Page:The works of Li Po - Obata.djvu/9

 PREFACE

This is the first attempt ever made to deal with any single Chinese poet exclusively in one book for the purpose of introducing him to the English-speaking world.

Li Po has been the best-known Chinese poet in the Orient for the last one thousand years or more. In America his name has only recently been made familiar to the poetry public through the translation of his poems by eminent contemporary poets. But as the Bibliography at the end of the present volume indicates, Li Po — variously designated as Le Pih, Ly Pé, Li Tai-pé, Li Tai-po, et cet. — has been known more or less to Europe during the past century. A prominent place is accorded the poet in all the French and German anthologies of Chinese poems, which have appeared from time to time. He is included among the Portraits des Célèbres Chinois in Amiot's Mémoires (1776-97), while Pavie's Contes Chinois (1839) has a nouvelle of his life. Excellent studies and translations have been made by two German scholars, Florenz and Bernhardi, in their monographs on the poet.

In the English language, there is Mr. Edkins' paper "On Li Tai-po," which was read before the Peking Oriental Society in 1888 and was published in that Society's Journal in 1890. Mr. Edkins was perhaps the first Englishman to pay special attention to our poet, though his translations are trite and barren. Professor Giles' Chinese Poetry in English Verse and History of