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The Rhythmic and Semantic Correlation in Li Bais Poetry:

A Manifestation of His Poetic Genius

Sayed Gouda

City University of Hong Kong

ABSTRACT

Li Bais poetic genius reveals itself in various poetic territories: linguistic, semantic, rhythmic,

stylistic, and others. This paper will focus only on his poetic genius in using rhythm to reflect

his meaning.

According to Pound, rhythm must have a meaning. Likewise, Eliot says in On Poetry

and Poets that rhythm does not exist apart from the meaning (p. 29), and that a good poet is

one who makes pattern comply with what he has to say, not one who has to adapt himself

to the pattern (p. 37). Applying this technique to Li Bais poetry reveals not only how much

Li Bai was aware of this rhythmic/semantic correlation but also how profoundly he applied it.

This paper will analyse the rhythmic structure of three poems, namely: Jing ye si

(Nostalgic Night), Qiang jin jiu (Wine Invitation), San wu qi yan

(Trimeter, Pentameter, and Heptameter), and Changgan xing (Changgan Song)

in an attempt to demonstrate how Li Bais application of rhythm reinforces the associated

meaning of the poems. The rhythmic analysis of these poems is based on the meaning of

rhythm as examined by prosodists in different traditions.

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THE RHYTHMIC AND SEMANTIC CORRELATION IN LI BAIS POETRY:

A Manifestation of His Poetic Genius

Introduction

In the hands of a grand poet, rhythm is not only a pleasing sonic effect, but a mirror that

reflects the meaning and adds more dimensions to it. In Pounds words, rhythm must have a

meaning. Likewise, Eliot says in On Poetry and Poets that rhythm does not exist apart from

the meaning (Eliot 1957: 29), and that a good poet is one who makes pattern comply with

what he has to say, not one who has to adapt himself to the pattern (ibid 37). Imagist poets

attached great significance to musical value, because poets, as Pound puts it in Vers Libre

and Arnold Dolmetsch, who are not interested in music are bad poets. Pound describes

rhythm as a form cut into TIME, as a design is determined SPACE (Pound 1991: 198). He

calls his special rhythm absolute rhythm, which shares the same characteristics of the

ancient nuance metre. Pounds absolute rhythm is a rhythm that suits a certain poem, and it is

ideal for expressing the poems content.

Changing the rhythm to mark a change in the meaning is a diverse tool that comes in

several types. For instance, a change in the rhythm can be marked by inversion, meaning, a

change in the metric foot; or by changing the feet and syllabic numeration per line, meaning,

a change in line length by decreasing or increasing the number of its feet and syllables.

Before illustrating Li Bais poetic genius in using rhythm as a channel in which the river of

his meanings flow at ease, I shall illustrate how rhythm works in other poetic traditions where

rhythm and meaning are not separate but united into one application.

Wordsworths Daffodils is a good example of foot inversion. He keeps the entire

poem in iambic tetrameter, which suits his carefree stroll and matches his pace in two steps

followed by another two steps. This rhythm also suits the unconcerned floating of the cloud.

However, in describing the flutter and the dance of the daffodils in lines 6 and 12,

Wordsworth begins each line with a trochee rather than iamb to draw the readers attention to

their movement, which becomes more dynamic and energetic because of the trochees heavy

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stress. He says in line 6: Fluttering and dancing in the breeze and in line 12 Tossing their

heads in sprightly dance.

This concept of using rhythm to foster the meaning is also echoed in other poetics and

traditions. For instance, the rapidity in French verse is controlled by the number of vowels,

their length and positions in a verse. In Le Vers Franais, Ses Moyens DExpression [French

Poetry, Its Mediums of Expression], Maurice Grammont gives many examples and discusses

the features of rapidity in French verse, one of which is the short verse, which does not

necessarily mean less number of syllables (Grammont 1901: 76-134). The following two

verses from Hugos Orientales are a good example of using short verse to express speed:

Et nous verrons soudain ces tigres ottomans

Fuir avec des pieds de gazelle!

