Li He

Template:Short description Template:Good article Template:Family name hatnote Template:Main otherTemplate:Wikidata image Li He (Template:Circa – Template:Circa) was a Chinese poet of the mid-Tang dynasty. His courtesy name was Changji, and he is also known as Guicai and Shigui.

He was prevented from taking the imperial examination due to a naming taboo. He died very young, and was noted for his sickly appearance.

He was a diligent poet, going out on journeys during the day and, when a line of poetry came to him, jotting it down, and completing the poems when he arrived home in the evening. His poems famously explored ghostly, supernatural and fantastic themes.

His popularity and place in the Chinese literary canon has fluctuated throughout the centuries. His idiosyncratic style of poetry was frequently imitated in China until the Qing dynasty. During this era, the popularity of his poetry suffered from a change in literary tastes, with his works notably being excluded from the influential Three Hundred Tang Poems, but there was a revival of interest in him in the twentieth century. He was among the Tang poets most admired by Mao Zedong.

Sources

Chapter 137 of the Old Book of TangTemplate:EfnTemplate:Sfnm and chapter 203 of the New Book of TangTemplate:Efn each give a brief outline of the biography of Li He.Template:Sfnm

Li Shangyin, a poet of the following generation, also wrote a Short Biography of Li He.Template:Sfnm Du Mu, in 831, wrote a preface to Li's collected poems (Template:Zh), which is more removed than the affectionate account written by Li Shangyin,Template:Sfnm but provides very little biographical information and is more focused on Li's appeal as a poet.Template:Sfnm Both the official histories are heavily dependent on these earlier records, particularly on Li Shangyin's account.Template:Sfnm

Names

His courtesy name was Changji,Template:Sfnm and he is also known by a combination of his surname and courtesy name, Li Changji.Template:Sfnm

He was also known as Guicai (, "devilish talent") by contrast of his morbid poetic styleTemplate:Efn to Li Bai's Tiancai ( "heavenly talent") and Bai Juyi's Rencai (人才 "humanistic talent").Template:Sfnm This title was given him by the Song scholar Template:Ill in his work Template:Ill.Template:Sfnm

He was also dubbed the "Poetry Devil" (),Template:Sfnm while Li Bai was called the "Poetry Immortal" () and Du Fu the "Poetry Sage" ().Template:Sfnm

Biography

Background and early life

His family were of distant royal descent (from the Li family who were the ruling dynastic family of the Tang dynasty),Template:Sfnm but his branch's fortunes had declined early on, and by Li He's time they were of low rank.Template:Sfnm Both the Tang state histories refer to him as a "descendant of Zheng Wang (鄭王)", but there is dispute as to the identity of Zheng Wang.Template:Sfnm The theory with more support among scholars is that it refers to Zheng Xiao Wang Liang (zh), an uncle of Li Yuan, the first Tang emperor;Template:Sfnm another theory is that it refers to the thirteenth son of Li Yuan, Zheng Wang Yuan Yi (zh).Template:Sfnm

He was born in 790 or 791.Template:Efn It seems likely that he was born in the year of the Horse, as some twenty-three of his surviving poems use the horse as a symbol for the poet.Template:Sfnm A native of Fuchang County (west of modern-day Yiyang County, Henan Province),Template:SfnmTemplate:Efn he started composing poetry at the age of seven, and by around 15 he was being compared to the yuefu master Li Yi.Template:Sfnm

Political career

When Li was 20, he attempted to take the Imperial Examination, but was forbidden from doing so because of a naming taboo: the first character (, jin) of his father's given name (, Jinsu) was homophonous with the first character () of Jinshi (), the name of the degree that would have been conferred on him had he passed.Template:Sfnm Ueki et al. (1999) speculate that this was a pretext devised by rivals, who were jealous of his poetic skill, to prevent him from sitting the examination.Template:Sfnm

Han Yu, who admired his poetry, wrote Hui Bian () to encourage him to take the exam, but Li was ultimately unsuccessful.Template:Sfnm He served only three years, in the low-ranking office of Fenglilang ()Template:Sfnm before returning to his hometown.Template:Sfnm

Sickness and death

He is described as having a very sickly appearance: he was supposedly very thin, had a unibrow, and let his fingernails grow long.Template:Sfnm Li He died a low-ranking and poor official in 816 or 817,Template:Efn at the age of 26 or 27.Template:SfnmTemplate:Efn The Short Biography of Li He reports that at the hour of his death he was visited by a figure in scarlet who told him that Shangdi had summoned him to heaven to write poetry.Template:Sfnm

Poetry

File:Collected Songs and Verses of Li He WDL11389.jpg

Collected Songs and Verses of Li He

In literary history, Li is generally considered a poet of the so-called Middle Tang period, which spanned the late-eighth and early-ninth centuries.Template:Sfnm Among his poetic influences were his older contemporary Meng Jiao and the aforementioned Han Yu.Template:Sfnm Other sources that have been identified as influencing Li's poetry were the shamanistic elements of the Chu Ci and the idiosyncratic poetry of Li Bai.Template:Sfnm

