Du Fu, who painted in poetry, and his attitude towards bamboo: Xinsong hates not high thousands of feet, and evil bamboo should be cut down

"The new pine hate is not high, and the evil bamboo should be cut down by ten thousand rods"

In the first month of 764, Du Fu, who was preparing to leave Sichuan, heard that his friend Yan Wu was once again appointed as the envoy of Chengdu Yin and Jiannan Jiedushi, and felt that he had another object of defection, so he and his family decided to return to Chengdu again.

Before arriving at the grass hall, Lao Du began to worry about the four small pine trees he had planted, and he presupposed that during his absence, the limited living environment of the small pine trees was probably occupied by the bamboos, so he viciously scolded the crazy and chaotic bamboo in his imagination.

Du Fu scolded the bamboo, and the reason for this is in this poem, "There will be five poems sent to Yan Zhenggong on the way to chengdu caotang", the last two sentences of which explain the original commission: three years of running empty skin and bones, it is believed that there are people who have difficulty walking.

The "three years" that Lao Du said is actually some exaggerated elements.

From Baoying's departure from Chengdu Caotang in June of the first year of the first year to the second year of Guangde, that is, February 764 AD, and then returning to Chengdu, Du Fu was in the area of Santai and Langzhong in Sichuan, in fact, drifting for about 1 year and 8 months.

However, almost seven years ago, An Lushan was arranged by An Qingxu to do it; also a year ago, the Tang Dynasty officials and troops successively recaptured Henan and Hebei, and Du Fu and his old wife also had a "long history of poetry and ecstasy". But why did Lao Du and his family still wander in Sichuan, and who gave Du Fu this kind of anger?

In the previous episode, we borrowed Du Fu's inscription poem "Inscribed Xuanwu Zen Master's House Wall" to understand the two great gods he admired: Gu Kaizhi and Master Hui Yuan, the artists of the two Jin Dynasties and the Southern and Northern Dynasties represented by these two gods, and in their works and creation theories, there was little special attention to bamboo.

Du Fu's poem "Inscription Xuanwu Zen Master's House Wall" was composed in 762 AD, that is, the first year of Zong Baoying in the Tang Dynasty.

In April of the first year of Baoying, the two former chairmen of Datang Company, Tang Xuanzong and Tang Suzong, died one after another, and Emperor Tang ascended the throne. After Emperor Tang ascended to power, he wanted to use Du Fu's friend Yan Wu, and Gao Shi took over his position as Chengdu Yin.

In June of that year, Yan Wu was ordered to enter the dynasty, and Du Fu sent him away. This delivery was sent for hundreds of miles, all the way to Mianyang, and the two of them hummed "outside the long pavilion and beside the ancient road" and couldn't stop.

When Du Fu and Yan Wu were drinking wine in Mianyang and singing "Outside the Long Pavilion, Beside the Ancient Road", a guy named Xu Zhi began to rebel in Sichuan, which not only stopped Yan Wu's way out of the river, but also made Lao Du unable to return to the Caotang and could only wander around Santai.

Although Xu knew that the rebellion was quickly suppressed, the whole of Sichuan was once again plunged into military chaos. It was not until two years later, in the first month of 764 AD, that Yan Wu was reappointed as the envoy of Chengdu Yin and Jiannan Jiedu, that Du Fu had the idea of returning to Chengdu and defecting to the Sichuan region, the military and political leader.

"The new pine hates not more than a thousand feet, and the evil bamboo should be cut down by a thousand rods" - that is, what he did when he returned to the grass hall this time.

Because the ignorant Xu knew that his family was drifting around and embarrassed, he sprinkled a belly fire on the "bamboo" around the grass hall.

Later generations often borrowed these two poems of Lao Du to say things, and some people who can "do big things" especially love to use them. They understand that "the evil bamboo should be cut off" as a clear distinction between love and hate, jealousy and hatred, exhaustion of evil, fierceness and stability, and it is also considered to be angry with themselves and find some reasons. This is somewhat abusive.

Illustration: Part of the Ming Emperor Xingshu Tu Li Zhaodao (biography) Collection of the National Palace Museum in Taipei

Old Du scolded bamboo, in fact, to vent his nest qi, but also to highlight his preference for pine. For the pine tree, a handsome and upright plant with evergreen seasons, Lao Du is obviously very partial in his heart, in fact, bamboo is not so?

If lao du's personal small emotions are placed in the Tang Dynasty, the overall literary and art circles, attaching importance to pine and contempt for bamboo, is indeed a common cultural phenomenon.

The literary leaders of the Prosperous Tang Dynasty left a large amount of ink to pine, cypress, peach, pear, plum, almond, willow, hibiscus, peony, peony, peony, and even for imported products such as bodhi trees, lotuses, sapros trees and grapes imported from the Western Regions.

They share the same view as people during the Three Kingdoms, the Two Jin Dynasties, and the Southern and Northern Dynasties: bamboo is nothing more than a dispensable prop or background.

You may say that Li Bai did not write "wild bamboo divides the mist, the flying spring hangs the green peak", "the bamboo color is green under the creek, and the lotus flower is fragrant in the mirror"?

Didn't Wang Wei recite "sitting alone in a hedgehog, playing the piano and screaming for a long time"?

Didn't Lao Du himself leave behind: "The rain washes Juanjuan clean, the wind blows fine incense", "The history of the feather forest shadow, the sparse smoke and dew posture", this kind of verse of The Bamboo?

That's true.

