China: Part Four (The 8th. C. Poet Du Fu)

     Chengdu is associated with many prominent writers--Li Bai and Xue Tao (late Tang Dynasty poets), Pa Chin (author of the 20th. Century classic novel, Family). But the writer whose legacy still permeates the city, literally and spiritually, is the 8th. Century poet, Du Fu.

     My favorite public park in Chengdu is the site of the Du Fu Cottage where the sad-eyed poet set up house with his family in A.D. 760.  The area boasts a gorgeous temple pavilion affording panoramic views of the city......

...... and a reconstructed version of the thatched cottage where Du Fu lived on and off for the remaining years of his life.

    It's mind-boggling to realize that Du Fu lived 600 years before Chaucer and Dante (often cited as founders of the European poetic tradition).  His poems still seem appropriate to the modern age. He can be as humanistic as Walt Whitman or William Wordsworth, as confessional as Sylivia Plath or Anne Sexton, as melancholic as Thomas Hardy or Robert Frost, as anti-war as Wilfrid Owen or Siegfried Sassoon.

     Here, for example, are the opening lines to his poem, "Song of the Road:"

 I, a man from Duling, wearing only/ Common hemp clothes; despite advancing years/ And becoming ever more impractical . . . still do I go on . . . searching/ For the better way; writing poems of passion/ In grief for the people, burnt/ Up with the agony of it all

   For Du Fu, the thatched cottage that he built with his own hands and whose bamboo-rich grounds he tended with great care, came to represent a welcome relief and refuge from the violent civil war that raged around him, and that would eventually bring about the fall of the Tang Dynasty. In the poem entitled "The Thatched Cottage," he writes:

I have come back/ To clear away the brambles; coming in/ I am happy to see my four pines/ Still live; in my grass sandals I go/ Through the bamboos, meeting/ My old dog so glad to see me/ That he gets up under my gown

     Yet his joy at being back home is tempered by a sad awareness that feudal lords are engaged in a bloody warfare that is draining the life-force out of the nation. He ponders his own role in such a war-torn place:

Perhaps because of all this chaos/ There is no place for one like me;/ Though useless still I have a little life left;/ Whatever good now comes to me/ I will appreciate and be content.

     True, he's not the happiest poet in the world.  But if you want to read a 1200-year old poet who still resonates in this day and age, I recommend the words of Du Fu. 

     Even better, if you want a pleasant refuge from the hustle and bustle of Chengdu traffic and city-life, I recommend the Du Fu Cottage in the city's central park.