Dejected Du Fu

Survived the war, struggling in the peace

Two years ago, Mr Du walked out of occupied Chang’an through the Gate of Golden Light, and made his way to the loyalist forces at Fengxiang. Now, in the first year of the restoration, I have been transferred out of the Imperial Chancellery to a position in Huazhou. I say goodbye to my family, and leave through this same gate, grieving for everything that has happened.
Du Fu

This is the way I went,
When I slipped back to our side,
Battalions of the horsemen then,
West of the city.
Even today I feel it,
The fear churning my stomach,
There are those whose souls
Never returned.
I was called to Chang’an to work
Just a few months ago,
This reassignment lacks
The stamp of majesty.
No skills to offer the state,
Just an aging civil servant,
Looking at the Palace of a Thousand Doors
As I ride away.


杜甫  至德二载甫自京金光门出，问道归凤翔。乾元初从左拾遗移华州掾。 与亲故别，因出此门。有悲往事。
此道昔归顺，西郊胡正繁。
至今残破胆，应有未招魂。
近得归京邑，移官岂至尊？
无才日衰老，驻马望千门。

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One of those classics where a whole story is told in the title. In this case, Du Fu has just been demoted from the job he held so nervously for a few months in the newly-restored Tang administration.

There are a couple of difficult points to negotiate in this one. The first is the name Du uses for the rebels who attacked Chang’an: the Hu. It means something like “northern foreigners,” and expresses a racial and cultural separation between the Chinese and whichever northern people it was. I often translate it as “barbarians”, but here wanted to keep the military reference, so I called them horsemen.

The next is the complaint about his demotion. Word for word, the text actually says, this demotion is hardly respectful. However, the word for respect is also a conventional reference to the emperor, so the sentence means, I can’t believe the order to demote me came from the emperor himself. I’m not entirely happy with my solution, but I think it works if we remember that any reference to the emperor inevitably created the expectation that a certain level of diplomacy and delicacy would be used. It’s a bit like raising a hot-button political issue in today’s world: as soon as politics or trans issues are mentioned, our ears prick up for certain key words, omissions, or circumlocutions. A reference to the emperor was the same: the readers expected some carefully-chosen words that could easily imply other levels of meaning. So here, Du Fu is saying that he blames some official for his demotion, not the emperor. But simply by saying it, he raises the possibility that he does blame the emperor, at least partially.