Li Bai dreams of the past

And siiiinnnnnnnnggggggs his drunken heart out!

Dreaming of the Past at Ox Sands
Li Bai

During the Eastern Jin Dynasty, the general Xie Shang organised boating at Ox Sands. As he and his retinue enjoyed the autumn moon, the voice of the poet Yuan Hong floated over the water, singing about the ambitions and frustrations of historical figures. General Xie admired both Yuan’s writing and his voice, and conversed with the poet until dawn. Yuan was soon appointed prefect of Dongyang.

On Western River, night falls at Ox Sands,
The cloudless sky above me gleams.
I’ll board my punt to view the autumn moon
With General Xie in my wistful dreams.
I could write a glorious song and let it ring out all along the course of this river,
But now and forever, the man who must hear it is gone.
Tomorrow dawn, I’ll hoist my sail again
As maple leaves begin to fall like rain.


李白  夜泊牛渚怀古
牛渚西江夜，青天无片云。
登舟望秋月，空忆谢将军。
余亦能高咏，斯人不可闻。
明朝挂帆席，枫叶落纷纷。

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I have come to love Li Bai rather dearly. As I’m translating each poem, I read it over and over, and ask myself, what is it about this poem that makes it it? What does this poem do that no other poem does? And the answer for this poem was that every time I got to the third couplet, it made me laugh. It’s outrageous, silly, goofy, fun. I’ll try to explain why.

First, the context. It’s 727, early in Li Bai’s life. He’s touring around the country and complaining that no-one will give him a good job.

Ox Sands: Actually the name of a hill next to the Yangtze River in modern Anhui. An important crossing point between north and south; site of historical battles; and the story of General Xie and his poetry appreciation. Legend has it, this is also the place where Li Bai many years later met his end, drunkenly trying to catch the moon in the river.

So, Li Bai comes to this well-known spot, and goes to admire the moon as Yuan Hong once did. The poem itself doesn’t contain the backstory; I added it because the poem makes no sense if you don’t know the legend. The first two couplets of the poem are conventional. The third couplet is raucous. This is the point in the poem where you are supposed to develop your theme, flash a metaphor, paint an indelible image. Instead, Li Bai bursts out, “Ah can sing good too!” The diction is all wrong - he uses the pronoun I, which is unusual; and the sentiment is absurdly bald. Of course, a lot of poetry was used to present oneself as a good candidate for office, but that doesn’t mean you can just baldly state, “I’m great, me! Really good at this!” In modern English, this is like walking into a job interview and saying, “Gissa job! Go on, just gissa job…” The effect seems to indicate that Li is drunk, and the word he chooses for “singing” reinforces this effect: 高咏 means to “praise highly in song,” but that high could also mean loud. Li is either going to hymn great men with fulsome language, or he’s going to bawl something out for the whole river to hear. (Yuan must have been singing pretty loud to attract the general’s attention…)

Anyway, Li Bai has been drinking as he gazes at the moon, has this outburst halfway through the poem (without ever breaking rhyme or meter, of course), and then collects himself for a conventional last couplet. And that’s the quiddity of this poem, that’s the heart of it. It draws us in with a simple opening, tells us the time and place, introduces a historical theme, then bangs us upside the head with a drunk man yelling in our face.

Reproducing the shock of that gear change is a challenge: the sudden use of pronouns doesn’t translate directly because English requires the use of pronouns everywhere; and dropping into slangy, low-register modern English usually feels too jarring. My solution was to do something metrical, and you’ll have to decide for yourself how you feel about it.

Here’s Cinix, who tragically does not burst into song when he reaches the third couplet.