Su Shi Writes the Red Cliff Odes in Exile

1082

Banished to Huangzhou after the Crow Terrace trial, Su Shi found in poverty what prosperity had never given him: the freedom to write without audience. His two prose-poems on the Red Cliff - meditations on history, impermanence, and the consolations of nature - became two of the most celebrated works in Chinese literature. At the cliff where ancient kingdoms had clashed, Su Shi made peace with his own smallness against the sweep of time.