Playlist: Great Tang Poets: Du Fu (721-770)

Du Fu (Tu Fu in Wade-Giles romanization) was a scholar-official who lived at a time of great turbulence in China. Corruption and nepotism at the Tang court prompted a rebellion, led by the general An Lushan, against the capital city of Chang'an (An Lushan Rebellion, 755-762). The Tang empire was fatally shaken and a prolonged era of internal strife brought Tang dynastic rule to an end in 907.

Transcript

"On the River," by Du Fu

On the river, every day these heavy rains—

bleak, bleak, autumn in Ching-ch'u

High winds strip the leaves from the trees;

through the long night I hug my fur robe.

I recall my official record, keep looking in the mirror,

recall my comings and goings, leaning alone in an upper room.

In these perilous times I long to serve my sovereign—

old and feeble as I am, I can't stop thinking of it!

Paul Rouzer: Undoubtedly, the greatest of the Tang Dynasty poets, and I think without fearing disagreement, the greatest poet of the Chinese tradition, period, is Du Fu, who lived at the first half of the eighth century AD.

What makes Du Fu so great is a complicated question to answer. Perhaps one of the main reasons is the fact that he took his obligations as a Confucian statesman, a Confucian official, extremely seriously. Probably more seriously than a good many of the poets of his own time.

He related his own life rather intimately to the rise and fall of the Chinese dynasty. And whenever anything occurred in the Chinese polity that had wide consequences for the Chinese people at large, Du Fu himself reacted to these particular events with a great deal of passion and emotion.

Stephen Owen: Du Fu was from a good Confucian background. His grandfather had been a famous court poet. He was obviously extremely knowledgeable, but there was something a little bit wrong with Du Fu. Some of things didn't quite go right for him. He was never able to make his way in the Tang government.

"I Stand Alone," by Du Fu

A single bird of prey beyond the sky.

a pair of white gulls between riverbanks.

Hovering wind tossed, ready to strike;

the pair, at their ease, roaming to and fro.

And the dew is also full on the grasses,

spiders' filaments still not drawn in.

Instigations in nature approach men's affairs—

I stand alone in thousands of sources of worry.

---

Du Fu's "On the River" from The Columbia Book of Chinese Poetry, Burton Watson, ed. and trans. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984) p. 234.

Du Fu's "I Stand Alone" from An Anthology of Chinese Literature, Stephen Owen, ed. and trans. (New York: W.W. Norton, 1996) p. 426.

Transcript

Robert Oxnam: Du Fu's genius lies in his use of the Chinese language and its complexity of meaning.

Paul Rouzer: One of the main characteristics of Chinese poetic language is it's ambiguity.

Most of the poets before Du Fu did not exploit ambiguity quite to the extent that he did. They tended to assume a fairly basic understanding of the various words that they used, so that there was no possibility of misinterpretation or multiple interpretations.

Du Fu, however, played with Chinese poetic language. For example, he would take a word that was normally used as a noun in Chinese poetic language, and create a sentence where it could be functioning as an adjective, or as a verb, or as an adverb, leaving it up to the reader to decide how the line was created.

Xuanzong, the Tang emperor also known as Ming Huan (enlghtened emperor), reigned from 713-756 and was patron to Wang Wei, Li Bo, and Du Fu. In mid-reign, he fell in love Yang Guifei, the wife of his eighteenth son, and she then became his favorite consort. It was the struggle for power between Yang Guifei's brother and a general named An Lushan that caused the latter to rebel in 755 and occupy the capital, Chang'an. The fleeing Xuanzong could not make his soldiers fight back until he agreed to the execution of Yang Guifei and her brother. This turbulent but romantic story is a well-known favorite in Chinese history.

Transcript

Stephen Owen: Du Fu is associated with Confucianism perhaps because he is yet another version of the poet of the Classic of Poetry, the Shi Jing, bearing witness to history.

In his case, the history he bore witness to was the An Lushan rebellion, in which An Lushan, who was a half Chinese, half Sogdian general, who commanded all the northeastern armies, because of political bickering with the minister in the capital, rebelled against the dynasty.

And with surprising quickness, the dynasty's armies collapsed. An Lushan came down, took Loyang and then moved on the road west from Loyang to Chang'an, the capital. The imperial armies collapsed in front of him.

Robert Oxnam: As An Lushan laid siege to the capital, the Tang emperor Xuanzong, along with his famous concubine, Yang Guifei, was forced to flee and abdicate in favor of his son.

Du Fu fled also with his family, then attempted to make his way back to join the exiled court of the new emperor. The rebels captured Du Fu, however, and held him prisoner in Chang'an.

Paul Rouzer: During this time, Du Fu wrote a large number of very powerful poems, most of them expressing his sorrow about his separation from his family, his fear for the Tang dynasty, and his sympathy over the destruction and anguish caused to the Chinese people by the results of the war and the rebellion.

