Translator's Preface

Du Fu(712–770)was one of the greatest poets of the Tang dynasty, golden age of Chinese literature which could boast of its pastoralism of Wang Wei(701–761), romanticism of Li Bai(701–762), classicism of Du Fu, realism of Bai Juyi(772–846)and symbolism of Li Shangyin(812–858). Du Fu was called “Sage of Poetry” and his works “History in Verse”, for his love of his country and his poetic art combined to make his poems vivid pictures of the life of his time and reflections of the thoughts of the people. While young, he travelled widely in the land and wrote the following verse at the age of twenty-four while gazing on the Tai Mountains:

Try to ascend the mountain's crest:

It dwarfs all peaks under our feet.

When he made friends with Li Bai, he wrote the following verse to show his admiration for his senior poet who was fond of drinking wine:

Li Bai would turn sweet nectar into verses fine.

During the rebellion of Tartar generals(755)he wrote many poems to show his suffering and the people's calamity, for example:

Have you not seen

On borders green

Bleached bones since olden days unburied on the plain?

The old ghosts weep and cry, while the new ghosts complain;

The air is loud with screech and scream in gloomy rain.

(Song of the Conscripts)

By the roadside cries my wife old,

So thinly clad in winter cold.

(Lament of an Old Man)

These verses, said Chinese critic Liang Qichao, proved what Keats wrote to be true: Beauty is truth and truth beauty. Liang also said the poem Coming Back to Qiang Village was highly realistic, forerunner of Bai Juyi's realism:

At my appearance starts my wife;

Then calming down, she melts in tears.

By chance I come back still in life,

While people drift in bitter years.

In 760 Du Fu came to Chengdu and built his thatched cottage, which he described in the following couplet:

My window frames the snow-crowned western mountain scene;

My door oft says to eastward-going ships “Goodbye!”

As for his life in the cottage, he wrote in the poem For a Guest:

The footpath strewn with fallen blooms is not swept clean;

My wicket gate is opened but for you today.

These lines show his love of secluded life as the pastoral poet Wang Wei. When his cottage was unroofed by an autumn gale, he wrote the following verse:

Could I get mansions covering ten thousand miles,

I'd house all scholars poor and make them beam with smiles.

…

Alas! Should these houses appear before my eye,

Frozen in my unroofed cot, content I'd die.

These lines show his love for the poor people and poor scholars. As for heroes and personages, we may read the last couplet of Temple of the Premier of Shu :

But he died before he accomplished his career.

How could heroes not wet their sleeves with tear on tear!

Du Fu's motto in versification was “never to stop short of surprising verse”. For example, we may read his famous couplet in the octave On the Height :

The boundless forest sheds its leaves shower by shower;

The endless river rolls its waves hour after hour.

The fallen leaves may symbolize the decline of the Tang Dynasty and the rolling waves predict the revival of the past glory which the poet could not forget, for instance, in the following verse of Reflections in Autumn :

Parrots can't peck up all the grains left on the plain;

Phoenix when old on the plane tree will still remain.

Parrots and phoenix, grain and plane all symbolize the past glory. These symbols may be said to be forerunner of Li Shangyin's symbolic “Dim morning dream to be a butterfly”. But grain and plane tree are visible while dim dream is not. From Du to Li we can see the development of symbolism in Tang poetry.