“His poetry often displays an immense wilderness, uniquely his own…Genius always revises the status quo.”
—Ha Jin
On January 23, KPFA presented an event at The Hillside Club in Berkeley. That event was a talk by the Chinese-American novelist, poet, and National Book Award winner, Ha Jin, who had recently published The Banished Immortal: A Life of Li Bai (Li Po). The event was hosted by Jack Foley. Today’s show is the second half of a presentation of excerpts from that event; the recording was done by Jane Heaven.
Ha Jin left his native China in 1985 to attend Brandeis University. The June 4th, 1989 incident at Tiananmen Square influenced his decision to remain in the United States and to write in English. He is the author of eight novels, four story collections, three volumes of poetry, and a book of essays—all in English. He has received the National Book Award, two PEN/Faulkner Awards, the PEN/Hemingway Foundation Award, the Asian American Literary Award, and the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. In 2014 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives in the Boston area and is a professor at the creative writing program at Boston University.
This is from The Banished Immortal: A Life of Li Bai (Li Po):
One day [Li Bai] and his pageboy, Dansha, arrived at Mount Emei, which had picturesque and breathtaking views. Bai was enchanted by the tranquil scenery, sensing that this must be a sacred place inhabited by xian (immortals). Deep in the mountain was a Buddhist temple called White Water (modern Wannian Temple). Bai immediately took to the peaceful surroundings—deer appeared then disappeared in the woods, monkeys howled here and there, birdcalls rose and fell, and hunters roamed with dogs in tow. Then from the temple came music that sounded like a stream falling on rocks. The wind mingled with the notes, rustling through the pinewoods, but Bai was unsure if it was the music or the wind that was stirring the branches. Perhaps both. He went over to the temple, where under an ancient cypress a monk sat, playing a lute. The monk stopped to greet Bai and introduced himself as
Guang Jun, nicknamed Monk Jun. Bai sat down and started to converse with the man. The more they chatted, the more Bai took a liking to him.
Li Bai decided to stay at White Water Temple. For a period of months, he would read books and listen to Monk Jun play his instrument every day. Life went on peacefully, and sometimes, between different pieces of music, Jun would talk to him about Buddhism, which Bai, instead of objecting as he had in the past, now found fascinating and enlightening. According to legend, which is probably inspired by Li Bai’s poem on Guang Jun, one night when the two of them sat on a pond, Bai asked Monk Jun, “Does the music you play on the lute also contain the sound of your preaching?” The monk replied, “Buddha’s words are everywhere, in every sound of the universe.” Bai was about to dismiss this as a stock answer, but then, as if on cue, frogs in the water burst out croaking. Monk Jun threw back his head and laughed, and Bai was amazed.
He stayed at the temple for three or four months, and then resumed his journey toward Chengdu. The time he spent with Monk Jun left him with fond memories. More than three decades later, when Li Bai heard that Guang Jun had passed away, he recalled the holy man and composed this poem in memory of him:
The monk in Shu holds his lute,
Sitting below the peak of Emei Mountain.
For me, he plucks away while I hear
The wind shaking the pines in the valley.
My soul is again cleansed afresh
As the lingering sound is still touching
The bell glazed with autumn frost.
I haven’t noticed the green mountain
Cloaked in the sunset as the clouds
Turn darker than a moment ago.
…
In Chinese poetry, Li Bai was the first to use the image of the moon abundantly, celebrating its loftiness, purity, and constancy. He imaged the moon as a serene landscape with sublime dwellings for xian, or immortals, who are often surrounded by divine fauna and flora and their personal pets. The beliefs of the ancient Chinese did not separate divinity from humanity, and their imagined heavenly space resembled the human world, with similar (but more fantastic) landscapes and architecture and creatures. If cultivated enough, any human being could rise to the order of divinity, becoming a xian—many temples in China worshiped these kind of local deities. Heaven was inhabited by these beings, who were somewhat like superhumans, powerful and carefree and immortal.
PART TWO