Li Po (May 19, 701 – November 30, 762), a Chinese poet, is considered one of the greatest poets of the Tang dynasty, along with Tu Fu and Bai Juyi, and of all Chinese literature.
WASHED AND WASHED
Stuck in the mud,
don't wipe your hat;
Bathed in perfume,
don't shake your coat;
Knowing that the world
It is beyond that which is too pure,
The wisest man
Cherish and preserve the light!
In the blue water
it is an old anger:
Let's go home.
you and me together.
Note:
'You and I' is addressed to an old anger that has spoken; it means that his advice is in Li Po's heart. This is an ancient story, told proverbially in the book of Mencius who lived from 372 to 289 BC; although in his version it is a young man fishing who speaks. Although not explicitly quoted here, in all versions the fisherman says: 'I wash my feet in murky water, but I wash the brim of my hat in clear water'; in the sense that we must accept and cannot escape the murky world; yet we can and must keep parts of ourselves untainted - a saying not so far removed from that of 'Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's'. But Li Po is specifically referring to a poem, probably from the 3rd century CE, in the anthology Ch'u's songsIn it, Ch'ü Yüan (343-390), the 'father of Chinese poetry', because he is the first important poet and author of the magnificent and especially long poem 'Meeting with Sorrow', encounters a fisherman. Ch'ü Yüan is for the Chinese the archetype of the incorruptible and most trustworthy minister, constantly insulted by his royal patron; and his eventual suicide by throwing himself into the Mi-lo River is still commemorated every year across China at the Dragon Boat Festival.
He is a Confucian hero, but the song of the old fisherman to which Li Po refers is Taoist in spirit: Ch'ü Yüan walks inconsolably along the riverbank, before drowning in it, complaining about his treatment, singing his virtues and his detachment from the corruption of the world; it is a truly arrogant manner, which the Taoists make the Confucians adopt when they want to attack them. This is what the old fisherman does in his song. It is Ch'ü Yüan, in the song, who says that after washing our hair we should clean our hat and after bathing we should shake out our coat; Li is making the old fisherman say the opposite, although in the old song the latter only responds with remarks about clear and turbid water and then, in Taoist fashion, disappears without saying anything more. (Taoists often give themselves the last word, or the last silence, in this way uncomfortable for Confucians.)
Without referring to it directly, or consciously thinking about it, there are probably some hidden associations with this story in the favored Chinese image of the fisherman, whether in painting or poetry, for example in 'The Snow River' by Liu Tsungizuan (773-819):
'Among the mountains/ where birds no longer fly/ Nor the paths have/ no trace of man anymore,// There are orphaned boats and a man with an old straw hat/ Fishing alone/ in the cold snow of the river.'
The fisherman is the artist.
/Taken from Li Po and Tu Fu, “Poems”, (Selected and translated by Arthur Cooper), Penguin Books Ltd, 2013
/Translation: Gazeta Express
t7 live
