Chinese poet du fu biography and wife

Together with his elder contemporary and friend Li Bai , Du is often considered one of the greatest Chinese poets. His life, like all of China, was devastated by the An Lushan rebellion of , and his last 15 years were a time of almost constant unrest. Although initially he was little-known to other writers, his works came to be hugely influential in both Chinese and Japanese literary culture.

Of his poetic writing, nearly fifteen hundred poems have been preserved over the ages. Traditional Chinese literary criticism emphasised the life of the author when interpreting a work, a practice which the American scholar Burton Watson attributed to "the close links that traditional Chinese thought posits between art and morality". Since many of Du Fu's poems feature morality and history, this practice is particularly important.

For modern Western readers, "The less accurately we know the time, the place and the circumstances in the background, the more liable we are to imagine it incorrectly, and the result will be that we either misunderstand the poem or fail to understand it altogether".

Chunwang by du fu

Most of what is known of Du Fu's life comes from his poems. His paternal grandfather was Du Shenyan , a noted politician and poet during the reign of Empress Wu Zetian r. Du Fu was born in ; the exact birthplace is unknown, except that it was near Luoyang , Henan province Gong county is a favourite candidate. In later life, he considered himself to belong to the capital city of Chang'an , ancestral hometown of the Du family.

Du Fu's mother died shortly after he was born, and he was partially raised by his aunt.