TaoYuanming, the First Idyllist

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In the Eastern Jin, the speculative philosophy prevailed, even poetic circle was influenced by metaphysics. But Tao Yuanming of the late Jin dynasty appeared and changed the literary world with his fresh and unique style.

Tao Yuanming (365-427), also known as Tao Qian, courtesy name(zi) Yuan Liang, was born in a aristocracy family. The time he lived in was the end of the Eastern Jin.

Tao Yuanming’s achieved outstanding accomplishment in poetry, especially in the idy1ls which sprouted and thrived and spread the seeds for the pastoral poems of later generations.

Tao Yuanming’s works are normally classified into the following four types according to the contents: Firstly, the idylls describing natural life and rural scenic views. His portrait of quiet natural views and a comfortable pastoral life displays his boundless plow-related fun, which is so real, vivid and tangible.

Secondly, poems for Tao’s social ideals and protests against wars. For example, his famous “Peach Blossom Spring”depicts a land hidden from the outside world, which reflects his strong desire to hide from the chaos caused by wars as well as his yearnings for a better life.

Thirdly, works criticizing the dark reality and implying disgusts against the society. In his Za Shi, Tao Yuanming resorts to the sharp contrast and acute contradiction between ideals and real life just to show his agony and melancholy after failing in fulfilling his ambitions.

Fourthly, poems describing the experience and thoughts acquired in farming. In his Harvesting Rice in Mid-September of Year Gengxu, Tao writes about the toil andhardship of farming activities, and his loath against the troubled times of war. In spite of all the hardship, Tao would be happy to live in that way as long as he could stay out of the chaos of war.

Tao Yuanming’s poems are rich in true feelings with deep and profound artistic conception. And the diction is plain and modest, outpouring his cultured and restrained ideas.

His employment of a great variety of art styles renders his works a bow of tepid old wine which has mellow tastes and lingering aftertastes.

Tao’s outstanding and long leading excellence in poetry makes him a star shining over the literal world of the Eastern Jin dynasty. His originality in pastoral poems pioneers a new field for poets of later time, helps to form of the tradition of the landscape poems and provides a valuable reference for the birth of the Southern dynasties and Tang’s pastoral poetry. In the meantime, he creates the figuration of artistic conception by drawing upon a plain depiction with fancy imagination and luxuriant exaggeration, and pays equal attention to the form and spirit. Tao Yuanming has formed a simplistic art style with unification of the plainness and purity, the reality and fancy.