When I was a child, my family declined. When I was nine years old, I lost my father and lived alone with my mother and sister. Most orphans and widows live in my grandfather Meng Jia's house. Meng Jia is a contemporary celebrity. "If you don't agree with each other, you will never feel happy. If you drink too much, you won't be chaotic. " As for forgetting his pride, he is unique. Yuan Ming said, "There are many imitators of ancestors." (Catch Qin) In the future, his character and cultivation will largely be his grandfather's legacy. His grandfather's family has a lot of books, which provides him with the conditions to read ancient books and understand history. He not only studied Laozi and Zhuangzi like an ordinary scholar-bureaucrat, but also studied the Six Classics of Confucianism and other "different books" such as literature, history and mythology. Influenced by the ideological trend of the times and family environment, he accepted two different concepts of Confucianism and Taoism, and cultivated two different interests: "aiming high" and "naturally loving mountains".
When Tao Yuanming was a teenager, he had a great wish to "escape all over the world and travel far away" (Miscellaneous Poems). In the 18th year of Xiaozong in Taiyuan (393), he served as Jiangzhou's wine offering with the wish of "saving the world". At that time, the gate and valve system was strict and came from civilians, so it was looked down upon and felt "unbearable". He went to Jingzhou and devoted himself to Huan Xuan's office. At this time, Huan Xuan was controlling the upper and middle reaches of the Yangtze River, and seized the opportunity to usurp the Eastern Jin regime. Of course, he refused to go with Huan Xuan and be the confidant of the careerist. He wrote in his poem: "How to give up this place and go as far as Xijing." ("Xin Chou went to leave Jiangling for a night outing in July") has remorse for official Huan Xuan. "("Two Poems by Gengzi in Mid-May ") issued a deep sigh for the official life of people who bow down to others. In the winter of five years in Longan, he resigned and went home because of his mother's funeral. In the first month of the first year of Yuanxing (402), Huan Xuan fought against the imperial court, invaded Jiankang and seized the military and political power in the Eastern Jin Dynasty. In the second year of Yuan Xing, Huan Xuan overtly usurped the throne in Jiankang, and changed his country name to Chu. Miao people are isolated from the world. Look around, but Fei Jing is usually closed during the day. "He disdained Huan Xuan's claim to the throne. In the third year of Yuanxing, the general, Xiapi Taishouwu and He Wuji joined forces and set out from Jingkou (now Zhenjiang, Jiangsu) to crusade against Huan. Huan Xuan defeated the West and brought Andi, who was imprisoned in Xunyang, to Jiangling. He left home to invest. He imitated the story of Tian Chou's loyalty to the Eastern Han Dynasty, disguised himself as a private traveler, ventured to Jiankang, took Huan Xuan hostage and arrived in Jiangling, and reported to Emperor Wu of Song. He happily wrote a poem: "forty ignorant, not afraid, fat my famous car, choose me as a horse." Although thousands of miles away, who dares not! " ("Mr. Murong" Chapter 4) After Emperor Wu of Song entered health, his style was quite extraordinary. The politics of the Eastern Jin Dynasty has long been corrupted by "abolishing all officials". After Emperor Wu of Song "set an example" (set an example), he first banned it by threatening means (banned it in advance), and "officials at home and abroad all respected it and changed customs" he once had a good impression on him. But soon after the curtain rises, he saw that Emperor Wu of Song killed Diao Kui's family and innocent Wang Yu's father and son in order to cut off dissidents, and with his affair, he took Wang Shu, Huan Xuan's confidant, whom everyone thought should be killed, as an important official position. These gloomy phenomena disappointed him. He wrote in the poem "A Qubo, the first town army joined the army" that I originally wanted to live in the mountains, but later I moved to my hometown. Later, I resigned and lived in seclusion. In the first year of Jian 'an (405), I joined the army as a general Jianwei, and