Looking for Joy in Times of Sorrow:

Apr 27
4 min read

The Great Tang Dynasty Poet Du Fu

Du Fu (杜甫, 712–770) — Du Fu (杜甫, 712-770)

Notes from the Tower of Songs

Issue 3

By Dan KJ Vercammen

For some, Du Fu (杜甫, 712–770) is the greatest Tang Dynasty poet. He was certainly a prolific writer and an inspiring poet. Evidently, many Chinese poets—both his contemporaries and later practitioners of poetry in China and abroad—revered Du Fu. So, he must have some value! Let us read one of his poems today and see if he can enchant you.

One day, Du Fu befriended Li Bo, whom we met in my first post of the Notes from the Tower of Songs. Neither of them led a successful professional life. It took Du Fu a while before he could obtain an official position, and when he finally acquired one, a rebellion caused the court to go into exile, because the capital, Chang’an (now Xi’an), was conquered by the rebels.

So, he was out of a job until he joined the exiled court. After the rebels had been defeated and a new emperor sat on the dragon’s throne, he temporarily worked at court. Taking a wrong action, he was demoted and, as a result, took his leave.

Going to Sichuan, a province in the southern center of the empire, he became the secretary of the governor until the governor’s death. The last few years of his life he wandered from one place to another, became ill, was impoverished, and finally died, poor and sick.

During his stay in Sichuan, Du Fu wrote many of his poems. His themes were nature and the circumstances of life, also of the poor common folk and the soldiers at war (but those are the poor common folk). He also wrote about and for his friends, for instance about Li Bo.

The poem we are concerned with here is one written in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan. It’s a poem describing a night and morning on the river. Or doesn’t it?

春夜喜雨

好雨知時節

當春乃發生

隨風潛入夜

潤物細無聲

夜徑雲俱黑

江船火獨明

曉看紅濕處

花重錦官城

Chun ye xi yu

Hao yu zhi shi jie

Chun dang nai fa sheng

Sui feng qian ru ye

Run wu xi wu sheng

Ye jing yun ju hei

Jiang chuan huo du ming

Xiao kan hong shi chu

Hua zhong jin guan cheng

Pleased with the rain on a spring night

Good rain knows the right time;

Spring coming, it thus gives life.

Secretively entering the night, following the wind,

And delicately moistening everything, without a sound.

Both the nightly pathway and the clouds pitch-black,

Only the fire on the river boat lights up.

At dawn I can see a red wet scene:

Heavy are the flowers in the city of the officials dressed in brocade.

This type of poetry is called lüshi, regulated verse, consisting of eight lines of (in this case) five syllables.¹ There are two quatrains in a lüshi. The even lines rhyme.

As I wrote in a previous post, the pronunciation of the characters in the Tang dynasty was not the same as in modern standard Chinese. The rhythm follows strict rules, which I won’t discuss in detail here. The caesura occurs after the second syllable, meaning that the first two characters form an important unit, set in a kind of opposition to the following three, which is accentuated by the cadence. Form and content clearly strengthen each other.

At first sight, we have a poem about nature here. Spring, rain, night, a breeze, no sound. The first quatrain accurately and poetically describes spring rain during a windy yet otherwise quiet night. It’s not a heavy rain; like a thief, the soft rain enters, hardly seen.

This kind of rain is not destructive; it feeds plants and flowers, giving them life. It’s a really good rain—one to look forward to. Quite a romantic, lovely scene.

And then the second quatrain starts…

It’s the picture of humans within—and somewhat against—nature. The old Taoist master Zhuangzi tells us about the opposition between nature (or Heaven, as he calls it) and human action. In chapter seventeen of the Zhuangzi, he gives an example: that horses and cows have four legs is heavenly; that humans bridle horses and pierce the noses of cows is not heavenly.

Du Fu is not a Taoist—he’s a Confucianist, being in official service—but in his days, during the Tang dynasty, Taoism was in favor, and it was not unusual for a Confucian scholar to read and know Taoist literature. He may therefore have been influenced by Zhuangzi’s views.

The human factors in the second quatrain are the pathway, the boat, the fire, the city, and its richly dressed officials. Night, clouds, darkness, the river, dawn, a red hue, wetness, and the flowers paint nature.

Nature is still more present than human influence, yet it is no longer as gentle as before: it is black, wet, heavy. Dark clouds hang over the human world—or perhaps over Du Fu’s world.

There is a small light in his life: he is in office, albeit in a low position (a lone sign of light, like the fire on the boat). The darkness and wetness may be a premonition: the poet’s life is nearing its end, and it is not an end to look forward to, as he will become ill and impoverished.

Dawn brings some solace. There is a red glow from the rising sun after a rainy night, and he can see flowers. Yet there is also a sense of separation, as he is literally seeing the city from a distance.

This distance becomes a metaphor: he no longer feels at home in official circles, having experienced too much disappointment in that world. Being a successful official, dressed in expensive robes, was once his aspiration—but it has proven to be an impossible dream.

And so, we have read a poem about an idyllic scene near the capital of Sichuan—one that, at second sight, is not what it seems.

Disappointment in the human world and the search for beauty in nature form the essence of the poem’s meaning.

Du Fu could have become a Taoist recluse, as these sentiments led many Confucian scholars toward Taoism later in life.

We are perhaps more fortunate than Du Fu, as we can still read his poetry—his way of transforming a difficult life into literary beauty.