Chānggǔ jí 昌谷集
The Chāng-gǔ Collection by 李賀 (撰), with appended Lǐ Chángjí xiǎozhuàn by 李商隱 (撰)
About the work
Verse collection in 4 juǎn plus wàijí in 1 juǎn of the guǐcái 鬼才 (“ghost-genius”) poet Lǐ Hè 李賀 李賀 (790–816, zì Chángjí 長吉), who lived at Chānggǔ 昌谷 (in Hénán’s modern Yíyáng county) and died at 27. The collection bears the appended Lǐ Chángjí xiǎozhuàn 李長吉小傳, a brief romanticized biography by Lǐ Shāngyǐn 李商隱 (= KR4c0074, KR4c0075, KR4c0076) — including the famous account of Lǐ Hè’s deathbed vision of a celestial summons to the Báiyù lóu (Jade Tower) of Heaven. The transmission begins with Shěn Zǐmíng 沈子明’s edition prepared from Lǐ Hè’s own four-fold arrangement (233 poems), with Dù Mù 杜牧 (= KR4c0072) writing the celebrated Lǐ Chángjí gēshī xù. Catalog gives 790–816. The wàijí of 23 poems was added later (Wú Zhèngzǐ’s preface notes the Capital edition lacks the wàijí; the Bào edition has it); Wú Zhèngzǐ found the wàijí’s diction shallow and considered some of it a forgery, though the tíyào defends it.
Tiyao
Chānggǔ jí in 4 juǎn, wàijí in 1 juǎn — by Lǐ Hè of the Táng. Hè in Xīn Tángshū wénxué zhuàn. Hè descended from the Zhèngwáng line, so styled himself Lǒngxī by ancestral seat — but actually lived in Chānggǔ, near Luòyáng (Táng Fúchāng; modern Yíyáng). The collection repeatedly says “returning to Chānggǔ”; Sòng Zhāng Lěi has a Chūn yóu Chānggǔ fǎng Chángjí gùzhái poem; his Fúchāng huáigǔ poem includes a Lǐ Hè zhái — clear evidence. The Yōuxián gǔchuī records that Hè’s surviving poems were thrown into the latrine by his cousin, so few were transmitted — but this concerns only Lǐ Fán’s collection. The Shěn Zǐmíng compilation, with Dù Mù’s preface, did not actually perish. Dù Mù’s preface records Zǐmíng’s letter: “Hè, near death, gave me his life’s poems in four sections, 233 piān” — so the juǎn division goes back to Hè himself.
The Tángzhì and Sòngzhì both record Hè’s collection at 5 juǎn — one more than Dù Mù’s preface. Checking the Wénxiàn tōngkǎo, this turns out to be 4 juǎn + wàijí 1 juǎn. Wú Zhèngzǐ’s Chānggǔ jí jiānzhù says: “the Capital edition lacks the wàijí; the Bào edition has it.” He further reports Xuē Chángzhōu (Xuē Shìlóng): the Shǔ edition and the Huìjī Yáo edition both have 219 piān; the Xuānchéng edition has 242 piān. The wàijí contains 23 piān; addition or removal of those 23 explains the difference. So they are essentially one stemma. The main collection is short by 14 piān against Dù Mù’s preface; the wàijí short by 29 piān against Huáng Bósī’s Dōngguān yúlùn colophon — neither verifiable. The Yuèfǔ shījí records two further poems, Jìngnǚ chūnshǔ qū and Shàonián yuè — neither in the present text. Perhaps Bósī’s holding lost them. Wú Zhèngzǐ further says the wàijí diction is shallow and unlike Hè’s voice — possibly forged by later imitators. Yet in the main jí the Kǔhuáng diàoxiào etc. are crude and not Hè-like — early masters had bad days. As Dù Fǔ has lín rè wū kāikǒu / shuǐ hún yú diàotóu — if not in the standard collection, who would believe Dù wrote it? Better to transmit doubt as doubt.
Abstract
Lǐ Hè (790–816) — the supremely strange (qí), violent, jewel-bright poet whose verse fused Chu-style cosmology with Han-fu lexical density into a wholly new visionary idiom — died at 27, his tiny corpus instantly canonized. The transmitted Chānggǔ jí is built on Shěn Zǐmíng’s edition of Lǐ Hè’s own four-fold arrangement (233 poems in 4 juǎn), with Dù Mù’s preface (composed shortly after Lǐ Hè’s death) — one of the most important pieces of mid-Táng literary criticism. The wàijí of 23 poems is later, possibly partly forged (so Wú Zhèngzǐ in the Sòng), though the Sìkù editors prefer to retain it. The Lǐ Chángjí xiǎozhuàn by Lǐ Shāngyǐn — including the celestial-summons anecdote — fixed Lǐ Hè’s posthumous image as the guǐcái: the genius marked for Heaven’s library, withdrawn early from the world.
The catalog gives 790–816; CBDB (id 33485) gives 805–831, but this is incorrect — the standard biographical sources (Xīn Tángshū, Lǐ Chángjí xiǎozhuàn, Tōngkǎo) all support 790–816, the death-at-27 fitting the late-Yuánhé / early-Chángqìng period of his lifetime. The tíyào implicitly confirms by placing him as a Yuánhé figure. CBDB error noted; followed catalog (= standard reference).
Translations and research
- Frodsham, J. D. 1970. The Poems of Li Ho (791–817). Oxford. The principal Western-language translation; full corpus.
- Frodsham, J. D. 1983. Goddesses, Ghosts, and Demons: The Collected Poems of Li He (790–816). North Point Press. Revised translation of all surviving poems.
- South, Margaret Tudor. 1967. Li Ho: A Scholar-Official of the Yüan-ho Period. PhD diss., U. of Adelaide.
- 王琦 Wáng Qí. Lǐ Cháng-jí gē-shī huì-jiě 李長吉歌詩彙解. The standard Qīng-period commentary; reprint Zhōng-huá.
- 葉葱奇 Yè Cōng-qí. 1959. Lǐ Hè shī jí 李賀詩集. Rénmín wén-xué.
- See KR4c0061 for the SBCK Gē-shī biān edition; KR4c0062 for the Sòng-era Jiān-zhù píng-diǎn Lǐ Cháng-jí gē-shī of Wú Zhèng-zǐ + Liú Chén-wēng.
Other points of interest
Dù Mù’s preface (the Lǐ Chángjí gēshī xù) is the foundational document of Lǐ Hè criticism. Dù records: “the cloud-mist conjoined and tangled is not enough for his form / a chasmal river surging is not enough for his feeling / the pure spring of mid-spring is not enough for his elegance / the moonless autumnal radiance is not enough for his style — these are images of him.” Lǐ Shāngyǐn’s appended xiǎozhuàn — with the famous celestial-summons scene where the dying Lǐ Hè announces to his mother that the Heavenly Lord has built the Báiyù lóu and summoned him to compose its commemorative inscription — is the locus classicus of the early-death cáizǐ (talented young poet) mythology in Chinese letters.