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

natural climactic phenomena were intimately connected in the public discourse of the time. Du Fu’s poetry makes extensive use of this. Nearly all of the poems discussed in this study feature some connection between the rain and flooding current at the time and political thought. The crisis of kingship featured in “Climbing the Pagoda” is largely figured in flood imagery. In “Pengya,” “Traveling from the Capital,” and “Northern Expedition,” Du travels through areas affected by rain and flooding. The floods form the pretext for and the primary object of contemplation in “Viewing the Flood” and constitute one of the central images in “Seeking Cui Ji and Li Feng,” a poem otherwise oriented around images of scholars in reclusion. These reflections are philosophically very rich. The question naturally arises: What does it mean to figure political poems in flood imagery in a tradition in which flood imagery in the wider textual realm has specific political meanings? Du’s representations therefore prompt questions concerning the natural moral order of the universe; about conceptions of the ideal king and the ideal minister; and, finally, about what the ideal society, a society in which there are no floods, would look like.

A parallel trend to the loss of literati power was the steady rise of the military and its influence over court politics. Li Linfu was a military man and consistently supported his kind for important court positions. The frontier generals now had a direct path to political power and influence, a power that was bolstered by the professionalization of the border commands. Under the reforms of the defense establishment begun in the 730s, temporary conscription was ended and the frontier forces were made permanent standing armies. Frontier governors and generals were gaining civil positions, and ministers were taking border commands in addition to their civil positions.⁴⁸ The line between the civil and the military was being erased. As the imperial palace guard, long in decline, became weaker with the years, the emperor soon was almost completely dependent on his frontier generals for security against threats both domestic and foreign. And the generals in charge of the frontier commands were all, with the exception of that in Sichuan, non-Chinese.