A study of Li Qi's poems representing high tang literati part IV

李頎の士人描写詩について(四)

A study of Li Qi's poems representing high tang literati part IV

Creators Kawaguchi Yoshiharu

The purpose of this article is to research Li Qi's literature, especially to understand the features of his poems representing High Tang Literati. This article is divided into 4 parts. Part IV endeavors to clarify the features of Li Qi's poems representing High Tang Literati and himself. In the first section, this paper researched Li Qi's poems representing the most famous person amongst his friends, that is, Gao Shi. In the poems representing Gao Shi, some facts can be found from other historical sources. And these poems contribute to clarify the picture of the mode of High Tang Literati life. In the second section, this paper explored Li Qi's poems representing unfortunate literati. They struggled hard and had a wealth of talent, but they were unhappy. Li Qi was also suffering misfortunes. So he was able to empathize with other unfortunate literati. I presume the purpose for Li Qi to describe them was that, if he had not done so, their existence and fame might not have been passed down or become more widespread. This mindset seems to have been inspired by Sima Qian who tried to resolve his misfortunes by writing Shi Ji. In the last section, this paper researched Li Qi's self-representing poems. Compared with his poems representing other poets, these contain fewer specific and concrete details. But his Yue-fu based on his own life experience is very interesting like Du Fu's self-representing poems. In summary, Li Qi's poems representing High Tang Literati are the most distinctive feature of his literature. This feature shows that Li Qi had an explicit role as a documentary writer, and his poems are thought of as the best attainment in the history of verse from Xian-Qin to High Tang that can be rated on a par with Du Fu.

[ISSN]2189-4825