Tao Qian

Chinese poet

• Born: 365
• Birthplace: Xinyang (now in Henan), China
• Died: 427
• Place of death: Xinyang (now in Henan), China

Tao Qian’s insistence on directness and simplicity in both form and content, although largely unappreciated during his lifetime, was in subsequent generations recognized as a major contribution to the development of Chinese poetry.

Early Life

Tao Qian (dow chyehn) was born on his parents’ farm near the city of Xinyang (Hsin-yang) in what is now the province of Henan. His family had once been prominent among the local gentry, but by Tao Qian’s time their property had shrunk to a few acres. In an autobiographical sketch written for his sons, he described himself as a bookish youth, fond of quiet and never happier than when observing the changing of the seasons. He received a conventional education in the Confucian classics and, on completing his studies, was awarded a minor position in the civil service.

It did not take him long, however, to become bored with this post, and he resigned to return to the life of a small farmer. He married and soon found himself with several young children to support; the unremitting toil of farming soon took its toll on his health. In 395 c.e., when he was thirty, his first wife died, and for a short time he was employed as a general’s secretary. Once again, he found that he could not abide the life of an official, and he was soon back tilling his meager farm.

After remarrying and having more children, thus putting additional pressure on his already straitened circumstances, Tao Qian made one final attempt at occupying the sort of position for which his education had prepared him. In 405 c.e., an uncle with influence at court arranged for him to be appointed magistrate at Pengze (P’eng-tse), not far from his home. Before long, however, he had to resign, because “my instinct is all for freedom and will not brook discipline or restraint.” For the remainder of his life, he would eke out a subsistence living on his farm and refuse all further offers of government employment, while exercising the poetic gifts that would not be widely acknowledged until well after his death.

Life’s Work

China was racked by dynastic warfare during much of Tao Qian’s life, and some commentators have suggested that his reluctance to assume official positions was caused by an awareness of the punishments that awaited those who supported the losing side. It is far more probable, however, that it was his profound dislike of being at a superior’s beck and call that made it impossible for him to take on the kinds of responsibilities society expected of him. His independent attitude was incomprehensible to most of his peers, and as a result it was commonly assumed that Tao Qian must be some sort of hermit or recluse.

This he was not, although it is true that he studiously avoided anything that carried with it formal duties or organizational affiliations. He was at one point on the verge of accepting an invitation to join the Lotus Society, an exclusive group of Buddhist intellectuals and literary men, but at the last moment he declined when he realized that no matter how convivial its members might be, it was still an organization with rules and regulations. Tao Qian was not antisocial—he was reputed to have been well liked by his neighbors, and he knew quite a few of his fellow poets—but he definitely was an advocate of the simple life, which for him meant staying close to home and nature and ignoring almost everything else.

It is this fundamental love of simplicity that distinguishes Tao Qian’s verses from the works of court poets of his time, who utilized obscure allusions and complicated stylistic devices to fashion verses that appealed only to the highly educated. Tao Qian, by way of contrast, seldom made any literary allusions whatsoever, and he wrote for the widest possible audience. As a consequence, he was slighted by his era’s critics and fully appreciated only by later generations of readers. It was more than a century after his death before a complete edition of his works appeared. The first writers to champion his reputation seriously were the Tang Dynasty (T’ang; 618-907 c.e.) poets Meng Haoran (Meng Hao-jan; 689-740 c.e.) and Wang Wei (701-761 c.e.), who ensured that his name would not be forgotten by honoring him as a spiritual predecessor of what would become one of the most brilliant periods in Chinese literary history.

The charms of Tao Qian’s poetry are subtle. The fifth poem in his series of poems on drinking wine is perhaps as good an example as any of how simple words and thoughts can yield complex emotions:

I built my cottage among the habitations of men,And yet there is no clamor of carriages and horses.You ask: “Sir, how can this be done?”“A heart that is distant creates its own solitude.”I pluck chrysanthemums under the eastern hedge,Then gaze afar towards the southern hills.The mountain air is fresh at the dusk of day;The flying birds in flocks return.In these things there lies a deep meaning;I want to tell it, but have forgotten the words.

The irony resides in the concluding line’s apparent confession of failure, which is superficially true—the poem’s meaning has not been formally defined in words—but in a more profound sense false, since meaning has been suggestively expressed in the cumulative interaction of these direct and vivid images. Such images might strike self-consciously sophisticated readers, which was how many of the court officials of Tao Qian’s time viewed themselves, as nothing more than bucolic snapshots. For those who approach them without patronizing preconceptions, however, their evident simplicity is resonant with intimations of elemental natural forces.

In order to appreciate the full impact of Tao Qian’s decision to concentrate on realistic description of his humble surroundings, the reader needs to compare his approach with that of the dominant aristocratic and scholarly poets of the period. Their ideal was the mannered evocation of court life in lyrics that were rigidly controlled by parallel structures and recurring tonal patterns. A literal translation of one of the poems by Shen Yue (Shen Yüeh; 441-513 c.e.) reads:

slackening reins, dismounts carved carriage,changing clothes, attends jade bed.slanting hairpin, reflects autumn waters,opening mirror, compares spring dresses.

