The “Hard Roads” of Chinese Poet Li Bai are Our Roads Too

It is my understanding that the idiomatic and linguistic beauty of Chinese poetry cannot be conveyed through translation, and I am sure this is true. Nevertheless, something of the poet’s meaning and imagery can be grasped. In the case of the great Tang Dynasty era poet Li Bai (701-762), whatever way we can perceive his poetic intuition is worthwhile. Li Bai still resonates deeply with the souls of the Chinese people today, after 1300 years. But in the segment cited below, I was struck not only by the classical style of China’s golden age and China’s enduring heritage, but also by the basic humanity expressed in these words about the struggle of a journey. How hard it is to persevere when the path grows steeper, darker, exhausting: “harder than scaling the blue sky.”

Human persons of every era and place and culture: we are all brothers and sisters.

Hard Roads in Shu (excerpt), by Li Bai

The Mountain of Green Clay is formed of many circles - 

Each hundred steps, we have to turn nine turns among its mound -

Panting, we brush Orion and pass the Well Star, 

Then, holding our chests with our hands

and sinking to the ground with a groan,

We wonder if this westward trail will never have an end.

The formidable path ahead grows darker, darker still, 

With nothing heard but the call of birds hemmed in by the ancient forest, 

Male birds smoothly wheeling, following the females; 

And there come to us the melancholy voices of the cuckoos 

Out on the empty mountain, under the lonely moon.

Such traveling is harder than scaling the blue sky.

Even to hear of it turns the cheek pale,

With the highest crag barely a foot below heaven.