I. The Exiled Immortal

742 CE. Li Bai was forty-two. He was finally summoned to the capital, Chang'an.

The poet He Zhizhang met him, read his poems, and said one sentence: "You are an immortal exiled from heaven."

An exiled immortal. Not a genius. Not a sage. Not a buddha of poetry. An immortal — banished from heaven to the human world.

This title defined Li Bai. It was not given by posterity — it was given by a contemporary the first time he laid eyes on the man. One look and you knew: this person does not belong here.

Du Fu was carved into a poet by reality — he wanted to serve in government, failed, and the remainder became verse. Li Bai was not carved into anything. He was born in flight. He is not a remainder — he is the thing that exists before carving begins.

Zhuangzi was pushed back to Hundun. Li Bai was always on the Hundun side. He was not pushed back, because he never came out.

II. Origins Unknown

Li Bai's origins are a mystery.

He claimed descent from Li Gao, a king of the Western Liang — if true, this would make him kin to the Tang imperial family. But no official record confirms it.

Some say he was born in Suyab — in what is today Kyrgyzstan. Some say in Sichuan. His family may have been merchants — "merchant" was a statusless category in the Tang, which may explain why he could never enter the civil service through the regular examination route.

His origins are unclear. His identity is ambiguous. Half Central Asian, half Chinese. Half aristocrat, half merchant. He belongs to no fixed category.

This was precisely the source of his freedom. Du Fu had a clear identity — the Du clan of the capital region, generations of officials, a Confucian scholar-gentleman. His identity anchored his direction: "to guide my sovereign above Yao and Shun." All of his suffering came from that direction being blocked by reality.

Li Bai had no anchor. He belonged to no fixed position. He drifted between Confucianism and Daoism. Between engagement and withdrawal. Between the court and the mountains. He was bound by no construction — because he never entered any construction to begin with.

He was rootless. Rootlessness is freedom.

III. Head Thrown Back, Laughing, He Walked Out the Door

He lasted less than two years in Chang'an.

Emperor Xuanzong summoned him to court and gave him the title "Hanlin Attendant" — not an actual government post, but a literary ornament for the palace. He was there to write poems for entertainment. To compose verses praising Yang Guifei. To improvise at banquets for the emperor's amusement.

He wrote. "Clouds remind me of her robes, flowers of her face; the spring wind brushes the railing where the dew is rich." Written for Yang Guifei. Reportedly while drunk. Reportedly the eunuch Gao Lishi had to pull off his boots because he could not be bothered to remove them himself.

Then he was "gifted gold and sent home" — the emperor gave him money and told him to leave. The polite version is "gracious return to the countryside." The reality: he was expelled. Reasons vary — offended Gao Lishi, offended Yang Guifei, too arrogant, too drunk, unfit for court.

As he left, he wrote a poem:

Head thrown back, laughing, I walk out the door — Are we the sort of men who belong among weeds?

Head thrown back, laughing. Not a bitter laugh, not self-deprecation — a genuine, full-throated laugh. People like me do not belong in the weeds.

When Du Fu was pushed out of court, he wrote: "Thirty years riding a donkey, eating others' food in the capital's spring. Mornings, I knock at the doors of the rich; evenings, I trail in the dust of their horses." — Bitterness. Humiliation. Hidden pain.

When Li Bai was pushed out of court, he wrote: "Head thrown back, laughing, I walk out the door." — You are throwing me out? Fine. I never belonged here anyway.

Du Fu's pain came from wanting to enter a construction (government service) and being unable to. Li Bai's laughter came from never wanting to stay inside any construction at all.

IV. Bring in the Wine

One of Li Bai's most famous poems. Perhaps the most famous drinking poem in Chinese literature.

Do you not see the Yellow River's waters descend from heaven, Rushing to the sea, never to return? Do you not see the bright mirror in the high hall grieve over white hair — Black silk at dawn, snow by dusk? When life goes well, enjoy it to the full; Do not let the golden cup sit empty in the moonlight. Heaven gave me talents that must have their use; A thousand gold coins spent will all come back again.

Boil the lamb, slaughter the ox — let us be merry; We must drink three hundred cups at a sitting.

Master Cen, Scholar Danqiu — Bring in the wine, do not stop the cups. I will sing you a song; Please lend me your ears. Bells, drums, jade, and feasts are not what I prize; I wish only to stay drunk and never wake. Since ancient times the sages and the wise have all been lonely; Only the drinkers leave their names behind.

