Wang Bo’s “Farewell:” An Exemplar of Classical Chinese Poetry and a Lesson for Today

By Adam Sedia

China’s uninterrupted literary tradition of three millennia is truly one of the world’s cultural wonders. Among its long history, the period of the Tang (唐) Dynasty (618-907) is considered one of China’s golden ages, a time of peace, prosperity, and political unity during which the arts flourished. Poetry flourished in particular during that age, and Tang Poetry is still considered “the golden age of Chinese poetry.” The Quan Tangshi (“Complete Tang Poems”), a 1705 anthology of Tang Poetry, contains 48,900 poems by more than 2,200 poets – conveying a sense of the ubiquity of the art at the time.

Two of China’s greatest poets, Li Bai (701-762) and his friend Du Fu (712-770), define the “High Tang” style. Other noted poets of the age include Chen Zi’ang (661-702), who abandoned the florid court style in favor of “authentic” poetry that included political and social commentary; Zhang Xu (658-747), also famous as a calligrapher; Wang Wei (699-759), also famous as a painter and whose poetry…