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Essay on Chinese Poets, Li Po and Tu Fu
Li Po (AD 701 - 762) and Tu Fu (AD 712 - 770) are regarded as the two greatest Chinese poets. Li Po was a spiritual poet whose verse deals with consciousness and the human mind, whilst Tu Fu was a chronicler of the everyday life. Comparison of Li Po and Tu Fu’s Poetry during the Tang Dynasty, Li Po and Tu Fu have reined the literary world with their poetry. Their writing techniques and themes in their poetry allow them to stand out amongst other poets at the time.
With the unique aspects and images these poets write about, they distinguish the similarities between themselves and contain different intensities in their poetry. While Li Po has a more relaxed tone to his poetry, Tu Fu deals with the serious aspects of life such as war, poverty, and suffering. Li Po’s writing style is conventional and contains no new innovations. Much of his poetry contains older styles such as lu-shih, chueh-chu, and especially the ku-shih. Li Po also tends to look upon the past more than the future (Nienhauser, Hartman, Stephen, 1985).
These two poets offer very different ideas at how to react to perhaps a hopeless situation that is, being on the losing side of a civil war. Li Po offers the remedy of drinking and battling chaos, ironically, by being chaotic himself (Hinton, 1996). On the other hand, Tu Fu takes the more responsible route and his poems reflect that he worries about his family and what the outcome of the war will be (Hinton, 1989). Reading their poems forced me to think of the two general ways in which I can live my life, not that I'm in a hopeless situation by any means.
But the question certainly is relevant in anyone's life. Should I be carefree, perhaps drowning in self indulgence?...........
