Li Bai and Horace: interesting coincidences (but nothing more than that)

Although it is not materially impossible that traces of the literature produced in Rome nine centuries earlier could have reached China in the 8th century, this possibility is nothing more than a fantasy. The double distance — time and geography — makes it far too unlikely. This is to say that Li Bai, one of the most remarkable Chinese poets, who lived in the eighth century of our era, could not know anything about Horace, the poet of the circle of Augustus, i.e. a poet of Rome in the first century BC. Sometimes, however, a reading of this Chinese poet shows surprising subject similarities with the work of the old Latin poet: the fleetingness of life, the subsequent appeal to enjoy the time, the celebration of the seasons, the song of the pleasures of life, these are just a few thematic affinities between both poets, and cause, if not some perplexity, at least a certain surprise. This is the approach proposed here, trying to show the universality of literature and its themes, despite the enormous diversity of its authors, located in very different times and geographies (spatial and epochal).