Du Fu Quotes

I sit, with all my theories, metaphors, and equations, Shakespeare and Milton, Barthes, Du Fu, and Homer, masters of death who can’t, at last, teach me how to touch my dead.

Could I get mansions covering ten thousand miles, I'd house all the poor scholars and make them beam with smiles

Te pasas el tiempo curando a la gente, pero ahogas tus heridas en el alcohol de tus propias lágrimas.

Beneath the light, the river and hills are beautiful, The spring breeze bears the fragrance of flowers and grass. The mud has thawed, and swallows fly around. On the warm sand, mandarin ducks are sleeping

My path is full of petals–I have swept it for no others. My thatch gate has been closed–but opens now for you. It’s a long way to the market, I can offer you little– Yet here in my cottage there is old wine for our cups.

Drifting, drifting,/ what am I more than/ a single gull/ between sky and earth?

it’s all one single grief.

I understand,” she says, and then she quotes Du Fu: “The country is broken, but the mountains and rivers remain.” Her eyes flash; he catches sight of the fire in this modest woman. “We are the mountains and rivers,” he says, impressed. “No matter what the country is called.

Who changes, who even slows this dead dazzling drunk in the wings of life we live?

News comes from nowhere.

Two yellow orioles sing under emerald willows One line of White Egrets ascends clear skies Window frames Western riged snow of a thousand autumns Door moors Eastern Wu a boat of ten-thousand li

I watch as two daughters car for their own with an inertia equal to gravity. I sit, with all my theories, and equations, Shakespeare and Milton, Barthes, Du Fu, and Homer, masters of death who can't, at last, teach me how to touch my dead

Despite my vocabulary, my books, knowledge, I find myself folded against the far wall, bereft. I watch two daughters care for their own with an inertia equal to gravity. I sit, with all my theories, metaphors, and equations, Shakespeare and Milton, Barthes, Du Fu, and Homer, masters of death who can't, at least, teach me how to touch my dead.

Realize that people are hypocrites. The sooner you accept this fact the better. I NEVER censor my stories. I NEVER sacrifice historical accuracy for sake of political correctness. And I apologize for nothing because I've noticed a sense of hypocrisy in regard to writing. People will buy a Stephen King book and read 900 pages of gruesome murder, graphic sex, and sometimes even kid fu**ing. And they will praise his artistic genius and buy his next filthy book. Then the same people will want to censor every line I put on the page. To hell with that. I'm an artist too.

Jo em quedo assegut mentre tu i la Mai, sense dubtar-ho, us poseu en marxa, els braços us planen per damunt l'ossada rígida de la vostra mare. Faig l'única cosa que sé fer. M'arronso els genolls contra el pit i començo a comptar-li els dits dels peus, que estan lila. 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5. Em gronxo amb els nombres mentre a tu les mans et floten damunt del cos, metòdiques com les infermeres quan fan la ronda. Malgrat el meu vocabulari, els meus llibres, el meu coneixement, m'estic replegat contra la paret de més enllà, desolat. Observo com dues filles cuiden algú dels seus amb una inèrcia idèntica a la gravetat. M'estic assegut amb totes les meves teories, les metàfores, les equacions, Shakespeare i Milton, Barthes, Du Fu i Homer, mestres de la mort que, al final, no em saben ensenyar a tocar els meus morts.

