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

whose writings either featured a Buddho-Taoist emphasis on reclusion as a response to the turmoil of the times or did not consider the events surrounding the rebellion much at all. Moreover, this line of reasoning seems to accept a rather stereotyped view of what Confucian thought is and thus misses some of the sophistication and nuance of Du’s thought when considered in relation to his textual sources. Nor does it consider the extent to which Du’s poetry becomes an assertion of a particular political view and corresponding poetic diction that stands in opposition to the literary fashion of the day and thus as an assertion of a political philosophy, the content of which must be delineated and defined.⁴³

At this point, it is possible to suggest another view of Du’s realism with very different implications for political thought. My focus here does not refute the view of realism as “true-to-life” poetics. This realism is what makes Du’s poetry so compelling and makes the realism I focus on work as literature. But my attention here is on how that realism is used to depict political subjects. Du’s representations of political institutions and of the empire over which those institutions rule are based on reality, but they are portrayed in poetic diction that at once captures that reality, invites political questions about it, and suggests standards by which to evaluate them. These evaluations, when considered in and of themselves, become political thought. In the actual political events of his time one finds the material out of which Du Fu creates the poetic-political representations that form the starting point of his critique of Tang politics and society: sharp factional conflict; the questionable role of the imperial harem in politics; the corruption of the tribute system of economic circulation; the hardship caused by floods; relations between the frontier generals and the political elite; the exclusion of the literati exam graduates from political power—all of these realities find literary expression in the poems considered here.⁴⁴

The first political issue to figure in Du’s poetry is the problem of aristocratic factionalism and the aristocracy’s near exclusion from positions of power of the literati, who relied on the exam system rather than clan