For modern Western readers, "The less accurately we know the time, the place and the circumstances in the background, the more liable we are to imagine it incorrectly, and the result will be that we either misunderstand the poem or fail to understand it altogether".

[6] The son of a minor scholar-official, his youth was spent on the standard education of a future civil servant: study and memorisation of the Confucian classics of philosophy, history and poetry.

[7] In the early 730s, he travelled in the Jiangsu and Zhejiang area; his earliest surviving poem, describing a poetry contest, is thought to date from the end of this period, around 735.

Hung concludes that he probably failed because his prose style at the time was too dense and obscure, while Chou suggests his failure to cultivate connections in the capital may have been to blame.

Du Fu would have been allowed to enter the civil service because of his father's rank, but he is thought to have given up the privilege in favour of one of his half brothers.

David Young describes this as "the most significant formative element in Du Fu's artistic development" because it gave him a living example of the reclusive poet-scholar life to which he was attracted after his failure in the civil service exam.

He took the civil service exam a second time during the following year, but all the candidates were failed by the prime minister (apparently in order to prevent the emergence of possible rivals).

It was in that year that Du Fu was forced to move his family due to the turmoil of a famine brought about by massive floods in the region.

This period of unhappiness was the making of Du Fu as a poet: Eva Shan Chou has written that, "What he saw around him—the lives of his family, neighbors, and strangers– what he heard, and what he hoped for or feared from the progress of various campaigns—these became the enduring themes of his poetry".

Du Fu wrote:[1] Brooding on what I have lived through, if even I know such suffering, the common man must surely be rattled by the winds.In 756, Emperor Xuanzong was forced to flee the capital and abdicate.

Du Fu, who had been away from the city, took his family to a place of safety and attempted to join the court of the new emperor (Suzong), but he was captured by the rebels and taken to Chang'an.

Du Fu's conscientiousness compelled him to try to make use of it: he caused trouble for himself by protesting the removal of his friend and patron Fang Guan on a petty charge.

[20] He was granted leave to visit his family in September, but he soon rejoined the court and on 8 December 757, he returned to Chang'an with the emperor following its recapture by government forces.

束帶發狂欲大叫， 簿書何急來相仍。 —from "Early Autumn, Miserable Heat, Papers Piling Up" (Chinese: 早秋苦熱堆案相仍; pinyin: Zǎoqiū kǔrè duī'àn xiāngréng); translation by William Hung.

[28] Luoyang, the region of his birthplace, was recovered by government forces in the winter of 762, and in the spring of 765 Du Fu and his family sailed down the Yangtze, apparently with the intention of making their way there.

[29] They travelled slowly, held up by his ill-health (by this time he was suffering from poor eyesight, deafness and general old age in addition to his previous ailments).

[32] Hung summarises his life by concluding that, "He appeared to be a filial son, an affectionate father, a generous brother, a faithful husband, a loyal friend, a dutiful official, and a patriotic subject.

They ask me where I have been on my journey; And then, when we have talked awhile, They bring and show me wines and dishes, Spring chives cut in the night-rain And brown rice cooked freshly a special way.

人生不相見， 動如參與商。 今夕復何夕， 共此燈燭光。 少壯能幾時， 鬢髮各已蒼。 訪舊半為鬼， 驚呼熱中腸。 焉知二十載， 重上君子堂。 昔別君未婚， 兒女忽成行。 怡然敬父執， 問我來何方。 問答乃未已， 兒女羅酒漿。 夜雨翦春韭， 新炊間黃粱。 主稱會面難， 一舉累十觴。 十觴亦不醉， 感子故意長。 明日隔山嶽， 世事兩茫茫。 —"To My Retired Friend Wei" (Zēng Wèi Bā Chǔshì 贈衛八處士)[35] Du Fu is the first person in the historical record identified as a diabetic patient.

[3] Although Du Fu's frequent references to his own difficulties can give the impression of an all-consuming solipsism, Hawkes argues that his "famous compassion in fact includes himself, viewed quite objectively and almost as an afterthought".

[41] Du Fu's compassion, for himself and for others, was part of his general broadening of the scope of poetry: he devoted many works to topics which had previously been considered unsuitable for poetic treatment.

Yuan Zhen was the first to note the breadth of Du Fu's achievement, writing in 813 that his predecessor "united in his work traits which previous men had displayed only singly".

Du Fu's seemingly negative commentary on the prized horse paintings of Han Gan ignited a controversy that has persisted to the present day.

[53] According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, Du Fu's writings are considered by many literary critics to be among the greatest of all time,[54] and it states "his dense, compressed language makes use of all the connotative overtones of a phrase and of all the intonational potentials of the individual word, qualities that no translation can ever reveal.

In this period a comprehensive re-evaluation of earlier poets took place, in which Wang Wei, Li Bai and Du Fu came to be regarded as representing respectively the Buddhist, Daoist and Confucian strands of Chinese culture.

[64] Su Shi famously expressed this reasoning when he wrote that Du Fu was "preeminent ... because ... through all his vicissitudes, he never for the space of a meal forgot his sovereign".

[68] While there was never another Du Fu, individual poets followed in the traditions of specific aspects of his work: Bai Juyi's concern for the poor, Lu You's patriotism, and Mei Yaochen's reflections on the quotidian are a few examples.

More broadly, Du Fu's work in transforming the lǜshi from mere word play into "a vehicle for serious poetic utterance"[69] set the stage for every subsequent writer in the genre.

[77] During the Kan'ei era of the Edo period (1624–1643), Shào Chuán (邵傳) of the Ming Dynasty's Collective Commentary on Du Fu's Lǜshi (杜律集解, Toritsu Shikkai) was imported into Japan, and it gained explosive popularity in Confucian scholars and chōnin (townspeople) class.

[78] The commentary established Du Fu's fame as the highest of all poets; for instance, Hayashi Shunsai, a notable Confucian scholar, commented in Vol.