Great Poet-Tao Yuanming

Tao Qian, or Tao Yuan Ming, was an early Taoist poet who greatly influenced the great Tang poets. Tao lived in the tumultuous Eastern Chin dynasty, after the fall of the great Han and before the reunification under the Sui. Having much hard luck in his attempts at life as an official, Tao gave up on society's Confucian ideals and retired at the age of 41 to Jiangsu province near Lu Mountain. There he lived as a recluse, leading a simple life and writing poetry that reflected his love of farm, family and drink. It is said he befriended Lu Mountain monk and Chan (Zen) pioneer Hui-yüan. He is lauded universally as a paragon of simple country virtue, and praised by admirers such as Meng Haoran for his rich, deceptively spare style.

 Tao's career as a "scholar-gentleman" or government official, clashed with his propensity for solitude, and he became a recluse in the Chinese manner, in a rural area with his family. As a poet he projects warmth, humanity, and personal vulnerability. Unlike most of his contemporaries and predecessors, Tao Chien neither wrote in a lofty manner nor exaggerated the virtues of reclusion. He is at once loyal to friends and family, skeptical philosophically, a realist about daily life and its hardships, but also rueful and wistfully romantic in his struggle to be worthy of the hermits and sages of the past.

Tao's autobiographical summary of several paragraphs, "Biography of the Gentleman of the Five Willows," written in the third person, is a stylized tour-de-force that does not reveal much but is infused with self-abnegating simplicity. Quiet and of few words, he does not desire glory or profit. He delights in study but does not seek abstruse explanations. Whenever there is something of which he apprehends the meaning, then, in his happiness, he forgets to eat. His house with surrounding walls only a few paces long is lonely and does not shelter him from wind and sun. His short coarse robe is torn and mended. His dishes and gourds are often empty, yet he is at peace. He constantly delights himself with writing in which he widely expresses his own ideals. He is unmindful of gain or loss, and thus he will be to the end.

The details of Tao Chien's life are simple. The family was poor but well-educated. His mother died when he was very young. He began a career in government bureaucracy and eventually quit to return home, refusing many later calls to an alternative post. Tao Chien married, had children, and determined to pursue a life of self-sufficiency as a recluse and farmer.

But after a fire destroyed his ancestral home, poverty dogged him. Farming was exhausting work and he grew thin and sickly. Still Tao refused job offers from old government acquaintances. For a while he gave in and served a military post, then a brief stint as town magistrate. But this did not last long.

Tao Chien's two episodes of withdrawal from service are described in his most celebrated poems, "Return Home" and "Returning to Live in the Country," the latter a series of five poems on reclusion. First, this scene from "Returning Home": My boat lightly tosses on the broad waters, The wind, whirling, blows my robe about. I ask a traveler of the way ahead. I am impatient with the dawn light's faintness. Then I espy my humble house: I am glad, so I run. The children wait at the gate.

Tao elaborates on reclusion in "Returning to Live in the Country": In youth I could not do what everyone else did; It was my nature to love the mountains and hills. By mistake I got caught in the dusty snare, I went away and stayed for thirteen years. He speaks of his house: My house measures ten mou or more, a thatch roof covers eight or nine spans. Around my door and yard no dust or noise. In my bare rooms, no busyness. After so long a prisoner in a cage I have returned to things as they are [i.e., Nature]. But reclusion was not to be without hardship. At first, Tao's poverty was so thorough-going that he served the plow as ox while his wife served as the plow head. He composed a series of "poverty" poems: Man's life is a matter of possessing the Way, But food and clothing truly are its beginnings. How can one make no provision whatsoever for these And yet seek contentment for oneself? ... To be a farmer is surely a harsh lot; One cannot refuse these hardships. I only wish that I might continue like this; At plowing with my own hand I have no complaint.