Five-flower horse, thousand-gold fur coat — Call the boy to take them out and trade for fine wine, And together we shall dissolve the sorrows of ten thousand ages.

"Heaven gave me talents that must have their use" — this is not confidence. It is an ontological declaration. I exist, therefore I am of use. No one needs to define my use for me. No court appointment required. No examination seal needed. I was born with use built in.

"Since ancient times the sages and the wise have all been lonely; only the drinkers are remembered." — the sages all ended up lonely. Only the drinkers are remembered. Is he mocking Confucius and Socrates? Perhaps. But the deeper meaning is: everything you chase — benevolence, morality, ritual — ends in loneliness. Better to drink.

"Together we shall dissolve the sorrows of ten thousand ages" — dissolve, with wine, the grief accumulated since the beginning of time. "Ten thousand ages" — not today's grief, not this lifetime's grief, but the grief of all time. This is a mortal attempting to dissolve the pain inherent in time itself.

Du Fu's poetry: "All my years I have grieved for the common people." His grief is concrete: who is hungry, who is freezing, who has been conscripted. Li Bai's poetry: "Together we shall dissolve the sorrows of ten thousand ages." His grief is cosmic: time is flowing, people are aging, everything is vanishing.

Du Fu grieves for the human world. Li Bai grieves for the universe.

V. The Moon

Li Bai's relationship with the moon is deeper than any poet's relationship with any image.

"Before my bed, bright moonlight — I thought it was frost on the ground. I raised my head to gaze at the bright moon; I lowered my head and thought of home." — His most famous poem. Probably the first Tang poem every Chinese-speaking person in the world memorizes, as young as five. But look closely: he had no home. His origins are unclear. He says "I thought of home" — but where is his home? Suyab? Sichuan? Chang'an? He belonged to none of them. The "home" he longed for may not have been on earth at all.

"I raise my cup to invite the bright moon; with my shadow, we are three." — He lifts his cup and invites the moon to drink. With his shadow, they make three. One person, one moon, one shadow. Two of the three are not human. Is he lonely? He is. But he turned loneliness into a banquet.

"People today cannot see the ancient moon, but today's moon once shone upon the ancients." — Today's people cannot see the moon of antiquity, but today's moon once lit the faces of the ancients. Time changes; the moon does not. People are finite; the moon is infinite. He was in conversation with the infinite.

Du Fu's interlocutor is humanity — "Ten thousand rooms to shelter the cold scholars of the world." He speaks to the people of the earth. Li Bai's interlocutor is the moon — he speaks to the universe.

Legend says his death was also connected to the moon. Folk tradition holds that he was drunk on a boat on the Yangtze, saw the moon's reflection in the water, reached down to grasp it, and drowned. The historicity of this story is near zero — he most likely died of illness (in his final years he lived with his relative Li Yangbing). But the story's structure is perfect: a man who spent his life in conversation with the moon died trying to seize the moon's reflection.

He was not grasping the moon. He was grasping a reflection. A shadow. Something unreal.

A man who spent his life flying in the unreal died trying to hold it. True or not, the structure is right.

VI. Li Bai and Du Fu

744 CE. Luoyang. Li Bai was forty-four. Du Fu was thirty-three. They met.

Literary history calls this encounter "the meeting of the sun and moon in Chinese literature." The scholar Wen Yiduo called it "a miracle that comes once in several thousand years."

They traveled together across the lands of Qi and Zhao for a time, along with another poet, Gao Shi. Seeking immortals, visiting Daoists, drinking, singing. Du Fu later recalled those days: "Drinking deep, singing wild, wasting the days — headstrong and unruly, for whose sake were we heroes?"

Then they parted.

Du Fu spent the rest of his life writing poems about Li Bai. "My old friend enters my dreams — proof that I have been thinking of him always." "The capital is packed with the capped and belted; this man alone is gaunt and worn." "A name for a thousand autumns, ten thousand years — but the loneliness is something that comes after death."

Li Bai wrote very few poems to Du Fu. Only two or three survive. One is called "Playfully Presented to Du Fu":

At Grain-Heap Hill I ran into Du Fu, Wearing a bamboo hat under the noonday sun. "Why have you gotten so thin since we parted?" "It must be from all that painful poem-writing."

Gentle teasing. Li Bai thought Du Fu was too bitter — bitter in his poetry, bitter in his life. Li Bai himself was not bitter. His poems were not wrung from suffering — they erupted in flight. "Heaven gave me talents that must have their use" requires no suffering. It is simply there.

