Du Fu (lived 712 - 770, his name sometimes translated at Tu Fu) has been one of the great Chinese poets whom I have known about but never sat down to intensively read. He is often paired with Li Po as they were friends and because of their backgrounds and artistic styles embodying a sort of yin-yang relationship, Li Po being the Daoist wanderer, floating through the world on wine, tears and cherry blossoms, while Du Fu was the Confucius poet, as a result of his living a more domesticated existence and tied with government positions.

While Du Fu did have a family, his life was anything but the orderly existence which I had presumed. For starters, while he made attempts at advancing through the ranks of the Tang Dynasty, fancying himself one day to be a scholar who could then acquire the prestige of retiring as a hermit poet, in reality he was at the bottom rungs of the ladder and never advanced to any such honorable position. As a result, his positions were only tentative and minor. Additionally, during Du Fu’s life, China was embroiled with rebel groups and under the constant threat of attacks from Tibet, placing nearly all of the Chinese citizenry of the region into an itinerant mode of living. A truly difficult time for everyone as one of the world's greatest civilizations began to crumble.

While Du Fu’s life was presented with hardships, throughout he was still able to document his life through poetry. In David Young‘s recent translation, Du Fu: A Life in Poetry, there is a focus upon the poems which directly represent Du Fu’s biography, the historical events around him more as setting than actual subjects (and from what I understand, there are a large number of Du Fu poems which directly speak to the political and moral situations around him, as why he is identified as a Confucian poet, but these don't appear to be the focus in this collection). As a result, this is a collection which seems to be a representation of his personal works, revealing more of the growth of the mind and life behind the poetry than the ideals he meant to uphold or the social-cultural-political situations which he encountered.

This makes for an interesting read for a couple of different reasons. First, because the poems are placed in chronological order, and with a map of China to show the different locals where Du Fu lived, there is a certain amount of narrative taking place which gives this collection the same appeal as any historical biography, or a work of fiction for that matter. Second, with the personal there tends to be innovations beyond the traditional forms, such as his poems which satirize the royal court– an example being where he documents a rainstorm that hits a whole boatload of heirs and decorated costumers, or a love poem written while being away from his wife– the more common love poetry in China being of one’s mistress or friendship with another male, or an unrestrained self-pitying- which previously was often expressed through general 'sorrow' rather than anything so specific.

Taken as a whole, there is a tremendous imaginative relationship with the world being revealed, but all the more accented because of the social structures Du Fu lived within:

As we see in the lake's middle
we see in its dark depths

the southern mountains, mirrored
upside down in the water

here and there a quiver
as if the mountain moved

maybe our boat will collide
with a high mountain temple

maybe the moon will swim
out of the mountain pass

--from 'Meipi Lake'

One could argue that throughout Du Fu’s life there was a yearning for a more Daoist lifestyle, to favor a prominent inflow/outflow of imagination over a life built upon social structures, but was never able to leave or ignore these structures. Even towards the end of Du Fu’s life when he largely wrote Daoist poetry, there remained the interference of political wars and the subsequent displacements, keeping him from ever overcoming the demands of social realities. And this to me is what gives Du Fu’s poetry its appeal and emotional tension, as the reader knows the life Du Fu desired-- a quite farming life with a cottage and a reasonable pension-- but is never able to fully achieve because of the historical disruptions. And this is maybe why I now find a bit more substance in Du Fu’s poetry than Li Po’s, as the conditions of his life are relatable thousands of years later in our contemporary times.