Du Fu\'s Song of War

Du Fu's "Song of War Chariots"

Du Fu wrote heavily during the Tang Dynasty. Roughly around the same time that Charlemagne of the West was bringing the barbarian tribes into submission, China was undergoing its own series of wars. Du Fu's "Song of War Chariots" is a lamentation of the massive societal tremors that China's wars were causing in the very fundamental building blocks of Chinese society -- the family. This paper will analyze Du Fu's "Song," and discuss its theme, symbolism, and imagery.

Du Fu's poetry may be assessed, initially, by the influence it has held over other artists. Ying Po-chong identifies with the poet in his ink and color on silk tapestry painting "Heroes or Bandits! " (1940), an "anti-war" thematic rendering of Tang dynasty soldiers on horses mounting an attack ("Heroes or "Bandits! "). Du Fu's "Song" is no less anti-war, though its style and voice are satirical in nature: " ...We have learned that to have a son is bad luck -- / It is very much better to have a daughter / Who can marry and live in the house of a neighbour, / While under the sod we bury our boys." The pain with which Du Fu sums up the conditions that war has placed upon the family unit is easily discernible: families that once yearned for male heirs, now wish only for girls (who cannot fight).

The theme of "Song of War Chariots" is, of course, death -- one of the consequences of war-ravaged China. What should be a flourishing society with a flourishing family life, where men and women unite to form families, has become a savage nation of violent conflict, where men mingle with men in battle. "The war-chariots rattle, / the war-horses whinny…" says the poet, "Till dust shall have buried the bridge beyond Changan." The double image is striking: in one sense it can be taken literally: the dust kicked up by the chariots is so thick that it covers everything like a pall; symbolically, the image suggests a kind of Western requiem: "Remember, man, that thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return" -- or, better yet, T.S. Eliot's "I will show you fear in a handful of dust." Du Fu has certainly achieved such an effect through his imagery and symbolism, and the poem's theme supplies the rest: the poem ends with the sorrowful image of a shore scattered and lined with the bones of China's fallen young men, and their ghosts haunting the memory of the Tang Dynasty.

Du Fu's use of images helps make the poem even more impressive, foreshadowing the ramifications of war through symbols: the "turbaned hair white now" preceding the later vision of white bones; blood spilling "like the sea," shows the extent to which the war has grown: it is now as natural and recurrent as the ocean's tides. An entire generation of boys has grown into a generation of old men -- yet the Emperor who uses them to war has not aged, but is like deathless vampire whose heart "still beats for war." Du Fu, of course, is speaking of the An Lushan Rebellion, which was not put down for nearly a decade in mid-eighth century China.

Emperor Wu's wars have essentially decimated the land. The lands are barren -- in more ways than one. The consequences of war are numerous: the men are gone, so in villages where couples should normally be uniting and having children, no children are had. The image Du Fu uses is of stark fields where "nothing grows but weeds," but the image could easily be construed as being representative of the lack of new life in the "two hundred districts / And in thousands of villages."

The next image Du Fu employs is one of heartbreaking sorrow: "and though strong women have bent to the ploughing, / East and west the furrows are all broken down." Du Fu's image is akin to the ballads of Ireland, "The Fields of Athenry," "Foggy Dew," and several others, in which war has acted as a scourge. While the image literally shows how women have had to take over the men's jobs while the men fight, it also acts a symbol of one of the casualties of war: delineation. The normal, traditional roles of men and women are lost in war time: men must leave their ploughs to do battle, and women must perform double duty keeping the house and tending to the fields to keep themselves and their families alive. As Du Fu states, "the furrows are all broken down." Another word for furrows could be channels or lines -- used for irrigation and separation of fields. War, however, has caused the lines to be erased -- has caused the normal channels for water (and grace) to be obliterated. The sense is one of utter ruin, desolation, and hopelessness.