Spring Prospect by Du Fu
"Spring Prospect," composed by the renowned Tang dynasty poet Du Fu, is one of his most celebrated works, showcasing his adeptness in the regulated verse form known as lüshi. Written during a tumultuous period while Du Fu was in Ch'ang-an, the poem captures a deep interplay between the natural and the artificial. It reflects on themes of beauty, renewal, and the emotional turbulence caused by political strife and personal separation. The poem artfully intertwines the poet's feelings with the imagery of flowers and birds, leaving ambiguous the sources of grief and sympathy.
The use of "beacon fires" serves as a poignant metaphor for the ongoing turmoil, symbolizing the prolonged duration of emergency and distress. Du Fu's characteristic self-deprecating humor is evident in his reflection on aging and personal loss, providing a contrasting lightness to the poem’s heavier themes. Through its intricate structure and rich imagery, "Spring Prospect" highlights Du Fu's mastery of poetic form and his profound sensitivity to the human condition, inviting readers to explore the connections between nature and human emotion.
On this Page
Spring Prospect by Du Fu
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of World Literature, Revised Edition
First published: Written: “Chun wang,” 757 (collected in The Selected Poems of Du Fu, 2002)
Type of work: Poem
The Work
“Spring Prospect,” Du Fu’s most famous poem, was written while he was held in Ch’ang-an and is characteristic of his verse, both in form and in subject matter. The poem seems to separate the artificial (the “nation” and the “city”) and the natural (“hills and streams”), only to erase this distinction when “grass and trees” are seen flourishing in Ch’ang-an at a time of destruction. The lines “feeling the times,/ flowers draw tears;/ hating separation,/ birds alarm the heart” are willfully ambiguous. Burton Watson, the translator, has given the flavor of the original by using dangling participles. Who is the implied subject of “feeling” or of “hating”? Is it the poet or the flowers and birds? Is nature sympathizing with humanity and the poet? Are the flowers crying over the political situation, or the birds suffering because Du Fu and his family are apart? On the other hand, the lines can be taken to mean that the poet is weeping on the flowers, symbols of beauty and renewal, while the birds’ songs stoke his emotional anguish. Thus, the poetry weaves humanity and nature together into one fabric.
The “beacon fires” of line 5, “Beacon fires three months running,” were used by the Chinese to maintain contact between garrisons; they would be lit at regular times to indicate that all was well. In the poem, their use for three months shows how long the emergency has lasted. The final two lines focus on the poet, but he refuses to take himself too seriously: He is losing so much hair that soon there will not be enough in the topknot for him to pin on his hat, and it will fall off. This wry, self-deprecating humor is typical of Du Fu.
The poem in Chinese consists of eight lines of five words each, a form called lüshi, or regulated verse. It was one of a group of forms known as “modern style,” which developed after the fifth century c.e. and could be written with either seven or five syllables to the line—Chinese words normally have only one syllable. Du Fu is particularly admired for his mastery of this very strict form. There were precise rules for verbal and tonal parallelism in the second and third pairs of lines, and the translation preserves most of these antitheses, as indicated for example, in lines 3 and 4: “feeling”/“hating”; “the times” (political and personal dislocation)/“separation”; “flowers”/“birds”; “draw”/“alarm”; “tears”/“heart.”
Bibliography
Chou, Eva Shan. Reconsidering Tu Fu: Literary Greatness and Cultural Context. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Cooper, Arthur, comp. Li Po and Tu Fu: Poems Selected and Translated with an Introduction and Notes. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin, 1973.
Davis, A. R. Tu Fu. New York: Twayne, 1971.
Dissanayake, Wimal. “Self as Image in the Nature Poetry of Kalidasa and Du Fu.” In Self as Image in Asian Theory and Practice, edited by Roger T. Ames, with Thomas P. Kasulis and Wimal Dissanayake. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998.
Feng Yuean-chuen. A Short History of Classical Chinese Literature. Translated by Yang Hsien-Yi and Gladys Yang. Hong Kong: Joint Publishing, 1983.
Lin, Shuen-fu, and Stephen Owen, eds. The Vitality of the Lyric Voice: Shih Poetry from the Late Han to the T’ang. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986.
Owen, Stephen. “Tu Fu.” In The Great Age of Chinese Poetry: The High T’ang. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1981.
Watson, Burton. Chinese Lyricism: Shih Poetry from the Second to the Twelfth Century, with Translations. New York: Columbia University Press, 1971.
Watson, Burton. The Columbia Book of Chinese Poetry: From Early Times to the Thirteenth Century. New York: Columbia University Press, 1984.
Watson, Burton, ed. The Selected Poems of Du Fu. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002.
Yu, Pauline, et al., eds. Ways with Words: Writing About Reading Texts from Early China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.