The man lost his father at the age of eight and lived alone with his mother and sister. According to Freud, children who live in a family without men are more or less weak in character and lack the courage and courage that men should have. Yes, that's right. Obviously, we can see this from his life, which is one of the reasons for Tao Yuanming's tragedy.
Unfortunately, his mother died when he was twelve, so he had to live at his grandfather's house. His grandfather was a famous person at that time and had a rich collection of books. It was at that time that Tao began to receive higher education. As we know, since Dong Zhongshu in the Western Han Dynasty "ousted a hundred schools of thought and respected Confucianism alone", Confucian culture has become the orthodox culture in feudal society, especially in the Jin Dynasty where Tao Yuanming lived. In Meng Jia's family, Tao Yuanming read the classics of Confucianism and Taoism and formed his unique belief. In his bones, his two completely different life concepts "aiming to be born" and "the mountain of sex" are the embodiment of these two different cultures. The contradiction of faith is another important reason for his life tragedy.
He joined the government four times and resigned five times in his life, which is extremely tortuous. At the age of 29, he made a drink offering in Jiangzhou. Later, because he was born in a civilian, he could not accept the contempt of the government and became an official. Later, he made a master book and resigned. Later, due to family difficulties, he joined Huan Xuan as a subordinate official. Before long, he learned that Huan Xuan had anti-intention, and he didn't want to go along with it, so he resigned. After Huan Xuan really abolished the Jin Emperor, the general Emperor Wu of Song objected, and he went to join the army under Emperor Wu of Song. After Emperor Wu destroyed Huan Xuan, he was really happy for a while. Clinker Liu Yu killed more people to cut off dissidents. He couldn't stand it and resigned again. This is already four words. But this autumn, he came out and became the county magistrate of pengze county. Soon, because he refused to bow his head and raise his eyebrows and work for the powerful, he completely withdrew from the officialdom. At the age of 4 1, thirteen years passed in repeated wars and official failures.
Imagine if Tao Yuanming had the courage of Xiang Yu's "He will take his place" or Liu Bang's "A man should live like this", would he have such a timid life? Don't think that he became enlightened and great after he resigned. To put it bluntly, Tao Yuanming, who resigned from his post, is a farmer at the foot of Lushan Mountain, but the difference between this farmer and other farmers is that he can read books, write some poems and plant chrysanthemums all day. Besides, this is a terrible drunkard. Once he was hungry for several days. Today, an old good friend came to see him. He couldn't get out of bed to see him. When my friend left, I felt sorry for him and gave him 20 thousand yuan. As soon as his friend left, this guy sent all 20 thousand dollars to the pub and saved it. That's good. If you can't finish this time, there will be another time. Accumulate ~!
Unfortunately, a fire soon destroyed his only four walls. What should I do? Wife and children still have to eat, and if they persist in lofty ideals, they will starve. No way, in order to survive, he had to work in the fields by himself. This is what our experts and scholars call the prototype of his active participation in people's labor. In fact, everything is passive, not for him to decide.
I have probably browsed some scholars' comments on Tao Yuanming, and I think the best one is what Liang Qichao said: "Tao Yuanming is narcissistic, cowardly and ashamed", basically like this. Of course, the research scale of ceramic art is getting larger and larger now, and it is not uncommon for many people to impose their own subjective assumptions in order to be unconventional. For example, I saw Mr. Yuan Xingpei's comments on Tao Yuanming's poems show a high degree of philosophical thinking and treat them with poems. I wonder, because of the differences between Chinese and western cultures and ways of thinking, almost all the works of thinkers in ancient China can only be said to be philosophical thoughts rather than philosophical conclusions, not to mention that you, Tao Yuanming, are a poet. You say it's a philosophical conclusion, so where is its connotation and extension? Learning should be innovative, but it is meaningless to flatter yourself. I remember Han Han said that once he received a letter from a reader, which contained a Chinese test paper from a reader's school. The reading question turned out to be Han Han's "Seeking a Doctor". He did it seriously, and the result was a pair of standard answers. He made five mistakes in eight questions. He wants to know why he made a mistake in his article. What's the problem? It's just something imposed by the questioner, for example, one sentence can tell what the author's attitude towards life is. In fact, as Han Han himself said, I didn't expect to add my own attitude towards life when writing this sentence. Similarly, I don't think Mr. Tao Yuanming thought that he would summarize his lofty philosophical conclusions in the form of poems when he wrote poems.
There are too many people talking about his poems, so I won't bother you anymore, but I agree with a statement here, that is, "Tao Yuanming ended a poetry era and Xie Lingyun started a poetry era", because before Xie Lingyun, poetry was mainly freehand brushwork, and when Xie Lingyun got it, poetry began to freehand brushwork, so I don't need to go into details. It is also worth mentioning that Tao Yuanming created the genre of pastoral poetry while ending the era of freehand brushwork poetry. It can be said that this man stood at the crossroads of China's ancient poems, and I think this is probably the reason why his poems are so valued.
There are different opinions about his thoughts. I don't think we can simply be satisfied with a simple summary of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism, or an abstract summary of "assisting Confucianism to enter Taoism", "learning from Confucianism" and "purifying Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism". It seems that people in our time participate in everything for innovation, whether they participate or not. Aside from the puzzling factors of politics, culture and society, I took off my pants to see Tao Yuanming. I think it should be a narcissistic weak cultural farmer with multiple beliefs. If there are too many, you can delete some.