Si indicava lo scanno dove sedevano gomito a gomito i sette rappresentanti dell'Haute Garonne, che invitati a pronunciarsi sul verdetto di condanna di Luigi XVI, avevano così proposto uno dopo l'altro: Mailhe, la morte. Delmas, la morte. Projean, la morte, Calès, la morte, Ayral, la morte, Julien, la morte. Desancy, la morte. Eco fatale che riempie in sé tutta la storia, dal giorno in cui fu instaurata la giustizia umana, eco sepolcrale tra le mura di tribunali. Si indicavano a dito gli uomini che avevano espresso il loro tragico giudizio, in tanta confusione; Paganel, che aveva detto: «Un re non può essere utile che con la sua morte. Dunque, a morte»; Millaud, il quale aveva gridato: «Se la morte non esistesse, oggi bisognerebbe inventarla»; il vecchio Raffron du Truillet, che aveva detto: «La morte, al più presto»; Goupilleau, il quale aveva urlato:«Subito al patibolo. Ogni lentezza aggrava la morte»; Sièyès, che aveva espresso con funerea concisione il suo voto: «La morte»; Thuriot, che si era opposto alla proposta di Buzot, tendente a proporre un appello al popolo: « È mai possibile?Le assemblee primarie? È mai credibile? Quarantamila tribunali, processo senza fine. La testa di Luigi XVI avrebbe tempo di incanutire, prima di cadere»; Augustin-Bon Robespierre, che, dopo il voto del fratello, aveva gridato: « Io non riconoscerei umanità che sgozzasse i popoli e perdonasse ai despoti. A morte! Chiedere un rinvio vuol dire appellarsi ai tiranni e non al popolo »; Foussedoire, sostituto di Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, il quale aveva sentenziato: «Sento tutto l'orrore di un'effusione di sangue, ma il sangue di un re non è sangue di creatura umana. A morte!» Jean-Bon Saint-André che aveva detto: «La libertà dei popoli si identifica con la morte dei tiranni»; Lavicomterie, assertore di questa formula: «Finchè un tiranno respira, la libertà soffoca. A morte!»; Chateauneuf-Randon, il quale aveva gridato: «Morte a Luigi l'ultimo!» Guyardin che vaeva espresso questo parere: «Deve essere giustiziato alla Barrière – Renversée!» volendo indicare la barriera del Trono; Tellier, il quale aveva detto: «Si deve fondere un cannone che abbia il calibro della testa di Luigi XVI, per combattere i nostri nemici».

À Yunnan Fu le ciel même apporte des femmes à mon père. Au moins une. Un jour la colonie française apprend une nouvelle absolument stupéfiante : une aviatrice va se poser avec son appareil sur l'aérodrome de la ville, c'est-à-dire en dehors des enceintes, une piste de terre rouge encore herbeuse. Pour l'aménager on a démoli quelques tombeaux avec leurs ossements si bien que la population chinoise considère le terrain comme maudit. Il y a un petit hangar dans un coin contenant les deux zincs de l'armée de l'air yunnanaise. C'est tout. Pour

Autumn Psalm A full year passed (the seasons keep me honest) since I last noticed this same commotion. Who knew God was an abstract expressionist? I’m asking myself—the very question I asked last year, staring out at this array of racing colors, then set in motion by the chance invasion of a Steller’s jay. Is this what people mean by speed of light? My usually levelheaded mulberry tree hurling arrows everywhere in sight— its bow: the out-of-control Virginia creeper my friends say I should do something about, whose vermilion went at least a full shade deeper at the provocation of the upstart blue, the leaves (half green, half gold) suddenly hyper in savage competition with that red and blue— tohubohu returned, in living color. Kandinsky: where were you when I needed you? My attempted poem would lie fallow a year; I was so busy focusing on the desert’s stinginess with everything but rumor. No place even for the spectrum’s introverts— rose, olive, gray—no pigment at all— and certainly no room for shameless braggarts like the ones that barge in here every fall and make me feel like an unredeemed failure even more emphatically than usual. And here they are again, their fleet allure still more urgent this time—the desert’s gone; I’m through with it, want something fuller— why shouldn’t a person have a little fun, some utterly unnecessary extravagance? Which was—at least I think it was—God’s plan when He set up (such things are never left to chance) that one split-second assignation with genuine, no-kidding-around omnipotence what, for lack of better words, I’m calling vision. You breathe in, and, for once, there’s something there. Just when you thought you’d learned some resignation, there’s real resistance in the nearby air until the entire universe is swayed. Even that desert of yours isn’t quite so bare and God’s not nonexistent; He’s just been waylaid by a host of what no one could’ve foreseen. He’s got plans for you: this red-gold-green parade is actually a fairly detailed outline. David never needed one, but he’s long dead and God could use a little recognition. He promises. It won’t go to His head and if you praise Him properly (an autumn psalm! Why didn’t I think of that?) you’ll have it made. But while it’s true that my Virginia creeper praises Him, its palms and fingers crimson with applause, that the local breeze is weaving Him a diadem, inspecting my tree’s uncut gold for flaws, I came to talk about the way that violet-blue sprang the greens and reds and yellows into action: actual motion. I swear it’s true though I’m not sure I ever took it in. Now I’d be prepared, if some magician flew into my field of vision, to realign that dazzle out my window yet again. It’s not likely, but I’m keeping my eyes open though I still wouldn’t be able to explain precisely what happened to these vines, these trees. It isn’t available in my tradition. For this, I would have to be Chinese, Wang Wei, to be precise, on a mountain, autumn rain converging on the trees, a cassia flower nearby, a cloud, a pine, washerwomen heading home for the day, my senses and the mountain so entirely in tune that when my stroke of blue arrives, I’m ready. Though there is no rain here: the air’s shot through with gold on golden leaves. Wang Wei’s so giddy he’s calling back the dead: Li Bai! Du Fu! Guys! You’ve got to see this—autumn sun! They’re suddenly hell-bent on learning Hebrew in order to get inside the celebration, which explains how they wound up where they are in my university library’s squashed domain. Poor guys, it was Hebrew they were looking for, but they ended up across the aisle from Yiddish— some Library of Congress cataloger’s sense of humor: the world’s calmest characters and its most skittish squinting at each other, head to head, all silently intoning some version of kaddish. Part 1