Transcript

Paul Rouzer: Perhaps the most famous poem that he wrote during this time period of imprisonment in the capital was his so-called, "View in Springtime," a poem that is written in the regulated verse form. That is, it is eight lines long, composed of four couplets. And with the second and the third couplets, written in a parallel structure.

"View in Springtime," by Du Fu

The country is smashed, hills and rivers remain.

The city turns to Spring, plants and trees grow deep.

Moved by the moment, flowers splash tears.

Resentful of parting, birds startle the heart.

Beacon fires have lasted for three months now.

Letters from home are worth 10,000 in gold.

I've scratched my white hairs ever scarcer,

until none will be left to hold hairpins to head.

[Translation by Paul Rouzer]

Paul Rouzer: In the opening couplet, Du Fu describes how the cycles of nature continue. He is writing in springtime, so, as one would expect in any springtime season, the leaves come back to the trees, the flowers bloom, the grasses grow tall.

Normally in Chinese poetry, this is an image of springtime renewal, but for Du Fu, it is a bitterly ironic image, because as spring renews itself, the Tang empire is not renewing itself. And the great capital of the Tang empire is in ruins.

Transcript

"View in Springtime," by Du Fu

The country is smashed, hills and rivers remain.

The city turns to Spring, plants and trees grow deep.

Moved by the moment, flowers splash tears.

Resentful of parting, birds startle the heart.

Beacon fires have lasted for three months now.

Letters from home are worth 10,000 in gold.

I've scratched my white hairs ever scarcer,

until none will be left to hold hairpins to head.

[Translation by Paul Rouzer]

Paul Rouzer: In the second and third couplets, written in parallel structure, Du Fu creates a series of juxtapositions of power to represent the particular feeling he has, and this collision between nature and man.

In the second couplet, Du Fu turns from his original idea of the collision between nature and human civilization, and instead represents nature as actually responding to the sorrows of the human world.

In this particular couplet, he places flowers against plants and trees. He places the tears that are shed by the flowers to the emotional response of the birds.

Transcript

"View in Springtime," by Du Fu

The country is smashed, hills and rivers remain.

The city turns to Spring, plants and trees grow deep.

Moved by the moment, flowers splash tears.

Resentful of parting, birds startle the heart.

Beacon fires have lasted for three months now.

Letters from home are worth 10,000 in gold.

I've scratched my white hairs ever scarcer,

until none will be left to hold hairpins to head.

[Translation by Paul Rouzer]

Paul Rouzer: In the third couplet, Du Fu then turns from the world of nature and the immediate world around him, and contemplates the length of time that he has been separated from his family, and the almost seeming endless duration of the horrible rebellion against which he is caught.

Here he juxtaposes two forms of communication, the so-called "beacon fires" (and in ancient China this was a way of communicating between armies: each particular detachment of troops would light a beacon fire on a hill, the following other detachments of troops would see this beacon fire from far away and light their own beacon fires, and so forth, as a way of quickly communicating battle calls or the movement of troops) — he contrasts this form of communication with another form of communications, letters from his own family.

And ironically juxtaposes these two forms of communications, saying that the one, the communication of a public, violent nature, is blocking the other form of communication, the peaceful, private letters from his family.

And he also, rather interestingly, juxtaposes the duration of the beacon fires — three months — against the cost of letters, the seeming cost of letters from his family. The long length of the rebellion, three months so far, has so-to-speak, "upped" the price of the letter. The longer the beacon fires last, the more expensive letters from home are worth to him.

Transcript

"View in Springtime," by Du Fu

The country is smashed, hills and rivers remain.

The city turns to Spring, plants and trees grow deep.

Moved by the moment, flowers splash tears.

Resentful of parting, birds startle the heart.

Beacon fires have lasted for three months now.

Letters from home are worth 10,000 in gold.

I've scratched my white hairs ever scarcer,

until none will be left to hold hairpins to head.

[Translation by Paul Rouzer]

Robert Oxnam: Du Fu is also a poet of everyday life. He is appealing to many readers because he uses comedy and irony to deflate his own importance, alluding to his own decline, his growing age, or his health problems. At the conclusion of "View in Springtime," he refers to "scratching his white hairs."

Paul Rouzer: In this particular ending, he portrays himself scratching his head in perplexity. Because in ancient Chinese poems, poets would often scratch their heads when particularly confronted with sorrow, or with something they cannot understand. And in the process, has gradually thinned out his hair, so much to the extent that he can no longer place a cap upon his head.

And this, of course, has a further consequence for Du Fu, because in ancient China all bureaucratic officials wore caps on their heads. And because they wore their hair long, these particularly caps were attached to their heads with hairpins.

So in this particular line Du Fu is basically saying that the increasing emotional stress that he is suffering will eventually make him unfit to serve in the government.

And so, in one very succinct image, he combines all these particular moods. His concern about his own increasing age and failing health, his anxiety about no longer being able to serve the state. His own ironic comment upon this by portraying this particular image through the loss of his hair.