Portrait: AI-generated imagined likeness
Poet · Writer
Poet of the Tang Dynasty. A giant of Chinese poetry, along with Li Bai, who experienced the Anshi Rebellion and wrote about the suffering of society in his poems. He is a person who thinks about the prosperity and turmoil of the Tang Dynasty.
View in catalogChang'an
Work
Chengdu
Residence
Du Fu's poetry
Poem
An Lushan Rebellion
755–763
War · Witness
Map: Natural Earth (PD)
Born into a family of military officers, he aspired to become a bureaucrat, but had difficulty in the imperial examinations and civil service. Although the Tang Dynasty prospered centered around the cosmopolitan city of Chang'an, contradictions between court politics and frontier military affairs were deepening.
Based on his experiences during the Anshi Rebellion and his wanderings, he expressed his feelings for the war, the suffering of the people, and his family in precise poems. Due to the high level of perfection of his prose poems, he was later called the ``Sage of Poetry.''
Du Fu's poems not only lament his own misfortune, but also direct his attention to those suffering from hunger and conscription. Personal emotions and major historical events are combined in one poem.
When we study Du Fu, we learn that Tang culture not only produced a gorgeous court culture, but also literature that expressed war and social unrest. He was a role model for writing history into poetry in East Asia's Chinese poetry culture. This is also an example of literature becoming a record of social criticism.
