A short answer in one sentence: A great romantic poet of the Tang Dynasty. He had three unique poems in his life: wine, wine and sword. He was known as the "Immortal of Poetry" in later generations and was the first person in the history of quatrains.
Extended introduction:
1. Poetry:
Li Bai's Yuefu, song lines and quatrains are the highest. The lines of his songs completely break all the inherent patterns of poetry creation. They are empty and have many styles of writing, reaching a magical realm of unpredictable and swaying at will. Li Bai's quatrains are natural, lively, elegant and unrestrained, and can express endless emotions in concise and clear language. Among the poets of the prosperous Tang Dynasty, Wang Wei and Meng Haoran were good at the Five Jue, and Wang Changling and other Qi Jue wrote very well. Li Bai was the only one who was good at both the Five Jue and the Seven Jue and reached the same extreme level.
Li Bai's poems are majestic and elegant, and his artistic achievements are extremely high. He eulogized the mountains, rivers and beautiful natural scenery of the motherland, with a majestic and unrestrained style, handsome and fresh, full of romantic spirit, and achieved the perfect unity of content and art. He was called the "Exiled Immortal" by He Zhizhang, and most of his poems mainly described landscapes and expressed inner emotions. Li Bai's poems have the artistic charm of "the pen falls in the storm, and the poem becomes weeping ghosts and gods", which is also the most distinctive artistic feature of his poems. Li Bai's poems are rich in self-expression and have a strong subjective lyrical color, and his emotional expression has an overwhelming momentum. He and Du Fu are both called "Big Li Du" (Li Shangyin and Du Mu are called "Little Li Du").
Li Bai's poems often use imagination, exaggeration, metaphor, personification and other techniques to create magical, magnificent and moving artistic conceptions. This is why Li Bai's romantic poems give people a heroic, unrestrained, elegant and fairy-like feeling. Here's why.
Li Bai's poems have had a profound impact on future generations. Famous poets such as Han Yu, Meng Jiao, and Li He in the mid-Tang Dynasty, Su Shi, Lu You, and Xin Qiji in the Song Dynasty, and Gao Qi, Yang Shen, and Gong Zizhen in the Ming and Qing Dynasties were all greatly influenced by Li Bai's poetry.
2. Ci:
Since the Five Dynasties "Hua Jian Ji", all the collections and collections of Tang and Song poems will not forget Li Bai in their specific operations, at least as much as Li Bai. Mention the previous sentence in the preface and postscript. As the first great lyricist in the history of literature, although he only has a few lyrics whose copyright is often doubted, no one has ever expressed any dissatisfaction or criticism against him. If the best poet in the world is selected, Li Bai will undoubtedly be elected as the "King of Ci" by unanimous vote.
3. Sword
Li Bai is not only brilliant in literary talent, but also very skilled in swordsmanship. He is "fifteen good at swordsmanship" and "has mastered swordsmanship by himself". His attainments are extraordinary. Li Bai's poetry, Pei's swordsmanship, and Zhang Xu's cursive calligraphy are collectively known as the three wonders of the Tang Dynasty. Although Li Bai's swordsmanship is not among the "Three Wonders", his swordsmanship is only lower than Pei Li, ranking second in the Tang Dynasty.
According to statistics, the word "Jian" appears 107 times in Li Bai's poems in "Complete Poems of the Tang Dynasty", excluding "Jiange" as a place name 3 times, "Jianbi" once, and the weapon "Jian" "There are still 103 times. "铓", which belongs to the sword, appears once, "Wu Gou" once, "Wu Hong" once, "Zhanlu" once, "ganjiang" once, "Moye" once, and "Qingping" twice , "Autumn Lotus" twice, "Frost Snow" twice, "Dagger" three times, and "Longquan" four times. In total, the word "sword" appears *** 118 times (when counting, "Wu Gou Shuang Xue Ming", "Kong Yu Zhan Lu Sword", "Sword Flower Autumn Lotus Light Comes Out of the Box", "Clumsy Wife Mo Xie Sword", " "My Qingping Sword" is counted once each), distributed in 106 poems, accounting for about 10% of the total number of poems.
