Du Mu (杜牧), 803 – 853 AD, was a native of Xi’an, Shaanxi Province. He was the grandson of Du You, the prime minister, and was a young man, so it was not difficult for him to rise to the top, but because he was upright and straightforward, and did not care to flatter the rich and powerful, he was not very happy in his life as a eunuch.
杜牧
dù mù
Main experience:
Du Mu lived in the era of the Late Tang Dynasty, which was an eventful period. At that time, the development of the Zhuang Tian system, a large concentration of land, the two tax law for a long time, the disadvantages of more, the levy of more complicated, the people’s livelihood is more difficult; and the feudal domination, eunuchs trespassing on the power, cronyism, all kinds of internal contradictions within the ruling class, intricate and complex, all of these directly or indirectly aggravate the people’s sufferings, so that the class contradiction is becoming more and more acute. Northwest two sides of the border defense, and often by the Tubo slave owners and migratory bird rulers of the intrusion. All these backgrounds of the times are reflected to some extent in his poems.
Du Mu was concerned about current affairs, and his political tendency was relatively enlightened and progressive. He inherited his grandfather’s study of the world, and had the passion of worrying about the country and the people and the ambition to help the world, and he liked to talk about politics and military affairs most of all. He believed that there were two big problems at that time, one belonged to internal worries and the other belonged to border troubles. The internal worry is the Anshi Rebellion after decades of feudalism, frequent civil wars, affecting the border defense is empty, people’s livelihoods are withering; border trouble is the Tubo ruler occupies the west of the river, the right side of the Yangtze River, threatening the Kyoto, and the people of the Yangtze River and the Yangtze River have long been subjected to the Tubo slave masters of slavery suffering. He wanted to solve these two problems, and then make the country peaceful, production development, people’s happiness; and want to solve these two problems, must use the military, so Du Mu is very much attention to military affairs, he thinks that the scholars do not know the military is not right. He once wrote “Sinful Words”, advocating the court to cultivate politics, and put forward the military strategy to cut down the clans and towns in Hebei. When Emperor Wu Zong Huichang was in the middle of the reign, Du Mu wrote a letter to Chancellor Li Deyu, stating his military strategy, and Li Deyu adopted his views. Du Mu also wrote a commentary on thirteen articles of Sun Tzu on the topic of military affairs.
When Du Mu was in his twenties, he traveled all over the world and was very concerned about people’s hardships. Later, Du Mu became an assassin, and as a pro-people official, he was always trying to eliminate the bad government within his power. He was also deeply dissatisfied with the corrupt politics of the Tang Dynasty. All these can be said to be progressive factors in Du Mu’s thinking. However, since his political ambitions could not be realized, he could not help but show his depressed feelings from time to time, and even because of his depressed feelings, he indulged in his love for women and spread some so-called “love affairs”. However, on the whole, he is still worthy of the late Tang Dynasty as an ambitious, insightful and righteous scholar.
Achievements:
Du Mu was good at poetry, fugue and ancient writings, but his poetic attainments were especially outstanding, and many of his progressive ideas were expressed in his poems. Some think that Du Mu’s poems are only good at love and beautiful works, but this view is not comprehensive enough, as some of Du Mu’s poems are quite political in nature.
Du Mu’s great concern in his life was to eliminate the clans and recover the rivers and mountains, and in the end, he hoped that he could seek peace and prosperity in the country. This ambition was clearly stated in his poems. When Du Mu crushed the rebellious town of Li Tongjie in Cangzhou in the early years of Emperor Wenzong’s Dahuo reign, he composed a poem entitled “Poem of Feelings”, lamenting the domineering clans and towns in the decades after the Anshi Rebellion. He lamented that in the decades following the Anshi Rebellion, the imperial court was too weak to control the powerful clans, and that although he had his own strategies, they could not be adopted. In 842 A.D., the migratory bird rulers invaded the south, and the imperial court deployed soldiers to defend the border, Du Mu was also very concerned, and he wrote a poem to express his deep sympathy for the people on the northern border who were displaced by the migratory bird invasion.
Du Mu was also very concerned about the occupation of Hexi and Longyou by the Tubo rulers. He wrote poems, remembering the people of He Long, lamenting the fact that Emperor Dai Zong could not use Yuan Zai’s strategy, and Emperor Xian Zong wanted to recover He Long but failed to do so.
In the countryside, Du Mu saw the suffering of the farmers’ life, once composed a poem “title village house”: three trees mulberry spring has not yet arrived, help the bed dairy maiden crying hunger in the afternoon. Where do I return to? I don’t know where to go?
Du Mu is a kind-hearted person with a sense of justice, he wrote a poem to praise his friends Li Gan, Li Zhongmin’s resistance to the power and treachery of the temperament, but also expressed the deep friendship between them, he also made “Du Qiuniang Poem”, “Zhang Shouzhao Poem”, for the feudal society in the unfortunate woman to send sympathy.
The unhealthy things in Du Mu’s thoughts are also revealed in his poems, and he is discouraged by the negative and perfunctory meaning of the world, and some of the poems also show his unruly behavior and the good of sound and sex; and there are also boring works of entertainment.
The art of Du Mu’s poetry is quite high. The Tang Dynasty was the golden age of Chinese classical poetry, and in the two hundred years before Du Mu, there were many famous poets who created different styles, but Du Mu, who was born in the late Tang Dynasty, did not imitate his predecessors, did not chase after fashion, and had his own original style. The poetic styles of Li He and Yuan and Bai were quite influential in the Late Tang Dynasty, so Du Mu especially put forward these two aspects to show that he was not contaminated by them; the so-called “not modern and not ancient, in the middle” means that he was not confined to the fashion and did not imitate the ancients. He was unique, and he was able to create his own style of writing. He was a maverick and was able to create his own unique style. Of course, this does not mean that Du Mu did not accept the literary heritage of the ancients, but that he was able to absorb their benefits and express them in his own spirit.
