Of Fu

杜甫, Dù Fǔ (712 - 770), or 杜少陵 Dù Shàolíng , or 杜工部 Dù Gōngbù , are with Li Bai the most famous poet of Tang. Marked by the thought Confucianist, not having succeeded in making a stable career of civil servant and contemporary of the revolt of Year Lushan, its poetry shows its sensitivity to misfortunes of its time.

Here how the Marquis D' Hervey de Saint-Denys, in his translation of poetries of the Dynasty Tang, presented it:

From Fu, also known under the nickname of Tseu-meï , which, if it could be translated, would mean about flower of elegance, had been born in a village from the surroundings from Siang-yang, city third order of the province of Hou-kouang, the second of the years kaï-youan of the reign of the emperor Ming Huangdi, i.e. the year 714 or 715 of our era. It seemingly had a robust complexing, although frail, a raised size, fine and delicate features; its manners were elegant, as much as its outside was distinguished.

“Of Fu, Mr. Abel-Rémusat says, in his biographical Études Rémusat, Nouveaux Asian Mixtures, T. II., announced happy provisions as of its youth, and however it did not obtain success in these literary contests which open, in China, the road of employment and fortune. Its spirit, recalcitrant and so much is not very inconstant, could yield with this inflexible rule only the institutions impose on all the well-read men without exception. It renonça thus with the ranks and the advantages which he had been able to hope for his advance, and its taste involving it towards poetry, he became poet. ”

What says Mr. Abel Rémusat of the character capricious and independent of Of Fu appears me completely justified by what we know of his life; but orientalist celebrates it deviates a little historical truth when he repeats with the Père Amiot that the Chinese poet did not obtain any success in the literary contests. He would induce in error the reader, if he prepared it to see in Of Fu what one would on our premises call a poet of nature, having given up the study to listen to only his only inspirations.

It was indeed following a failure undergone in its examinations that Of Fu went to Tchang-ngan, where was the Court, and where its immense successes as poet made him forget those which it had initially aspired to like well-read man; but this examination in which it had failed was that of the candidates to the rank of tsin-, title which one on our premises compares to that of doctor, which indicates that it had already taken the ranks of graduate (sieou-tsaï) and bachelor (kiu-jîn) siao thang hoa tchouàn (Gallery of the famous men): Biography of Thou-insane. Library of Mr. Pauthier. However, it is very little of Chinese, even more skilful, who succeed in obtaining the doctorate as of the first test. Number of them hardly arrive there before having gray hair, and Thou-insane, when it came in Tchang-ngan, was not yet twenty-eight years old.

If I could expose with some clearness, at the beginning of this volume, the ideas of the poetic matter Chinese, and perhaps the same principles which govern versification on their premises, it is judged that this detail, mentioned by Rémusat, is not without some importance to be rectified; it is a feature characteristic of the Chinese literature which the scholarship is there less essential to the poet than with the historian. No one, if it is illiterate, could not write with distinction.

As for the high functions to which simple scholars could claim only by initially obtaining high literary ranks, they all were accessible to a man from the reputation from Fu, and will see we it, under the reign of Penny-tsoung, invested one of highest dignities of the Empire. He enjoyed a true celebrity already, when the attention of the Hiouan-tsoung emperor even as Ming-hoang-Ti. One indifferently indicates it under these two names. was attracted on three small descriptive poems due to its brush, and which made great noise then. Hiouan-tsoung complimented itself the poet, and conferred to him at once an honorary title which made it go of par with very large lords. Soon after Thou-insane lives itself promoted with functions of a still higher row; they gave him the facility to see each day the sovereign and to discuss familiarly with him. These functions, which mainly consisted in drawing up the list of the allowed people to the imperial audiences and regulating between them the order of precedences, reflect the poet in daily connection with all the illustrations of the Empire. Such was the favor of which he enjoys that the emperor offered the government of a province to him; such was the charm of Tchang-ngan that Thou-insane refused it.

Friend of Li Bai, of which it had philosophy without having the intemperance of it; friend especially of Tsin-tsan, less famous, but more delicate poet; celebrated, sought of all, sharing its hours between the study and the pleasure, singing the lakes and the mountains, celebrating youth and spring, it reached its fortieth year imperceptibly, leaving, as it said it, to leave during the days without counting them.

