Li Bai: a beast or a god?
Two Tang dynasty poets are getting drunk again
LI BAI’s hut. He and DU YU are seated by the fire with an open bottle of plum wine. LI BAI has his head in his hands.
LI BAI: … and then she called me a flea-ridden dog living in a peasant’s hut, and ran down the hill.
DU YU: Have you heard from her since?
LI BAI: No. I believe she has returned to her parents in Jinan.
DU YU: You can hardly be surprised. This place is a mess… empty bottles… mud on the floor… are those the bones from last week’s mutton?
LI buries his face in his hands.
DU: I should be more respectful. You have chosen to live on your own. You do not bow to social conventions. You have to be yourself!
LI: Ah, my friend… he puts his head against Du Yu’s chest and weeps. I fled to this shepherd’s hut…. Unfortunately, the social conventions have followed me here!
DU: It is truly hard to be free. Did not a great philosopher say: to live alone, one must be either a beast or a god?
LI: Yes, Nietzsche…. But did not his friend, Wagner, accuse the great philosopher, living alone on his mountaintop, of being… (he weeps more bitterly) … a wanker!
I am not a beast or a god. And this talk of becoming oneself, creating oneself… hah! He recollects himself and downs his glass. It is for motivational posters and pokerwork souvenirs.
DU: You admit, then, that it has a widespread appeal.
LI: It has become (enunciating carefully) the i-de-o-logy of a canaille of bourgeois bohemians, whom Nietzsche would have despised.
DU: But indeed, when the human race has discarded its childish moral philosophies, what else remains but self-creation?
LI: The idea that we can create ourselves is a serious error. Humans, unlike robin redbreasts and bears, are not asocial animals.
Indeed, you will find that the person you are in the company of others, when you bow to convention, is often a great deal nicer than the person you dream of being, the man who throws off these chains. He refills their glasses. Nicer, wiser. Perhaps even more yourself.
Have you ever walked away from an argument, thinking: “I wish I had said — this or that — to his face”?
DU: Many times. Many more times, to her face. And quite a few times to you.
LI: Oh my friend… I am not good enough for you. He clasps Du Yu’s gown.
DU: Do not. Do not begin weeping again.
LI still clasping: And have you ever done it? Have you ever really let go? Told someone exactly what you thought?
DU: A few times, yes.
LI: And won the battle? He lets go. And afterwards, you felt pretty clever, right?
DU: Hmmm… when I called you a “drunk, misanthropic poetaster who fled to the hills so as to flee from himself, pursuing a pretentious urbanite’s delusion of the simple life…”
LI: “… and whose insufficiently-baked vers libre will lead for sure to reincarnation as a cockroach….”
DU: Do not remind me. No, I did not feel clever. He drinks. I felt like a fool who had talked crap and insulted my friend.
LI: I am sure I deserved it. And you were right about the Prefect’s daughter. She —
DU: No, you are correct. The person I wanted to be… just a fool!
LI: And how often we think terrible things of other people — our relatives, our lovers, the officials whose favour we curry at court. But when we are in their presence, the force of shame makes us behave rather better.
DU: Perhaps if our real self is an idiot, it is good to be an idiot?... No, no. Those thoughts behind the mask are no realer than the others. I want to be strong. To “say exactly what I think”. In short, to show off!
LI: The internal spectator never leaves us. But sometimes, that spectator is the other boys in the classroom, when we were six.
They drink and stare into the fire.
DU: Are we nothing then but a semblance of masks?
They drink and stare into the fire.
LI: I am sure that I am Li Bai. And you… do you.
DU: You have made that joke many times. It is actually offensive.
LI: I’m sorry…
A pause. Li Bai begins to sing.
LI BAI: “Life in the world is but a big dream; I will not spoil it by labour or care….”
DU: It is time to sleep. You have had enough. He half-carries him towards the mattress in the corner of the hut. Do you have water?
LI: I think so. Good night.
DU: Good night!
He puts the guard in front of the fire, then walks out of the hut and down the hillside. It is beginning to rain. The sheep are huddling under the oaks.
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