Du Fu bids goodbye at the graveside

To the guy who ruined his career

Shadows of the Past, by Joyce Cairns. This contemporary painting seems to me to do something like what Du Fu is doing in his poem: the very texture is made up of deeply-felt stories of the past that define his (and our) moral understanding of the world.

Farewell at the Grave of Defender-in-Chief Fang
Du Fu

Again I was on the road to somewhere,
But as I passed, I stopped the horse
To pay my respects at the lonely grave.
Tears have been wept here, tears enough
That not a patch of earth is dry,
And close overhead, the kind of torn clouds
That glow after the sun has slipped below.
You were a master at the go board,
Like Xie An, who never rose from his seat
Even as his troops destroyed the enemy.
I am a guest who comes too late,
Like Prince Zha, who brought a gift to Xu
Only to find its lord had passed away.
The forest was quiet for our farewell:
The falling of flowers was all that I saw,
And all that I heard was the trill of an oriole.

杜甫  别房太尉墓
他乡复行役，驻马别孤坟。
近泪无干土，低空有断云。
对棋陪谢傅，把剑觅徐君。
唯见林花落，莺啼送客闻。

---

When I just started this blog, a reader wrote that they were not a fan of Du Fu because he’s such a dirge. I rebuffed them with some of Du’s greatest and funniest poems, of which there are many, but now we’re getting deeper into the oeuvre, and I have to admit… Yeah, in this poem, he’s a bit of a dirge. I mean, literally, since he’s singing at the graveside of a friend. Also, this is a poem that is tough to bring into English because its beauty lies in allusions to history and other poems. I’ve done my best, but if this one doesn’t immediately capture you… it’s because it’s a tough ask.

That said, it is a pleasurable read. Let me give you the background first, because it’s fascinating. Fang Guan was one of the leading politicians of Xuanzong’s late reign, and was charged with leading the defence of the realm against An Lushan’s rebel army in 756. Fang messed up badly, and the rebels took Chang’an. Ultimately, Fang was removed from command, demoted, and sent to work in a regional outpost, where he soon died. (The title of Defender-in-Chief was given to him after his death. It doesn’t mean that he was good at defending, more like a belated well-done-for-trying.)

Now, Du Fu managed to get himself mixed up in this debacle. In the court you hitched yourself to a patron, and Fang Guan was Du Fu’s patron. (It’s not clear to me if they ever talked when they were at court. I suspect that Fang was much too successful to ever interact directly with Du. More like Fang was at the top of one particular patronage chain, and Du was on its lower rungs.) When Fang’s future was being debated at court, Du spoke on his behalf, and after Fang’s dismissal, the fact that Du Fu had supported him did Du no favours at all. Du would soon be sent off to a backwater posting as well.

After they both fell from favour, Du seems to have visited Fang at least once. He continued to believe in Fang, and wrote of him in heroic tones, including in this poem.

It starts with the plainest of scene-setting, because for Du Fu, poetry is his diary. But immediately his poetic imagination kicks in. First we have reverential floods of tears, and then the torn clouds above. On the face of them, the clouds suggest nature mourning the loss of Fang Guan. But there’s always another layer of meaning with Du Fu: these torn clouds come from a poem by an old poet-king, the Emperor Wen of Liang, which says: 断云留去日，长山减半天。Torn clouds hold onto the departed sun, the mountain ridge takes away half the sky. Torn clouds are mournful, but to Du Fu, they also suggest a final hint of something recently lost - very appropriate for a man at the graveside, remembering his recently departed friend.

Next, historical stories come to Du’s mind. Xie An was a great leader in the state of Eastern Jin, whose strategies helped keep the state safe against invasion. When he received news of one decisive victory, he was in the middle of a game of go, and did not allow the happy news to break his concentration even for a moment. On the surface, Du is complimenting Fang on the quality of his go playing; but underneath, he is suggesting that Fang really did save the empire. He still seems loyal to his old patron, to the point of asserting Fang’s military skills despite all evidence to the contrary.

Finally Du Fu mentions the Lord of Xu. Prince Zha, a nobleman of Wu in the south, was touring the northern nations. He passed through Xu, and observed that the king very much admired his jewelled sword. He had national business to attend to first, but when he finished his mission, he returned via Xu, intending to give the sword to the king. Unfortunately the king had died in the interim, so Prince Zha hung his sword on the king’s tomb, telling his attendants that he would be betraying his own good intentions if he failed to make good on his promise. We don’t have much evidence for what Du Fu ws thinking here, but the message seems clear enough to me. Now that Fang Guan was dead, no doubt friends had urged Du Fu to renounce his former support for Fang. Perhaps if he admitted Fang was wrong (and that he himself had been wrong to support Fang), he could get back onto the Chang’an career ladder. And with Fang dead, it would do no harm now… Du Fu rejects this reasoning. If he fails in his loyalty to Fang after Fang is dead, then it is a betrayal of his own conscience.

Du’s decision is made, but the path of righteousness is a lonely one. The falling flowers and hooting birds at the end emphasise the loneliness of the grave, and the isolation of Du Fu in his determined defence of a friend.

It’s taken three chunky paragraphs to explain all that, but for Du Fu, this is blink-of-an-eye fast. This is just the way he thinks: the moral stories of history make up the texture and building blocks of his thought, and the ease with which he puts them together, while maintaining a natural surface-level meaning, is why his poetry is still worth reading.