Li Bai’s apocryphal death story shows admirers invented the ending they wished for him

Evidence

There is a legend about Li Bai’s death. It is probably not true, but it is the kind of death his admirers wished for him. They say that one night, drunk and happy in a boat on a river, Li Bai saw the moon reflected in the water — the moon he had loved and written about all his life. He reached out from the boat to embrace the moon’s reflection, fell into the water, and drowned — and was carried up to heaven on the back of a whale, or a dolphin, to live among the immortals forever. — , A Year of World Stories, 7867

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the larger theme in this book of how a culture’s death-legend of a poet mirrors the imagined spirit of their work — compare the author’s note in the title chapters on the legend functioning as a literary wish.