[And we suddenly saw these ottoman tigers

Flee with the feet of gazelles!]*

While the first verse is alexandrine, the second verse is decasyllabic, a shorter verse to

express the speed of the ottoman soldiers who flee like fast gazelles. The alexandrine verse

has the usual csura after the sixth syllable, which is an internal rime itself chiming with the

end rime. The second verse has a light pause after the word fuir to indicate the rapidity with

which the Ottoman soldiers flee. Thus, the rhythmic structure is (6-6) for the first verse and

(1-7) for the second.

Short units of rhythm within the verse also reflect speed like the following two verses

from Hugos Fin de Satan:

Dire : Cest bien ! je dors tout comme une autre bte,

Comme un lopard, comme un chacal, comme un loup!

[Say: That is fine! I sleep just like a beast,

Like a leopard, like a jackal, like a wolf!]

The rhythmic structure of the second verse expresses the meaning dynamically by

punctuating the verse into three short units. The alternating order of short and long rhythmic

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units foregrounds the intended meaning. In the above example, the poet expresses how fast he

falls asleep by dividing his verse into three short units. On another level of interpretation,

short verses or short phrases come in contrast with long verse/phrases in order to accentuate

the meaning of both. The rapidity felt in the short verse/phrase when followed by a longer

verse/phrase prepares the reader for the meaning expressed in the long verse/phrase, which is

what the poet then wants to project. Sometimes, the change from a short verse/phrase to a

longer verse/phrase requires a change not only in the rhythm, but sometimes the metre, too.

What is said about the binary relation between short and long verses/phrases can also

be said for stanzas and strophes when we compare one stanza/strophe to another in terms of

form, rhythm, and length. This can also be true for the length of foot, whether it is

monosyllabic, dissyllabic, or trisyllabic. No doubt, this alternation between short and long

rhythmic elements reflects the meaning to a great extent.

To give an example from the Arabic poetry, in alalul-Waqt [The Dew of Time],

A mad Abdul Mu igz uses the two feet f iltun and mustaf i lun alternatively

without following the strict order and numeration as observed in the columnar form. He

lengthens and shortens his lines in accordance with the meaning in each line. Just to give one

example, the first two lines begin with (Here is the dew of time, and birds / fall on it) with

three feet in the first line and only one foot in the second scanned as ( alalul-Waqti, wal-

uyru alayhi / Wuqqa un). The poets youth seems to elapse so fast and he has aged as

sudden as the fall of the birds. There are many such examples in the poem, but one example

suffices here.

The Poetic Genius of Li Bai

This understanding of rhythm and its crucial role in expressing the meaning also aides our

understanding of Chinese poetry. By all accounts, Li Bai is among many grand poets who

turned rhythm into a tool for expressing implicitly what the poet does not explicitly utter in

words. In order to achieve the desired effect in certain parts of the poem, this requires

occasional deviations from the monotony of conventional metre. Therefore, each poem will

have its own form that serves as an extension of its content. Li Bai is keen on realizing this

spontaneously without letting the content be affected by the poems form. He rejects both

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imitation and consciously crafted poetry in favour of simple and unadorned rhymes of ancient

times.

As opposed to other Chinese poets, who seem objective and less passionate, like Du

Fu (712-770), Li Bai is subjective in a way that every object he refers to in his poetry is

always used to project his own feelings and bring his own mood to the forefront. Even if

sometimes his meaning is rather vague, his feelings always come through (Xu 1984: 78). In

general, the scenes Li Bai describes in his poetry clearly transmit his feelings to the reader

and raise questions without providing answers.

The poetic innovation of Li Bai is demonstrated in various poetic domains: linguistic,

semantic, rhythmic, stylistic, thematic, and so on. Even though his poetic innovation was

valued in his lifetime and he enjoyed a high status as the foremost poet of China, this high

literary status suffered a setback beginning from the Song Dynasty (960-1279) when scholars

adopted Neo-Confucian standards as basis for all literary learning and criticism. Over time,

however, Li Bai gained back his high literary eminence. Against the mainstream poetics of

his time, Li Bai opted to write in gufeng (Ancient Style) that was simple, unadorned,

and more prosaic than the ornamented poetry style of the Six Dynasties. However, his usage

of Ancient Style, in terms of unrestrained rhythm, rhyme scheme, and prosaic syntax, does

not mean that it is a thoughtless imitation of past poets without demonstrating his authenticity,

as the few examples below show.

