Li Bai and Landscape Poems in High Tang ——Rereading The Hard Roads Toward Shu

The substance of Li Bai's landscape poems——amongst which the mostrepresentative work was The Hard Roads Toward Shu——is to express the sublime and isdifferent from the beauty-expressing substance of the landscape poems of Wang Wei and Meng Haoran, and the two substances represent the two different artistic styles of landscape poems in High Tang. The Hard Roads Toward Shu is a special variant of the two dominant aesthetic types in High Tang i. e. of the borderland poems and the landscape poems of Wang and Meng. The sublime aesthetic experience it represents and another aesthetic experience of 'ecstasy' show the uncompromising contradiction between the individual and the social context, and the negative aspects of social life and individual life as well.