Poetry of the Tang Dynasty

  libai

du fu

The Tang Dynasty witnessed the zenith of Chinese ancient poetry, with many renowned poets and famous works appearing over a period of less than 300 years. Some 50,000 poems and the names of 2,300 poets of that period remain widely known today.

The best-known poets of the Tang Dynasty are Li Baia (701-762 AD) and Du Fub (712-770 AD).

Being unconstrained and most talented, Li Bai traveled all over China. With lofty sentiments and powerful imagination, he created many poems in praise of its magnificent mountains and mighty rivers. He also showed deep concern for state affairs, refuting corrupt politics, or expressing his wishes for the realization of his lofty aspirations. Some 900 poems of Li Bai have been preserved, of which the most famous are Invitation to Wine, The Sichuan Road, and Watching the Waterfall at Lushan.

When Du Fu was young, he visited many scenic spots and places of historical interest. Later, he lived among the poor at the bottom of society. His turbulent experiences enabled him to know better the darkness of human society and people's sufferings. In his poems, he boldly exposed the rottenness of the feudal court, profoundly portrayed people's miserable lives and the social upheavals of the day. About 1,400 of his poems have been preserved today, of which the best-known are Looking out on Spring, Ballad of the Army Carts, The Conscripting Officer at Shihao, The Conscripting Officer at Tongguan, The Conscripting Officer at Xin'an, Farewell to My Husband, Farewell to My Old Wife and Farewell of a Lonely Soul.

Eminent poets of the Tang also include Wang Wei, Bai Juyi, Li He, Li Shangyin, to name but a few.

Chinese people are very fond of Tang poetry, and even children can recite some from memory, such as Thoughts in the Silent Night by Li Bai, Good Rain on a Spring Night by Du Fu, etc. Verses like "if you want to widen your view three hundred miles / Go up one more flight of stairs", "Do you not see the Yellow River pouring from the sky" are often quoted. The book of Three Hundred Tang Poems is a bestseller at home and abroad, making Tang poetry also part of the world treasury of great verse.

Here are two examples:

Thoughts in the Silent Night Li Bai

Beside my bed a pool of light

Is it hoarfrost on the ground?

I lift my eyes and see the moon,

I bend my head and think of home.

Short Impressions Du Fu

From vivid green willows

Comes the call of two orioles;

A file of white water birds

Rises into the clear blue heavens; as if

Held in the mouth of my window

Are the mountains ranges with

Their snows of many autumns;

Anchored by our gate are

The long distance boats of Wu.

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dufu

If there is one undisputed genius of Chinese poetry it is Du Fu. The Taoist Li Bai was more popular, the Buddhist Wang Wei was sublimely simple and more intimate with nature, but the Confucian Du Fu had extraordinary thematic range and was a master and innovator of all the verse forms of his time. In his life he never achieved fame as a poet and thought himself a failure in his worldly career. Perhaps only a third of his poems survive due to his long obscurity; his poems appear in no anthology earlier than one dated one hundred thirty years after his death, and it wasn't until the 11th century that he was recognized as a preeminent poet. His highly allusive, symbolic complexity and resonant ambiguity is at times less accessible than the immediacy and bravado of Li Bai. Most of what we know of his life is recorded in his poems, but there are dangers to reading his poems as history and autobiography. Du Fu is sometimes called the poet of history because his poems record the turbulent times of the decline of the Tang dynasty and constitute in part a Confucian societal critique of the suffering of the poor and the corruption of officials. He also records his own sufferings, exile, falls from grace, the death of his son by starvation; but some critics have suggested that the poems on these themes are exaggerated in the service of self-dramatization.

Du Fu was born to a prominent but declining family of scholar-officials, perhaps from modern day Henan province, though he referred to himself as a native of Duling, the ancestral home of the Du clan. In the Six Dynasties period his ancestors were in the service of the southern courts; his grandfather Du Shenyan, was an important poet of the early Tang dynasty, and a more remote ancestor, Du Yu (222-84), was a famed Confucianist and military man. In spite of family connections, however, Du Fu had difficulty achieving patronage and governmental postings, and twice failed the Imperial Examinations, in 735 and 747. He was a restless traveler, and the poems of this early period show him to be a young man given to revelry, military and hunting arts, painting and music. In 744 he met Li Bai, and this formed the basis for one of the world's most famed literary friendships; the two poets devote a number of poems to each other. In 751 Du Fu passed a special examination that he finagled through submitting rhyme-prose works directly to the emperor, but it wasn't until 755 that he was offered a postCa rather humiliating posting in the provincesCwhich he rejected, accepting instead the patronage of the heir apparent. In the winter of that year, however, the An Lushan Rebellion broke out, and the emperor fled to Sichuan, abdicated, and the heir apparent became the new emperor in Gansu province. Meanwhile, the rebels seized the capital, and Du Fu, attempting to join the new emperor in the distant northwest, was captured by the rebels. He was detained for a year, but managed to escape, and after traveling in disguise through the occupied territory, joined the emperor's court in the position of Reminder. He was arrested soon after four his outspokenness in defending a friend, a general who had failed to win a battle, but was pardoned and exiled to a low posting in Huazhou. He quit his job there, and moved to Chengdu, where he and his family depended upon the kindness of friends and relatives, and moved again and again to avoid banditry and rebellions. In spite of this instability, his poems show a serenity in this period, particularly those from 760-762, when he lived in a Athatched hut provided by a patron and friend named Yan Yu, who hired him in the years that followed as a military adviser. After Yan's death in 765, Du Fu left Chengdu, traveling down the Yangtze River, finding patrons and dreaming of a return to Changan, but being prevented by invasions from Tibet. He spent his final three years traveling on a boat, detained in sickness, and finally winding down to his death as he journeyed down the Yangtze, apparently accepting the withering away of his health and life.

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