Sino-Hellenic Network seminar

Tuesday 17 June, 11am - 12.30pm BST (Room 1.11, Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge. Refreshments at 10.30am). Sign up for Zoom here

Beth Harper (The University of Hong Kong): Rocking the Lyric East and West: Mountains, Cliffs and Poetic Inspiration in Horace (65-8 BCE) and Li Bai 李白 (701-762)

Chair: Emily Gowers (University of Cambridge)

Abstract: Veronica della Dora writes of mountains: ‘Their hard stone transcends human temporariness; it is an absolute mode of being.’ Mountains are also paradoxical beings: hanging halfway between the human, humble world of the earth (humus)and the non-human world of the heavens, they partake of the nature of both. Their lithic beauty is rooted in earth and yet unearthly. Here, I read two poets whose lyrics inscribe the phenomenological encounter of human and aura-filled stone, and discuss the ramifications for the crafting of poetic authority. Though Horace and Li Bai enshrine deep-rooted cultural thinking in a specific language, place, and time, they share a remarkable preoccupation with the special status of the lyric poet who enjoys a quasi-divine relationship with the nonhuman environment. Dangerous, unyielding, rugged cliffs and mountains are where mere mortals would fear to tread, and yet they appear in their lyrics as numinous entities in an almost symbiotic relationship with the poet. How do Horace and Li Bai’s respective philosophical inheritances from the long traditions of Greco-Roman, Confucian, Daoist and Buddhist traditions of engaging with mountains contribute to the lithic eco-materialisms we find in their work? What is it to really see a mountain? How does this ‘absolute mode of being’ contribute to each poet’s self-representation and claims to authority and specialness?