Sorrow And Pleasure

There is a sentence in the Shijing that says Junzi writes poem with the intention of expressing sorrow.We can find the same feeling through the whole works of Du Fu.On the one hand,Du Fu's miserable life effects the emotion of his works;on the other hand,the strong feeling of sadness may be related to numbers of autumn poetry.Chinese classic literature has the long tradition of describing the sad spring and grieved autumn,and especially the latter one was preferred by generations of elites because of its narration about losing chances to achieve ambition,which the main reason induced the widespread sorrow of Chinese elites.Sorrow is a characteristic personality of Du Fu,so this paper intends to illustrate Du Fu's miserable life by analyzing about 400 autumn poems.Besides sorrow,there are also various emotions found in autumn poems,and we can use Xing to describe the other feelings.Qiu Xing was a classic title of autumn-themed woks,and Qiu Xing Ba Shou is one of the greatest representative works of Du Fu.This paper consists of five chapters.The first chapter is about the initial intention of the research,present research on this theme and the fundamental introduction of Du Fu's autumn poetry.The second chapter begins with the review of the grieved autumn tradition written by the former poets from Pre-Qin till Tang Dynasty,and this review can help us clarify the heritage and transformation features in Du Fu's autumn poetry.In the heritage part,Du Fu also used classic themes,such as hardships in long journey,fear of aging and regrets about achieving nothing,to express his sorrow in the autumn.And the transformation part offers some unusual examples showing different themes and emotions,which proves Du Fu's original talent in poem writing.Moreover,Du Fu's practice reminds us that season-themed compositions need not only to avoid the cliche,but also to focus on the real feeling from the writer in order to make the works reflect nature well.The third chapter chose 3 important themes from the autumn poetry.They are respectively:family and friends,nation loyalty and self-confession.The examples with these 3 themes are often the well-known poems in Du Fu's woks,so by discussing these examples we can fully understand the deep sadness of Du Fu.The theme of family and friends demonstrated the difficulties of togetherness in war time,thus Du Fu often wrote poems about missing under the autumn moon.And what's more heart-breaking is the tragedy that lots of dear friends dead early without meeting Du Fu again.This makes autumn become a horrible season.The theme of nation loyalty discussed Du Fu's love for the people undergone autumn natural disasters and the country undergone collapse.In the poems of this theme,autumn was thought as a broken and damaged symbol.The theme of self-confession found some interesting coincidence between autumn and Du Fu's life.For example,Du Fu encountered a success in career in spring,but next autumn he left official affairs completely and never came back.Also Du Fu wrote several autobiographical poems to retrospect his life and got deep introspection in autumn.While the most important example is that the poems enjoyed good reputation were all written in autumn and they are perfect samples to perceive Du Fu's long-lasting endurance and strong will.The fourth chapter is divided into 3 sections to discuss the art of Du Fu's autumn poetry.The first section gave the evidence that Du Fu applied different sensory descriptions to display the autumn atmosphere,which can convey a more lively feeling than the old methods.The second section held the view that the odd and abnormal elements in Du Fu's poems may have the connection with the season.Because as autumn approaches,nature and human society come into silence and decline,and these changes would have negative influence on sensitive poet's heart,then they are all generated into words.This phenomenon can be explained by the aesthetic term Sublime.The third section discussed the Du Fu's poetry style Chen Yu Dun Cuo.By analyzing the exact connotation of Chen Yu and Dun Cuo,we can find their similarity with the style of most autumn poems.Therefore it's easily to assume that the numerous as well as outstanding autumn poems may contribute to the style Chen Yu Dun Cuo.The last chapter is the epilogue.