Du Fu was a prominent Chinese poet of the Tang Dynasty. Along with Li Bai, he is often called the greatest of the Chinese poets. His main personal goal was to serve his country as a successful civil servant, but he proved unable to make the necessary accommodations.

Du Fu (about712-770) was born in China and raised as a Confucian in a prominent but declining family of scholar-officials. 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. Despite family connections,? Du Fu had difficulty achieving patronage and governmental postings, and twice failed the Imperial Examinations, in 735 and 747. In 744 Du Fu met Li Bai, and this formed the basis for one of the world's most famous

literary friendships; two poets devoted a number of poems to each other. In 751 Du Fu passed a special examination through submitting rhyme-prose works directly to the emperor, but it wasn't until 755 that he was offered a rather humiliating post in the provinces which he rejected, accepting instead the patronage of the heir apparent. In the winter of that year, 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 when trying to defend a friend, a general who had failed to win a battle, but was pardoned and exiled to a low posting in Huazhou.

More about Du Fu’s life in Chengdu

In 760, he arrived in Chengdu (Sichuan province), where he spent the most of the next five years. By the autumn of that year he got into financial trouble, and sent poems begging for help to various acquaintances. He was rescued by Yan Wu, a friend and former colleague who was an appointed governor general at Chengdu. Despite his financial problems, this was one of the

happiest and most peaceful periods of his life, and many of his poems from this period are peaceful depictions of his life in his famous "thatched hut". In 762, he left the city to escape a rebellion, but he returned in summer 764 and was appointed military advisor to Yan, who was involved in campaigns against the Tibetans.

Was Du Fu a Nestorian?

Nobody is really sure about Du Fu’s religious beliefs, although a few believe he might have been a follower of Nestorian Christianity. Such a claim is possible, since Nestorian Christianity had gained slight foothold in China during the previous century, but since Du Fu's poetry focused on the creation rather than creator, such a claim about him having a preference for Christianity is rather subjective. A Nestorian was an adherent of Nestorius, patriarch of Constantinople in the fifth century, who was condemned as a heretic for claiming that all human natures were not merged into one nature in Christ (who was God in man). Therefore, it was improper to call Mary the mother of God though she might be called the mother of Christ.

Du Fu wrote more than 1,000 poems throughout his life, the famous ones included Three Officers, Three Partings, A Song of Chariots, A Song of Fair Ladies and A spring View. Du Fu's poetry offered great sympathy to common people and revealed the sharp contradiction between exploiters and exploited in feudal society. "Wine and meat rot behind vermilion gates, while on the roadside, people freeze to death" has been a line indelibly inscribed in the minds of generation after generation of Chinese people.A spring View and Upon the News of the Recapture of Henan and Hebei by the imperial

Armies shows the poet's great love for his motherland. A Song of Chariots and A Song of Fair Ladies not only praise the people’s desire to serve the country, they also expose the malfeasance of a warlike ruling class.

What is the style of Du Fu’s poetry?

In writing poems, Du Fu often hid his subjective feelings behind objective descriptions. For example, in A Song of Fair Ladies, he did not denounce Lady Yang and her brother's way of life directly but described their finery and diet in great detail, which implicitly unveils the poet's attitude.

What is “the Sage of Poetry”?

All of these merits establish Du Fu's status as "The Sage of Poetry" in a history of more than 3,000 years of Chinese literature.

The style of his work changed as he developed his writing manner and adapted to his surroundings. His earliest works are in a relatively derivative, courtly style, but he came into his own in the years of the rebellion. Owen comments on the "grim simplicity" of the Qinzhou poems, which mirrors the desert landscape; the works from his Chengdu period are "light, often finely observed”; while the poems from the late Kuizhou period have a "density and power of vision".

Du Fu is poorly represented in contemporary anthologies of poetry at his time. However, as Hung notes, he "is the only Chinese poet whose influence grew with time", and his works began to gain popularity in the ninth century.

ensured that Du Fu, as its poetic exemplar, occupied the paramount position. Since the establishment of the People's Republic of China, Du Fu's loyalty to the state and concern for the poor have been interpreted as embryonic nationalism and socialism, and he has been praised for his use of simple, "people's language".

Du Fu has also been influential outside China, although together with other High Tang poets, his reception into the Japanese literary culture was relatively late. It was not until the 17th century that he was granted the same respect in Japan as in China, but he then had a particular influence on Matsuo Bashō. In the 20th century, he was the favorite poet of Kenneth Rexroth, who has described him as "the greatest non-epic, non-dramatic poet who has survived in any language", and commented that, "he has made me a better man, as a moral agent and as a perceiving organism".