“I Envy You Your New Teeth and Hair”: Humor, Self-Awareness and Du Fu’s Poetic Self-Image

Tang Studin 2,l-24 (200S~) "I Envy You Your New Teeth and Hair": Humor, Self-Awareness and Du Fu's Poetic Self-Image CHRISTOPHER G. REA COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY Du Fu fJ:-m (712-770) was not the first Tang poet to be concerned about his own image, but the degree to which he sought to shape it through his poetry is remarkable. While it may be said that any text enables some sort of inference about its author, Du Fu's poems exhibit an acute and conscious attention to selfrepresentation . As Stephen Owen writes, "no poet before Du Fu, with the possible exception of Tao Qian, had ever made such elaborate efforts to give an account of himself." 1 However, accepting Owen's assenion that "the only aspect [ofDu Fu's identity] that can be emphasized without distorting his work as a whole is the very fact of its multiplicity"2 should not prevent us from highlighting individual facets of Du Fu's self-portrayal that contribute to his composite identity. This paper examines Du Fu's inclination to make fun of himself: a poetic trait that has been remarked upon in passing by many critics but has never been the focus of a dedicated study. William Hung introduces Du Fu as "a man of ambition, character, and humor,"3 but he does not further discuss the relationship Thanks to Wendy Swartz, Stephen Owen, and two anonymous reviewers for their comments on an earlier version of this essay. I Stephen Owen, An Anthology of Chinese Literature: Beginningr to 1911 (New York: WW Norton, 1996), 416. 2 Stephen Owen, The Great Age of Chinese Poetry: The High Tang (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981), 184. 3 William Hung, Tu Fu: Chinas Greatest Poet (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard 47 Rea: •• , Envy You You, N~ Tt~lhana Hai,· between Du Fu's humor and his character or poetic an. David McCraw more specifically detects a "wry, self-mocking humor" in Du Fu's verse and notes: "Du Fu's humor can range from gentle to derisive, from lighthearted to inscrutable .... But its prevailing tone is the 'dry mock,' and its target is almost always himsel("4 Eva Shan Chou draws our attention to "Du Fu's command of physical comedy and his disarming ability to make himself a figure of fun,") while Owen in his seminal study, the Great Agt of ChintSt POttry: The High Tang, refers several times to Du Fu's "half-humorous" and "mocking" self-image.6 As Owen's use of the qualification "half-" implies, Du Fu's risible impulse is sometimes ambivalent or incomplete, deriving its full effect only in relation to other inclinations, such as grandeur, bitterness, heroism, or solipsism. But if Du Fu's "legacy to later poets was the capacity to laugh at oneself,"; as Owen states elsewhere, how did he laugh at himself, and what can be learned from his various laughing self-portrayals? HUMOR AND SELF-MOCKERY AS PoETIC MODES Discussions of humor are sometimes hamstrung by humor's subjectivity. As Qian Zhongshu ~Jt_ (1910-1998) once remarked, humor lies in how one perceives a thing and not in the thing itself/~and this is one of the main reasons why humor is such University Press, 1952), vii. 4 David R. McCraw, Du Fus lAments from the South (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1992), 11, 221. S Evan Shan Chou, Reconsidering Tu Fu: Littrary Greatn~s and Cultural Contcct (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 182. Spelling changed from "Tu Fu" to "Du Fu" for consistency. 6 Owen, The Great Age o/Chinese Poetry, 195, 207, 209, and 212. 7 Stephen Owen, "The Selrs Perfect Mirror: Poetry as Autobiography," in The Vitality 0/the Lyric voice: Shih Poetryfrom the lAu Han to the Tang, ed. Shuen-fu Lin and Stephen Owen (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), 94. 8 Qian Zhongshu ~J1., "Shuo xiao" ~~, finri ping/un ~ B ~~, 1.22 (May 28, 1939): 13. 48 Tang SnuJin 23-24 (2005-06) a tricky phenomenon to analyze in literature. What one reader takes to be humorous and playful another may interpret as a bitter self-reproach. Debates about literary humor often come down to interpretation...