Li Bai received a good family education when he was a teenager. At the age of ten, he recited poetry books, watched hundreds of schools, wrote poems and learned fencing, and had a wide range of hobbies. He wrote an excellent article when he was fifteen. After the age of 20, I wandered around Sichuan, enjoying the magnificent scenery of Sichuan, getting in touch with social life, broadening my horizons, cultivating the thoughts of loving the motherland, being bold and hearty, and loving freedom, and also planting the roots of the negative thoughts of wandering immortals.
In the 14th year of Kaiyuan (726), 26-year-old Li Bai traveled far away from home and began to roam in Anlu (now Hubei) for a period of 16 years, covering Hunan, Hubei, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Henan, Shanxi and other regions, and covering more than half of China. The poems in this period mostly describe the natural landscape and roaming life, such as Ding Du Shouge, Yellow Crane Tower Farewell to Meng Haoran, Yue revisits the ancient times, and Hearing the flute in a spring night in Los Angeles. , mature style.
In the first year of Tianbao (742), 42-year-old Li Bai was recommended by a friend to be sent to Beijing to worship the Hanlin. At the beginning of being called, Li Bai was very excited and wrote a poem like "Go out with a smile, are we Artemisia people" ("Nanling children don't go to Beijing"), thinking that they would realize their political ambitions, but the reality ruthlessly shattered his fantasy. At that time, Tang Xuanzong was fatuous and decadent, indulged in debauchery and ignored political affairs. The poet's wish of "being wise and willing to help him" ("Dai Shoushan answers Meng Shaofu's biography") failed to come true. As a result, he was excluded, left Chang 'an in disappointment and indignation, and ended his life in the imperial city in less than two years. Although this period was not long, the poet was exposed to the inside story of court life and the corruption of the upper ruling group, and wrote many poems attacking reality, such as Antique, Difficult to Go to Heaven, Fu Liangyin and so on. These poems attacked the powerful and showed the poet's ideology, morality and rebellious spirit.
In the spring of the third year of Tianbao (744), Li Bai left Chang 'an. With disillusioned pain and indignation, he began his second roaming around Liangyuan (Kaifeng), which lasted for eleven years. "Wandering around the world, you can drink poetry and wine" (Liu's "Bachelor of Hanlin in Tang Dynasty"), but he is still very concerned about state affairs and hopes to return to the court one day. In the autumn of Tianbao's third year, he met Du Fu and Gao Shi in Luoyang and Bianzhou respectively, and the three of them traveled together in Liangyuan and Jinan. Since then, a profound friendship has been forged: "Fall drunk and sleep together, and Japan walk hand in hand" (Du Fu's "Seeking Seclusion with Li Twelve"). During this period, poets created the most abundant works, and their representative works included: Dream of Climbing Mount Tianmu, Entering Wine, Popular in the North, Poems in the Garden of Liang, etc. Profound realistic exposure and strong rebellious spirit are the remarkable characteristics of this period's works.
In the 14th year of Tianbao (755), An Shi Rebellion broke out. With the desire to eliminate rebellion and restore national unity and stability, Li Bai joined Li Lin's team in Wang Yong. Unexpectedly, Wang Yong and Su Zong competed for the throne, and Su Zong eliminated Li Lin's team. Li Bai was found guilty and exiled Yelang (now Tongzi County, Guizhou Province). The poet cried silently: "In this life, fortunately, I met an Amnesty halfway and was released. The poem "Chaofa Baidicheng" describes the mood at that time.
In the 2nd year of Shang Dynasty (76 1), 61-year-old Li Bai heard that Li Guangbi led the troops to pursue Shi Chaoyi in autumn and decided to join the army. However, he returned to Jinling due to illness, saying, "Heaven takes the heart of a strong man and says goodbye" ("I heard that millions of Red Army troops were sent to the southeast cowards to apply for cutting, but I still stayed in Jinling for 19 rhymes"), and in the first year of Baoying (770).
Although Li Bai failed to realize his ideal politically, he made great achievements in poetry creation and occupied a lofty position in the history of China literature. Inherited and carried forward the positive romantic poetry tradition since Qu Yuan, and pushed the romantic spirit and creative method to a new peak.
He often uses unrestrained passion to express his ambition of fighting and his ideal of helping the poor and stabilizing the country. With a strong rebellious spirit and arrogant attitude, the poet attacked the society and whipped the powerful. Although Li Bai has no extensive contact with the people of the government, he also sympathizes with the working people. In the Song of Dingdu Lake, I wrote the blood and tears of the boatman. In Song of Autumn, I wrote about the hardships of fishermen and smelters. In his poems such as My Concubine's Misfortune, Long March and Popular in the North, he expressed sympathy for the fate of women. After the Anshi Rebellion, he lamented that "the white bones turned into a mound (one was" covering up "), and what was Shu Ren's crime" ("Giving a good butcher to Chiang Kai-shek"), and expressed that he "applied for a parcel but mourned for seven days" ("Running to the Road of Death") and "sighed four or five times in the middle of the night, often worrying about the big country" ().
He used a lot of poems to praise the magnificence of the motherland's mountains and rivers, and entrusted his patriotism. In the poet's pen, steep Shu Road, strange peaks and rocks, rushing rivers and waterfalls are all magnificent and moving.
Undoubtedly, there are also some negative emotions in Li Bai's poems, such as seeking immortality, visiting Taoism, taking medicine through alchemy, preaching and teaching, and having fun in time, which need to be identified.
Li Bai's poems are freely placed. He wants to fall into the sky, and the sky is underground. It is really illusory. Weird exaggeration, magnificent colors, fairy tales, anecdotes and legends are all integrated into poetry. But his poems are like hibiscus, not fake carvings. It constitutes its elegant and bold, magnificent and free and easy artistic style. He is best at seven-character poems and quatrains. His quatrains are regarded by later generations as a model of quatrains in the Tang Dynasty. Du Fu was deeply impressed by Li Bai, and once spoke highly of his poems: "When the pen falls, the poem becomes a weeping ghost" (Send Twelve White Rhymes).
The Complete Works of Li Taibai has been handed down from generation to generation, with more than 990 poems. Wang Qi's Notes on the Complete Works of Li Taibai in Qing Dynasty and Li Baiji's Collation of Qu Tuiyuan Zhu Jincheng. You can refer to Guo Moruo's Li Bai and Du Fu, Wang Yunxi's Li Bai Study, Yao Yao's Li Bai, and Selected Poems of Li Bai compiled by the Classical Literature Teaching and Research Group of Chinese Department of Fudan University.