‘Do not allow an empty goblet to face the moon’: lyrical materialities in the drinking poems of Li Bai 李白(701–762) and Du Fu 杜甫 (712–770)

Abstract

This essay explores poems by the Tang poets Li Bai and Du Fu to show how they anticipate insights of new materialism as the natural product of a classical Chinese conception of the universe. It discusses traditional Chinese metaphysics to argue that the idea of the ‘the ten thousand things’ (萬物 wanwu) infuses poetic scenes of drinking with a phenomenological encounter with the natural world. Lyric scenes of transcendence or immortality (understood from a Daoist perspective as not beyond nature like a soul but imbedded within it) suggest that keeping oneself as open as possible to mutually transformative exchanges is the best way for human beings to nourish vitality and dynamism. The imbibing of wine is often the conduit for such reflections. The materiality of the Chinese lyric and the non-human actants it bodies forth reinforce the interconnectedness and interdependence between the human subject and the more-than-human world.