Out of Position and Offside: Critical Power and Boundaries in DU Fu's "Ode to Painting"

The commentary on HAN Gan's "painting the flesh" in DU Fu's "Ode to Painting" has triggered dual controversies in the fields of literary history and painting history. This phenomenon actually arises from the misinterpretation by later critics through the heterogeneous lenses of the "painterly eye" and "poetic eye." DU Fu's aesthetic interest in saddle horses does not lie in external forms such as fatness, leanness, old age, or weakness, but in their inner capability to fight on the battlefield and be entrusted with life and death. The original intention of DU Fu's "Ode to Painting" is to write a biography of CAO Ba with poetic brushwork, and his attitude toward HAN Gan is in fact one of consistent admiration. The "out-of-position thinking" in mutual learning between artistic disciplines contains the critical power of "turning the secondary into the primary"; meanwhile, differences in aesthetic orientation, temporal trends, and the ontological attributes of art also constitute the critical boundaries of "out-of-position practice." Beyond exploring the "unity of poetry and painting, " greater attention should be paid to the characteristics of the "distinctness of poetry and painting."