31 Facts About Du Fu

Du Fu was a Chinese poet and politician during the Tang dynasty.

Stephen Owen suggests a third factor particular to Du Fu, arguing that the variety of the poet's work required consideration of his whole life, rather than the "reductive" categorisations used for more limited poets.

Du Fu was born in 712; the exact birthplace is unknown, except that it was near Luoyang, Henan province.

Du Fu's mother died shortly after he was born, and he was partially raised by his aunt.

Du Fu had three half brothers and one half sister, to whom he frequently refers in his poems, although he never mentions his stepmother.

Du Fu later claimed to have produced creditable poems by his early teens, but these have been lost.

Du Fu failed, to his surprise and that of centuries of later critics.

Du Fu would have been allowed to enter the civil service because of his father's rank, but he is thought to have given up the privilege in favour of one of his half brothers.

Du Fu spent the next four years living in the Luoyang area, fulfilling his duties in domestic affairs.

Du Fu was by some years the younger, while Li Bai was already a poetic star.

Du Fu took the civil service exam a second time during the following year, but all the candidates were failed by the prime minister.

Du Fu, who had been away from the city, took his family to a place of safety and attempted to join the court of the new emperor, but he was captured by the rebels and taken to Chang'an.

Around this time Du Fu is thought to have contracted malaria.

Du Fu's conscientiousness compelled him to try to make use of it: he caused trouble for himself by protesting the removal of his friend and patron Fang Guan on a petty charge.

Du Fu moved on in the summer of 759; this has traditionally been ascribed to famine, but Hung believes that frustration is a more likely reason.

Du Fu next spent around six weeks in Qinzhou, where he wrote more than sixty poems.

Du Fu was relieved by Yan Wu, a friend and former colleague who was appointed governor general at Chengdu.

Du Fu was survived by his wife and two sons, who remained in the area for some years at least.

Du Fu's last known descendant is a grandson who requested a grave inscription for the poet from Yuan Zhen in 813.

Du Fu is the first person in the historical record identified as a diabetic patient.

Criticism of Du Fu's works has focused on his strong sense of history, his moral engagement, and his technical excellence.

Du Fu therefore "lends grandeur" to the wider picture by comparing it to "his own slightly comical triviality".

Yuan Zhen was the first to note the breadth of Du Fu's achievement, writing in 813 that his predecessor "united in his work traits which previous men had displayed only singly".

Du Fu mastered all the forms of Chinese poetry: Chou says that in every form he "either made outstanding advances or contributed outstanding examples".

Du Fu is noted for having written more on poetics and painting than any other writer of his time.

Du Fu wrote eighteen poems on painting alone, more than any other Tang poet.

Du Fu is poorly represented in contemporary anthologies of poetry.

Du Fu's influence was helped by his ability to reconcile apparent opposites: political conservatives were attracted by his loyalty to the established order, while political radicals embraced his concern for the poor.

Du Fu's popularity grew to such an extent that it is as hard to measure his influence as that of Shakespeare in England: it was hard for any Chinese poet not to be influenced by him.

Du Fu's poetry has made a profound impact on Japanese literature, especially on the literature from the Muromachi period and on scholars and poets in the Edo period, including Matsuo Basho, the very greatest of all haiku poets.

Du Fu's are free translations, which seek to conceal the parallelisms through enjambement and expansion and contraction of the content; his responses to the allusions are firstly to omit most of these poems from his selection, and secondly to "translate out" the references in those works which he does select.