杜甫の「貧しさ」をめぐって

Abstract

From early on, a great deal has been written on the subject of poverty. In the Analects, while Confucius expresses reverence for those who preserve their internal integrity, unaffected by external factors such as poverty or low station, he does not assert that there is value within poverty itself. In later ages, however, some began to conceive of poverty as a noble way of life, enabling them to assuage the misery that resulted from their straitened circumstances. Tao Yuanming's "Seven poems on Impoverished Gentlemen" (Yong pin shi qi shou) is a representative example of this development, for in this sequence, the poet introduces examples of men of old who maintained a noble way of life amid their poverty, suggesting a parallel between his own circumstances and those of such forebears. Du Fu was also a poet who was ultimately unable to escape from poverty, but his expressions of this reality show a major difference from his predecessors. Throughout his life, Du Fu was consistent in never attempting to portray poverty or low social station as a pure and noble way of life, but we can also detect some changes in his expression over time. During the period when he was seeking office, it was common for him to portray his poverty in exaggerated terms as a way to solicit support. His "Going from the Capital to Fengxian; Expressing My Feelings in 500 graphs" (Zi jing fu Fengxian xian yong huai wu bai zi) is a poem that marks a transition for Du Fu; from this point forward, his personal life begins to enter into his poetry. Du Fu's poverty had caused the deaths by starvation of his own child, but he expanded the limits of his imagination to include common people who were suffering from even more dire forms of deprivation. There are examples of poems by Bo Juyi in which the poet introduces the examples of others less fortunate in order to cheer himself up, but in these cases the purpose is clearly stated to be consolation. Moreover, whereas the individuals whom Bo Juyi introduces are specific acquaintances from the world around him, Du Fu instead shows a broader concern for humanity in general. In "Song When Drunk" (Zuishi ge) and "Song When My Thatch Roof was Destroyed by Autumn Winds" (Maowu wei qiufeng suo po ge), we can see a kind of masochistic humor wherein Du Fu caricatures his own desperate poverty. Shifting his miserable actuality into the domain of humor allows Du Fu to create an expressive world distinct from that reality. In these poems Du Fu composes about poverty, there is none of the traditional conceptualization by which impoverished circumstances are transformed into a refined purity of the spirit. Rather, in both the imaginative gesture toward others and the caricatured representation of the self we can see the distinctive characteristics of Du Fu's expression, developing in directions not previously explored.