Li Shangyin

Oh, when shall we be trimming wicks again together in your western window?
When shall I be hearing your voice again all night in the rain?

Li Shangyin (Chinese: 李商隐, c. 813–858), courtesy name Yishan (義山), was a Chinese poet of the late Tang Dynasty.

Quotes

• 君问归期未有期，巴山夜雨涨秋池。
  何当共剪西窗烛，却话巴山夜雨时。
  • You ask when I'm coming: alas, not just yet......
    How the rain filled the pools on that night when we met!
    Ah, when shall we ever snuff candles again,
    And recall the glad hours of that evening of rain?
    • "Souvenirs" (《夜雨寄北》), in Gems of Chinese Literature, trans. Herbert A. Giles
  • Variant translation:
    • You ask me when I am coming. I do not know.
      I dream of your mountains and autumn pools brimming all night with the rain.
      Oh, when shall we be trimming wicks again together in your western window?
      When shall I be hearing your voice again all night in the rain?
      • "A Note on a Rainy Night", in Three Hundred Poems of the Tang Dynasty, trans. Witter Bynner

• 留得枯荷听雨声。
  • Reserve the withered lotus leaf for the visitor to listen to the raindrop.
    • As quoted and translated in Gerald Cipriani (ed.), Chinese Environmental Aesthetics (Routledge, 2015), p. 80
    • Variant: "留得残荷听雨声" ("Leave the withered lotus to hear the patter of rain"), as quoted in Dream of the Red Chamber (c. 1760) by Cao Xueqin, ch. 40; translation by Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang, in A Dream of Red Mansions, Vol. II (Foreign Languages Pr., 1978), p. 1129

• 身無疑鳳雙飛翼, 心有靈犀一點通。
  • We do not have the colourful wings of the phoenix to fly side by side, but our hearts, like the magic horns, are linked to each other.
    • As quoted in A Dictionary of Chinese Popular Sayings and Famous Quotes by Chan Sin-wai (HK: The Commercial Press, 2021), p. 241

• 公之斯文若元气，
  先时已入人肝脾。
  • Literature endures, like the universal spirit,
    And its breath becomes a part of the vitals of all men.
  • "The Han Monument" (《韩碑》), in The Jade Mountain (1929), trans. Witter Bynner, p. viii

Quotes about Li Shangyin

• What Li Shangyin's poems are about I cannot determine. I cannot even explain the literal meaning line by line. Yet I feel they are beautiful, and when I read them, they give me a new kind of pleasure in my mind.
  • Liang Qichao, as quoted in Chloe Garcia Roberts's introduction to Li Shangyin (New York Review of Books, 2018), ISBN 978-1681372259

External links

• Encyclopedic article on Li Shangyin on Wikipedia
• Poems by Li Shang-yin at Poem Hunter