Speaker: Robert Ashmore, Associate Professor and Chair, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, University of California Berkeley

Li He’s own writings, as well as comments from his contemporaries and later critics, persistently note the centrality of song and musical traditions to his distinctiveness as a poet—from early on, his works themselves were often referred to not simply as shi 詩 or “poems,” but rather as geshi 歌詩—i.e., “song-poems.” Traditions linking Li He and his works to contemporary Tang musical repertoires, and particularly to imperial musical institutions, emerged early on in his reception history, and to a significant degree shaped his image in readers’ minds. These early accounts, however, prove on closer scrutiny either inconclusive or positively refutable. This essay will attempt an alternative (though perhaps in the end complementary) approach to the question of Li He’s “musicality.” Rather than straining to substantiate concrete connections between Li He and contemporary musical performance, this discussion will follow up on cues within Li He’s works to explore the imaginative spaces of song and musicality as these would have appeared to a young aspirant to imperial service at the turn of the ninth century. In this specifically medieval world of acoustics, musicality, and song, it is precisely those features that most diverge from our own tacit assumptions that may offer the most tangible critical payoff for our reading and appreciation of this seemingly anomalous and enigmatic writer.

Robert Ashmore is Associate Professor and Chair in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, UC Berkeley. His research focuses on the literary and scholarly traditions of medieval China from the third to tenth centuries, with particular emphasis on traditions of interpretation and hermeneutics. He is author of The Transport of Reading: Text and Understanding in the World of Tao Qian (353–427) and The Poetry of Li He. He is currently completing work on a book titled Bodies of Interpretation: Performance and Hermeneutics in Chinese Classicist Traditions.