Each line contains exactly two parallel images, the Chinese ideograms follow a set sequence of tones, and the content is characteristically taken from upper-class life.

Compare the above to the third section of Tao Qian’s “Returning to the Farm to Dwell”:

I planted beans below the southern hillThe grasses flourished, but bean sprouts were few.I got up at dawn to clear away the weedsAnd come back now with the moon, hoe on shoulder.Tall bushes crowd the narrow pathAnd evening dew soaks my clothes.Wet clothes are no cause for complaintIf things will only go as hoped.

Here the conversational tone of the narrative, the way that content is restricted to the mundanities of farm life, and the in medias res beginning all work together to convey an impression of natural reality that is the polar opposite of Shen Yue’s sort of poetry.

Tao Qian was not, however, averse to enlivening his rural existence with an overindulgence in the pleasures of wine. He was renowned for his drinking, which in the social context of his period was an acceptable way of temporarily escaping worldly preoccupations rather than a sign of moral weakness. Tao Qian’s name is thus often linked with those of two other poets who were also serious imbibers: Chu Yuan (Ch’u Yüan; c. 343 b.c.e.-c. 277 b.c.e.) and Li Bo (Li Po; 701-762 c.e.). Some of his best poems were written while enjoying this favorite pastime.

Tao Qian’s life ended in the same pastoral setting in which it had begun, with no dramatic anecdote to set the day of his death apart from the days that had preceded and would follow it. During his final twenty-two years, he had become both a material and a spiritual part of his natural environment. In a prose sketch written just before he died, Tao Qian described how, as was the custom, his old friends gave him a farewell banquet in honor of what he had meant to their lives. With typical unhurried deliberation, he enumerated the foods and wines that were served as he prepared “to depart from this lodging house to return for all time to his own home,” where he would become one of the immortal figures of Chinese literature.

Significance

It is the high value Tao Qian set on immediacy and immanence that has led many literary historians to see his work as pivotal in the development of Chinese poetry. Although there were advocates of simplicity who came before him and apostles of aestheticism still to come after him, it was his lyrics, more than any others, that served as a continuous source of inspiration for succeeding ages and would be rediscovered whenever poetry seemed in danger of becoming too mannered and removed from common experience.

In addition to his importance as a literary model, Tao Qian is admired for his decision to remain true to himself rather than subordinate his feelings to the demands of conventional lifestyles. The writers and intellectuals of his day were, broadly speaking, split into the opposing camps of conformist Confucians and antiauthoritarian Daoists, and when Tao Qian rejected the former it would have been normal for him to have gravitated to the vagabond life of the latter. He chose, however, to pilot his own idiosyncratic course between these polar opposites, and he suffered much personal hardship in so doing.

Even more important than his position in literary history or his personal qualities, however, is the candid beauty of his poetry. The freshness of his images, his homespun but Heaven-aspiring morality, and his steadfast love of rural life shine through the deceptively humble words in which they are expressed, and as a consequence he has long been regarded one of China’s most accomplished and accessible poets.

Bibliography

Cotterell, Yong Yap, and Arthur Cotterell. The Early Civilization of China. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1975. Chapter 6, “The Age of Disunity: The So-Called Six Dynasties,” gives a good general account of historical developments during Tao Qian’s time. This chapter also includes useful sections on the religion and art of the period.

Davis, A. R. T’ao Yüan-ming: His Works and Their Meaning. 2 vols. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983. This thorough study consists of a volume of translation and commentary, and a second volume of commentary, notes, and a biography of the poet.

Kwong, Charles Yim-tze. Tao Qian and the Chinese Poetic Tradition: The Quest for Cultural Identity. Ann Arbor, Mich.: The Center for Chinese Studies, 1995. One of the few English-language literary studies of Tao Qian’s work. Discusses the poet in his cultural and literary contexts, comparing his work to that of both Chinese and Western poets.

Tao Qian. The Poems of T’ao Ch’ien. Translated by Lily Pao-hu Chang and Marjorie Sinclair. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1953. This beautifully produced volume includes original brush drawings reminiscent of a deluxe Chinese-language edition. Chang and Sinclair opt for inclusiveness in translating all the poems attributed to Tao Qian, several of which are the objects of scholarly debate. The translations themselves are reliable if not always idiomatic. A brief biography of the poet is included in an appendix.

Tao Qian. The Poetry of T’ao Ch’ien. Translated and edited by James Robert Hightower. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1970. The standard edition in English. The translations themselves are not noticeably superior to those of his predecessors, but Hightower’s notes make the book an essential reference for anyone doing serious work on Tao Qian. It is by far the best guide to its subject’s use of traditional elements of the Chinese literary tradition.