Du Fu

Overview

Du Fu (February 12, 712–770), courtesy name Zimei and self-styled Shaoling Yelao, was also known as Du Shiyi and Du Gongbu. A realist poet of the Tang Dynasty, he is traditionally paired with Li Bai as “Li-Du.” His poetry is known for a grave, forceful style and broad social realism. Later generations revered him as the “Poet Sage,” while his poetry was called a “poetic history.” Born into the Jingzhao Du clan, Du Fu lived through the transition from the High Tang to an era of decline and endured prolonged displacement. His major works include “Spring View,” “Northern Expedition,” the “Three Officials,” and the “Three Farewells,” and his influence on later Chinese literature was profound.

Biography

Du Fu came from the Jingzhao Du clan and was a descendant of the Western Jin general Du Yu; he called himself Du Yu’s thirteenth-generation descendant. The family was originally from Xiangyang, in present-day Hubei. His great-grandfather Du Yiyi moved the family to Gong County after serving there as county magistrate. His grandfather Du Shenyan was a prominent early Tang poet, ranked with Shen Quanqi and Song Zhiwen, and rose to Vice Director in the Ministry of Imperial Sacrifices. Du Fu’s father Du Xian served as an official in Yanzhou and as magistrate of Fengtian. His mother, Lady Cui of the Qinghe Cui clan, died when he was young; his stepmother Lady Lu belonged to the Fanyang Lu clan.

Du Fu was born on February 12, 712, the first day of the first lunar month in the first year of the Taiji era of Emperor Ruizong of Tang, in Yaowan Village, Gong County, present-day Gongyi in Henan. He spent much of his childhood with his second paternal aunt in Luoyang. He studied eagerly from an early age, could compose poetry at seven, and practiced large-character calligraphy at nine. By fourteen or fifteen he was already moving in literary circles and was appreciated by prominent figures such as Cui Shang and Wei Qixin; senior men including Li Yong and Wang Han also visited him. In his youth he watched Lady Gongsun perform sword dances in Yancheng, heard Li Guinian sing in Luoyang, and saw murals by Wu Daozi at the Xuanyuan Emperor Temple. The source presents these artistic experiences as important influences on his later poetry.

In 731, the nineteenth year of the Kaiyuan era, nineteen-year-old Du Fu traveled to Xunxia. The next year he began several years of travel through Wu and Yue. He returned home in 735 for the local qualifying examination and failed the jinshi examination in Luoyang the following year. Because his father was then serving in Yanzhou, Du Fu went there to visit him and began traveling through Qi and Zhao. He spent four or five years in a carefree life of travel and riding and wrote some of his earliest surviving poems, including “Viewing Mount Tai,” “Ascending the Yanzhou City Tower,” “Painting of a Hawk,” and “General Fang’s Horse.”

In April 744, the third year of the Tianbao era, Du Fu met Li Bai in Luoyang after Emperor Xuanzong had released Li Bai from court with gifts of gold. They agreed to travel together through Liang and Song, where they also met the poet Gao Shi. In the autumn of the following year, Du Fu met Li Bai again in the Qi-Lu region. Their friendship became close, and after they parted at the end of that autumn they never met again.

In 746, Du Fu returned to Chang'an and began ten years of hardship in the capital. In 747 Emperor Xuanzong summoned those skilled in any art to sit a special examination, but under Chancellor Li Linfu all candidates were rejected in the episode celebrated sarcastically as proof that “no talent had been overlooked.” With the examination route blocked, Du Fu sought patronage from powerful officials through letters and presentation pieces, without success. In the first month of 751, before three major state ceremonies, he submitted the “Three Grand Ritual Rhapsodies.” Emperor Xuanzong appreciated them and ordered an examination at Jixian Academy, but Du Fu received only a place among those eligible for future selection. In 755 he was finally appointed county commandant of Hexi. Unwilling to accept what he regarded as a humiliating post, he was instead made an officer in the Right Guard of the Heir Apparent. In the eleventh month, while visiting his family in Fengxian, he learned on entering the house that his young son had died of hunger. Drawing on his ten years in Chang'an and what he had seen on the road, he wrote “Five Hundred Words of Reflection on My Journey from the Capital to Fengxian.”

