Tao Yuanming has the largest number of pastoral poems and the highest achievements. This kind of poetry fully shows the poet's lofty interest in disdaining fame and fortune and his noble integrity in keeping his ambition; It fully shows the poet's extreme hatred and complete break with the dark officialdom; It fully shows the poet's love for simple pastoral life, his understanding of labor and his friendly feelings for working people. It fully shows the poet's pursuit and yearning for the ideal world. As a scholar-bureaucrat, such thoughts, feelings and contents are unprecedented in the history of literature, especially in a society with strict gate system and concept. Some of Tao Yuanming's pastoral poems also reflect his predicament in his later years, which can help us indirectly understand the miserable life of the peasant class at that time. Tao Yuanming's Peach Blossom Garden was written in the early Song Dynasty. It depicts a utopian ideal society. It shows the poet's complete denial of the existing social system and infinite admiration for the ideal world. It marks that Tao Yuanming's thought has reached a new height. Tao Yuanming is the pioneer of pastoral poetry. With its simple and natural language and lofty artistic conception, it opened up a new world for China's poetry circle and directly influenced the pastoral poetry school in Tang Dynasty.
Tao Yuanming's existing articles include 3 poems, 5 rhymes and 4 essays, totaling 12. The leisure fu in Ci Fu is written by imitating Zhang Heng's fixed love fu and Cai Yong's static love fu. The content is to write a dream about love, which is meaningless. "Feeling Men Meet Fu" is an imitation of Dong Zhongshu's "Feeling Men Meet Fu" and Sima Qian's "Sad Men Meet Fu", and its content is to express the resentment under the door valve system. Gui Xi Ci is a political declaration that Tao Yuanming publicly broke with the upper class when he resigned and retired. The article uses a lot of space to write about his infinite joy of leaving the officialdom, imagine his infinite joy after retiring to the countryside, and show the author's yearning and love for nature and seclusion. The article skillfully integrates narrative, discussion and lyricism to create a vivid, natural and fascinating artistic realm; The language is natural and simple, washing away the strong local flavor. The rhymes include Painting Praise on the Fan, Reading History, Nine Chapters, Sacrifice to Sister, Sacrifice to Brother and Sacrifice to Yourself. Prose includes "Biography of Meng Fujun, General of the Western Expedition to Jin Dynasty", also known as "Biography of Meng Jia", which is a biography written for Meng Jia, the ancestor of foreign nationalities; In addition, there are Biography of Mr. Wu Liu, Peach Blossom Garden, and Dissipation with Yan Zi. Generally speaking, Wen Tao's numbers and achievements are not as good as Shi Tao's.
Xiao Tong in the Southern Dynasty compiled Tao Yuanming's works into 8 volumes, Yang Xiuzhi in the Northern Qi Dynasty supplemented it with 10 volume, and Song Yu in the Northern Song Dynasty reprinted it with 10 volume. But all the books on it are gone. The existing versions mainly include the shadow sculptures in Guangxu period of Qing Dynasty, and the Ji Gu Collection 10 Volume. Annotations mainly include Li Gonghuan's annotation on Tao Yuanming's collection in Yuan Dynasty, Mr. Jingjie's collection annotated by Tao Shu in Qing Dynasty, Yuanlou series of my wife in ancient times, and five kinds of ice pavilions. The latter is called Tao Jingjie's poetry talk.
The poet was disappointed with the reality and was forced to return to poetry to build an ideal society. Peach Blossom Garden poetry is a reflection of his ideological tendency.
In addition to his pastoral poems, Tao Yuanming also has poems praising warriors, poems full of patriotic enthusiasm and poems isolated from the world, which shows the complexity of his poetic thoughts.
Tao Yuanming's poems are mostly based on rural scenery and ordinary life, which are directly expressed by simple language and line drawing techniques, making people feel natural, cordial and sincere, without any traces of artificial carving, guiding readers to appreciate the relaxed and diluted feelings and enter the artistic conception created by the poet.