was the secretariat of Jiangzhou, Wei Liu. In March, he was ordered to go to Jiankang to resign for Liu. After Liu left, he also left his post. In the autumn of the same year, my uncle Tao Kui introduced him as the county magistrate of Pengze. The subordinate official said: "I was greeted with a belt," he sighed. "How can I bow to the children in the village for five buckets of rice?" So he got the seal to leave his post. Tao Yuanming's thirteen-year official career ended with his resignation from pengze county. These thirteen years are the thirteen years in which he kept trying, disappointed and finally despaired to realize his ideal and ambition of "helping the poor". Finally gave him "go home and resign"
Tao Yuanming resigned and returned to his hometown, living a life of "dedicating himself to his capital". His wife, Zhai, is like him, happy, humble and polite. "The husband plows in front and the wife hoes in the back." * * * Work with the working people to maintain his life, and his life is closely related to the working people. At the beginning of returning to my hometown, life was ok. "There are more than ten acres of square houses and eight or nine thatched houses. Seeing Nanshan leisurely "("Drinking ") is widely known so far. He is such a heavy drinker that he gets drunk when he drinks. When a friend visits, no matter how high or low, as long as there is wine at home, drink it with him. When he was drunk for the first time, he said to his guests, "I am drunk enough to sleep." Yixi lived in Beijing for four years (now at the foot of Xijing Mountain in Xing Zi County) and moved to Chestnut. In the last few years in Yixi, an old farmer knocked at the door in the morning, brought wine to drink with him, and advised him to be an official: "It is not enough to live in a high place under a broken roof. I will live in Shang Tong all my life (right or wrong), and I hope you can ooze out its sludge. " He replied, "I was deeply impressed by my father's words." And * * * enjoy this cup, I can't drive back. "(drinking) declined the old farmer's advice in the tone of" harmony but difference " In his later years, his life became poorer and poorer. Some friends offered to help him, and sometimes he couldn't help asking for a loan. His old friend was Liu's Shi 'an county magistrate in the first year of Jingping (423). He drank one glass after another. However, he asked for a loan or accepted charity in principle. In the first year of Yuanjia in Song Wendi (424), Tan Daoji, the secretariat of Jiangzhou, paid a personal visit. At this point, he was sick and hungry for several days, and he couldn't get out of bed. Tan Daoji advised him: "The sage is alive, there is no way in the world, but there is a way. Why did he suffer this? " He said, "Those who dare not look at the sages are less ambitious than me." Tan Daoji gave me a piece of meat, and he waved and left. He resigned from his post and returned to his hometown for 22 years, leading a poor rural life, but as he got older, he became more and more interested in keeping poor and honest. In the fourth year of Yuanjia (427), when he was conscious in mid-September, he wrote three elegy poems for himself, the third one.
In 427 AD, Tao Yuanming finished his 63-year life course (the date of birth of Tao Yuanming has yet to be verified, so the 63-year theory here has yet to be verified) and died. He was buried in the tomb of Tao Jiagong at the foot of Nanshan Mountain, at the foot of Mianyang Mountain at the junction of Jiujiang County and Xing Zi County in Jiangxi Province today. Today, Tao Yuanming's tomb is well-preserved, and the tombstone consists of one big tablet, two small tablets, right in the middle.
[Edit this paragraph] Reasons for seclusion
Tao Yuanming is known as a recluse poet. His creation created a precedent of pastoral poetry and a new realm of China's classical poetry. Since ancient times, many people like Tao Yuanming's lonely, idyllic and extraordinary philosophy of life, and his long, quiet, natural and unparalleled artistic style. At the same time, I would like to express my concern or research and analysis on the reasons why Tao Yuanming retired to the countryside and lived in seclusion. The following article tries to discuss this with Tao Yuanming's poems.
