The idea of writing chinese poetry in japan is established already in the early ninth century. The poem, atre, incaptulates practically all you need to know about tongue poetry. It still preserves an awful lot of the rhyme - three out of the four lines all rhyme. And it's also interesting thatwe spoke so much about the soft and strange and shocking language of the bibe. That's kemenski, better known as kamenu or bon vourne melvus. Next week we meet emma harth, a philosopher celebrated as the father of modern education.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss two of China’s greatest poets, Li Bai and Du Fu, who wrote in the 8th century in the Tang Era. Li Bai (701-762AD) is known for personal poems, many of them about drinking wine, and for finding the enjoyment in life. Du Fu (712-770AD), a few years younger, is more of an everyman, writing in the upheaval of the An Lushan Rebellion (755-763AD). Together they have been a central part of Chinese culture for over a millennium, reflecting the balance between the individual and the public life, and one sign of their enduring appeal is that there is rarely agreement on which of them is the greater.
The image above is intended to depict Du Fu.
With
Tim Barrett
Professor Emeritus of East Asian History at SOAS, University of London
Tian Yuan Tan
Shaw Professor of Chinese at the University of Oxford and Professorial Fellow at University College
And
Frances Wood
Former Curator of the Chinese Collections at the British Library
Producer: Simon Tillotson