Lee Bo. 2014

“Drifting clouds echo the traveller’s thoughts,

The setting sun reflects my old friend’s feelings”

LI BAI 

one of the most revered poets in the history of Chinese literature and is considered one of the world’s greatest poets (701-762).

Li Bai’s poetry was often compared to the swift flight of a bird: “like a swallow, sweeping over the surface of the waters.” The simplicity of the style allowed Li Bai to convey in his poems the most subtle spiritual impulses and moods. Li Bai saw his highest vocation in “clearing and transmitting” the most worthy in poetry and so that it “shone with light and illuminated a millennium ahead.”

In the era of the Southern and Northern dynasties, formalism triumphed in Chinese poetry – poems often represented sets of pompous phrases. The Tang Epoch renewed the stagnant realm of Chinese poetry. In 750s, new masters show themselves. Their work anticipated the emergence of the genius of Li Bo. From his great predecessors Qu Yuan and Tao Yuan-ming, he inherited the cult of a free personality, the cult of emotions and nature, a hot and irreconcilable enmity to oppression of a human.