Writers › Writer / Poet
Du Fu
Tang poet who lived through the An Lushan rebellion, served briefly as Reminder of the Left, and whose war-years verse was called a history in poetry
Mural of Climbing High, a work by this person.
An aged traveler stands on a high autumn slope while leaves scatter over the broad river and birds wheel in the wind. The exposed landscape deepens the poem’s sense of age, hardship and solitude.
Also known as Zi Zimei · Hao Shao Ling Ye Lao · Du Gongbu · Shi Sheng
- Roles
- Writer / Poet
Du Fu, courtesy name Zimei, called himself the Rustic Elder of Shaoling; his family came from Xiangyang, but he was born in Gong county, Henan, a grandson of the poet Du Shenyan. In 751 he presented three rhapsodies on state rites, and Emperor Xuanzong had him await appointment at the Academy of Scholarly Worthies. During the An Lushan rebellion he escaped in 757 to the emperor's temporary court at Fengxiang and was made Reminder of the Left, but his defense of the minister Fang Guan cost him favor, and he was sent out to Huazhou, where the 'Three Officers' and 'Three Partings' poems soon followed. In 759 he resigned and travelled through Qinzhou and Tonggu to Chengdu, building his thatched cottage there; the governor Yan Wu later secured him the nominal post of vice-director in the Ministry of Works. He died in 770 on a boat on the Xiang River. Meng Qi's *Poems with Their Stories* (*Benshi shi*) records that his contemporaries already called his verse a history in poetry.
Life and times
Dates 712 CE–770 CE