AI-Generated Song 'The Seasoned One' — Du Fu

(Translated from the Chinese version with the help of Claude.)

I came across the AI-generated song The Seasoned One through a video by Daodao Feng. (I also played around with Suno when it first came out, but eventually lost interest and left it at that.) I tracked down the original song and listened to it. I agree with Daodao’s conclusion: the musical quality is mediocre, but its value goes far beyond the music itself.

In the song, “Du Fu” sings:

“The year my son starved to death, I was still in Chang’an, bowing my head and begging people for favors.”

Me: Wait, Du Fu’s son starved to death?

Gemini:

Yes. Du Fu’s youngest son did indeed die of starvation. According to historical accounts and Du Fu’s own poetry, this tragedy occurred in the winter of 755. Du Fu was traveling from Chang’an to Fengxian County (present-day Pucheng, Shaanxi) to visit his family, who were staying there. As soon as he entered the house, he heard the terrible news. In his famous poem Five Hundred Characters: Written on the Journey from the Capital to Fengxian, he wrote in anguish:

I entered the house and heard wailing cries;
My youngest child had starved to death.
I am ashamed to call myself a father:
With no food, I let my child perish.

At the time, the An Lushan Rebellion had not yet broken out, but the Tang dynasty was already facing severe social and economic problems, including an enormous gap between rich and poor. Although Du Fu came from a family with a history of official service and had just secured a minor government position as an officer in the Right Guard Command, years of hardship, repeated failures in his pursuit of an official career, and financial difficulties had left him unable to provide even basic sustenance for his wife and children. The result was this heartbreaking tragedy.

Me: Holy crap. Du Fu! The Sage of Poetry! I knew he had struggled in his career and lived in poverty, but I never imagined things had gotten this bad! People say that a nation’s misfortune is a poet’s fortune. But isn’t this an awfully high price to pay?

Gemini:

That shock and heartbreak are exactly what most people feel when they encounter this episode in history. Du Fu, now revered as the “Sage of Poetry,” endured a degree of poverty and hardship during his lifetime that is far beyond what many people imagine.

What makes Du Fu truly great is that he not only endured suffering that most people could hardly comprehend, but also managed to transform his personal tragedy into compassion for an entire age.

In the same poem, Five Hundred Characters: Written on the Journey from the Capital to Fengxian, Du Fu did not simply dwell on his personal grief after learning that his son had starved to death. Instead, he extended his sympathy to others, writing one of the most famous lines in Chinese poetry:

“The rich man’s gates reek of wine and meat;
On the roads lie the bones of those frozen to death.”

He juxtaposed the extravagance and debauchery of the ruling class with the miserable fate of ordinary people at the bottom of society—including his own family. He realized that even he, a minor government official, could not keep his child alive. How utterly desperate, then, must life have been for ordinary people with even fewer resources?

Me: Just how poor was Du Fu?

Gemini:

Beyond the death of his youngest son, Du Fu’s life was filled with other heartbreaking episodes of poverty:

• A decade of struggling in Chang’an: During the ten years he spent seeking an official position in Chang’an, he had to knock on the doors of wealthy families during the day and follow the carriages of rich men in the evening, hoping for a meal. As he famously wrote: “In the morning I knock on the doors of the rich; at dusk I trail the dust of their fat horses.” At times, he even had to gather medicinal herbs in exchange for a meager amount of food.
• His thatched cottage destroyed by the autumn wind: Later, after fleeing to Chengdu, he built a thatched cottage with the help of friends. One day, a fierce wind tore the thatch from his roof, and torrential rain poured in. His bed and bedding were soaked. Yet even in such miserable circumstances, he dreamed of something much bigger than his own comfort: “If only I could build ten thousand spacious mansions, sheltering all the poor scholars under heaven, so that every one of them could smile with joy!”
• A tragic end in his later years: In his old age, Du Fu wandered from place to place, living aboard a small boat. In the winter of 770, while traveling from Tanzhou (present-day Changsha) toward Yueyang, he died in a dilapidated boat at the age of 59.

