Goddesses, Ghosts and Demons: The Collected Poems of Li He (790-816)

by Li He, J.D Frodsham (Translator)

Poetica 15 Li He, born in 790 A.D., is said to have written poetry of great power at age seven. His death at twenty-six was considered a tragic loss. Legend records him writing poems on horseback, gathering the fragments in a tapestry bag carried by a servant lad. His mother once exclaimed, "This boy of mine won't be content until he has vomited out his heart." Barely 240 poems survive. Neglected in his own country for many years as aberrant and extremist, his work has recently undergone a re-evaluation in China and Japan, as well as in the West. As mystic and shaman-poet, Li He writes of goddesses, of the supernatural and demonic, of time and of alchemy. Taoist and Buddhist, his verse is distinguished by a romantic extravagance, a wild, exotic pessimism, a dark beauty more like Baudelaire or Trakl than like his contemporaries in the late T'ang. Today his poems seem unsettlingly modern. T'ang China (618-907) was one of the richest cultural periods in history, a flowering of art and literature of extraordinary beauty and endurance. In poetry this three-hundred-year period's impact was so great that many people's conception of Chinese poetry is actually T'ang poetry. This was also a period of religious and philosophical thought. Taoism, Confucianism and Buddhism each exerted great influence on this medieval society. Among the great T'ang writers and philosophers, Li He stood apart as a poet of remarkable and eccentric originality and genius.

Genres: Poetry, China, Literature

287 pages, Paperback

First published July 28, 1983

About the author

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 a native of Fuchang County (west of modern-day Yiyang County, Henan Province). 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.

He started composing poetry at the age of 7, 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 a homonym of the first character (進) of Jinshi (進士), the name of the degree that would have been conferred on him had he passed.[6] 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.

Reviews

[J.M. Hushour · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reviewing poetry is a no-no for me. It's like getting a flash-bang grenade to the crotch. But I can recommend this nice collection of an often-overlooked Tang poet. I am not referring to the hideous powdered beverage, but rather the Tang period of Chinese history.
Li He will stand out to you because some (not all as the title might suggest) of his pieces involve the supernatural, which wasn't something casually tossed around as a subject during this time. If that's what you're looking for, the back half will serve your purposes. The rest are middling court-style stylisms, not bad, nothing outstanding.

[Steve]

Li Ho (791-817), also known in the West as Li He and Li Ch'ang-chi, is in many ways an exceptional figure in classical Chinese poetry. Though he was distantly related to T'ang dynasty royalty, a silly technicality prevented him from even taking the state exams necessary for advancement through the Chinese bureaucracy. So he was condemned to low level positions unsuited to his talents and ambitions. The only other important classical poet I can think of who didn't pass that exam was Li Po (Li Bai). But Li Ho had the additional misfortune of being stricken with tuberculosis, a disease called in the past consumption with very good reason, and so he declined into an early and miserable death at the age of 26.(*)

These two factors played a major role in shaping his mature poetry, a poetry of violent contrasts, full of dark moods and despair punctuated by convulsions of rebellion against his fate, exaltation and moments of ornate beauty.(**) Juxtaposition, a major tool of Chinese poetics, is taken to extremes, and the natural and supernatural exist side by side. The result was a poetry outside of the main line of classical Chinese poetry and termed "weird, astonishing, demonic" by Chinese critics of the past.(***) When one runs across passages like

Blue raccoons are weeping blood
As shivering foxes die...
Owls that have lived a hundred years,
Turned forest demons,
Find emerald fire, laughing wildly,
Leaps from their nests.

one can well understand that the adjectives "weird, astonishing, demonic" were not chosen at random. Nonetheless, the predominantly melancholy tone of Li's work is common to most mid and late T'ang dynasty poetry, and he was an important influence for a good number of later poets.

Because Li did not care about what happened to his poems after he wrote them and, if the old stories are to be believed, a resentful relative threw a bundle of them into a privy, only some 230 poems have survived.