The relationship between the two men was not symmetrical. Du Fu looked up to Li Bai — "Bai is matchless in poetry; his thoughts soar beyond the crowd." Li Bai's feeling toward Du Fu was more like affection for a beloved younger friend — you are too bitter, do not be so bitter.

But history gave them an equal place. "Li-Du." Named together. One in the sky, one on the ground. One flying, one walking. One divine, one sagely.

The Song dynasty evaluation is the most precise: "Li Bai is divine in poetry; Du Fu is sagely in poetry."

The divine does not need to labor. The divine simply is. The sage requires a lifetime of grinding. The sage is ground into being.

VII. Hundun Itself Is Speaking

Now Li Bai's place in this series can be named.

Every person in this series has either carved or been carved.

Socrates carved false knowledge. Confucius carved false piety. Laozi said the unspeakable. Zhuangzi was pushed back to Hundun. Kant drew a boundary. Nietzsche swung the hammer. Wang Yangming carved inward. Shakyamuni used construction to destroy construction. Jesus, in the moment of being carved, was still giving. Gödel carved with mathematics. Einstein carved Newton and was trapped by his own beauty. Du Fu was carved into a poet. Homer carved sound into text. Qin Shi Huang used construction to carve away remainder. Washington used non-construction to carve away power. Alexander conquered to the end of the world. Darwin discovered life carves itself. Newton constructed the universe with four laws. Bach constructed a musical universe in counterpoint. Beethoven went deaf and kept carving. Sima Qian was castrated and kept constructing.

Every person — either carving, or constructing, or being carved, or being constructed.

Li Bai is not on this list.

He does not carve. He does not construct. He is not carved (when expelled from Chang'an, he threw his head back and laughed). He is not constructed (he never entered any system).

Where is he?

He is before the carving.

Zhuangzi was pushed back to the state before carving — Hundun. Zhuangzi was pushed back. Li Bai never came out. He was always there.

Hundun is flowing, formless, impossible to pin down. Li Bai's poetry is exactly this — not painstakingly crafted (that is Du Fu), not rigorously counterpointed (that is Bach), not logically derived (that is Kant). It surges. Like a spring. Like "the Yellow River's waters descend from heaven."

"Heaven gave me talents that must have their use" — no carving needed, no construction needed. Born with it.

He is the only person in this series who does not need the chisel-construct cycle to produce anything. Because he himself is the thing that exists before the chisel. He is not remainder — remainder is what carving produces. He is the original state before any carving occurs. Hundun itself.

Zhuangzi saw Hundun. Li Bai is Hundun.

VIII. Flying

One more at the bridgehead.

But he is not standing at the bridgehead. He is above the bridge. Flying.

Qin Shi Huang stands at the bridgehead, cracks beneath his feet. Washington stands at the bridgehead, soil beneath his. Beethoven stands at the bridgehead, fist clenched. Sima Qian stands at the bridgehead, back slightly bent. Du Fu stands at the bridgehead, in his torn sleeves.

Li Bai does not stand. Li Bai flies.

He is the only person in this series who does not touch the ground. He does not touch the bridge, does not touch the soil, does not touch the cracks. He passes over all their heads — not because he is higher than they are, but because he does not belong to the ground.

He looks down. He sees Du Fu walking on the earth. He thinks Du Fu is too bitter. He wants to call out to Du Fu: fly. But Du Fu cannot fly — Du Fu carries the weight of "ten thousand rooms to shelter the cold scholars of the world." Du Fu's ren nails him to the ground.

Li Bai carries nothing. That is why he can fly.

But flying has a cost. Not touching the ground means not touching anyone. The moon is his friend. His shadow is his companion. Wine is his fuel. But the moon does not speak, the shadow does not answer, and when the wine is finished, he wakes up sober.

He is the freest person. He is also the loneliest.

Du Fu is lonely because no one understands his ren. Li Bai is lonely because no one can fly with him.

"I raise my cup to invite the bright moon; with my shadow, we are three." — He could find no one to drink with, so he drank with the moon and his shadow.

This is the cost of freedom.

The bridgehead is filled with people. Every one of them is on the ground — some standing, some bent, some with clenched fists, some already vanished. Only one is in the sky.

He holds a cup of wine. He is laughing. He looks down and sees everyone. Then he looks up and sees the moon.

He chose the moon.

Han Qin (秦汉) · @hqinjarsy · Great Lives