Li Shangyin (813–858), one of the most respected, mysterious, ambiguous and provocative of Chinese poets, lived during the late Tang period, when the glorious Tang dynasty was beginning to decline. It was a time of social riots, political division and painful general insecurity. Li Shangyin is famous as a highly original and committed poet who developed a unique style full of vague allusions and unusual images derived from the literary past (the traditional canon, myths and legends) as well as from nature and personal experience. The second important feature of his poetry is a mysteriousness which finally leads to ambiguity. Ambiguity plays an essential role in most of his renowned poems, and he uses it to superbly connect present and past, reality and fantasy, and history and mythology. Thus, ambiguity and obscurity, respectively, often engender different interpretations among Chinese critics. These interpretations reflect the poems’ imaginative qualities, hypotheses and contradictions. Since each interpretive direction emphasizes but a single aspect of the poet’s character, it is more fitting to understand his ambiguous poems in symbolic terms. Such understanding entails that the meaning of the poem is not limited to one interpretation; rather, the poem’s poetic landscape opens itself up to various interpretations.Li Shangyin is actually most popular for his melancholic love poetry that reveals his ambiguous attitude to love. In this poetry, love is shrouded in a secret message. On the one hand, we can sense his moral disapproval of a secret but hopeless love; on the other, we can sense his passion. This leads to a paradox: the pleasing temptations of an illicit romance also exact a high price. In these love poems Li investigates various aspects of the worlds of passion which stoke in him feelings of rapture, satisfaction, joy and hope as well as feelings of doubt, frustration, despair and even thoughts of death.
Li Shangyin and the Art of Poetic Ambiguity