Who Was Li He, the 'Ghost Poet' of the Tang Dynasty?

Q: Why did so few poems survive?

The New Book of Tang says that few of his poems survived because they were so strange and because he died so young. A later anecdote adds a more dramatic reason: a cousin who was asked to collect Li He's poems disliked him so much that he threw the collection into the toilet. Whether or not that is true, two anthologies of his work have come down to us.

Li He wrote eerie poems about ghosts and gods and died at about 26. Why he was called the Ghost Poet, how a name taboo ended his career, and how he wrote.

Li He (c. 790–816 or 817) was a Chinese poet of the mid-Tang dynasty, famous for strange, ghostly and fantastic poems. He was nicknamed Shigui (詩鬼), the "Poet Ghost", to set him beside Li Bai, the "Poetry Immortal", and Du Fu, the "Poetry Sage"; a naming taboo kept him from the imperial examinations, and he died young, at about 26. Today about 240 of his poems survive, and his dark, colourful style has influenced Chinese poets for more than a thousand years.

Immortal, Sage and Ghost

Chinese readers often remember three great Tang poets by their nicknames. Li He was also called Guicai (鬼才), "devilish talent", in contrast to Li Bai's Tiancai, "heavenly talent", and Bai Juyi's Rencai, "human talent". The label comes from the Song dynasty scholar Qian Yi. The word gui means a ghost or spirit of the dead, and it fits: Li He wrote about haunted tombs, gods and the world beyond death more than almost any other classical poet.

His courtesy name was Changji, so he is also known as Li Changji, and later critics called his manner the "Changji style".

A gifted boy from a fallen royal family

Li He's family were distant relatives of the Tang imperial family, but his branch had declined, and by his time they were of low rank. He was born in 790 or 791 in Fuchang County, in today's Henan Province. Some twenty-three of his surviving poems use the horse as a symbol for the poet, which has led scholars to suggest he was born in the year of the Horse. He started writing poetry at seven, and by around fifteen he was being compared to the famous ballad poet Li Yi.

How a name taboo ended his career

In Tang China, the surest road to success was the imperial examination. When Li He was 20, he tried to take it but was banned because of a naming taboo. His father's given name was Jinsu, and the first character, jin (晉), sounded the same as the jin (進) in jinshi, the degree he would have earned. Avoiding a parent's name was a serious custom, and his rivals used it against him; some scholars believe it was a pretext invented by people who were jealous of his talent.

The great writer Han Yu, who admired his poetry, wrote a famous essay arguing that the ban was unreasonable, but it did not help. Li He served only three years in a minor post at court, managing seating and ritual order at ceremonies, before going home. That disappointment runs through many of his poems.

How did Li He write?

The best-known story about him comes from a short biography written by the next-generation poet Li Shangyin. Li He would set out on journeys during the day carrying an old brocade bag. Whenever a line of poetry came to him, he wrote it down and dropped it into the bag, and when he got home in the evening he arranged the lines into poems. It is a vivid picture of a poet who treated every walk as a hunt for words.

He was also said to look unusual: very thin, with eyebrows that met in the middle and long fingernails.

What are his poems like?

His poetry is full of fantastic, unusual imagery. Almost none of his surviving poems use the strict "regulated verse" form that was fashionable in his time, and he often used words other poets avoided as unlucky, such as "old" and "death". In some poems he described the worlds of gods and Buddhas; in others, such as "Autumn Comes" and "Song of the Divine Strings", he gave eerie pictures of the world of ghosts. The symbolism of the second poem has been called "nearly impenetrable".

He also loved to mix colour with feeling, so that a colour carries an emotion. Among his influences were the older poets Meng Jiao and Han Yu, the shamanistic songs of the ancient Chu Ci, and the wild imagination of Li Bai.

Why did so few poems survive?

The New Book of Tang says that few of his poems survived because they were so strange and because he died so young. A later anecdote adds a more dramatic reason: a cousin who was asked to collect Li He's poems disliked him so much that he threw the collection into the toilet. Whether or not that is true, two anthologies of his work have come down to us.

A death fit for a ghost poet

Li He died poor and in a low position in 816 or 817. Li Shangyin's biography says that at the hour of his death a figure dressed in scarlet appeared and told him that the Lord on High had summoned him to heaven to write. It is a legend, of course, but it shows how his friends wanted to remember him: not as a failed official, but as a poet too gifted for this world.

Was he forgotten?

Not really. Poets of the next generation, Du Mu and Li Shangyin, wrote about him, and Du Mu's preface to his collected poems shows they were being edited within a few decades of his death. His style was widely imitated until the Qing dynasty. Then tastes changed, and his poems were famously left out of the influential anthology Three Hundred Tang Poems. Interest revived in the twentieth century, and he was among the Tang poets most admired by Mao Zedong.

Learn with Li He: English phrases

Phrase	Meaning	Example
ahead of one's time	with ideas too new for one's era	Li He was ahead of his time.
to jot something down	to write something quickly	He jotted down each line.
a dark horse	someone whose talent surprises people	The young poet was a dark horse.
haunting	beautiful but sad or eerie	His poems are haunting.
to cut short	to end something too early	His career was cut short.

Try this: Write three sentences about an artist you like, using "haunting" and "ahead of one's time".