The An Lushan Rebellion began in the eleventh month of 755. Tong Pass fell the following June and Emperor Xuanzong fled west. In the seventh month, Crown Prince Li Heng proclaimed himself emperor at Lingwu as Emperor Suzong. Du Fu had taken his family to Qiang Village in Fuzhou for refuge. When he learned of Suzong’s accession, he traveled north alone in the eighth month to join him but was captured by rebel forces and taken to Chang'an. Because his official rank was low, he was not imprisoned. While witnessing the occupied capital, he wrote works including “Lament at Chentao,” “Moonlit Night,” and “Spring View,” poems later treated as part of his “poetic history.”

In April 757, after Guo Ziyi’s army reached the area north of Chang'an, Du Fu escaped through Jinguang Gate on the west side of the city and crossed the lines of the two opposing armies to reach Emperor Suzong at Fengxiang. On May 16 he was appointed Reminder of the Left. Less than a month later, however, he angered the emperor by defending the dismissed grand councilor Fang Guan and was subjected to investigation by the State Finance Commission. Chancellor Zhang Gao intervened, saying that although Du Fu’s words were reckless, they did not violate the proper role of a remonstrating official. Suzong nevertheless grew increasingly distant from him. In the intercalary eighth month Du Fu was allowed to return to his family in Fuzhou; on the journey he wrote “Northern Expedition” and the three poems of “Qiang Village.”

In June 758, the first year of the Qianyuan era, Du Fu was demoted to an administrative post in Huazhou and permanently left the central court. That winter he visited his old home in Luoyang and sought news of the government siege of Ye. In the third month of 759, an army said to number 600,000 was defeated near Ye. Traveling through Xin'an, Shihao, and Tong Pass back to Huazhou amid the chaos, Du Fu saw officials forcibly conscripting soldiers and laborers and ordinary people suffering severely. He turned these experiences into the six famous poems known as the “Three Officials” and the “Three Farewells.”

In July 759, disillusioned with government and confronted by famine, Du Fu resigned and took his family to Qinzhou, present-day Tianshui in Gansu. He stayed there for more than three months and wrote works including the “Qinzhou Miscellaneous Poems.” In October he moved south to Tonggu, present-day Cheng County, Gansu, where the family fell into extreme hunger and cold; he wrote the seven “Songs Written While Living in Tonggu in the Qianyuan Era.” Early in December they fled again into Shu and reached Chengdu by year’s end.

In spring 760, with help from friends and relatives, Du Fu’s family built a thatched cottage beside Huanhua Stream in the western suburbs of Chengdu, later known as the Du Fu Thatched Cottage. In 762 he accompanied Yan Wu as far as Mianzhou when Yan returned to court, but the revolt of Xu Zhidao, military commander in Jiannan, forced Du Fu to wander in Zizhou and Langzhou. In 764 Yan Wu returned to govern Chengdu and recommended Du Fu as an adviser on his military staff and Acting Vice Director in the Ministry of Works, giving rise to the later name Du Gongbu. The New Book of Tang also records tension between Du Fu and Yan Wu, including an episode in which Du Fu insulted Yan while drunk and Yan considered killing him before being stopped by his mother. Du Fu left the staff in the first month of 765. Yan Wu died in April; deprived of this support, Du Fu left Shu in May, traveling through Jiazhou, Rongzhou, Yuzhou, and Zhongzhou to Yun'an, then moving to Kuizhou in late spring of the following year.

