![]() ![]() ![]() Inevitably, one or the other of the two poets would be construed as being “greater” than the other. Yet, as is inevitable when discussions turn to qualitative rankings, the pair as such became an object of contention. Of all the poetic pairs that populate Chinese literary history, it is perhaps Li Bai 李白 (b. 701–d. 762, whose name is also transliterated as Li Po, Li Bo, and occasionally Li Taibai 李太白) and Du Fu 杜甫 (b. 712–d. 770) who form the most compelling one, not least because, from the beginning, theirs was uniquely conceived in evaluative terms in the literary imagination they were, and remain, the Two Greatest Poets of the Tang-or even of China. Until recently, most people educated in the tradition would have no trouble reeling off a number of such pairs, some of them involving social connections, but all of them constructed to highlight either complementary or reinforcing sets of poetic aesthetics. The tradition of pairing poets-long a staple in the Chinese literary historical imagination-is something that has come and, for the most part, gone. ![]()
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