Five Daoists
Chapter 40. Climbing Yang Terrace
The year 744. Li Bo and his young friend Du Fu ascend Yang Terrace, the mountain residence of his late teacher, Sima Cheng-zhen.341 At the summit, Li Bo does this calligraphy.342
Fig. 51. Li Bo’s calligraphy “Climbing Yang Terrace” (Shang yang-tai tie 上陽台帖).343
His text:
Tall mountains, long rivers,
a thousand million images and things.
Without the brush-stroke of the ancients, your lucent vigor will fail you.
Written by Li Bo, the Great White, on ascending Yang Terrace the eighteenth day of the moon344
山高水長，物象千萬 非有老筆，清壯可窮
十八日上陽台書，太白
Fig. 52. The character shang 上, “ascend,” enlarged from the calligraphy.
In 725 the Emperor had requested Sima’s presence on Mount Wangwu and built for him the Abbey of Yang Terrace (Yangtai guan 陽臺觀).
Sima would live there until his death in 735, aged eighty-nine.
At that time his disciples sent this official report to the Bright Emperor:
On the day of his death, a pair of white cranes circled the altar. A white cloud surged from within the altar, mounting right to Heaven. The Teacher’s face appeared to be alive.345 The outer Yang Terrace atop Mount Wangwu takes its name from the inner Yang Terrace, the grotto-heaven concealed with-in that mountawith-in.346 This grotto-heaven is preeminent among such caverns, the concealment place of Highest Clarity scrip-tures. From the Declarations of the Perfected:
Lord Pei said, “The Terrace of Yang is the Adjunct Heaven of the Immortals at Mount Wangwu. When they first attain Dao, everyone pays a visit to this Yang Terrace. It’s the Palace of the Clear Void.”347
But Yang Terrace, the terraces of yang, the bright, is also the name of another ancient place, where the King of Chu met his shaman lover. But only for one night.348
Li Bo’s poem speaks of “a thousand million things and im-ages.” “Things” is wu 物, and “images” xiang 象. “The ten-thou-sand things” is how you’d say “all the appearances of this world.”
Regarding xiang, Isabelle Robinet writes:
The xiang are images that make things apparent; they are part of reality, and inherently contain and manifest the cosmic di-mension of things and their structure. This is why the xiang are often considered to be the “real forms” (zhenxing 真形) of things, or the fundamental substance (ti 體) of beings. They are visible but lie before and beyond the world of forms. They allow us to understand the world and to get along in the uni-verse; hence they are guides and models of conduct.349
Chapter 41. Du Fu
Who is China’s greatest poet? For the last thousand years there have only been two serious contenders, Li Bo and his young ad-mirer Du Fu 杜甫 (712 – 770), with their famously contrastive energies, deep Yin and deep Yang. Here they are together:
1. Li Bo’s poem to Du Fu, “Sent to Du Fu from my home below the walls of Sandhill City, by the old kingdoms of Qi and Lu”
After all, why did I come here,
to be left high and dry in Sandhill City?
An ancient tree grows outside the city walls, where dusk merges with the sounds of autumn.
The wine of Lu can’t get me drunk, the songs of Qi just repeat old sentiments.
When I think of you, it’s like Wen River, carrying my message south in its raging flood.350
沙丘城下寄杜甫
Lord Li, your handsome verse is so often like that of Yin Keng.
We were both pilgrims at Meng Mountain, and I cherish you like an older brother.
We dozed in autumn, drunk under a single quilt, we walked in the sun holding hands.351
與李十二白同尋范十隱居 李侯有佳句，往往似陰鏗 余亦東蒙客，憐君如弟兄 醉眠秋共被，攜手日同行 3. Li Bo’s poem, “For Du Fu, in play”
I met Du Fu on top of Rice Kernel Mountain.
It was high noon, and he was wearing a huge rain hat.
How did you get so skinny since we met?
“It’s because I write such poetry of anguish!”352 戲贈杜甫
Autumn now. We’re still two tumbleweeds who can’t meet shaming the Great Alchemist because we haven’t yet made up,
the elixir.
Hard drinking, madly singing, letting empty days pass, strutting and swaggering, whose hero are we trying to be?353
贈李白
秋來相顧尚飄蓬 未就丹砂愧葛洪 痛飲狂歌空度日 飛揚跋扈爲誰雄
Both Li Bo and Du Fu are equally an affront to the poetry that preceded them. Both reveal most intimate secrets — Du Fu’s are secrets of the vast human realm, while Li Bo’s are of the vast…
well, I don’t know.
So which is China’s greatest poet?354 Chinese littérateurs have argued this a thousand years. Indeed, you could write a history of Chinese poetics based entirely on this contest.355 So let’s set the record straight right now: Li Bo and Du Fu together are Chi-na’s greatest poet. It’s a bit like the conundrum of two football players in the 1977 movie Semi-Tough:
Billy Clyde Puckett: There are no 10’s.
Shake Tiller: Janey Woods is a 10.
Billy Clyde Puckett: No, Janey Woods is a 9. Janey Woods and her sister Patty together are a 10.
伯夷：沒有十分女。
叔齊：欸？張麗是個十分女啊。
伯夷：不。張麗和她的妹妹一共為十分女。
Fig. 53. Movie poster for Semi-Tough.356
For Li Bo that human realm is the theater where the divine puts on its plays, and the human being a perceptual apparatus that somewhat limits the shows that can be presented. He’s a tum-bling down of luminosity across this space, a shattering of light.
He is only here as play.
Mathematicians distinguish between two sizes of infinity, the countable and uncountable. The natural numbers 1, 2, 3… are a countable infinity — they never end, but you can still count them. But between, say, the numbers 4 and 5 there are many, many more numbers than that — you can continue to divide that space forever, and establish more numbers, and between each of those numbers are even more numbers, endlessly. Both Du Fu and Li Bo are infinities, but Li Bo is uncountable — right there between your 4 and your 5 is already everything.
Thus if you want to write good Chinese poetry, you’ll be told to imitate Du Fu, never Li Bo.357 “Indeed,” writes Steven Owen,
“the originality and variety of Li Bo’s work is such that it is very difficult to isolate features that are true for more than a handful of poems.”358 This goes beyond an ability to rhyme “apples” with
“Indianapolis,” though it is of course related.359 These are the victories of the military lineage.
They cannot be transmitted in advance.
—Sun Tzu’s Art of War (Sunzi bingfa 孫子兵法), ch. 1