Du Mu

Life

Du Mu was a grandson of Du You, a chancellor and historian, and the son of Du Congyu, who held the title Jiabu yuanwailang; his younger brother was Du Yi and his father-in-law was Pei Yan.

His family’s ancestral home at Xiadufan near Chang’an led to the sobriquet Du Fanchuan. Service as a secretary to a regional military commissioner, as an assistant director in the Ministry of Personnel, and as a Chamberlain of the Secretariat gave rise to the sobriquets Du Shuji, Du Sixun, Du Sheren, and Du Ziwei. He was called Little Du to distinguish him from Du Fu, and was paired with Li Shangyin as the Little Li–Du.

In 828, the second year of the Dahe era under Emperor Wenzong, he passed the jinshi examination, also passed the examination for the worthy and upright who could speak frankly and remonstrate, and was appointed a proofreader in the Hongwen Office. That year Shen Chuanshi recruited him as a circuit-training officer in Jiangxi; when Shen was transferred to Xuanshe, Du followed him to Xuanzhou. In 833 he entered the staff of Niu Sengru, serving in Yangzhou as a judicial aide to the Huainan military commissioner and later as secretary; in 835 he returned to Chang’an as an Investigating Censor and was soon assigned to the eastern capital.

In 837 he became a circuit-training assessor in Xuanzhou; in 839 he returned to Chang’an as Left Remonstrator, then served as an assistant director in the Court of the Grand Court of Sacrifices and in the Court of Judicial Review, while also holding a historiographical post. In 842 he went out as governor of Huangzhou and later served as governor of Chizhou and Muzhou. In 848 he returned as Assistant Director of the Palace Library and a compiler in the Historiographical Institute, later becoming an assistant director in the Ministry of Personnel; in 850 he went out as governor of Huzhou and also held the office of Dali Shaoqing, and in 851 returned as a Court Gentleman for Evaluating Merit and drafter of edicts, becoming a Chamberlain of the Secretariat the following year, when he died.

Du Xunhe, Du Chengze, Du Huici, and Du Dexiang are also described as his sons. Late in life Du Mu lived at a villa in Fanchuan south of Chang’an; after falling ill, he composed his own epitaph and burned all the writings he had produced.

Thought and literature

Du Mu read widely and was skilled in military affairs. He said that he kept his attention on “the traces of order and disorder, rise and fall, and matters of revenue and arms,” and made the salvation of the age and service to his generation his aim; his early essays included Zuiyan, Yuan Shiliuwei, Zhanlun, and Shoulun, which addressed the dangers of military governors and the failings of contemporary politics.

When Liu Congjian held Ze-Lu and He Jintao controlled Weibo without observing legal norms, Du Mu wrote Zuiyan on the court’s military policy; after Ze-Lu was pacified, events broadly followed his proposal. He also annotated Sunzi, and argued that prose should make intention primary, vital force its support, and verbal ornament and sentence form its defensive guard.

Du Mu was accomplished in prose and poetry, with a particular strength in seven-character regulated verse. His five-character ancient poems included “感懷詩,” “郡齋獨酌,” “杜秋娘詩,” and “張好好詩,” while his regulated poems and quatrains included “泊秦淮,” “秋夕,” “赤壁,” “寄揚州韓綽判官,” and “華清宮絕句三首.” His poetry was marked by a vigorous and rounded freshness, together with reflective sadness, emotional resonance, and controlled rises and falls; later criticism also described it as “俊爽” and “雄姿英發.” Beyond poetry and prose, he had considerable accomplishment in calligraphy and painting.

Works and transmission

The twenty-scroll 《樊川文集》 was compiled by his nephew Pei Yanhang and has survived. Later collectors gathered poems and prose outside the main collection as 《外集》, 《樊川別集》, 《樊川詩補遺》, and 《集外詩》, and produced 《樊川詩集注》; some pieces were mixed with works by other authors.

The Complete Tang Poems contains eight scrolls of Du Mu’s poetry, while its supplements add nine poems, one of them fragmentary; the seventh scroll is almost entirely made up of poems by Xu Hun. Works also attributed to him include the two-scroll 《考工記》 and the one-scroll 《杜秋傳》.