CHN 306
Yugen Wang
Paper 1
Grace Jo
Patriotism
诗言志(Shi Yan Zhi) means “Poetry articulates aims.” Du Fu articulates clear messages and aims in “The View in Spring.” “The View in Spring” is one of his works which shows this Confucian idea of loyalty and love of the people. Especially, in “The View in Spring”, he is articulating patriotism as a theme. At the same time, his style is effectively conveying the message about yearning for his family and lamenting of himself. He is trying to show sad reality compared to a realistic description of beautiful nature. His theme, structure, and expression methods enable “The View in Spring” to deliver his messages more strongly.
After Chang-an was ruined, spring came and Du Fu is looking at the city. The title is gazing in spring, which literally means gazing on the collapsed country in spring. However, based on Chinese character version 春望, it can be understood gazing on spring, and I analyze that he is hoping ‘spring’. What does this mean? Spring is the season when all living things come back to life, and in spring most people feel that everything is fresh, and they feel like to start something new with expectation and hope. While gazing on the ruined city, he is showing designated patriotism by having a hope of spring which will be come. He hopes that the city and the country come back to be refreshing and to be rebuilt.
I think patriotism is love for the country and loyalty towards it. Even though I don’t work for government directly to manage the affairs of a nation, I can have patriotism much more than anyone else. In this poetry, Du Fu is worried about the state affairs and hoping that the real meaning of ‘spring’ comes back to the country as soon as possible. Based on my definition, Du Fu is articulating patriotism. Du Fu is using the structure as a tool to convey his message effectively. Du Fu shows nature and scenery first and then exposes feeling and emotion later. In the first two couplets, he shows readers spring’s mountains and rivers, plants and trees; and lovely flowers and a song of birds. In the last two couplets, he expresses yearning for his family because of war and feeling sorry for himself, and also he is desperately worried about the country. To boost his message be clearer, Du Fu also uses four different expression methods: contrast, parallelism, hyperbole, and impersonation.
First, he is using contrast method. In the first two couplets, Du Fu shows troubled reality and unchanged nature contrastively. Du Fu is describing ruined Chang-an’s nature. Even though the central government was collapsed, hills and rivers are still there as they were. There is a clear contrast by portraying a scene of no people but just remained plants and trees. Also, in the last couplet, Du Fu is lamenting for himself who became weak and old because of worries about the family and the country. A poetic background is a beautiful spring, but in reality he personally has a lot of worries and troubles. As I explained earlier spring is the season when all living things come alive again, and in spring most people feel joy with expectation and hope. By contrasting spring’s beautiful nature and his weakness and lowliness, Du Fu is emphasizing his lamentation about himself and maximizing the effect of the contrast method.
Secondly, in the first two couplets, I found parallelism that Du Fu puts some words in couplet’s one line to be matched to words in the same position in the other line. For example, in the first couplet, “kingdom smashed” in the first line and “spring in the city” in the second line; “hills and rivers” in the first line and “plants and trees” in the second line, and in the second couplet