陸游の目に映じた杜甫

Abstract

Lu Yu, the famous poet of the Southern Sung, admired Tu Fu's work and, because he believed that there were many points of similarity in their lives and experiences, felt particularly close to him. Both men lived in ages of war and social unrest, both suffered from poverty, and both spent a part of their lives in Shu, the region of present-day Szechwan. Yet the image of Tu Fu which Lu Yu conceived in his mind contained an element of distortion. Lu Yu conceived of Tu Fu not only as a poet but as a statesman, and one who unfortunately found no opportunity to realize his ambitions in the latter direction. At the same time he saw Tu Fu as a man who, though he complained of poverty, was happy to hold even a minor post in the government. This distortion arose, it would appear, from the differences in social consciousness that marked the T'ang poet and the Sung poet. Lu Yu considered himself a member of the ruling class, but in T'ang times the ruling class refused to permit a man like Tu Fu, who belonged to the middle class, to join its ranks.