As illustrated in the examples taken from English, French, and Arabic poetry,

changing the rhythm can be achieved either by foot inversion or by altering the syllabic

numeration in the line. The few examples taken from Li Bais poetry exhibit these varied

types of rhythm changes and rhyme alternations.

Even though lshi (Regulated Verse) was the most popular mode of poetry

writing in the Tang Dynasty (618-907), Li Bai often mixed it with gufeng into a new form

named gufeng lshi (Ancient Style Regulated Verse). A good example of foot

inversion is well verified in the tone pattern of Jing ye si (Nostalgia on a Quiet

Night), which is structured in the fourth tone pattern of lshi with the following inversions

highlighted in grey:

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, , , (the fourth tone pattern)

, , , (the poems tone pattern)

Ping and ze (level and deflected tones) are terminologies of acoustic elements in

ancient Chinese poetry that cover the four tones. While ping refers to pingsheng in ancient

Chinese, yin pingsheng and yang pingsheng in modern Chinese, ze refers to shangsheng,

qusheng, and rusheng in ancient Chinese and shangsheng and qusheng in the modern Chinese

language. In Chinese poetry, ping and ze together construct one foot, and their alternation

defines the rhythmic tone in its rise and fall, speed and slowness, long and short vowels, etc.

Comparing the formal fourth tone pattern with the tone pattern of Li Bais poem shows five

main features that distinguish the form of this poem from lshi:

1. The third tone is inverted in three lines even though it is not permitted to be

reversed in lshi;

2. The second and the fourth tones are given the same tone in two lines even

though it is not permitted in lshi;

3. The second characters in the two lines of the first couplet have identical tones

when, according to the principle of dui (antithesis), they should have contrasting tones,

4. The second character in the second line of the first couplet is not identical with

the second character in the first line of the ensuing couplet, thus violating the principle of

nian (consistency);

5. The word yue (moon) and the word tou (head) are repeated twice in the

parallelism used in the poem even though it is not permitted to repeat the same word in any

parallelism used in lshi.

The lines are structured as (2 + 2 + 1) in the first couplet and (2 + 1 + 2) in the second

couplet as follows:

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Chung-qin / mng-yu / gung, / /

y-sh / d-shng / shung. / /

J-tu / wng / mng-yu, / /

d-tu / s / g-xing. / /

The bright moonlight before my bed

seems like frost on the ground.

I raise my head and gaze at the bright moon,

I bow my head and long for my homeland.

The rhythmic structure of the poem, based on its grammatical syntax, thus reads (2+2+1) /

(2+2+1) / (2+1+2) / (2+1+2). The pattern (2 + 1 + 2), which is used in the last couplet, is

another deviation from the lshi tone pattern. Here one may wonder why Li Bai changes the

structure of his metric line from (2 + 2 + 1) in the first couplet to (2 + 1 + 2) in the second.

The only explanation we can give here is that Li Bai ends line 3 and 4 with two syllables

rather than one syllable in order to give the reader a sense of time duration. The first two lines

end with one syllable because seeing the moonlight at the bed foot and thinking it is a patch

of frost on the ground can happen in a split second. Therefore, the metrical length of one

ending syllable reflects the natural duration of this movement. However, for the poet to raise

his head to look at the moon and to lower it thinking of his homeland would definitely take a

longer time and hence the movements of raising the head, contemplating the moon, lowering

it and thinking of his homeland need an emphasis that makes the reader feel the time duration,

which might have taken the poet a whole night. This is how we would read and analyse the

metric structure of the second couplet in this quatrain.

There is another version of the poem that goes as follows:

Chung-qin / kn / yu-gung, / /

y-sh / d-shng / shung. / /

J-tu / wng / shn-yu, / /

d -tu / s / g-xing. / /

I see the moonlight before my bed;

It seems like frost on the ground.

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I raise my head and gaze at the mountain moon,

I bow my head and long for my homeland.