About 240Template:Efn of his poems survive.Template:Sfnm The New Book of Tang reports that few of his poems survived because of their strangeness and because of Li's early death.Template:Sfnm An anecdote in the Taiping Guangji records that a cousin of Li's was asked to compile a collection of his poems, but because he did not like Li personally he eventually threw what had been collected in the privy.Template:Sfnm

There are two extant anthologies of his poems: the Collected Songs and Verses of Li He (Template:Zh) and the Wai Ji (Template:Zh).Template:Sfnm

The Short Biography of Li He describes him as a diligent poet, who carried an old brocade bag around with him, and when a line of poetry came to him he would jot it down and put it in this bag.Template:Sfnm After getting home, he would arrange these lines into a poem.Template:Sfnm

His poetry is unique, filled with fantastic and unusual imagery, which is where he gets his nickname "Guicai" (see above).Template:Sfnm Virtually none of his surviving poems are in regulated verse form,Template:Sfnm and his poems make frequent use of inauspicious words such as "aging" (Template:Zh) and "death" (Template:Zh).Template:Sfnm In poems like "Tianshang yao" and "Meng tian", he wrote evocatively of the worlds of gods and Buddhas.Template:Sfnm

夢天 Traditional	Mèng Tiān Pinyin	"Sky Dream" English translationTemplate:Sfnm
老兔寒蟾泣天色， 雲樓半開壁斜白。 玉輪軋露濕團光， 鸞佩相逢桂香陌。 黃塵清水三山下， 更變千年如走馬。 遙望齊州九點煙， 一泓海水杯中瀉。	lǎo tù hán chán qì tiān sè, yún lóu bàn kāi bì xié bái. yù lún yà lù shī tuán guāng, luán pèi xiāng féng guì xiāng mò. huáng chén qīng shuǐ sān shān xià, gēng biàn qiān nián rú zǒu mǎ. yáo wàng qí zhōu jiǔ diǎn yān, yī hóng hǎi shuǐ bēi zhōng xiè.	A moon's old rabbit and cold toad weeping colors of sky, lucent walls slant across through half-open cloud towers. A jade-pure wheel squeezes dew into bulbs of wet light. Phoenix waist jewels meet on cinnamon-scented paths. Transformations of a thousand years gallop by like horses, yellow dust soon seawater below changeless island peaks, and all China seen so far off: it's just nine wisps of mist, and the ocean's vast clarity a mere cup of spilled water.

He also gave eerie descriptions of the world of ghosts in his poems "Qiu lai" and "Shen xian qu".Template:Sfnm The spiritual symbolism Li employed in the latter poem has been called "nearly impenetrable".Template:Sfnm

"Shen xian qu" was the name of a popular folk song going back at least as far as the Six Dynasties period, and Li's poem borrows the name of this song.Template:Sfnm The song originated in the Nanjing area, as a ritual song meant to be played at religious ceremonies to invite the favour of the gods.Template:Sfnm Li's poem describes the supernatural world but this is not the case with the original folk song.Template:Sfnm

He frequently combined colour and feeling imagery in his poetry, as can be seen in his poems "Tianshang yao" (see above) and "Qin wang yin jiu".Template:Sfnm

秦王飲酒 Traditional	Qín Wáng Yǐn Jiǔ Pinyin	"The King of Qin Drinks Wine" English translationTemplate:Efn
秦王騎虎遊八極， 劍光照空天自碧。 羲和敲日玻璃聲， 劫灰飛盡古今平。 龍頭瀉酒邀酒星， 金槽琵琶夜棖棖。 洞庭雨腳來吹笙， 酒酣喝月使倒行。 銀雲櫛櫛瑤殿明， 宮門掌事報一更。 花樓玉鳳聲嬌獰， 海綃紅文香淺清， 黃娥Template:Efn跌舞千年觥。 仙人燭樹蠟煙輕， 青琴Template:Efn醉眼淚泓泓。	qín wáng qí hǔ yóu bā jí, jiàn guāng zhào kōng tiān zì bì. xī hé qiāo rì bō lí shēng, jié huī fēi jìn gǔ jīn píng. lóng tóu xiè jiǔ yāo jiǔ xīng, jīn cáo pí pá yè chéng chéng. dòng tíng yǔ jiǎo lái chuī shēng, jiǔ hān hē yuè shǐ dǎo xíng. yín yún zhì zhì yáo diàn míng, gōng mén zhǎng shì bào yī gēng. huā lóu yù fèng shēng jiāo níng, hǎi xiāo hóng wén xiāng qiǎn qīng, huáng é diē wǔ qiān nián gōng. xiān rén zhú shù là yān qīng, qīng qín zuì yǎn lèi hóng hóng.	The king of Qin tours the cosmos on tigerback, his sword's glimmer illuminating the clear, blue heavens. As Xihe whips the sun, glass is chiming; ashes of the old world, burnt asunder, flit about; peace reigns eternal. Drinking wine from a dragon-flask, he invites the god of wine to join him, his gold-set pipa twanging dyang-dyang in the night. The pitter-patter of the rain on Dongting Lake sounds like the blowing of a flute, deep in his wine, the King shouts at the moon, causing it to change direction. Silver clouds piled high, dawn comes to the bejeweled palace; the doorman announces the coming of night. In the flower palace, with its jade phoenixes, a woman's charming voice; a robe made of merfolk's thread and decorated with a crimson pattern, tinged with a faint scent, is worn by a yellow-robed serving girl who dances a dance of wishing for the king's reign to last a thousand years. The candles burn light smoke; the handmaiden's eyes well up with tears of purest water.