Du Fu remained in Kuizhou for nearly two years and wrote more than four hundred poems, among them “Ascending the Heights,” the eight “Autumn Meditations,” and the five “Reflections on Historical Sites.” In the first month of 768 he took his family out through the Three Gorges, passed Jiangling and Gong'an, and reached Yueyang in late winter. He then wandered through Hunan in poverty and illness. In winter 770 he died aboard a boat on the Xiang River, aged fifty-nine. He was first buried at Yueyang and was later reburied at Yanshi in Henan.

Major Deeds

Du Fu is presented as one of the great synthesizers of classical Chinese poetry. About 1,500 of his poems survive, and his works are collected in the Du Gongbu Ji. His poetry is renowned for its grave, forceful style and its broad, penetrating depiction of society before and after the An Lushan Rebellion, earning the designation “poetic history.”

He mastered many poetic forms and made especially important contributions to regulated verse. He broadened its expressive range by bringing major social and political subjects into a form that had often been used for courtly exchange. His seven-character regulated poem “Ascending the Heights” was later praised as the foremost example of its form, while “Spring View” became a canonical five-character regulated poem. He also developed a new form of yuefu poem whose title arose directly from the event described, as in the “Three Officials” and “Three Farewells,” helping prepare the way for the New Yuefu movement of the mid-Tang.

Du Fu’s style was varied. Some poems, such as “The War Carts” and “The Beautiful Ladies,” offer realistic social criticism; others, such as “Song of the Eight Immortals of the Wine Cup,” are expansive and free; still others, such as “Moonlit Night” and “Happy Rain on a Spring Night,” are delicate and intimate. His language is compressed and allusive, contributing to his distinctive grave and measured style.

Du Fu held the ambition of helping his ruler achieve sage government and restore social morality, but his official career was difficult. He failed the special examination of 747 during Li Linfu’s “no talent overlooked” episode. His 751 “Three Grand Ritual Rhapsodies” won Emperor Xuanzong’s attention but only a place among candidates. In 755 he declined the post of Hexi county commandant and instead became an officer in the Right Guard of the Heir Apparent.

His appointment as Reminder of the Left in 757 marked the high point of his political career. Less than a month later he almost suffered punishment for defending Fang Guan. He was eventually demoted to Huazhou and left the central court. After resigning in 759, he never again held a substantive office. In 764 he served on Yan Wu’s staff and was nominally appointed Acting Vice Director in the Ministry of Works, but resigned the next year.

Du Fu traveled across much of China. In youth he journeyed through Wu and Yue and Qi and Zhao; in middle age he spent ten difficult years in Chang'an. During the An Lushan Rebellion he moved between Fuzhou, Fengxiang, and Huazhou. After resigning in 759 he traveled through Qinzhou and Tonggu before entering Shu and settling at Chengdu. He later wandered through Zizhou, Langzhou, and Kuizhou, then left the Three Gorges and passed Jiangling, Gong'an, Yueyang, and Tanzhou. He died on a boat on the Xiang River. The source notes that his lifelong displacement brought him into close contact with ordinary people and gave him rich material for poetry.

Du Fu’s friendship with Li Bai and Gao Shi became a celebrated episode in literary history. He met Li Bai in Luoyang in 744, traveled with him through Liang and Song, and met Gao Shi; he again traveled with Li Bai in Qi and Lu the next year. Du Fu later wrote many poems about Li Bai, including “Thinking of Li Bai on a Spring Day,” the two “Dreaming of Li Bai” poems, and “Thinking of Li Bai at the End of the Sky.”

Du Fu and Yan Wu were family friends, and Yan provided crucial support after Du Fu entered Shu, recommending him for the post of Acting Vice Director in the Ministry of Works. Du Fu had been a private friend of Fang Guan and risked his career by submitting a memorial in Fang’s defense after his dismissal. Du Fu also exchanged poems with Wang Wei, Cen Shen, and Jia Zhi when they served at court, and maintained close ties with poets including Su Yuanming, Zheng Qian, and Xue Ju.