A Discussion on Life Consciousness in Du Fu’s Poems

Abstract

Respecting life and protecting life are the core values of Chinese culture. As the greatest poet nurtured by Chinese culture, Du Fu showed a distinct consciousness of life in his poems. With the passage of time and the changes in his physical body, Du Fu became sensitively aware of the existence of life. Government service was the main way to realize the value of life for scholars of Tang, and this way was frustrated by reality for a long time, particularly for the poet Du Fu, who faced the crisis of settling his life. Although Du Fu wanted to find a place to settle his life in the other dimensions of the human world, in the real and imaginary drunken world and the natural world, he could not overcome the frustration concerning the relationship between the ruler and the minister, and he often felt the pain of nowhere to settle his life and the insignificance of life when its meaning becomes absent.