His poetic style was dubbed Changji-ti (Template:Zh) by later critics, after his courtesy name.Template:Sfnm The Song commentator Yan Yu listed this as one of the individual author-based styles of poetry that was frequently imitated.Template:Sfnm

Reception

Several modern Western and Japanese critics, including A. C. Graham, Naotarō Kudō, and J.D. Frodsham, have claimed that Li's poetry was not widely read until the modern era, but this is not entirely accurate.Template:Sfnm In a 1994 survey, Wu Qiming pointed out that Li was in premodern China more subject to imitation than to neglect.Template:Sfnm

Tang and Song dynasties

Two poets of the generation following Li He, Du Mu and Li Shangyin, commemorated Li in their prose writings: a preface to Li's collected poems and a short biography of Li, respectively.Template:Sfnm Du Mu's preface in particular is taken as proof that Li's poetry was being compiled and edited within a few decades of his death,Template:Sfnm as internal textual evidence dates the preface to 831.Template:Sfnm The Tang author Pi Rixiu also wrote about Li He's poetry alongside that of Li Bai in his critical work "Liu Zao Qiang Bei" (Template:Zh).Template:Sfnm

He was also one of a group of Tang poets frequently quoted in the lyrics of Song-era musicians such as Zhou Bangyan (1056–1121).Template:Sfnm Yan Yu, in his work Canglang Shihua, contrasted Li to the earlier poet Li Bai.Template:EfnTemplate:Sfn The earliest surviving edition of Li's poetry was collected and annotated in the Southern Song dynasty.Template:Sfnm

Yuan and Ming dynasties

Many shi poets of the Yuan dynasty emulated Li's poetic style.Template:Sfnm These included Cheng Tinggui (),Template:Sfnm Yang Weizhen,Template:Sfnm and Gu Ying (),Template:Sfnm as well as the early Ming poet Gao Qi.Template:Sfnm

The Ming scholar Hu Yinglin read Li's poetry politically as "the tones of a ruined state" and recognized that Li's poetic style was especially influential during the latter years of various dynasties.Template:Sfnm

Qing dynasty

There was an upswing in popularity of Li's poetry from the late Ming to the mid-Qing dynasties.Template:Sfnm A great many newly annotated collections of Li's poetry appeared during this period, and his poetry was widely imitated.Template:Sfnm The scholar Template:Illm wrote a five-volume commentary on his poetry.Template:Sfnm

Around the mid-Qing dynasty, though, Li's poetry began to fall out of favour with the literary establishment. The anthologist Shen Deqian included a scant ten of Li's poems in his influential work Template:Illm.Template:Sfnm Shen was highly critical of his contemporaries' tendency to imitate Li's poetry.Template:Sfnm Li's poetry was also conspicuously absent from the Three Hundred Tang Poems, the arbiter of poetic tastes in the late Qing and early twentieth century.Template:Sfnm

Modern era

Along with Li Bai and Li Shangyin, Li He was one of the "Three Lis" () admired by Mao Zedong.Template:Sfnm In 1968, Roger Waters of the rock band Pink Floyd borrowed lines from Li's poetry to create the lyrics for the song "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun".

In his article on Li for the Chūgoku Bunkashi Daijiten, Japanese sinologist Kazuyuki Fukazawa called him "the representative poet of the Middle Tang".Template:EfnTemplate:Sfnm According to French sinologist François Jullien, Li He's poetry was readmitted to the Chinese literary canon "at the end of the nineteenth century ... [when] ... Western notions of romanticism [allowed] the Chinese to reexamine this poet, allowing the symbolism of his poems to speak at last, freeing his imaginary world from the never-ending quest for insinuations."Template:Sfnm Paul W. Kroll, in his chapter on Tang poetry for The Columbia History of Chinese Literature, called Li "[t]he most eccentric poet of the T'ang, perhaps in all of Chinese poetry", and dubbed him "the Chinese Mallarmé" for his almost inscrutable poetic style and use of imagery.Template:Sfnm

Works cited

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External links

• Books of the Quan Tangshi at the Chinese Text Project that include collected poems of Li He:
  • Book 390
  • Book 391
  • Book 392
  • Book 393
  • Book 394
• Biography
• Template:Internet Archive author