But if you carefully read the poems of Li Bai, Lao Du and Wang Wei, they only look at bamboo as an ordinary plant and the landscape created by it to praise, although bamboo is included in the category of "social beauty", but there is still a certain distance to personalize it. In particular, Du Fu himself preferred to compare himself to an eagle, a thin horse, or a green pine, but he did not regard himself as a member of the bamboo at all, nor did he ever link his moral standards with the "modesty", "humility" and other qualities of bamboo.

The cultural circles of this period, as well as the opinion leaders of the Three Kingdoms, the Two Jin Dynasties, and the Southern and Northern Dynasties, held the same view: bamboo, just a dispensable aesthetic prop in poetry and painting, did not suffer from an obsessive-compulsive disorder like Su Shi: if you prefer not to eat meat, you must also get a few bamboo sticks to carry in your yard.

Although the association of the name Du Fu with "shisheng" is the first time for the late Ming Dynasty literary scholar Wang Xiao (zhì), this does not mean that Du Fu's position in literature, art and even in the ideological circles has been ignored before.

In fact, as a "poetic history" of Du's poems, there are more than 30 guanhua poems, inscription poems and beggar painting poems, which reflect Du Fu's interaction with almost all well-known painters in the Tang Dynasty, Su Shi once wrote: "Shaoling Hanmo invisible painting, Han Gan Danqing silent poetry" - linking Du Fu's poems with HanGan's paintings, Su Shi's analogy is not far-fetched.

Du Fu uses a poet's keenness, meticulousness, profound observation and extraordinary imagination to present us with his era, from the tang dynasty to the middle and late Tang dynasties, many painters and their works, as well as his comments and insights on paintings, styles, and techniques.

In Du Fu's poems, there are praises for Gu Kaizhi's Wei Mo Jietu of the former dynasty, as well as the technical depictions of Cao Ba, Han Gan, and Wei Yan painting horses at that time, he observed Wei Yan's Double Pine Diagram, Wang Zai Landscape Map, Xue Ji's Crane, and Xuandu Daoist's Qingsong, and also wrote "Painting Eagles", "Painting The Eagle", "Painting the Eagle Painting of the Banquet in the Yan Gong Hall", "Jiang Chugong Painting Horn Eagle Song", "Yang Supervisor in the Palace Seeing Zhang Xu Cursive Drawing", etc., which can be said to have recorded a painting history of the Tang Dynasty with poetry.

However, in all of Du Fu's poems on painting, there are no paintings with bamboo as the subject of creation or depictions of techniques. His records are similar to those of later art historians such as Zhang Yanyuan and Zhu Jingxuan.

The neglect of bamboo by painters in the early Tang and Sheng Tang dynasties came from the traditions of the Wei and Jin dynasties. In the previous two episodes, the two Southern Dynasty painters Gu Jingxiu and Lu Tanwei, whom we all mentioned, sporadically mentioned the works of bamboo in the records of their paintings by historians, but in addition to the Taoist figure paintings, they were also classified as "cicada birds" by later generations as flower and bird painters, Gu Jingxiu was famous for painting cicadas and finches, and the theme of painting cicadas on fans was jointly created by him and Gu Baoguang and others at that time. And Lu Tanwei once made a similar "Cicada Finch Diagram".

After this, from the time of entering the Tang Dynasty, poetry, music and painting gradually ushered in great changes, which were embodied in: the painting of figures was exquisite, the scenery was also improved, and the painting of Buddha statues was deeply influenced by foreign influences.

In the prosperous Tang Dynasty, painting ushered in a great prosperity, which was not only reflected in the large number of works and the improvement of the artist's skills, but also had an epoch-making style transformation: Taoist figure painting with Chinese characteristics began to take shape; on the other hand, landscape painting gained a truly independent status. In Du Fu's poems, we can feel it completely.

So, in this process of painting history from change and transition to prosperity, can you find the figure of bamboo in the images left behind?

In the next episode, we will combine the series of works from this period that have survived in the history of Chinese art and then give you a detailed introduction.

Note: This article is a series of audio programs on the history of Chinese art jointly produced by "Taste in the Afternoon" and "Captain Reading Paintings", and you are welcome to listen to it.

Appendix: In the second year of Guangde, in February 764, Du Fu composed five poems "Will be sent to Yan Zhenggong on the way to Chengdu Caotang", which mentions Yan Zhenggong, who is both Yan Wu and was given the title of Duke of Zheng the year before. Three of Du Fu's five poems mention bamboo. They are:

【Part 1】

He had to return to the hut and go to Chengdu, and then cut the spell for Wen Weng.

But Lu Yan still gave in, daring to argue that Shochiku had been desolate for a long time.

The fish knows the origin of the C cave, and the wine memory pi barrel does not need to be pickled.

Wu ma used to know the trail, and several times he wrote to the diver.

【Part 3】

Bamboo cold sand bihuan flower stream, thorn vine tips are within reach.

Passers-by must be worried about entering and leaving, and residents do not understand things.

Bookmark medicine wrapped in cobwebs, Wild Shop Mountain Bridge to send horseshoes.

By virtue of the color of the desolate spring grass, the first sentence is drunk as mud.

【Part 4】

Often bitter sand collapses the medicine bar, and also falls from the river sills to the wind turbulence.

The new pine hate is not high, and the evil bamboo should be cut down.

Physiology only depends on Huang Ge's old age, and he wants to pay Zi Jindan.

Three years of running empty skin and bones, I believe that there are people who have difficulty walking.

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