As a model of Chinese genius poet, Li Bai in the story always improvises after drinking, completing perfect masterpieces in one go. This image of talent is not entirely the imagination of future generations.
Li Bai was known as a genius when he first entered the poetry world in his youth. During his lifetime, he was hailed as an "immortal" (immortal descended from the earth) by the senior poet He Zhizhang. His creations were even described by Du Fu as "a hundred poems about drinking wine", "The pen falls in the storm, and the poem turns into weeping ghosts and gods." This is no different from the public image of aliens who speak poems and sentences are passed down to the world.
Such a surge of creativity is obviously more in line with the definition of "genius" than Du Fu's diligent thinking and chanting - Du Fu himself probably would not object to this. While praising Li Bai as a talented poet, he often He describes himself as a hard-working player who "revises new poems and sings them again."
The creative process described by other poets is similar to that of Du Fu. For example, Bai Juyi said, "New poems are written every day, and old sentences are changed from time to time." ", which is very different from Li Bai's "Just spray it from the chest and it's done".
Like most great writers, although Li Bai was widely praised during his lifetime, his praise gradually increased after his death. Extreme comments such as "Absolute" and "Fairy Brush".
Especially when mentioned together with Du Fu, Li Bai's image becomes more vivid. Ouyang Xiu once said: "Li Bai's talent is self-disciplined. He has to be a newcomer." Others also emphasized the elegance of Li's poems and the melancholy of Du's poems, making Li Du almost the representative of two opposite categories of poets - simple and elegant. In other words, "poetry" belongs to the human world, while "poetry" can only be seen in heaven.
In addition, in the article "Analysis of the Divergent Status of Li Bai's Poetry Texts", Mr. Chen Shangjun compared and collated various rare copies of Li Bai's collected works and ancient manuscripts of Tang Dynasty selections, eliminating mistakes in later generations' transmission and attachments. Relying on unexpected factors such as Li Bai's poems, it was finally proved that there was a difference between the first draft and the final draft of Li Bai's poems. Many poems were revised repeatedly by Li Bai himself.