Tao Yuanming (365 ~ 427) was a poet, lyricist and essayist in Jin and Song Dynasties. Also known as Qian, the word is bright, and the number is Mr. Wu Liu, Xunyang Chai Sang (near Jiujiang, Jiangxi) [1]. Tao Yuanming was born and raised in a declining bureaucratic family. Great-grandfather Tao Kan was the founding father of the Eastern Jin Dynasty. His grandfather was a satrap, his father died young, and his mother was the daughter of Meng Jia, a famous figure in the Eastern Jin Dynasty. The sharp contrast between family environment and society, as well as his own situation, made him a generation of literary masters. Tao Yuanming is an important poet in the history of China literature. He lived in an era when formalism prevailed, and the poetry world was full of works of metaphysics, Zen and Mo Shan's flooding. In form, we deliberately pursue gorgeous words and embroidery. Tao Yuanming, on the other hand, showed the spirit of innovation and wrote Li Zhuo with brand-new contents and forms.
Tao Yuanming's artistic achievements are mainly in poetry. His works include 125 and 12. Five-character poems are the best, with 1 16 poems and 9 four-character poems. The themes of Tao's poems can be mainly divided into five categories: pastoral poems, poems chanting for the bosom, poems chanting for the bosom and poems answering questions [2]. Nature, as the first person in the history of China literature, the pastoral poetry created by Tao Yuanming embodies the artistic features of his poems most intensively, which can be summarized in the simplest and most distinctive words: plain and natural. This is also the deepest impression that Tao Yuanming's poems have left in people's hearts for thousands of years. This is not only the purport of Tao Yuanming's life, but also the overall artistic characteristics of his poems.
Shi Tao likes to express unpretentious and sincere feelings with simple and natural narration and argumentation. When he has feelings in life, he resorts to pen and ink, which is neither melodramatic nor melodramatic. In the preface to drinking, it is written: "When you are drunk, ask a few questions to entertain yourself, and there is too much paper and ink." Just look around, not pursuing strong stimulation, no strong color, no tortuous structure, pure natural, very magical. But because of his lofty personality and profound life experience, as long as it is written truly, it is very infectious. As Huang Che, a poet in the Song Dynasty, said, "Those who are profound because of their profound knowledge have no intention to be disrespectful and skillful." [3] Tao Yuanming's ordinary life, with his subtle inner feelings, makes people feel that he is walking in the sun and living in the shade. "Old Forest", "Old Garden", "Nanshan" and "Dongli" are as calm as springs.
Of course, to understand Shi Tao's plain and natural artistic characteristics, we must start with his content and thoughts. The poet lives in an extremely dark society, but he insists on lofty ideals and interests. Some of his works show Geng Jie's persistence in his ambition. The poem "He Zhu Guo Bo" said: "Fang Ju opened Lin Yao and Song Qingyan watched the platoon; With this beauty, it is outstanding for the cream. " The eighth song of "Drinking" said: "Loose in the East Garden, the grass has no posture; First frost is different and can see the high branches. " The blooming chrysanthemums and the immortal pine trees under the frost are symbols of the poet's unyielding character. It is precisely because of this character that the poet shows a detached attitude towards the decadent ruling class on the one hand, and a strong dissatisfaction with the dirty reality on the other.
Tao Yuanming's interest and personality finally made him completely break away from the upper class of the political class and return to the countryside. He wrote many pastoral poems. Famous pastoral poems include Returning to the Garden, Teacher Guo's Book, Early Rice in the West, Missing, etc. His pastoral poems are full of hatred for dirty society and love for pure countryside. Such as "back to the garden" one:
Few people do as the Romans do. Their nature is to love nature. I sneaked into the official career network and have been away from the game for more than ten years. Birds in cages are often attached to the forests of the past, and fish in ponds yearn for the abyss of the past. I want to open up wasteland in Minamino and keep my humility to the fields. There are more than ten acres of square houses and eight or nine straw houses. Willow trees cover the eaves, and peach trees cover Li Lieman in front of the hospital. A warm and distant village, the smog in the Yi market. Several dogs barked in the alley, and the mulberry tree was barked by a rooster. The house is clean and miscellaneous, and the virtual room is idle. Trapped in a cage without freedom for a long time, I finally returned to the forest today.
The poet dismissed the upper class of the ruling class as a "dust net", regarded those who devoted themselves to it as "birds in a cage" and "fish in a pond", and said that retiring from the countryside broke out of the "cage" and returned to "nature", which showed his contempt for ugly society. The poet described the pure and beautiful rural scenery in detail, revealing the author's heartfelt love between the lines. Here, the simple and quiet rural life is in sharp contrast with the hypocrisy, fraud and mutual struggle of the upper class, which has a particularly attractive force. In addition, Tao Yuanming has some pastoral poems describing his rural poverty.
The main contents of Tao's poems are the simple pastoral scenery, the daily life in the countryside and the quiet state of mind in this life; However, it is naturally expressed through simple language and sketching techniques, which makes people feel as if it is "naturally flowing out of the chest" [4] without any trace of axe chisel. For example, the third part of Return to the Garden:
I planted beans at the foot of Nanshan, and the weeds in the field were covered with peas. Get up early in the morning to get rid of weeds, and come back with hoes in the moonlight at night. The narrow path covered with vegetation, the night dew wet my clothes. It's not a pity to get wet, but I hope it won't be against my will.
The painting is very simple, and the language is very plain, which makes people feel effortless to read, but they only feel that they are exposed to a scene of life, and these scenes, life, and the poet's interests and mood are all the real feelings of the poet, so they are very kind to write. One of the characteristics of Tao's poetry is also his pioneering work, that is, to poeticize daily life, find important significance and lasting poetry in daily life, and make daily life full of vitality. Disappointment with reality forced the poet to return to poetry to build an ideal society, and Peach Blossom Garden poetry was a reflection of his ideological tendency.
In addition to his pastoral poems, Tao Yuanming also has poems praising the brave, poems full of patriotic enthusiasm and poems isolated from the world, which shows the complexity of his poems.
[1] Literary Heritage 1996 The first issue was published by Yuan Xingpei and Jiangsu Ancient Books Publishing House.
[2] Liao Zhongan, Tao Yuanming, Zhonghua Book Company Publishing 1963, 67 pages.
[3] Huang Song Che, "Gong Xi Shi Hua", Volume V.
[4] Dai Jianye's "The Mirror of Clarity: A New Theory of Tao Yuanming", published by Huazhong Normal University Press, 1998, 105.