The impermanence of all things is a common theme in Asian poetry, but see what Li does with it in one of his most famous poems in a translation by A.C. Graham that draws out its ornateness. (As usual, you must click on the link below to see the correct line breaks.)

An Arrowhead from the Ancient Battlefield of Ch'ang-p'ing

Lacquer dust and powdered bone and red cinnabar grains:
From the spurt of ancient blood the bronze has flowered.
White feathers and gilt shaft have melted away in the rain,
Leaving only this triple-cornered broken wolf's tooth.

I was searching the plain, riding with two horses,
In the stony fields east of the post-station, on a bank where
bamboos sprouted,
After long winds and brief daylight, beneath the dreary stars,
Damped by a black flag of cloud which hung in the empty night.

To left and right, in the air, in the earth, ghosts shrieked from
wasted flesh.
The curds drained from my upturned jar, mutton victuals were
my sacrifice.
Insects settled, the wild geese swooned, the buds were
blight-reddened on the reeds,
The whirlwind was my escort, puffing sinister fires.

In tears, seeker of ancient things, I picked up this broken barb
With snapped point and russet flaws, which once pierced
through flesh.
In the east quarter on South Street a pedlar on horseback
Talked me into bartering the metal for a votive basket.

Torn, as always, by the necessity of choosing only two or three poems, I quote one of Li's visions. The old hare and the chilled frog live on the moon, the white-jade wheel. In other words, in this poem Li is looking at China from the Moon. (Graham's translation)

A Dream of Heaven

The old hare and the chilled frog weep the sky's sheen,
Through a door ajar in a mansion of cloud the rays slant
white on the wall.
The white-jade wheel shivers the dew into wet globes of light;
Chariot bells meet girdle pendants on cassia-scented paths.

Yellow dust and fairy water beneath the Fairy Mountains
Change places once in a thousand years which pass
like galloping horses.
When you peer at far-off China, nine puffs of smoke:
And the single pool of the ocean has drained into a cup.

In The Poems of Li Ho (1970) J.D. Frodsham has translated all of the extant poems into English and supplied a lengthy and informative introduction. he has also written extensive supplementary notes on each poem explaining historical allusions, cultural references and, in some cases, alternative readings.

One can find selections of Li's poetry in many collections - I mention, in particular, Five Tang Poets (translated by David Young) and Poems of the Late Tang (translated by A.V Graham) - but this book of Frodsham's seems to be the only collection available in English with a translation of all of the poems. Frodsham's book was later re-published with a revised introduction and curtailed notes under the title Goddesses, Ghosts, and Demons: The Collected Poems of Li He.



(*) And curious it is that Li is the third excellent author, after Edith Södergran and Higuchi Ichiyo, I've read in the past 6 months who was cut down in the bloom of their youth by tuberculosis.

(**) Not without reason, there exists a Ph.D. dissertation comparing Li Ho and John Keats. Other Western readers are reminded of Baudelaire because of his mixture of pessimism, sensuality and aestheticism. All true. In light of their shared mysticism and startling visions, I would also find an analogy to William Blake. Clearly, Li Ho is a very unique poet.

(***) They seem to be coming around, though; in fact, in Poetry and Prose of the Tang and Song, published by the very official Foreign Languages Press in Beijing, Li's poetry (under the name Li He) stands alongside that of the most stellar poets of those two stellar periods in Chinese literature.

Rating

http://leopard.booklikes.com/post/898...