However it was always an expensive stay which that of the capital of a great empire, and the salaries of the poet were, appears it, insufficient for its needs. He thus addressed to the emperor a request in worms, whose one would not have to literally take all the terms, but of which it is not without interest to know the drafting:

“The literature, said it, is the inheritance of those of my race; I am literary man with the eleventh generation. Since the seventh year of my age, until fortieth where I entered, I made another thing only study, read and compose. I acquired some reputation, but not good; I am in the greatest distress. Some grasses salted with a little rice are all my food; all my clothing consists in the dress which I have on the body. If Your Majesty does not hasten to put order at it, it must expect the first day to intend to tell that Thou-insane is death of cold and of hunger. It holds only with it to save this sad account, by helping me if it believes me useful to its service; while returning me, if I am not good with nothing concerning the Chinese for him, T.V, pp. 386-387. ”

It would be difficult not to see a poetic hyperbole in this so absolute destitution, on behalf of a man who had refused to exchange against the government of a province the conditions of existence which were made to him at the Court. Always it is that the request was very favorably accommodated. It was worth with Thou-insane a pension of which the first year was delivered to him in advance; but such events even occurred this year, that it was unfortunately for him the only one that it had to touch.

A Tartar general had revolted, beaten the Imperial ones and was posed itself like applicant with the Empire. Hiouan-tsoung was withdrawn in an inaccessible province, and, fugitive on its side, Thou-insane gained the mountains of Chen-if, while the savage Tartars made to brouter their horses in these beautiful gardens of Tchang-ngan, of which he had sung so many times the vain alleys and the flowered floors.

It is starting from this phase of its life that I especially made loans with works of Thou-insane. The Old man of Chao-ling, the Recruiter, a Beautiful Young woman, the Fugitive one, offer tables of the company of then and misfortunes of the Empire, which appeared me to be of interest, outwards even of their more or less of literary merit.

The rebellion having been overcome, Penny-tsoung having succeeded his/her father who had abdicated, Thou-insane returned in Tchang-ngan, where the new sovereign entrusted the highest load to him that a subject could ambitionner. It did it imperial critic N. 7 following the part of Thou-insane entitled Song of autumn, p. 242. China is perhaps the only country of the world where similar functions ever existed; all the more dangerous functions as they are taken with serious by those which fill them. Always entrusted to the most famous well-read men, they were for several of them the occasion to sacrifice their life with heroism; they attracted with Thou-insane an exile in which it was to die.

The poet had discharged many times duties of his load as a man above very feared, without the emperor finding it bad. One of the ministers of state, San-kouan, having been broken and having been disgraced, it took its defense in energetic terms highly, but, it should be recognized, rather little measured. “It is against the good policy, says it to the emperor, to disgrace a minister for small faults. If those which are useful to you are always in fear, you will be surrounded only the flattering ones who will applaud you until in your excesses more shouting. The fault whose San-kouan was made guilty towards you not being those which interest the State, deserved your share only one reprimand. You broke it without taking council of anybody; of which name do want you that one calls this way of acting? If one gives him that which is appropriate, one will say that it is the whim or some passion unworthy of the Master of the Empire concerning the Chinese, T.V p. 390. ” The emperor offended tone of this remonstrance; he named the critic governor of a city of Chen-if, which was naturally equivalent to an order to leave the Court.

Thou-insane went to its station; but at the day fixed to take possession of its load publicly, when all the civils servant were assembled, it stripped badges who made it recognize for what it was, placed them on a table, made them, in the presence of everyone, a deep reverence and eclipsed. This way of excusing itself of an employment for which one did not feel clean had been formerly of use and, either pride in its disgrace, or that it had thirst for freedom, Thou-insane had judged in connection with being prevailed about it.