SENT TO DU FU BELOW SHAQUI CITY What is it that I've come to now? High before me: Shaqiu city. Beside the city, ancient trees; The sunset joins the autumn sounds. The Lu wine cannot make me drunk, Qi's songs cannot restore my feelings. My thoughts of you are like the Wen's waters, Mightily sent on their southern journey.

Si fusero in una danza macabra di amore e morte, si aggrapparono l’uno all’altra, spaventati e increduli, confusi ma uniti. E poi vi fu solo un silenzio, la pace dei corpi e dello spirito. I mostri erano stati sconfitti. Una battaglia era vinta.

Why did Du Fu write so many poems expressing his fondness for Li Bai, while Li wrote so few? Some have explained it by saying that many of Li Bai’s poems have been lost, and the lost works must have included many about Du Fu. This is a charitable interpretation, and it might even be true, but there is little point in us trying to impose equality on their friendship from our vantage point, centuries later. They were two very different personalities. Despite this, they were both great friends, models for generations to come. When a roc and a swan goose come together, their wing beats shred the air, and all creation looks up in wonder, but when they separate, the swan goose sings on and on of their encounter, while the roc has long since disappeared over the southern reaches or the northern oceans. It knows no bonds; it knows no obstacles. They are very different, these two, but they are both masters of the air, glories of the world.

On war-torn land streams flow and mountains stand

White gull in the vastness of the waves—ten thousand miles away, who can tame him?

Se auzi scârţând portiţa din spatele casei şi Aglaia îşi făcu apariţia în cadrul uşii de la bucătarie. În lumina blândă, galben-sângerie, părea un înger mare şi greoi. Lui Petrişor îi fu deodată dragă – era o bucată curată din viaţa lui. Ea şi soră-sa. I se făcu deodată dor de Luluţa şi de tot neamul lor - de tat-su când trăia, de mă-sa rătăcită prin lume... Peste toţi, în această vedenie, Aglaia îşi desfăcea aripile ca o cloşcă care-şi apără puii. Se uită la bunică-sa siderat. Văzu puii umflându-se sub aripile ei. Se prefăcură apoi în pui de barză, mici şi golaşi, după care se transformară în berze cu ciocul portocaliu, cu picioare lungi şi subţiri ca nişte nuiele de salcâm, cu marginile aripilor albe brodate în negru. Apoi toate berzele îşi luară concomitent zborul. Se înălţară deasupra casei şi luară drumul ţărilor calde. - Petrişor, du-te de adă o găleată de apă! - Da, bunică. Băiatul luă găleata, se îndreptă spre fâtână, dar nu pierdu din ochi cârdul de berze. Rămase cu gura căscată, urmărindu-le din priviri cum se îndreptau spre necunoscut, spre ţările acelea îndepărtate, străine, dar mai blânde iarna. Vor mai şti oare drumul înapoi spre cuiburile goale şi părăsite din satul lor? - Sărmanele berze! Sărmanele cuiburi de berze! ... îngână încet, pentru sine, Petrişor.

According to our Tang dynasty poet Du Fu, people do not write well when they are happy. If you are content with life, you simply want to enjoy it.