Only two words in this version differ from the first version, namely kn (see) and shn

(mountain). While the rhythmic tone of kn, which is ze, differs from the rhythmic tone of

mng (bright), which is ping, the tone of shn does not differ from mng (bright) as both

carry a ping tone. This change renders the rhythmic structure, based on its grammatical

syntax, into (2+1+2) / (2+2+1) / (2+1+2) / (2+1+2). The pattern (2 + 1 + 2) in the first line

does not upset our analysis since the poets gaze at the moonlight at the foot of the bed does

not necessarily have to happen in a fleeting moment the way he mistakes it for a patch of

snow on the ground, which definitely occurs in a split second.

Li Bais poem Qiang jin jiu (Wine Invitation) is another example of Li Bais

poetic mastery in using rhythm to stress the meaning he wants to deliver in each line. It is an

invitation from Li Bai to his friends to join him in drinking wine. Even though the poem is a

heptasyllabic poem, Li Bai varies the length of his lines from the basic seven syllables per

line to three, five, and ten syllables. By that, he turns his heptasyllabic poem from qiyanshi

into zayanshi (Mixed Verse). That is for a good reason, of course. For example,

the line that describes the Yellow River that runs down from Heaven, and the line that

illustrates an old man examining his white hair in the mirror are both decasyllabic in order to

give a sense of length in terms of distance, space, and time:

Jn b jin hungh zh shu tin shng li,

bnli do hi b f hu.

Jn b jin gotng mngjng bi bi f,

cho r qngs m chng xu.

[Do you not see the Yellow River coming from Heaven,

running towards the ocean without return?

Dont you see him grieving his white hair in a bright mirror in his high chamber?

It was like black silk in the morning that changed into snow white.]

Contrary to these two decasyllabic lines, Li Bai uses the next four trisyllabic lines to stress

the opposite meaning when he calls his friends to join him in drinking and never to leave

their cups empty:

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Cn fz,

Dn qi shng,

Qing jn ji,

bi m tng.

[Master Cen!

Friend Danqiu!

Come to drink!

Do not put down your cups!]

Here, the lines are short and the rhythm is fast. These short trisyllabic lines manifest his

hurried manner and his eagerness to invite his friends to come and drink with him. This is the

same technique Li Bai uses when he describes his precious belongings, which he is willing to

sell in order to buy good wine for his friends:

w hu m,

qin jn qi,

[a horse dappled with flowers,

a fur coat worth a thousand gold coins,]

The speedy rhythm of these two trisyllabic lines shows how ready and fast he is in selling his

belongings, no matter how dearly he treasures them. Not only does Li Bais usage of rhythm

prove his poetic brilliance, it also manifests his innovative style that deviates from all the

restrictions of the lshi of the Tang Dynasty.

Li Bai says in San wu qi yan (Trimeter, Pentameter, and

Heptameter Lines):

Qifng qng,

qiyu mng.

Lu y j hi sn,

hn y q f jng.

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Xing s xing jin zh h r? ?

C sh c y nn wi qng! !

[Fresh autumn wind,

bright autumn moon.

Fallen leaves gather and scatter,

cold crows are settled and startled.

I miss you and wonder when shall we meet?

How painfully I long for you this hour, this night!]

The poem can be divided into three stanzas based on the length of the lines. It begins

with two lines of trimeter that describe the fresh autumn wind and bright moon. This

is life when it is peaceful and tranquil and when husband and wife are together in

peace and love. The second stanza consists of two lines of pentameter that describe

another phase of life when the leaves fall under the tree and get scattered by the wind.

Now, the trees are bare of their leaves, the crows are cold as they are suddenly

exposed to the cold wind. The third stanza has two lines of heptameter that describe

the longing of the husband and the wife to reunite with each other.

Li Bai uses the right images to animate the meaning of each stanza. He

compares their togetherness to the fresh autumn wind and the bright moon and

compares their parting to the fallen leaves that leave their branches only for the wind

to carry them away. Li Bai also compares their parting to cold crows that perch on tree

branches and settle there seeking warmth. Before they find warmth, natures forces

the wind, the fallen leaves, and the cold, startle them.

