Du Mu: translation
(Tu Mu)
(803–852)
One of the leading poets of the late TANG DYNASTY, Du Mu was best known for his jueju—brief quatrains that generally focused on sensual descriptions that were popular in the second half of the Tang dynasty. Sometimes called Xiao Tu (Little Tu) to distinguish him from the more famous DU FU, Du Mu wrote a range of longer poetry as well, and also wrote prose essays. He was a successful bureaucrat, a painter, and a calligrapher, but the image he creates for himself in his poetry is that of an epicurean, enjoying drink, women, and the beauties of nature.
Du Mu was born in the Tang city of Xi’an (Changan).His father was a historical scholar, and Du Mu was well educated in the Confucian classics.He passed the JINSHI civil service examination in 827, and held a long series of minor posts. The political intrigues of his time no doubt contributed to his inability to attain any higher appointments in the bureaucracy, but that failure frustrated Du Mu, and he often shows his dissatisfaction in his poetry, and also in letters that he wrote to highranking officials in the government, criticizing military and domestic policy.He was appointed to his highest post, secretariat drafter, in 852, shortly before his death.
Du Mu is particularly famous for his jueju. These were poems of four lines of either five or seven syllables. The form was particularly suited to express a brief, fleeting emotion, or to depict the very essence of an experience or a scene. As such, it has been compared to the later Japanese form, the TANKA. Each line, at least according to later practitioners of the form, had a specific function: The jueju contained an opening line, a second line to develop the opening, a turning point in the third line, and a conclusion in the fourth. Thus in one of Du Mu’s quatrains, “Sent in Parting,” the first line makes an opening generalization, the second sets that concept in a specific scene, the third focuses on a new mood created by the personified candle, and the last leaves a final impression of sorrow:
Great love may seem like none at all:
Wine before us, we only know that smiles won’t come.
The tallow candle has a heart—it grieves at parting,
In our place drips tears until the break of day.
(Burton 1990, 286)
It has been suggested that the beautiful images Du Mu created in his poetry were something of an escape from the bleak situation of the late Tang imperial government. In a world where provincial generals were beyond imperial control and the court was dominated by the deception of those in power, the art of poetry had an appealing permanence and truth for late Tang poets. Du Mu, in brief lyric utterances, creates a beauty that transcends the reality of his official life.
Bibliography
■ Burton, R. F., trans. Plantains in the Rain: Selected Chinese Poems of Du Mu. London: Wellsweep, 1990.
■ Graham, H. C., trans. Poems of the Late T’ang. Harmondsworth, U.K.: Penguin, 1965.
■ Watson, Burton, ed. and trans. The Columbia Book of Chinese Poetry: From Early Times to the Thirteenth Century. New York: Columbia University Press, 1984.