This is why Du Fu is revered as the “Sage of Poetry.” His poems were not armchair exercises in sentimentality. They were written out of suffering he had personally endured, capturing the reality of his times, line by line. This is also why his poetry is often called a “history in verse.”

Me: Wait, Du Fu actually went to Changsha?!

Gemini:

Yes! Not only did Du Fu visit Changsha (known as Tanzhou during the Tang dynasty), but he spent almost the entirety of the last two years of his life in Hunan.

For Du Fu, Changsha was the final stop in a lifetime of wandering. His journey to Hunan was filled with dramatic twists and heartbreaking misfortune.

Why did he go to Changsha?

In the late autumn of 768, at the age of 57, Du Fu had lost his support network in Sichuan and decided to leave the region with his family, hoping to return north to his hometown. But the north was still engulfed in warfare, making the journey impossible. He learned that his old friend Wei Zhijin, whom he had known since his youth, was serving in Hunan and was about to be transferred to Tanzhou. Du Fu therefore decided to travel there and seek his friend’s help.

But fate played a cruel trick on him: by the time he had endured the arduous journey and finally arrived in Changsha by boat, Wei Zhijin had already died suddenly.

Having lost what might have been his last source of material support, Du Fu, sick and destitute, found himself in desperate circumstances and was forced to remain in Changsha.

His impoverished life in Changsha and the riverside pavilion

Life was extremely difficult for Du Fu during his two years in Changsha.

• Living aboard a boat: At first, he did not even have a proper place to stay. His family had to squeeze into a dilapidated boat that remained moored in the Nanhu harbor.
• Renting a room by the river: Later, he rented a humble building outside the western gate of Changsha, along the banks of the Xiang River. This is the area associated with today’s famous landmark, Du Fu River Pavilion. It was built by later generations to commemorate this difficult chapter of the poet’s final years.
• Surviving on poetry and patronage: Du Fu wrote about his desperate circumstances in Changsha: “I borrow rice from one household after another to stave off hunger; I seek cups of wine wherever I go to ease my sorrow. Leftover wine and cold scraps—wherever I turn, there is sorrow and humiliation.” He had to compose poems and dedicate them to local officials and literati in exchange for small amounts of food to keep himself alive.

The final masterpiece: “Meeting Li Guinian South of the Yangtze”

Despite his poverty, failing eyesight, hearing loss, and illness, Du Fu continued to write in Changsha. He composed more than a hundred poems there, over fifty of which have survived.

The most famous is undoubtedly Meeting Li Guinian South of the Yangtze, which many of us encountered in our Chinese literature textbooks:

In Prince Qi’s mansion, I often saw you perform;
At Lord Cui’s residence, I heard your songs time and again.
Now, amid the lovely spring scenery south of the Yangtze,
We meet once more, just as the flowers are falling.

Li Guinian had once been the most celebrated court musician in Chang’an during the prosperous Kaiyuan era. He frequently performed at the residences of princes and nobles, and the young Du Fu had heard him sing at those aristocratic gatherings.

After the An Lushan Rebellion, the two men, both witnesses to the glory of the prosperous Tang dynasty and both abandoned by the times, unexpectedly met again in the impoverished lands south of the Yangtze, far from Chang’an.

The poem may seem understated, but beneath its simple words lies an immense sense of loss: a fallen empire, shattered families, and a vanished golden age.

In the summer of 770, a military mutiny broke out in Changsha. Du Fu fled once again, heading toward Hengyang, but was forced to turn back when the roads became impassable. That winter, aboard a dilapidated boat on the Xiang River, somewhere between Changsha and Yueyang, this great poet quietly closed his eyes for the last time. He was 59.

Reflections

I had no idea the story behind Changsha’s Du Fu River Pavilion (completed in 2005) was so heartbreaking.

Sigh. This is even more poignant and heartbreaking than Pergolesi’s story.