Bai Juyi
What the world keeps is not what you worked hardest on
He knew it in his lifetime and did not reorder his list
'Letter to Yuan Zhen', written in 815 while demoted to Jiangzhou
The work you laboured over goes unread and the offhand piece travels. What to do once you know that.
What actually happened?
In 815 Bai Juyi was demoted and sent to Jiangzhou. That year he wrote a long letter to his friend Yuan Zhen, sorting his own poems into four kinds. The ones he ranked highest were the satirical poems, written about ordinary people's hardship. The ones readers actually loved were his long narrative poem and his occasional verse. What the age values, he wrote, is what I rank low. Then he gave the reason: the satires are urgent in feeling and plain in language, and plainness is not what people warm to.
He knew it at the time, not in hindsight
Usually this only becomes visible decades later. He had it written down in his thirties: what they love and what I rate are not the same set. He even diagnosed why - that kind of poem speaks bluntly and runs hot, which is unpleasant.
The proposal you were proudest of goes unmentioned while a diagram you knocked out gets forwarded everywhere.
Knowing it, he still did not reorder the list
The harder part is what comes next. He neither stopped writing satires to suit his readers nor spent his life proving they were better. He simply kept them first in his own ranking. The order of the takings and the order in your head can differ.
If you still rate the thing nobody applauded, do not strike it off your own list because nobody applauded.
Aim wide, act narrow
In the same letter he sets out his own resolution: the ambition is to serve everyone, the practice is to keep himself in order. That is not retreat. It separates two sizes, so falling short of the ambition stops counting as abandoning it.
You cannot fix the whole industry, but you can make your own corner of it into something others can copy.
The part they kept is also yours
He rated the long narrative poem low, but he wrote it. What the world picked out came off the same bench as everything else; it simply is not top of his own list. Granting that, you need not disown the thing that did land.
The work people remember may not be your favourite, and it is still yours. Both can hold at once.
He wrote it from the lowest point he reached
The letter dates from the year of his disgrace, not from a comfortable retrospective. When least recognised, people tend either to write themselves off or to write the world off. He did neither. He totted up the account and went on writing.
The judgement you record right after being turned down is often worth more than the one you record on a good day.
How do I use it today?
Where you are: the work you laboured over goes unwanted while something you tossed off is passed around.
Ask first: is the ranking in my head still mine, or has the reception quietly rewritten it - because those two lists are allowed to differ.
Where it goes wrong: using it to prove that whatever gets applause is shallow. He never says the public's taste is wrong. He says there are two lists, and that he knows which one is his.
Lines to keep
What the age values is what I rank low.
The order of the takings need not be the order in your head.
He wrote it in the year he was demoted, not in a good one.
Same situation, other people are asking
I've been saying it for years and nobody listens.All these years of not making it — did I write any of it down?I planted it years ago and nothing has come up.I've been at this for years and it has never worked.It still hasn't worked · all 20 questions →If this one named what you are going through,
send it to someone who needs it, or keep it somewhere you will find it again.