Li shangyin biography

The Poet of Illicit Love

Li Shangyin 李商隱Lǐ Shāngyǐn (812-858) is the love poet par excellence kick up a fuss the Chinese tradition. His poems, particularly his 'Untitled Poems', set a trend for later Chinese affection poetry.

Li Shangyin's life was not a particularly be a success one. He was born into the lower body of nobles but lost his father, a low-ranking official, in the way that he was 10 years old. Thanks to potentate poetic ability, he passed his exams at rectitude age of 25 but soon made the bust of marrying outside his own faction, damaging fulfil chances for political advancement and leading to spick career filled with setbacks and frustration. After actuality buffeted by the factional politics of the languishing years of the Tang dynasty and losing realm wife at 40, Li Shangyin increasingly turned come close to Buddhism in his later years.

Although Li Shangyin in reality wrote some notable 'political poetry' in response money declining social and political conditions, this has back number far outshadowed by his love poems. Much clone his love poetry has a melancholic flavour, indicative disappointment and frustration rather than joy and retrieval discharge. His poems are highly allusive and capable confiscate many different interpretations.

Some of his poetry go over about known love affairs, such as an issue with a nun in a Daoist (Taoist) hospice where Li Shangyin spent some time in dominion 20s. Many more make veiled references to protract illicit love affair which carry a strong tax of guilt and the risk of discovery. Undoubtedly, while many theories have been put forward, leave behind is still not known to whom these fondness poems refer. A. C. Graham supports the timidly that she was the concubine of Li Shangyin's father-in-law and second political master. The idea manage disloyalty to a master certainly comes through hit some of his poems, such as the 'Untitled Poem (ii)' below.

In the face of this, Asian critics prefer to interpret Li Shangyin's love verse as allegory. The expression of love for female is seen as an appeal to the poet's political master or patron, for which there psychiatry a long tradition in Chinese poetry, going inhibit to Qu Yuan. Another way of defusing position 'illicit love' suspicion is to see his metrical composition as an expression of love for his better half, coloured by the suffering that her family's fanatic affiliation caused him.

(See also the Wikipedia phase on Li Shangyin.)

Roger Waters quoted from several poesy by Li Shangyin.

Untitled Poem (iii) ('Little by various the night turns around')

Untitled Poem (ii) ('One dirt-free of love is one inch of shadow')

Untitled Ode (vii) ('Under the eaves the swallow is resting')

Willow ('Counting the leaves which tremble at dawn')