[Steve]

Li Ho (791-817), also known in the West as Li He and Li Ch'ang-chi, is in many ways an exceptional figure in classical Chinese poetry. Though he was distantly related to T'ang dynasty royalty, a silly technicality prevented him from even taking the state exams necessary for advancement through the Chinese bureaucracy. So he was condemned to low level positions unsuited to his talents and ambitions. The only other important classical poet I can think of who didn't pass that exam was Li Po (Li Bai). But Li Ho had the additional misfortune of being stricken with tuberculosis, a disease called in the past consumption with very good reason, and so he declined into an early and miserable death at the age of 26.(*)

These two factors played a major role in shaping his mature poetry, a poetry of violent contrasts, full of dark moods and despair punctuated by convulsions of rebellion against his fate, exaltation and moments of ornate beauty.(**) Juxtaposition, a major tool of Chinese poetics, is taken to extremes, and the natural and supernatural exist side by side. The result was a poetry outside of the main line of classical Chinese poetry and termed "weird, astonishing, demonic" by Chinese critics of the past.(***) When one runs across passages like

Blue raccoons are weeping blood
As shivering foxes die...
Owls that have lived a hundred years,
Turned forest demons,
Find emerald fire, laughing wildly,
Leaps from their nests.

one can well understand that the adjectives "weird, astonishing, demonic" were not chosen at random. Nonetheless, the predominantly melancholy tone of Li's work is common to most mid and late T'ang dynasty poetry, and he was an important influence for a good number of later poets.

Because Li did not care about what happened to his poems after he wrote them and, if the old stories are to be believed, a resentful relative threw a bundle of them into a privy, only some 230 poems have survived.

The impermanence of all things is a common theme in Asian poetry, but see what Li does with it in one of his most famous poems in a translation by A.C. Graham that draws out its ornateness. (As usual, you must click on the link below to see the correct line breaks.)

An Arrowhead from the Ancient Battlefield of Ch'ang-p'ing

Lacquer dust and powdered bone and red cinnabar grains:
From the spurt of ancient blood the bronze has flowered.
White feathers and gilt shaft have melted away in the rain,
Leaving only this triple-cornered broken wolf's tooth.

I was searching the plain, riding with two horses,
In the stony fields east of the post-station, on a bank where
bamboos sprouted,
After long winds and brief daylight, beneath the dreary stars,
Damped by a black flag of cloud which hung in the empty night.

To left and right, in the air, in the earth, ghosts shrieked from
wasted flesh.
The curds drained from my upturned jar, mutton victuals were
my sacrifice.
Insects settled, the wild geese swooned, the buds were
blight-reddened on the reeds,
The whirlwind was my escort, puffing sinister fires.

In tears, seeker of ancient things, I picked up this broken barb
With snapped point and russet flaws, which once pierced
through flesh.
In the east quarter on South Street a pedlar on horseback
Talked me into bartering the metal for a votive basket.

Torn, as always, by the necessity of choosing only two or three poems, I quote one of Li's visions. The old hare and the chilled frog live on the moon, the white-jade wheel. In other words, in this poem Li is looking at China from the Moon. (Graham's translation)

A Dream of Heaven

The old hare and the chilled frog weep the sky's sheen,
Through a door ajar in a mansion of cloud the rays slant
white on the wall.
The white-jade wheel shivers the dew into wet globes of light;
Chariot bells meet girdle pendants on cassia-scented paths.

Yellow dust and fairy water beneath the Fairy Mountains
Change places once in a thousand years which pass
like galloping horses.
When you peer at far-off China, nine puffs of smoke:
And the single pool of the ocean has drained into a cup.

In The Poems of Li Ho (1970) J.D. Frodsham has translated all of the extant poems into English and supplied a lengthy and informative introduction. he has also written extensive supplementary notes on each poem explaining historical allusions, cultural references and, in some cases, alternative readings.

One can find selections of Li's poetry in many collections - I mention, in particular, Five Tang Poets (translated by David Young) and Poems of the Late Tang (translated by A.V Graham) - but this book of Frodsham's seems to be the only collection available in English with a translation of all of the poems. Frodsham's book was later re-published with a revised introduction and curtailed notes under the title Goddesses, Ghosts, and Demons: The Collected Poems of Li He.



(*) And curious it is that Li is the third excellent author, after Edith Södergran and Higuchi Ichiyo, I've read in the past 6 months who was cut down in the bloom of their youth by tuberculosis.