He flees towards the Sichuan, traversing the valleys and the mountains, carrying out a wandering life and soon poor wretch, lasting which he often lived of wild fruits, that he prepared itself with the hearth of the loggers and the peasants. As the winter approached and that it envisaged the moment when more serious resources would become necessary to him, it imagined to go to the town of Tching-tou, in order to sell to some opulent well-read men new pieces of poetry. It had soon found what it sought; but, known as the father Amiot, it found also what it did not seek. He was recognized by principal Mandarin of the district, which wrote at the Court, asking whether he were to stop it. For any answer, it accepted fine patent which named Thou-insane general police chief of the attics of the district, with order to say to him that the emperor would place it elsewhere when it would be annoyed stay of Tching-tou. Mandarin did what one ordered to him; it benefitted from the first day when the poet showed himself in the city to give his patent to him, but this one did not want any more employment which obstructed its freedom less world. “You are mistaken, says it to Mandarin; it is not with me that this patent is addressed; I am not your man; made your effort to find it. ” Mandarin said in vain, it could not draw some from another speech.

Seeing itself recognized in Tching-tou, the poet gave up the surroundings of this city and was inserted front in, where this time he was discovered by the military governor of the province, called Hien-vou, liberal man and friend of the letters, which offered initially a sumptuous hospitality to him, and which wrote in its turn with Tchang-ngan, requesting for its host the nomination of advising ministry for the public works. Great work of restoration was going to be carried out in all the monuments of the province, and he did not know, wrote he, no man able than Thou-insane to chair it. The nomination was not made wait. Consequently, invested functions which did not oppose of anything its tastes, bound of a sharp friendship with his guard, the Chinese poet took again this life of pleasure which it had known to sacrifice to his outspokenness, but which was not less the bottom of its ambition.

This state of affairs lasted six years, with the end of which the governor having died and of great disorders having burst again in the province, the poet took again his wandering life, not having more, however, to fear misery, because a will of Hien-vou had put some at the shelter.

It was fixed during some time close to Koueï-tcheou, at the extreme border of, where it wrote the part entitled Chant of autumn, by which I finished the extract that I give of his poetries. It had left Tchang-ngan at forty six years; it had some fifty-five then. If its exile were less hard than was that of Ovide, Thou-insane did not turn less constantly its glances from there towards Tchang-ngan, like illustrates it exiled Volumes had turned to them his towards the capital of the Roman world. The same concern devoured them; but it is remarkable that one meets in the last worms of Thou-insane, neither the expression of a regret for the action which had brought its disgrace, nor least servile adulation, in order to erase the past.

Cur aliquid vidi ? cur conscia lumina feci ? exclaims with bitterness the Latin poet. “I knew to fill the duties of my load, known as Thou-insane; I was to be rewarded. ”

The ninth of the years your-Li, i.e. about year 774 of our era, Thou-insane which was then in Loung-yang; in Hou-kouang, wanted to go to visit the ruins of an antique building, which one allotted construction to the one of the most former sovereigns of China. Being ventured only in a boat, on an overflowed river, despite everything the representations which had been made to him, it was wrapped by large water and forced to take refuge in a given up temple, to the slope of a mountain where, during ten days whole, it had to live only raw roots that provided him the rock. Mandarin of the place, not seeing it returning, had made build a raft and had been put at its research, helped by bold boatmen; it ends up discovering it with half death of cold and of hunger.

The joy which it had to have saved the life with this man celebrates inspired the fatal idea to him to give a great feast to this occasion. Thou-insane sat down in the middle of invited. The abundance of the mets and especially the good wine made him forget that its head and its stomach were weakened by a long fast. He ate much, goal more, and the following day one found it dead in his bed. It was fifty-nine years old siao thang hoa tchouàn (Gallery of the famous men): Biography of Thou-insane. Library of Mr. Pauthier.

Thou-insane is the only poet whom his compatriots put in parallel with Li-taï-EP. If the majority of the well-read men grant only the second place to him, it however has many partisans who do not accept this judgment, and of which the opinion, I believe, will be divided by the European reader. It is a feeling to which I would have yielded myself for the arrangement of this collection, if I had not believed to have, in similar matter, to respect the order followed by the Chinese editors. Like those of its rival, poetries of Thou-insane were joined together and published in body of work only a long time after its death. The editions that one made some are innumerable and offer sometimes alternatives which one cannot be astonished. That which was printed about the middle of XIe century, and which is estimated, contains fourteen hundred and five parts, without including/understanding there poetries that Thou-insane had composed during its races in, which form an additional volume.

See too

Poetry of Of Fu translated into French

Zh-classical: 杜甫 Zh-min-nan: Tō͘ Hú Zh-yue: 杜甫

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