Ли Хэ: Поэт-призрак эпохи Тан

Chinese writer

Li He (c. 790–791 – c. 816–817) 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.

His courtesy name was Changji, and he is also known by a combination of his surname and courtesy name, Li Changji. He was also known as Guicai (鬼才, "devilish talent") by contrast of his morbid poetic style to Li Bai's Tiancai (天才 "heavenly talent") and Bai Juyi's Rencai (人才 "humanistic talent"). This title was given him by the Song scholar 錢易 in his work italic=y. He was also dubbed the "Poetry Devil" (詩鬼), while Li Bai was called the "Poetry Immortal" (詩仙) and Du Fu the "Poetry Sage" (詩聖).

His family were of distant royal descent (from the Li family who were the ruling dynastic family of the Tang dynasty), but his branch's fortunes had declined early on, and by Li He's time they were of low rank. Both the Tang state histories refer to him as a "descendant of Zheng Wang", but there is dispute as to the identity of Zheng Wang. 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; another theory is that it refers to the thirteenth son of Li Yuan, Zheng Wang Yuan Yi (zh). He was born in 790 or 791. 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. A native of Fuchang County (west of modern day Yiyang County, Henan Province), he started composing poetry at the age of seven, and by around 15 he was being compared to the yuefu master Li Yi.

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 (晉, jin) of his father's given name (晉肅, Jinsu) was homophonous with the first character (進) of Jinshi (進士), the name of the degree that would have been conferred on him had he passed. 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. Han Yu, who admired his poetry, wrote Hui Bian (諱弁) to encourage him to take the exam, but Li was ultimately unsuccessful. He served only three years, in the low ranking office of Fenglilang (奉禮郎) before returning to his hometown.

He is described as having a very sickly appearance: he was supposedly very thin, had a unibrow, and let his fingernails grow long. Li He died a low ranking and poor official in 816 or 817, at the age of 26 or 27. 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.

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. In a 1994 survey, Wu Qiming pointed out that Li was in premodern China more subject to imitation than to neglect.

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. 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, as internal textual evidence dates the preface to 831. 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"
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). Yan Yu, in his work Canglang Shihua, contrasted Li to the earlier poet Li Bai. The earliest surviving edition of Li's poetry was collected and annotated in the Southern Song dynasty.

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

There was an upswing in popularity of Li's poetry from the late Ming to the mid Qing dynasties. A great many newly annotated collections of Li's poetry appeared during this period, and his poetry was widely imitated. The scholar wrote a five volume commentary on his poetry. 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 Shen was highly critical of his contemporaries' tendency to imitate Li's poetry. 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.

Along with Li Bai and Li Shangyin, Li He was one of the "Three Lis" (三李) admired by Mao Zedong. 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". 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." 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.