1. Tao Yuanming was influenced by his family background and Confucian classics when he was a teenager, and he had the ambition to help the world. However, due to the existence of the gate system, it is impossible for people from civilian backgrounds to break through the monopoly of the gate gentry on the power of senior officials. Under such circumstances, it is difficult for Tao Yuanming's ideal to become a reality, and his ideal dream is doomed to be shattered. Tao Yuanming became an official at the age of 29, but throughout his life, all he did was offer wine, join the army, and be a sesame official like Xiancheng. Not only can't display ambition, but also bring disgrace to oneself has to deal with some officialdom figures during sexual intercourse. By the age of thirty-nine, his thoughts had undergone a qualitative change and he began to devote himself to self-sufficiency and pursue inner peace. Since then, he has been playing for Peng because he doesn't want to fight for the five fights. He ended his career efforts and his hesitation, and embarked on the road of seclusion without hesitation. Since he retired to the countryside at the age of 4 1, Tao Yuanming has really enjoyed an idyllic pleasure of "a distant village, smoke from a market in Iraq, dogs barking in a deep alley, chickens crowing and mulberry trees jumping". However, Tao Yuanming, who came from a scholarly family, was not a good farmer. The hardship of "land reclamation in the south" may not make him live a well-off life. In the fourth year of Yixi, when Tao Yuanming was 44 years old, a disaster left his family destitute. This summer, the poet's "eight or nine cabins with more than ten acres of square houses" was destroyed by a ruthless fire, so the whole family had to live on a boat and rely on relatives and friends for help. In the third year of Yong (429) and the fourth year of Yuanjia (427), the poet was poor and ill. In the second elegy, the poet fantasizes that he can "bulge his stomach without thinking" after death, which makes people sad: "There was no wine to drink before, but now it is empty. When can I taste it better? I cried before the food box came to me.
Secondly, people are used to explaining Tao Yuanming's seclusion and reclusion from the social environment, advocating seclusion and his Confucianism and Taoism. In fact, by grasping Tao Yuanming's five official experiences and analyzing the reasons for his clumsy retirement in history, we can get some new understandings, which can be summarized in two aspects: one is Tao Yuanming's nature, and the other is social reality. The essential feature of Tao Yuanming's personality is to pursue the greatest freedom and mentality of the soul. An official's life does not conform to his nature of advocating nature. Tao Yuanming is in an era of advocating freedom and mystery. Political usurpation and war can easily make literati who are bent on avoiding disasters form a recluse character. It should be said that the formation of Tao Yuanming's reclusive character has something to do with the literati's general pursuit of spiritual freedom in the Eastern Jin Dynasty. It is this natural endowment of advocating nature, carefree and unrestrained that he can't stand it. The reason why he resigned was because he was "natural, not motivated, hungry and cold, and only wanted to fight his own illness." His detached personality makes him prefer to go hungry rather than go to officialdom to see his boss against his will. The poet sang in "Returning to the Garden": "There is no rhyme, and its sex is autumn mountains. After falling into the dust net by mistake, he fell in love with the forest for thirty years. " I hate my official career beyond words. Tao Yuanming, who regarded his career as a cage because of "nature" and "love of posts", finally resigned and retired, leaving behind the dust and returning to nature. Tao Yuanming's seclusion in the countryside should not only be considered in combination with his frank personality, but also be observed from the broad political background and his official career. His birth, his birth, can be said to be related to the social reality at that time. Tao Yuanming. However, he has the idea of contributing to the world. In his poems such as Drinking Miscellaneous Poems, he once said that "young people are poor and can swim well through the Six Classics", "they want to escape from the world" and "young people are strong and complete, and they swim alone with swords", which shows that he has not laid hands on them. He did something in politics. However, at the end of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, the situation was turbulent: the internal struggles of the imperial clan and the warlords' ambitions for political power constantly led to bloody killings and even fierce struggles. This social unrest not only brought disaster to the people, but also caused serious anxiety in the upper class of society. This makes Tao Yuanming's political ambition have to be reduced. Besides, in this power struggle, all dirty and bloody plots are under the guise of lofty morality. This makes Tao Yuanming, who is truly pure in nature, unbearable. From the 18th year of Xiao Jin's reign in Taiyuan, 29-year-old Tao Yuanming first went to work as an official, and returned to the field at the age of 42 in the 13th year. During this period, Tao Yuanming has been in the contradictory struggle between "being born" and "joining the WTO", which is reflected in his poems. In Xin Chou last July, he went on holiday and went to Jiangling to wipe his mouth at night, and so on. There are too many disappointments and sorrows in this poem. It can be seen that the poet once hesitated whether to return to the fields, but his long-cherished wish of "loving Qiushan" overwhelmed his ambition of "fleeing from the four seas", and he finally found his ultimate way out-seclusion in the countryside. Therefore, his seclusion is the result of social reality and the irreconcilable result of his thoughts and social reality.
