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

In keeping with the historical-biographical approach, Chou’s method is to read Du’s poetry as direct commentary on events. Chou observes, Du’s poetry can be read “on one level as a record of the devastation and decline of empire set in motion by that [An Lushan] rebellion.”³⁷ She proposes that the best method for fleshing out Du’s political views is to “examine in general terms the effect exerted on Tu [Du] Fu’s poetry and on the reception of his poetry by its recurrent political and social themes,” which range from “officials and court politics, military policies and politics, battles (including advice on strategy and post-battle evaluation), to taxes, prices, punishments, local officials, regional militia, and the sufferings of the common people.”³⁸ She concludes by this method that Du’s politics fit “squarely within the traditions of Confucian thought.” His Confucian analysis of the causes of the social disorders of his day and his solutions for them are all, in Chou’s analysis, conventional.³⁹ Du’s political views are naive in that they are inadequate in the face of the complicated times the poet endured, amounting to pious Confucian platitudes with which no one could disagree, but which were also limited and wholly ineffectual, “both in the analysis offered and in the solutions proposed.”⁴⁰ The reason for this is that Du’s thinking remains mere sentiment inherited from an idealistic Confucian-Mencian tradition that avoids the practice of politics on the ground in favor of the cultivation of proper intentions. In the end, she concludes, “Tu Fu does not fit what is usually meant by a political thinker, nor do his views shed much light on political thought.”⁴¹ Chou’s analysis is designed to examine Du’s cultural legacy and how it was formed through the eventual fusion of the steadfast Confucian sentimentality expressed in his poetry with the inherited image of the poet as a model figure and cultural icon in later ages. This image, she convincingly argues, has become a barrier to the literary study of a body of poetry that has been too long the subject of personality analysis by both Chinese and Western scholars.⁴² However, arguing that Du rather unthinkingly accepts the conventions of Confucianism seems to underestimate how unique Du’s Confucian views were relative to those of the vast majority of the poets of the day,