Du Fu: A Life in Poetry (2013) is a recent English translation of the works of the Chinese poet Du Fu (712-770) of the Tang dynasty (618-907 AD). Thirteen centuries after his death, he is still regarded as one of China’s greatest poets, if not the greatest. He is credited as the originator of the lyric poem. From the poet’s 1,400 or so poems, the translator David Young has chosen 170.
This translation has eleven chapters, each with a brief introduction to the place, time, and circumstance of the period, which informs the reader of each poem’s historical and social context as the poet travels around China. Moreover, it shows the development of Du Fu’s poetry and artistic growth over time.
In a time of uncertainty, Du Fu’s poems are imaginative, evocative, and compassionate. It is said that “in bad times … artists may well produce their best work.” His poverty, worry, and distress at how he is going to care for his family are constant, yet he maintains his connection to poetry by documenting his emotions, “content to live in the present” although in the poem “On the Tower at Yanzhou” he writes “I love the past / I always have.”
He begins writing poetry in his early 20s about his friendship with the famous bohemian poet Li Bai, eleven years his senior, and of the great Mongolian horse, the falcon, the changing seasons, views from scenic outlooks, and leaving his friend in the rural village when he decides to live in the city.
Du Fu writes of the rebellion (750-755), the decline of the Dynasty’s power in Central Asia, his life as a refugee, being forty years old, taking a position as a palace guard, and being away from his wife. In one of his most famous poems “Spring Scene” he writes:
The state goes to ruin
mountains and rivers survive
spring in the city
thick leaves, deep grass
in times like these
the flowers seem to weep
birds, as if they too
hated separation
flutter close by
startle the heart
for three months
the beacon fires have been lit
a letter from home
is worth a fortune
this white hair is getting sparse
from scratching
almost too thin
to hold a hatpin!
In “Jade Flower Palace” he writes of the ruins of Prince Taizong’s palace, when everything is destroyed:
…
all that remains
is one stone horse on its side
sadness brims up inside me
I have to sit down in the grass
to sing and then to sob
wiping my streaming eyes
all of us on the road
all restless and unhappy
anything but immortal
not very long to live.
Du Fu’s sadness turns to joy as he is reunited with his wife and son. Now he has an office job. In “Too Much Heat and Too Much Work” he writes:
Middle of August and the heat
is just about unbearable
and who could have any appetite
in all this steam?
at night I lie awake
and worry about the scorpions
and now the flies are getting worse
as summer moves toward autumn
wearing the robes and belts of office
I sit at work and want to scream
and my subordinates
just pile up more paperwork
I stare out the window at the pines
that rim the canyons in the distant mountains
and dream of walking barefoot
across crushed ice!
And then he pens poems of his retirement on a farm in the country. He rises late, he shows off his vegetables to his guests, and “it must be a month / since I’ve even combed my hair!” In his latter years, he writes of “Random Feelings” and “Filling in the Time.” As he ages, he writes of loneliness: “and like the letters I don’t get / my loneliness means nothing.” Trying to capture his youth, he rides a horse, and comically writes about it in his poem “Drunk, I Fell off My Horse.”
This is a beautiful collection of poems—comic and tragic—simply told with unrestricted thoughts of romance, love, hurt, pain, nostalgia, loss, grief, self-depreciation, and acceptance. Everyday life is recorded in exquisite detail. The poems are so relatable today. I love every one of them.
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MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of: Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).
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