The 100 Most Influential Writers of All Time (6 page)

Du Fu's early poetry celebrated the beauty of the natural world and bemoaned the passage of time. He soon began to write bitingly of war—seen in
Bingqu xing
(
The Ballad of the Army Carts
), a poem about conscription—and with hidden satire, as in
Liren xing
(
The Beautiful Woman
), which speaks of the conspicuous luxury of the court. As he matured, and especially during the tumultuous period of 755 to 759, his verse began to sound a note of profound compassion for humanity caught in the grip of senseless war.

Du Fu's paramount position in the history of Chinese literature rests on his superb classicism. He was highly
erudite, and his intimate acquaintance with the literary tradition of the past was equaled only by his complete ease in handling the rules of prosody. 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. He was an expert in all poetic genres current in his day, but his mastery was at its height in the
lüshi
, or “regulated verse,” which he refined to a point of glowing intensity.

(b. 915, K
Å«
fah, Iraq—d. Sept. 23, 965, near Dayr al- ‘
Ā
q
Å«
l)

A
l-Mutanabb
Ä«
, regarded by many as the greatest poet of the Arabic language, primarily wrote panegyrics in a flowery, bombastic, and highly influential style marked by improbable metaphors.

Al-Mutanabb
Ä«
was the son of a water carrier who claimed noble and ancient southern Arabian descent. Because of his poetic talent, al-Mutanabb
Ä«
received an education. When Sh
Ä«
'ite Qarmatians sacked K
Å«
fah in 924, he joined them and lived among the Bedouin, learning their doctrines and Arabic. Claiming to be a prophet—hence the name al-Mutanabb
Ä«
(“The Would-Be Prophet”)—he led a Qarmatian revolt in Syria in 932. After its suppression and two years' imprisonment, he recanted in 935 and became a wandering poet.

He began to write panegyrics in the tradition established by the poets Ab
Å«
Tamm
ā
m and al-Bu
ḥ
tur
Ä«
. A panegyric on the military victories of Sayf al-Dawlah, the
Ḥ
amd
ā
nid poet-prince of northern Syria, resulted in al-Mutanabb
Ä«
's attaching himself to the ruler's court in 948. During his time there, al-Mutanabb
Ä«
lauded his patron in panegyrics that rank as masterpieces of Arabic poetry.
Among his lines of praise for Sayf al-Dawlah are ones written after the prince's recovery from illness: “Light is now returned to the sun; previously it was extinguished / As though the lack of it in a body were a kind of disease.”

The latter part of this period was clouded with intrigues and jealousies that culminated in al-Mutanabb
Ä«
's leaving Syria in 957 for Egypt, then ruled in name by the Ikhsh
Ä«
dids. Al-Mutanabb
Ä«
attached himself to the regent, the Ethiopian eunuch Ab
Å«
al-Misk K
ā
f
Å«
r, who had been born a slave. But he offended K
ā
f
Å«
r by lampooning him in scurrilous satirical poems and fled Egypt about 960. After further travels—including to Baghdad, where he was unable to secure patronage, and to K
Å«
fah, where he again defended the city from attack by the Qarmatians—al-Mutanabb
Ä«
lived in Sh
Ä«
r
ā
z, Iran, under the protection of the emir ‘A
ḍ
Å«
d al-Dawlah of the B
Å«
yid dynasty until 965, when he returned to Iraq and was killed by bandits near Baghdad.

Al-Mutanabb
Ä«
's pride and arrogance set the tone for much of his verse, which is ornately rhetorical yet crafted with consummate skill and artistry. He gave to the traditional
qa
á¹£
Ä«
dah
, or ode, a freer and more personal development, writing in what can be called a neoclassical style that combined some elements of Iraqi and Syrian stylistics with classical features.

(b.
c
. 935, near
Ṭ
Å«
s, Iran—d.
c
. 1020–26,
Ṭ
Å«
s)

F
erdows
Ä«
was a Persian poet who gave to the
Sh
ā
h-n
ā
meh
(“Book of Kings”), the Persian national epic, its final and enduring form.

He was born in a village on the outskirts of the ancient city of
Ṭ
Å«
s. In the course of the centuries many legends
have been woven around the poet's name—which is itself the pseudonym of Ab
Å«
al-Qasem Man
á¹£
Å«
r—but very little else, other than his birthplace, is known about the real facts of his life. The only reliable source is given by Ne
ẓ
ā
m
Ä«
-ye ‘Ar
ūẓī
, a 12th-century poet who visited Ferdows
Ä«
's tomb in 1116 or 1117 and collected the traditions that were current in his birthplace less than a century after his death.

According to Ne
ẓ
ā
m
Ä«
, Ferdows
Ä«
was a
dehq
ā
n
(“landowner”), deriving a comfortable income from his estates. He had only one child, a daughter, and it was to provide her with a dowry that he set his hand to the task that was to occupy him for 35 years. The
Sh
ā
h-n
ā
meh
of Ferdows
Ä«
, a poem of nearly 60,000 couplets, is based mainly on a prose work of the same name compiled in the poet's early manhood in his native
Ṭ
Å«
s. This prose
Sh
ā
h-n
ā
meh
was in turn and for the most part the translation of a Pahlavi (Middle Persian) work, the
Khvat
ā
y-n
ā
mak
, a history of the kings of Persia from mythical times down to the reign of Khosrow II (590–628). It also contained additional material continuing the story to the overthrow of the S
ā
s
ā
nians by the Arabs in the middle of the 7th century. The first to undertake the versification of this chronicle of pre-Isl
ā
mic and legendary Persia was Daq
Ä«
q
Ä«
, a poet at the court of the S
ā
m
ā
nids, who came to a violent end after completing only 1,000 verses. These verses, which deal with the rise of the prophet Zoroaster, were afterward incorporated by Ferdows
Ä«
, with due acknowledgements, in his own poem.