As for the poems form, the length of the lines testifies to Li Bais poetic

genius. He expresses the couples happy togetherness in trisyllabic lines to indicate

how fleeting and short happy times seem to lovers. In expressing their separation, Li

Bai uses pentasyllabic lines to indicate that time now seems slower and longer than

the time when they were together. Away from each other and longing for each other,

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both lovers feel that time is even slower and longer than it used to be. Here, Li Bai

uses heptasyllabic lines to express their longing and their extended sense of time. So

short a poem, but doubtless, a masterpiece of a grand poet.

Li Bai uses his rhymes to match the flow of the meaning and the shift from one stage

of thoughts and feelings into another. He says in Changgan xing (Changgan Song):

Q y

Qi f ch f ,

zh hu mn qin j.

Lng q zh m li,

ro chung nng qng mi.

Tngj Chnggn li,

ling xio w xin ci.

Shs wi jn f,

xi yn wichng ki.

Dtu xing n b,

qin hun b y hu.

Shw sh zhnmi,

yun tng chn y hu.

Chng cn bo zh xn,

q shng wng fu ti.

Shli jn yun xng,

Qtng Yny du.

Wyu b k ch,

yun shng tinshng i.

Mn qin ch xngj,

yy shng l ti.

Ti shn b nng so,

luy qifng zo.

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Byu hdi hung,

shungfi xiyun co.

Gn c shng qi xn,

zu chu hngyn lo.

Zown xi Snb,

y jing sh bo ji.

Xing yng b do yun,

zhzh Chngfngsh.

Q r

Y qi shn gu li,

ynchn b cng shi.

Ji y Chnggn rn,

sh tu hu fng s.

Wyu nn fng xng,

s jn xi Balng.

Byu xfng q,

xing jn fyng z.

Q li bi r h,

jin sho l bi du.

Xingtn j r do,

qi mng yu fngb.

Zur kungfng d,

chu zh jing tu sh.

Mio mio n w bin,

xngrn zi h ch.

Ho chng fyn cng,

jiq ln zh dng.

Yunyng l p shng,

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ficu jn png zhng.

Z lin shw y,

yns tohu jing.

N zu shngrn f,

chu shu f chu fng.

[(First Piece)

When my hair still covered my forehead,

I plucked flowers and played in front of the gate.

You would come, riding a bamboo horse,

and loiter at the well toying with green plums.

We both lived in Changgan,

two children with nothing to doubt.

At fourteen, I became your wife,

I was too shy to uncover my face.

I used to lower my head facing the dark wall,

a thousand calls from you and not once did I look back.

At fifteen, I started to beam with joy,

and wished to stay together until we become dust and ashes.

I always had the devotion of the pillar embracer,

and climbed the Waiting-for-Husband Hill in vain.

I was sixteen when you travelled far away,

past Qutang gorge and Yanyu rocks.

In May, boats collided with rocks,

and the monkeys shrieked up on the cliffs!

Your footprints, in front of the door,

were covered with green mosses.

The mosses were so deep that I could not sweep them away,

and the leaves were falling in the early autumn gales.

In August, yellow butterflies

flew in pairs over the western garden grass.

Thinking of this breaks my heart,

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I sit in sorrow until my rosy colour turns pale.

Someday, when you sail leaving Sanba region,

write a letter to me beforehand.

It is never too far for me to meet you,

I will go as far as the Long Wind Beach.

(Second Piece)

I remember myself in the inner bower,

not aware of the smoke and the dust of the world.

Since I married a Changgan man,

I went to the beach to observe the wind.

When the south wind blows in May,

I picture you sailing to Baling.

When the west wind arises in August,

I imagine you leaving Yangzi.

You come and go; how sorrowful I am!

How rarely we meet! How often we live apart!

How many days until you arrive in Xiangtan?

I dream of crossing the winds and the waves.

Last night, a storm passed by in fury,

bringing down the trees on the riverbank.

The dark flood was endless,

where are you now, my traveller?

I would ride on a Cloud-floating Horse,

and happily meet you east of the Orchid Isle.

Two mandarin ducks among the green bulrush,

and halcyons embroidered on a screen.

How pitiful I am! A bit older than fifteen,

my colour is pink like a peach flower.