Thirdly, from the perspective of Tao Yuanming's life after his seclusion, his seclusion is different from other hermits in the Eastern Jin Dynasty who bought his name as a hermit. He is a real hermit, a choice of life, and an aversion to "the world is turbid" and "everyone is drunk". Look at the general experience of Tao Yuanming's life: at first, he offered wine to the country and was unbearable for the officials. Later, he worked in Huan Xuan. Resolutely resigned and returned to the agricultural and pastoral areas. Later, I advised him to work for Liu Song again. He would rather be poor and ill than be involved in officialdom again. It can be said that Tao Yuanming's seclusion is really stupid. In poems such as "Drinking in the Garden", the poet described his life after seclusion. "I hide Chai Fei during the day, thinking about wine. When I return to the market, I will wear grass. " There are eight or nine thatched cottages. ""This is a warm and distant village, and there is smoke in the Yi market. Dogs bark in deep alleys, chickens crow and mulberry trees play. " "Building a house is in a human environment, but there are no chariots and horses. Ask what you can do, you can see Nanshan leisurely under the hedge of picking chrysanthemums. "These rural areas that others look down upon, ordinary things, and rural life are like that in the poet's pen. This makes his pastoral poems more full of the flavor of working life. His poems, such as Going to the Garden in the Early Spring, Returning to the Garden, and Early Rice in the West in September of Gengxu Year, all describe the poet's participation in labor in this way: "I heard of Nanmiao in the past, but I didn't practice it then. There are people who have been empty for many times, and I can't avoid it. I drove in the morning and have begun to paint my feelings in Myanmar. "The Japanese will pay back if they lose." "Wen Yuan is so long, but I can't regret my efforts." In the hard work of leaving early and returning late, the poet has a closer relationship with the working people, and his feelings for the working people are more sincere: "Get along with each other and return home, and the pot is close to the neighbors", "When the market is revived, the grass is covered with grass. Meet without gossip, Sang Ma long ","morning smell. Readers can see that in this leisurely pastoral life, the poet's mood is natural and quiet, and he has reached a truly harmonious state of spiritual development, which is the real seclusion.
Tao Yuanming's seclusion is not entirely innate. His seclusion itself is a kind of resistance to the dark reality, which is different from escaping from reality. The poet has been engaged in field work in the countryside for a long time, and he is getting closer and closer to the working people emotionally and knows their sufferings better. In his poems, he reflected the poor life of the working people and the dark hypocrisy of his official career. He wrote in his poem: "Hungry in summer, sleepless in cold nights" and "Old Valley has neither. He is an old farmer, but in the past year, he is suffering from disaster. He still lingers in the sun and moon, but his troubles are not over. Xi Nong has been away from me for a long time, and the world rarely returns to the truth. Zhong Hua left me for a long time and has been poor in the world. Although he has retired to the countryside, the poet is not at peace. He is unwilling and impossible to completely abandon social reality. He pinned his unfinished political ideals on his poems. In the Peach Blossom Garden, the poet described. Everyone enjoys himself. Without exploitation and oppression, everyone works and lives a rich and peaceful life. This kind of "Xanadu" embodies the poet's beautiful wishes, which is in sharp contrast with the dark social reality at that time and is a denial of the real society. It is the crystallization of the poet's rural life practice after returning to the field and the result of the further development of his thought. This is enough to prove that Tao Yuanming did not live in seclusion.
From Tao Yuanming's retirement and his life after retirement, we can see that the society that Tao Yuanming yearns for is a peaceful, self-cultivating, non-competitive, non-hypocritical, non-oppressive and harmful society; The pursuit of life is simple and sincere, indifferent and lofty, and there is nothing to ask for; His favorite living environment is also a quiet and natural country. Because of these pursuits, most of his pastoral poems present a diluted and peaceful appearance, but behind them are full of hatred and anxiety about the real society and anxiety about the short and insensitive life. Therefore, as Mr. Lu Xun said, "Tao Qian is great because he is not completely silent."