I am not at all expert on this, but my understanding is that when the empire was strong, imperial patronage effectively displaced local patronage. For example, early in his career, Li Bai went to ask for patronage from local governors, but they were people assigned to their territories by the state. They didn't represent local wealth or local power bases. For someone as ambitious as Li Bai, Chang'an would be the only place to hang out. Leaving Chang'an was the same as retiring, stepping out of the rat race - something everyone said they wanted to do, but usually only did when there was absolutely no choice.
In between the Han Dynasty (about 200BC-200AD) and the Tang Dynasty (about 600-900AD), there was a 400 year gap when no single empire controlled "China". That was a time of constant war, but also the intensive development of poetry and the arts. The most famous poet from this time was probably Tao Yuanming, who wrote the Peach Blossom Spring (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Peach_Blossom_Spring) - a story about a man who accidentally stumbles on a mysterious paradise in the deep mountains, where peace reigns.
Soon after this Li Bai poem was written, the Tang Dynasty was torn apart by the An Lushan rebellion. During that time, local elites did become more powerful again. One of the royal princes set himself up as leader in the eastern part of the country, and Li Bai went to serve him - and very nearly got executed for it when that prince lost the factional battle. At the same time, the younger poet Du Fu fled the capital, and was famously housed for years in a cottage in Chengdu by a local patron. So, yes, poetry could definitely also flourish during times of disunity or weak central control.
I spent years as an avowed non-fan of Li Bai and his hey-guys-you-won't-believe-how-messed-up-I-got routine, and it's only recently, and thanks to poems like this one, that I realized he's a lot more interesting than his persona. (This is what I get for avoiding him for so long.) Even something like 將進酒 becomes richer and more endearing if you look at it as him playing a part he'd grown tired of.
Yep. Li's been my big discovery of this project (I'm doing the 300 poems plus whatever catches my eye along the way). I already liked Wang Wei and Du Fu, but had never got the Li Bai schtick. It was realising how much irony is built into his use of language that unlocked him for me. Everything is front and performance. He'd be completely unsufferable, except back then he didn't have a chorus of Brooklyn hipsters to support him, so he was just pumping out these industrial levels of poseur cool onto unsuspecting unsophisticates, and I think often hating himself for doing it.
In the next poem in this series, he pushes the premises of this piece through to its natural conclusion. But I still don't believe that that's his sincere belief. He's still just constructing an argument for X to show that he can.
Yeah; I think of him as someone sort of in the Brendan Behan/Shane Macgowan mold -- a talented pisshead unlucky enough to learn early on that people really liked the wildman act, who subsequently overcommitted to the bit and got trapped in a caricature of himself. There's something terribly sad about Du Fu's "痛飲狂歌空度日，飛揚跋扈為誰雄" in 贈李白 -- sad and recognizable, at least to me.
OG
Did local elites not support poets or scholars?
I am not at all expert on this, but my understanding is that when the empire was strong, imperial patronage effectively displaced local patronage. For example, early in his career, Li Bai went to ask for patronage from local governors, but they were people assigned to their territories by the state. They didn't represent local wealth or local power bases. For someone as ambitious as Li Bai, Chang'an would be the only place to hang out. Leaving Chang'an was the same as retiring, stepping out of the rat race - something everyone said they wanted to do, but usually only did when there was absolutely no choice.
Were there many famous poets from periods when the empire was weak?
In between the Han Dynasty (about 200BC-200AD) and the Tang Dynasty (about 600-900AD), there was a 400 year gap when no single empire controlled "China". That was a time of constant war, but also the intensive development of poetry and the arts. The most famous poet from this time was probably Tao Yuanming, who wrote the Peach Blossom Spring (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Peach_Blossom_Spring) - a story about a man who accidentally stumbles on a mysterious paradise in the deep mountains, where peace reigns.
Soon after this Li Bai poem was written, the Tang Dynasty was torn apart by the An Lushan rebellion. During that time, local elites did become more powerful again. One of the royal princes set himself up as leader in the eastern part of the country, and Li Bai went to serve him - and very nearly got executed for it when that prince lost the factional battle. At the same time, the younger poet Du Fu fled the capital, and was famously housed for years in a cottage in Chengdu by a local patron. So, yes, poetry could definitely also flourish during times of disunity or weak central control.
I spent years as an avowed non-fan of Li Bai and his hey-guys-you-won't-believe-how-messed-up-I-got routine, and it's only recently, and thanks to poems like this one, that I realized he's a lot more interesting than his persona. (This is what I get for avoiding him for so long.) Even something like 將進酒 becomes richer and more endearing if you look at it as him playing a part he'd grown tired of.
Yep. Li's been my big discovery of this project (I'm doing the 300 poems plus whatever catches my eye along the way). I already liked Wang Wei and Du Fu, but had never got the Li Bai schtick. It was realising how much irony is built into his use of language that unlocked him for me. Everything is front and performance. He'd be completely unsufferable, except back then he didn't have a chorus of Brooklyn hipsters to support him, so he was just pumping out these industrial levels of poseur cool onto unsuspecting unsophisticates, and I think often hating himself for doing it.
In the next poem in this series, he pushes the premises of this piece through to its natural conclusion. But I still don't believe that that's his sincere belief. He's still just constructing an argument for X to show that he can.
Yeah; I think of him as someone sort of in the Brendan Behan/Shane Macgowan mold -- a talented pisshead unlucky enough to learn early on that people really liked the wildman act, who subsequently overcommitted to the bit and got trapped in a caricature of himself. There's something terribly sad about Du Fu's "痛飲狂歌空度日，飛揚跋扈為誰雄" in 贈李白 -- sad and recognizable, at least to me.