(Li Shang-yin)
(ca. 813–ca. 858)
Li Shangyin was one of the outstanding poets of the late TANG DYNASTY. Nearly 600 of his poems are extant. These include historical verses that are subtly satirical, and more accessible untitled love poems celebrating illicit love affairs. His poems include a good deal of sensual imagery, but also often contain obscure language, with cryptic quotations and political allusions that make his verse very difficult to understand and even more difficult to translate. He was also a master of the ancient prose style called pianwen or parallel prose, in which the complete text consisted of passages that were parallel or antithetical.
Li Shangyin was born in what today is China’s Henan (Honan) province, and for a short time in his youth he seems to have been attached to the Taoist temple there. In 837, Shangyin successfully passed the highest imperial civil service examination, the JINSHI (ch’in-shih). However, he was never successful in advancing in his political career, largely because he entered public service just as two influential factions, the Niu and the Li, were struggling for power within the imperial bureaucracy, and Shangyin was caught in the middle.He held several minor posts, including editor of the Archival Office, deputy magistrate for a county close to the capital, scribe of the Archival Office in 842 and later a professor at the High School. In 851 he joined the staff of the powerful new governor of Sichuan (Szechuan), but he eventually resigned because of ill health and died in 858.
Li Shangyin never held a position of power in the bureaucracy, and was out of favor for much of his life. But his carefully structured poems, with their beautiful if obscure language, were highly influential on later generations of Chinese poets.Most appealing to Western readers is probably the intense emotion sometimes revealed in Li’s untitled love poems, such as becomes apparent in lines like these:
The spring silkworm’s thread will only end
when death comes;
The candle will not dry its tears until it
turns to ashes.
Before the morning mirror, she only grieves
that her dark hair may change;
Reciting poems by night, would she not feel
the moonlight’s chill?
(Liu 1969, Poem 6, ll. 3–6)
Bibliography
■ Liu, James J.Y. The Poetry of Li Shang-yin: Ninth Century Baroque Chinese Poet. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969.
Encyclopedia of medieval literature. 2013.