(**) Not without reason, there exists a Ph.D. dissertation comparing Li Ho and John Keats. Other Western readers are reminded of Baudelaire because of his mixture of pessimism, sensuality and aestheticism. All true. In light of their shared mysticism and startling visions, I would also find an analogy to William Blake. Clearly, Li Ho is a very unique poet.

(***) They seem to be coming around, though; in fact, in Poetry and Prose of the Tang and Song, published by the very official Foreign Languages Press in Beijing, Li's poetry (under the name Li He) stands alongside that of the most stellar poets of those two stellar periods in Chinese literature.

Rating

http://leopard.booklikes.com/post/898...

[Davis · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had read a few poems of Li He's in a different collection, and they were striking, vivid, and different enough from the rest of Chinese poetry that I sought out more of his work. Unfortunately, the rest of Li He's poetry is not very good. A few images or phrases were memorable or unique, but for the most part, the story of Li He's life is more interesting than his poetic output. And those poems that I had originally read in another collection? I could not tell you which ones they were. While reading this collection, the poems ran together to the point of that they are all indistinguishable. If I read Chinese, or knew more about Chinese poetry, maybe Li He's unique voice would resonate more. If you don't, this is a forgettable poet.

The editor also inserted too much of his own thoughts and opinions in the introduction and footnotes, but those are easily ignored. While Frodsham's notes occasionally clarify the voice or create a sense of why a poem was written, most of the footnotes are intrusive and only for serious scholars already conversant in the material.

[AB]

Compared to the Rivers and Mountains poets, Li He is incredibly dense and deeply symbolic.

By now the stars have faded, heaven is high,
All nature knows another day is dawning.
Born into this world, I have to feed myself,
So out of my gate I go, with burdened back.
Jun-ping was long gone and did not return,
Kang-bai ran away on the state highway.
"What a rowdy place this is!" I think at daybreak.
Round the market gates, a thousand chattering men.

[Paul H. · Rating 3 out of 5]

The thing about obscure, out-of-print poets is that they often just aren't very good (i.e. there's a reason we've heard of Li Po and not Li He). Certain images are somewhat effective but the poems in general are too allusive/dense and -- at least in this translation -- aren't really worthwhile.

[Hsu Jui-Ting · Rating 3 out of 5]

A well researched compilation of a badly behaved poet, but with the most absurd organization possible in terms of subtext and historical context. What it is to bathe in the milk of human sorrow!

[Taylor Swift Scholar · Rating 3 out of 5]

For someone described as “the bad boy poet of the late Tang Dynasty” I was expecting this to be more scandalous! I did enjoy quite a few of these — particularly the ones about alcohol and horses.

[Patti K · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection was originally published in 1970 and revised in this
2016 edition. It is great fun if you like ancient Chinese poetry.
There are 85 pages of Notes that are brilliantly detailed and help
the reader contextualize and understand all the terms and metaphors.
"Leaves on the lotus-pool, numberless, green coins" "In the icy
night among the waves,/ the ancient dragon roars.""You want a horse
can run a thousand leagues?/ First try looking for the gleam in its eye"
Very lyrical and resonant with some of the poems satires of his current
life and its troubles. Highly recommend.

[Dr. Barrett Dylan Brown, Phd · Rating 3 out of 5]

To be honest, I was looking for the poetry of "Li Po," but I guess it got lost in translation and I got this by accident. Li Ho's sad poetry is amazingly beautiful and deeply provocative. Sadly, those are only the smallest portions of his work and the rest I could do without (although maybe if I read pre-manderin chinese I would have a greater appreciation).

[Paul Kerschen]

As poems these versions don't come up to David Hinton or A.C. Graham, but the notes are excellent, and there's value in seeing Li He complete, with more conventional poems alongside the exotic anthology standards--though one has the sense they might appear less conventional if translated by a different hand.

[g026r]

Could have used one more editorial pass.

Occasional inconsistent conversion to pinyan from Wade-Giles. End notes clearly written for the ebook edition; "See note above." could refer to the previous poem, or it might refer to a sentence in an otherwise unrelated note 100 pages prior.