SOURCE: “Introduction,” in The Works of Li Po, the Chinese Poet, E. P. Dutton, 1922, pp. 1-22.

In the following introduction to the first volume of Li Po's work rendered into English, Obata offers details of the poet's life that informed his verse.

I

At the early dawn of medieval Europe China had reached the noontide of her civilization. Indeed, the three hundred years of the Tang dynasty beginning with the seventh century witnessed a most brilliant era of culture and refinement, unsurpassed in all the annals of the Middle Kingdom. And the greatest of all the artistic attainments of this period was in literature, and particularly in poetry. There were no dramatists; no romancers; but only poets—and poets there were galore.

“In this age,” remarks a native critic, “whoever was a man, was a poet.” And this is not satire. The “Anthology of the Tang...