Confucian Prophet: Political Thought In Du Fu’s Poetry (752–757) ...

Figuration and Allegory

As discussed earlier, realism is a major key to an understanding of both Du’s poetics and his political thought. But that realism is not absolute; it is qualified and mediated by the necessary relation between the individual poem and the wider linguistic, textual realm in which it works. This connection is in turn the key to a view of the standards by which Du judges the politics and political institutions of his day. As in the case of realism, my view of this deeper connection between Du’s poetics and the wider linguistic culture is a development of existing scholarship on the allusive and symbolic aspects of Du’s language. A brief review of that scholarship and its corresponding method of political analysis are in order before proceeding.

Liu, Yoshikawa, and Stephen Owen hint at the possibility of deeper levels of figuration in Du’s poetry. Liu notes Du’s Confucian cast of mind, his moral purpose. Owen writes, “Du Fu seems to have possessed an unconscious sense of the inner pattern of events.” He also states that there deepened over time a “sense in his poetry of an inner symbolic order in the world.” Most tantalizingly, in his discussion of Du’s poem “Facing Snow” 對雪, Owen says,

Double meanings mark the secret correspondences between the human world and the uninhabited scene. The poet faces a world of disorder, white in the growing darkness of night, and the predominance of black and white, darkness and light, echo (as elsewhere in Du Fu’s poetry) the interplay of cosmic forces.⁵⁰

Yoshikawa sees Du’s connection with the past primarily through his use of specific words: “Du Fu tended to use vocabularies which have historical significance as expressed by the famous saying ‘There is not a single word without history in Du Fu.’” His conclusion is, “The greatness of Du Fu’s poetry, when seen from the viewpoint of its contents and thought, lies in his sound appreciation of how men should live.” The value of Du Fu, in Yoshikawa’s view, is primarily ethical. His poetics