In addition to being a "poet saint", Du Fu has a better title-a master of ancient poetry.
"Master of Ancient Poetry" is a reputation that belongs exclusively to Du Fu, and it is also the only one without semicolon.
It is true that Li Bai and Du Fu are both called "Du Li" and the two greatest poets in the Tang Dynasty and even in ancient China. If we say the popularity of their works and the popularity of later generations, Li Bai may be better among young people. But when it comes to "epitomizing", Li Bai really can't compare with Du Fu.
What is "comprehensive"? That is, the advantages and achievements of a certain kind of things in all aspects are integrated to a fairly complete degree.
In other words, the basic condition of "comprehensiveness" is comprehensiveness. If you want to be called a "master of ancient poetry", you must have outstanding achievements in every type of poetry.
Poetry genre is divided into modern poetry and ancient poetry. Among them, modern poetry is the quatrains and metrical poems that we often say, which are divided into five-character quatrains, seven-character quatrains, five-character metrical poems and seven-character metrical poems, and are characterized by paying attention to flatness, antithesis and rhyme. Relatively speaking, classical poetry is free in meter, flat and even, wide in rhyme and unlimited in length. Sentences are not limited to five or seven words, but can be four, five, six, seven or other words.
Li Bai is good at quatrains in ancient poetry and modern poetry, which are undoubtedly the pinnacles. Among them, the representative works of five-character quatrains include Silent Night Thinking, Sleeping in a Mountain Temple and Sitting Alone in Jingting Mountain. The representative works of the seven-character quatrains include Wang Lun, Baidicheng, Looking at Lushan Waterfall, Farewell to Meng Haoran's trip to Yangzhou, etc. Classical poetry, especially Yuefu and Gexing, is Li Bai's unique skill. His representative works include Entering Wine, Difficult Road to Shu, Difficult to Ascend to the Sky, Climbing Mount Tianmu in My Dream, Long March, Chivalrous Journey, Long March and so on.
But Li Bai has almost no metrical poems, but there is an article "On Ascending Nanjing to Phoenix Terrace", which is said to imitate Cui Hao's "Yellow Crane Tower". In fact, it is not difficult to understand that Li Bai is a romantic poet. He is a bohemian by nature and pursues arbitrariness in writing poems. Rhyme, which is extremely strict with leveling, antithesis and rhyme, is bound to bind Li Bai's lofty aspirations and make him unable to release them freely, which is really not suitable for him.