4. Since Li Bai was a boy, he often went to Daitian Mountain to find Taoist priests from Taoist temples to discuss the Taoist scriptures. Later, he lived in seclusion in Minshan Mountain with a hermit named Dong Yanzi, and studied with great concentration. They raised many exotic birds and became animal breeders in the mountains and forests where they lived. These beautiful and docile birds, because they are used to being raised, fly here regularly to beg for food. They seem to understand people's language. With a call, they fly down from all directions and fall in front of the steps. They can even peck at grains from people's hands. Grain, not afraid at all. This incident was rumored as an anecdote, and eventually the governor of Mianzhou went to the mountains to watch the birds eating. Seeing that they could command the movements of birds, the governor thought that they had Tao skills, so he wanted to recommend them to take the Tao exam. However, both of them politely refused. Zhao Rui, a famous political strategist at that time, was also Li Bai's teacher. In the fourth year of Kaiyuan (716), he wrote ten volumes of "The Long and Short Classics". Li Bai was only fifteen years old at that time. Zhao Rui's strategist-style work studied the similarities and differences of the Six Classics, analyzed the world situation, and emphasized the rise and fall of chaos, which aroused Li Bai's great interest. In the future, he was determined to make great achievements and loved to talk about the ways of kings and dominators. It was also influenced by this book.
5. Politics
In the prosperous Tang Dynasty, the country was strong and many scholars were eager to make contributions. Li Bai regarded himself as an unparalleled talent and promised to "exercise his wisdom and be willing to serve as an assistant to make the whole region settled and Hai County unified". He devoted his life to the pursuit of "Talking about Smiling An Liyuan" and "Li Yuan". The ideal of finally settling the country down. He compares himself with the big roc, the celestial horse, and the majestic sword: "The big roc rises with the wind in one day and soars ninety thousand miles. If the wind stops and comes down, it can still win the water." ("Li Yong"). He hoped to be like Jiang Shang in assisting Mingjun and like Zhuge Liang in reviving the Han Dynasty. "Yin of Liang Fu", "Reading the Biography of Zhuge Wuhou", "Song of King Yong's Eastern Patrol", and "The Journey Is Difficult" (Part 2) all reflect his thoughts of this kind.
He felt that with his talents, he could "be on equal terms with the princes when going out, and overlook the nest when escaping" ("Preface to "Send Yan Ziyuan Yan Yinxian City Mountain"), for those who rely on family status He showed strong contempt for the powerful and powerful people who enjoyed high positions and generous salaries, showing an arrogant and unyielding character. He despised the feudal hierarchy, was unwilling to flatter others, and disdained to live up to the customs. The darkness of reality disillusioned him, and the shackles of the feudal ethical hierarchy suffocated him. He longed for the freedom and liberation of his personality, so he adopted a wild and uninhibited attitude towards life to break free from the shackles and strive for freedom. His expression may include drinking and singing wildly, searching for immortals and learning Taoism. However, wine can neither relieve his sorrow, and immortals are even more illusory, so he "enjoys traveling to famous mountains all his life" ("The Ballad of Mount Lu"), taking the beautiful nature as the sustenance of his ideals. , the embodiment of freedom to sing. Emei, Huashan, Lushan, Taishan, Huangshan, etc. in his works are majestic and majestic, absorbing the wind and clouds, and converging with rivers; the rushing Yellow River and the surging Yangtze River in his works cleanse and sweep away everything, showing the poet's unruly and unruly spirit. Character and strong desire to break through bonds.
This is Li Bai's angry struggle against society and an important manifestation of his rebellious spirit. He opposed Xuanzong's ambition to achieve great results, go to war and expose the generals who were not his, causing the people and soldiers to die in vain. Due to Xuanzong's arrogance, the power of the eunuchs was extremely popular. Through the analysis of the political agenda and the on-the-spot observation in Youyan, Li Bai used the sensitivity of a poet to understand You Zhuwei, among the poets at that time, he and Du Fu were the first to reveal the coming disaster. The "Anshi Rebellion" broke out, and his patriotic enthusiasm was sublimated, and he got rid of the contradiction of hiding the source. His rebellious character and rebellious spirit have profound patriotic connotations and are full of social significance and characteristics of the times. Chapters 3, 15, 24, and 39 of "Ancient Style" all provide profound exposure and powerful criticism of social reality.
He has both a noble and arrogant side and a vulgar and humble side. His ideals and freedom can only be found in mountains, forests, fairyland, and drunken countryside. Poems such as "Yin on the River" and "Song of Xiangyang" reveal the ideas of life being like a dream, carpe diem, uniting all things, escaping from reality, etc. This is also representative among the upright and aloof literati in feudal society.