I became a merchants wife,

grieving over the waves and the wind.]

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One cannot fully appreciate such a heartfelt poem without deciphering the connotations of

some words. I will try to illuminate these hidden allusions in this poem, which was written

probably in 726.

The poem starts with the wife recalling her days when she was only fourteen with a

fringe of hair covering her forehead. As children, they were raised together, played together,

and their innocent feelings turned into affection that bound them together in marriage in the

end. The poem cascades in years and seasons as it sketches the girl when she was fourteen,

fifteen, and then sixteen, and illustrates the husbands departure in May and return in August.

Her shyness when she was fourteen dissolves after marriage as she starts to be attached to her

husband, and his company becomes her joy. They vow to stay together forever, to wait for

each other no matter how long they part or how far they are apart. He leaves her to attend to

his business when she is sixteen. She declares that she will wait for him in fidelity just like

Wei Sheng , who lived in the 6th century BC and promised the girl he loved to wait for

her under a bridge in Changan. She did not appear and the river water was rising. Yet, Wei

Sheng kept his promise and he clutched to the bridge pillar, refusing to leave until the river

water flooded the bridge and he eventually drowned. The wife vows to have this same

fidelity and wait for her husbands return. In his absence, she goes to the Waiting-for-

Husband Hilla name given to more than one hill where forlorn wives used to go to wait for

their husbands return. Traditions speak of a forlorn wife who waited for her husband on that

hill for so long that she was turned into a rock that carried the same longing features and

gazing into the direction of her husband (Sun 1982: 172). The wife asks her husband to send

her a letter when he leaves Sanbaeast of Sichuan where merchants used to go for trading

(ibid 174). She promises him to go and wait for him at the Long Wind Beach, which is a

beach in Anhui. It is several hundred miles from Nanjing; yet, the wifes longing to meet her

husband makes her willing to go all that long distance. This description of the wifes longing

could not be so heartfelt and genuine had Li Bai himself not had the same longing for his

family.

The first piece of the poem has fifteen rhymes, the first seven of which describe the

young wifes remembrance of her beautiful memory when she was still a child playing with

her future husband and the early years of their happy marriage. The following six rhymes

describe her loneliness and longing, while the last two rhymes talk about her longed-for-

reunion with her husband in the future (Zhang 1988: 352). This variation in using rhymes

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reflects the changes in the young wifes mood from remembering her happy togetherness

with her husband in the past, which occupies almost half the first part of the poem, to her

current lonesomeness and longing, which takes up almost the second half of that part of the

poem, to her anticipation of seeing her husband again in the future, which is articulated in

only two lines in allusion to the couples longing for and happiness of reunion. Hence, the

rhymes change when the wifes mood changes and when the sense of time changes, too.

Li Bais poetry is rich with these examples that clearly prove that Li Bai does not use

rhythm by default without distinguishing the appropriate rhythm that goes best with the

meaning. Reading the works of a great poet, like Li Bai, urges us not to take his rhythm for

granted without interpreting it in its semantic vein. No doubt, the examples that can be used,

not only in Li Bais poetry but in the poetry of any grand poet, are many and they all support

one idea, and that is: rhythm must have a meaning.

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WORKS CITED

Eliot, T. S., 1957. On Poetry and Poets. London: Faber Paperbacks.

Grammont, Maurice, 1901. Le Vers Franais, Ses Moyens DExpression. Paris: Librairie

Alphonse Picard et Fils.

Luo, Hanchao and Chen, Yulan , 2009. Zhongguo shixue. Diyi bu:

Xingshi lun (Chinese Prosody. Vol. I:

Theory of Form). Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe.

Pound, Ezra, 1991. ABC of Reading. London: Faber and Faber.

Sun Yu, 1982. Li Bai shi xinyi (Li Po-A New Translation). Hong Kong:

The Commercial Press.

Xu Shuren , 1984. Li Bai he tade shige (Li Bi and his poetry).

Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe.

Zhang Xin , 1988. Changgan xing . In Li Bai shige shangxiji

(The poetry of Li Bai selected readings] . Pei Fei ed. Chengdu: Bashu

shushe.

* All translations, unless indicated otherwise, are my own.