Non-fiction Review: The Banished Immortal by Ha Jin

One of the tightest held secrets here at Speculiction is our deep, deep love of Chinese poetry. There it is, it's out in the open now. But it's a love that has not been rekindled in some time. Years were once consumed devouring every compendium, anthology, collection, and biography of Chinese poets and poetry—not as easy as one might think given 99% of the material is written in Chinese. Every new book we discovered was cherished (and sits on hallowed shelves to this day). But it's been a while. Perhaps looking to rekindle some of that passion, we stumbled across Ha Jin's 2019 biography of one of the Chinese great The Banished Immortal: A Life of Li Bai. Is the flame burning strong again?

The Banished Immortal follows the tried and true template of many a biography: chronological order, birth to death. Given Li was born in the 8th century, a time of patchy recorded history, Ha Jin acknowledges he is working with an incomplete picture. He also acknowledges a debt to the biographers who came before him in filling that window of time. What he does not acknowledge, however, is what new information is being brought to the table—what have the years of Li Bai research brought to life since the other Li Bai texts were published?

And the title is also indicative—the use of the indefinite as opposed to the definite article. In the early pages of the biography, Ha Jin notes Li Bai is three people: the actual, the self-created, the historical. The indefinite 'a' would be wholly appropriate had Ha Jin chose and stuck with one of those, but he fluctuates back and forth between the first two, arriving at a fourth identity: legend—”the” banished immortal.

As is becoming clear, I am critical of the biography. I appreciate there is much of Li Bai's life that was never recorded, and therefore unavailable to any biographer, regardless Ha Jin or someone else. That being said, there are rose-tinted glasses palpable throughout the biography. Ha Jin prostrates himself at the altar of Li Bai, showering the poet with platitudes and complimenting the poet every step of his life's journey. It gets sappy at times—the praise for the man, the myth, the legend Li Bai. There is very little criticism or negative connotations—an oversight considering Li Bai woke up and put his shoes on like every other person.

To say something positive about the biography, Ha Jin's diction is satisfyingly precise and pace is perfect. He moves through the life of Li Bai at a steady rhythm and uses effective language in describing. And—what is important for a lot of would be readers—he compliments the known events of Li's life with many poetry samples. After all, why read a biography of one of the world's greatest poets without reading the poetry? And lastly, Li Bai lived an interesting life. A romantic with ambition, he traveled far and wide and rubbed shoulders with giants. The book did push me to look at those hallowed shelves...

In the end, The Banished Immortal is a routine biography that will give the reader with little prior knowledge of Li Bai a framework of the poet's life and a few dozen samples of poetry. Heavily romanticized, Ha Jin does little to present Li Bai as a gray character. The author really buys in to the idea of Li Bai as a Chinese demi-god. The biography is filled with lavish praise, flowery obeisances, yet little criticism and few negative observations. That being said, there are no other Li Bai biographies available in English. We wait for the more objective one to be written—if possible. Justice was only partially done.