu dances are not over yet,

  Though the sun is down, half behind the green mountain.

  The brass water clock still drips to measure time

  While the autumn moon falls into the waves of the river.

  What can you do as the east is turning white?

  It is generally held that Xishi was one of the most beautiful women in ancient China. In the poem, she indulges in revelry with her lord, but of course the party cannot go on forever and has to end at daybreak. In essence, the poem is about the sinister nature of time and the ephemerality of beauty and pleasure sustained by passion and power. In a way this is also an allegorical poem, one that resonated with the current situation at court, where the emperor was somewhat bewitched by his favorite consort, Lady Yang. But unlike Bai’s other poems, the speaker here doesn’t mention politics directly and simply focuses on the progression of time. As a song poem (yuefu), this verse should have had eight lines, but the closing couplet is cut in half to reflect the truncation of pleasure and beauty by time: the impaired form of the verse signifies the futility of human effort to make merry. In this sense, beauty and power are both doomed since no one, despite the desperate passion that may drive them, can sustain pleasure for long.

  He Zhizhang must have caught the political implications of the poem and been struck by its fluidity, verbal music, and poetic virtuosity—he hand-copied it and couldn’t stop sharing it with others. Compared to Bai, Zhizhang was not a prolific poet but was famous for a handful of short poems, particularly this one: “I left home a boy and returned an old man. / My accent has not changed but my hair is thin and white. / Children greet me as a stranger, / And smiling, they ask me where I’m from” (“Writing by Chance on My Return Home [6]”). Zhizhang was forty years older than Bai, and in spite of his seniority as the director of the Imperial Library, he became an unlikely supporter of the young poet.

  In addition to Zhizhang’s advocacy, we also know that the emperor and Lady Yang had read and loved Bai’s poetry themselves, and wanted to recruit him for service in the palace. This, of course, would have been by far the strongest factor in Bai’s favor.

  There is another explanation for the royal summons that involves Princess Yuzhen, the emperor’s younger sister. It was at her villa outside Chang’an where Li Bai had stayed for months during his first visit to the capital twelve years before. The princess never met Bai during his stay there, despite the poems he wrote singing her praises. Later, Bai’s friend Yuan Danqiu, the hermit in Mount Song, became Princess Yuzhen’s dependable associate. Both were devoted Daoists, though Danqiu was more senior in the religious society than she and had actually been her endorser for her induction. Yuzhen trusted Danqiu and assigned projects to him: he supervised temple renovations and managed a large shrine in Chang’an City. In recent years, Danqiu had often accompanied the princess on her pilgrimages, and on these journeys he had introduced Bai’s poetry to her. In this way the princess became an admirer of Bai’s and eventually recommended him, a fellow Daoist, to her brother the emperor. In every sense, Danqiu was Bai’s devoted friend and helped him whenever he could. Their friendship lasted decades, a lifetime.

  Legend has it that Li Bai was enamored of Princess Yuzhen, and it is even said there was an affair between them. This claim cannot be substantiated, but undoubtedly Bai longed for her attention and patronage, if not her affection or love. His wild nature, however, made him an unlikely protégé for the princess, given that she was quiet and peaceful, detached from worldly affairs. She preferred the other great poet
of their time, Wang Wei, a reserved, mild man with a delicate disposition and a sensitive intelligence. He had been under her guidance since the beginning of his career. With her support, he had passed the civil-service examination and become a court official in his early twenties, in charge of musicians and other entertainers.

  Here is a riddle in the history of Chinese poetry: these two great poets were the same age—the dates of their births and deaths are nearly the same—but there is no record of their paths ever having crossed. Wang Wei was an official in the palace (though he was twice banished from the capital) where Bai must have gone frequently, and there must have been occasions where he and Li Bai encountered each other. The two poets even had friends in common—both of them were close with Meng Haoran and Du Fu. Yet there are no references to each other in their writings—it is as though they lived in different times and were unaware of each other. In addition to poetic rivalry and aesthetic difference—Wang Wei’s poetry is serene, rational, and restrained, rarely touching on realities of his day, whereas Li Bai’s is passionate and spontaneous, often lamenting the hardships of soldiers and common people—there may have also been competition for the affection and patronage of Princess Yuzhen. This competition must have alienated them from each other to such an extent that they appeared to be strangers throughout their lives.

  IN THE CAPITAL AGAIN

  The journey from Lu Prefecture to Chang’an was more than six hundred miles, but Li Bai reached the capital in just fifteen days. Such a trip usually took more than a month. When he arrived, rather than going to an inn, he checked into Talent Haven, which was owned by the municipality and provided free lodging for men of special ability who came to serve the central government. While waiting for the emperor’s interview, Bai worked hard on a long essay titled “A Grand Plan for Our Dynasty,” which expressed his political vision. As always, he was grandiloquent in his diction and extravagant in his analogies.