The
Sh
ā
h-n
ā
meh
, finally completed in 1010, was presented to the celebrated sultan Ma
ḥ
m
Å«
d of Ghazna, who by that time had made himself master of Ferdows
Ä«
's homeland, Kh
Å«
r
ā
s
ā
n. Information on the relations between poet and patron is largely legendary. According to Ne
ẓ
ā
m
Ä«
-ye ‘Ar
ūẓī
, Ferdows
Ä«
came to Ghazna in person and
through the good offices of the minister A
ḥ
mad ebn
Ḥ
asan Meymand
Ä«
was able to secure the Sultan's acceptance of the poem. Unfortunately, Ma
ḥ
m
Å«
d then consulted certain enemies of the minister as to the poet's reward. They suggested that Ferdows
Ä«
should be given 50,000 dirhams, and even this, they said, was too much, in view of his heretical Sh
Ä«
'
Ä«
te tenets. Ma
ḥ
m
Å«
d, a bigoted Sunnite, was influenced by their words, and in the end Ferdows
Ä«
received only 20,000 dirhams. Bitterly disappointed, he went to the bath and, on coming out, bought a draft of
foq
ā
‘ (a kind of beer) and divided the whole of the money between the bath attendant and the seller of
foq
ā
‘.

Fearing the Sultan's wrath, he fled first to Her
ā
t, where he was in hiding for six months, and then, by way of his native
Ṭ
Å«
s, to Mazanderan, where he found refuge at the court of the Sepahb
ā
d Shahrey
ā
r, whose family claimed descent from the last of the S
ā
s
ā
nians. There Ferdows
Ä«
composed a satire of 100 verses on Sultan Ma
ḥ
m
Å«
d that he inserted in the preface of the
Sh
ā
h-n
ā
meh
and read it to Shahrey
ā
r, at the same time offering to dedicate the poem to him, as a descendant of the ancient kings of Persia, instead of to Ma
ḥ
m
Å«
d. Shahrey
ā
r, however, persuaded him to leave the dedication to Ma
ḥ
m
Å«
d, bought the satire from him for 1,000 dirhams a verse, and had it expunged from the poem. The whole text of this satire, bearing every mark of authenticity, has survived to the present.

It was long supposed that in his old age the poet had spent some time in western Persia or even in Baghdad under the protection of the B
Å«
yids, but this assumption was based upon his presumed authorship of
Y
Å«
sof o-Zal
Ä«
kh
ā
, an epic poem on the subject of Joseph and Potiphar's wife, which, it later became known, was composed more than 100 years after Ferdows
Ä«
's death. According to the narrative of Ne
ẓ
ā
m
Ä«
-ye ‘Ar
ūẓī
, Ferdows
Ä«
died inopportunely just
as Sultan Ma
ḥ
m
Å«
d had determined to make amends for his shabby treatment of the poet by sending him 60,000 dinars' worth of indigo. Ne
ẓ
ā
m
Ä«
does not mention the date of Ferdows
Ä«
's death. The earliest date given by later authorities is 1020 and the latest 1026; it is certain that he lived to be more than 80.

The Persians regard Ferdows
Ä«
as the greatest of their poets. For nearly a thousand years they have continued to read and to listen to recitations from his masterwork, the
Sh
ā
h-n
ā
meh
, in which the Persian national epic found its final and enduring form. Though written about 1,000 years ago, this work is as intelligible to the average, modern Iranian as the King James version of the Bible is to a modern English-speaker. The language, based as the poem is on a Pahlavi original, is pure Persian with only the slightest admixture of Arabic. European scholars have criticized this enormous poem for what they have regarded as its monotonous metre, its constant repetitions, and its stereotyped similes; but to the Iranian it is the history of his country's glorious past, preserved for all time in sonorous and majestic verse.

(b.
c
. 978, Ky
ō
to, Japan—d.
c
. 1014, Ky
ō
to)

M
urasaki Shikibu is the name that has been given to the court lady who was the author of the
Genji monogatari
(
The Tale of Genji
), generally considered the greatest work of Japanese literature and thought to be the world's oldest full novel. Her real name, however, is unknown; it is conjectured that she acquired the sobriquet of Murasaki from the name of the heroine of her novel. The main source of knowledge about her life is the diary she kept between 1007 and 1010. This work possesses
considerable interest for the delightful glimpses it affords of life at the court of the empress J
ō
t
ō
mon'in, whom Murasaki Shikibu served.

Some critics believe that she wrote the entire
Tale of Genji
between 1001 (the year her husband, Fujiwara Nobutaka, died) and 1005, when she began serving at court. More probably, however, the composition of this extremely long and complex novel extended over a much greater period and was not finished until about 1010.

The Tale of Genji
captures the image of a unique society of ultrarefined and elegant aristocrats, whose indispensable accomplishments were skill in poetry, music, calligraphy, and courtship. Much of it is concerned with the loves of Prince Genji and the different women in his life, all of whom are exquisitely delineated. Although the novel does not contain scenes of powerful action, it is permeated with a sensitivity to human emotions and to the beauties of nature hardly paralleled elsewhere. The tone of the novel darkens as it progresses, indicating perhaps a deepening of Murasaki Shikibu's Buddhist conviction of the vanity of the world. Some, however, believe that its last 14 chapters were written by another author. The translation (1935) of
The Tale of Genji
by Arthur Waley is a classic of English literature. Murasaki Shikibu's diary is included in
Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan
(1935), translated by Annie Shepley
Ō
mori and K
ō
chi Doi.