Li He was born in Henan (Honan) province in
central China, the son of a minor bureaucrat who
was descended from a cadet branch of the ruling
Tang dynasty. One story holds that he composed
his first verse at age seven in honor of a visit by the
famous poet HAN YU. By the time of his father’s
death in 805, he had acquired a considerable literary
reputation. Five years later, at age 21, he arrived
at the imperial capital at Chang’an to take the Confucian
examinations for a prestigious career in the
imperial civil service.
Li He promised to excel in the arduous literary
examinations, and some historians believe the
newcomer’s obvious brilliance excited the envy of
higher-placed yet mediocre poets. Incredibly, officials
barred him from the exams because of an arcane
technicality known as a “character taboo”: a
Chinese written character in his father’s name had
the same sound as a character in the title of the
exam.Heartbroken and embittered, Li He accepted
a menial post in the Chinese bureaucracy, but he
resigned only two years later. In dire poverty, he
turned to his friend Han Yu for aid in finding another
position, but five years of disappointment
and struggle had taken their toll. He died in
Changgu (Ch’ang-ku) at age 26, supposedly summoned
from this world by a heavenly messenger
on a red dragon.
Literature remembers Li He as a “demongifted”
poet who composed his later verses in a
unique fashion. Each morning, he would ride
through the countryside on horseback, followed by
a servant boy carrying an embroidered black bag
on his shoulder.As inspiration struck, he would jot
down single lines at random on small strips of
paper, drop the strips into the bag, and assemble a
finished poem from the strips in the evening.
In contrast to the formal, concrete, and traditional
styles favored by most poets of the later Tang
period, Li He’s dark and sensual work is characterized
by its beautiful imagery, unique word
choice, jarring metaphors, and, not infrequently,
pessimism tinged with compassion, the last undoubtedly
stemming from the poet’s melancholy
life. In the words of translator David Hodges,“This
poet is very much an aesthete, drawn to curious artifacts,
ancient legends, beautiful women (courtesans
and dancing girls), picturesque ruins and
strange rites.”
“Haunting” is the adjective modern scholars
most often use to characterize Li He’s verses. One
of the most famous of these is “Song of the Jadehunter,”
about an elderly jade-cutter in rural
China, one of the men who daily risked their lives
in conditions of great privation to procure the
prized stone:
Like the blood that wells from the cuckoo’s
maw
Are the old man’s tears
Another of Li He’s verses noteworthy for its imagery
and metaphors is “Cold is the North,” describing
a river in winter:
The Yellow Stream—all ice, so fish and
dragon died.
Tree barks, three foot—a script of frostcracked
runes.
A common Chinese aphorism, comparing Li He
with two of his better-known and more conventional
contemporaries, holds that Du Fu’s (Tu Fü’s)
genius was that of a Confucian sage, Li Bai’s of a
Daoist (Taoist) immortal, and Li He’s of a ghost or
demon. To quote Hodges, Li He was “a poet so
striking and so different that readers are still not
sure what to think of him.”Although he is not as famous
today as several other poets of the Later Tang
period, many scholars believe that the untimely and
tragic death of the “Chinese Keats”deprived his nation
of one of its greatest poets-to-be.
English Versions of Works by Li He
Five Tang Poets. Translated by David Young. Oberlin,
Ohio: Oberlin College Press, 1990.
Goddesses, Ghosts, and Demons: The Collected Poems
of Li He. Translated by J. G. Frodsham. San Francisco:
North Point Press, 1983.
Poems of the Late Tang. Translated by A. C. Graham.
New York: Penguin, 1977.
Works about Li He
Fusheng Wu. The Poetics of Decadence: Chinese Poetry
of the Southern Dynasties and Late Tang Periods.
Albany: State University of New York Press,
1998, 77–116.
Kuo-ch-ing Tu. Li Ho. Boston: Twayne, 1979.