杜甫與高適 : 杜詩札叢之一

Abstract

Kao Shih (d. 765) was one of the oldest and closest of Tu Fu's friends. Their association began when Tu Fu was in his twenties, and Kao Shih was over thirty, and lasted for the next twenty years or so. But although Tu Fu greatly admired the poetic ability of Kao Shih, there were marked differences in the ways of thinking of the two men. These differences are evident in the poems composed when Kao Shih, Tu Fu, and their friends visited the Tz'u-en 慈恩 Temple in Ch'ang-an and climbed the pagoda there. But they are perhaps most clearly shown in the contrast between Kao Shih's poem "Li Yun-nan cheng man shih", written in 752 in celebration of Li Mi's conquest of Cochin China, and Tu Fu's "Ping-ch'e-hsing" 兵車行 written in the same year. While Tu Fu describes the hardships inflicted upon the people by such military expeditions, Kao Shih merely praises the achievements of his friend, the official Li Mi, and shows no sympathy for the plight of the soldiers. Moreover, if the histories of the period are to be believed, Li's "victory" was actually a defeat which he disguised to appear as its opposite. Kao Shih's poems are often described as patriotic, but it would appear that, like Ts'en Ts'an 岑参, he journeyed to the border regions on his own initiative merely in search of fame, and had little concern for the welfare of the people as a whole. Thus when Tu Fu praised Kao Shih, it was for his beauty of diction and fame. It was praise of a different kind from that which he gave to the poetic works of men like Yüan Chieh or Li Po.