| Chapter 1: | Poetry and Political Thought |
|
|
suggesting that originality with respect to Tao grows from serious philosophical engagement. Though Swartz concludes that this engagement began in the Song, she notes as well that Li Bai’s “references to Tao’s wine and zither” in his 756 poem “When I Fled from the Rebellion and Sought Refuge in Yan, I Presented this Poem to Cui Qin, Magistrate of Xuancheng” 經亂後將避地剡中留贈催宣城 “should be read as signs of a more profound appreciation of Tao’s spirit.”28 I believe Swartz is correct in this assertion. I would also add Du Fu’s engagement—especially in “Pengya,” “Northern Expedition,” and “Three Poems on Qiang Village”—with Tao’s idyllic social visions. These are important elements of Du’s critique of the chaos of the age and inform his political thought in significant ways.
The language of Du’s poetry works within and against this authority structure, the textual realm of the age, as it creates meaning. To the extent that the authority structure is political, the relationship between this structure of political language and the language of the poem generates definable political ideas. This is extremely useful for the quest I have expressed, using embroidery as a metaphor for the poem. Du’s language does not spring from a vacuum, existing only in his time and place; it participates in a textual tradition that in the Tang was the subject of a self-conscious and purposeful reassessment precisely as an assertion of a common and authoritative culture upon which political and social reform could proceed. Du was very much a participant in this culture. Understanding both the language of his poetry and the political ideas therein entails a recovery at least of that portion of the cultural fabric through which Du’s embroidery threads, that portion of the authority structure and conceptual world that is relevant to Du’s use of its language. Du’s critiques of the politics of his day are meaningful as thought to the extent that they relate to inherited cultural and political authority, the implied ideal against which the subject of the critique is evaluated, and to the extent that they relate to actual political structures insofar as those structures are conceived in terms conditioned by the language of those texts. This textual realm constitutes the field of