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

world than most of the rest of Du’s poems. Du began thinking and writing about politics in 752, with the composition of “Climbing the Pagoda of the Temple of Compassionate Blessings with Several Friends” 同諸公登慈恩寺塔 (hereafter “Climbing the Pagoda”).⁶ Again, just on the eve of the An Lushan Rebellion, he composed in 755 “Thoughts While Traveling from the Capital to Fengxian County: Five Hundred Characters” 自京赴奉先縣詠懷五百字 (hereafter “Traveling from the Capital”). In 756, during the rebellion, he composed both “Seeking Cui Ji and Li Feng on the Last Day of the Month” 晦日尋崔戢李封 (hereafter “Seeking Cui Ji and Li Feng”) and “Viewing the Flood in Sanchuan: Twenty Rhymes” 三川觀水漲二十韻 (hereafter “Viewing the Flood”). In 757 he wrote “Ballad of Pengya” 彭衙行 (hereafter “Pengya”), “Three Poems on Qiang Village” 羌村三首, and “Northern Expedition” 北征. These poems share a number of characteristics that, taken together, make them good subjects for a political-philosophical reading.

First, they are all firmly dated and their political context is clear. All of them were written during the central political event of the Tang 唐 (618–907), the political crisis of Tang politics and ensuing rebellion of An Lushan, which exploded on the scene in 755. The rebellion nearly destroyed the dynasty, and the consequences of it reverberated well into the succeeding Five Dynasties 五代 (907–960) and the Song 宋 (960–1279), occupying many of the best minds of generations of Chinese intellectuals, poets, and statesmen. As did the fall of the Qin 秦 (221–206 BC) and the demise of the Han 漢 (206 BC–220 AD), the Tang crisis prompted one of the major reassessments of politics and political culture in Chinese history. Just as such writers as Jia Yi 賈誼 (200–168 BC) in the early Han began to ask why the Qin fell, this generation of Tang intellectuals began a broad reassessment of Tang politics and political culture. Du was a member of a generation of intellectuals whose political thinking was principally a response to this crisis, a generation that included many of the writers who began to frame the debates that would proceed into succeeding ages, figures such as Li Hua 李華 (ca. 710–ca. 767); Xiao Yingshi 蕭穎士 (708–759); Yuan Jie 元結 (719–772); Jia Zhi 賈至