Whether Tao Yuanming's seclusion was voluntary or forced

Tao Yuanming, ziyuanliang, name qian, known as Mr. Jingjie, called himself Mr. Wuliu, is the first pastoral poet in China. Later generations called him "the Lord of the Hundred Generations of Pastoral Gardens, the Sect of Seclusion through the Ages". He has a poem "Drinking": "The knot is in the human realm, and there is no carriage or horse noise." Asked Jun He Neng'er, his heart was far away from himself. Under the eastern fence of the chrysanthemum, you can leisurely see the South Mountain. The mountain atmosphere is good day and night, and the birds are returning. There is truth in this, to discern what has been forgotten. "This ancient and modern drinking song depicts a fairyland on earth far away from the world, allowing us to unconsciously get rid of the hustle and bustle of the world and get inner peace from it." We can't help but ask what kind of person Tao Yuanming is? Why did he write such beautiful poems? What kind of strange experience did he have?

Tao Yuanming was born in the third year (365) of the Eastern Jin Dynasty Emperor Xingning, born into a family of broken eunuchs. After Tao Yuanming lost his father at the age of 9, his family declined and he lived with his mother and sister. Orphaned and widowed, most of them live in the home of their grandfather Meng Jia. My grandfather's family had a large collection of books, which provided him with the conditions to read ancient books and understand history, and in the two Jin Dynasties, when scholars used "Zhuang" and "Lao" as their ancestors to depose the "Six Classics", he not only studied "Lao Tzu" and "Zhuangzi" like ordinary scholars, but also learned the Confucian "Six Classics" and "different books" such as literature, history and mythology. The influence of the trend of thought of the times and the family environment made him accept the two different ideas of Confucianism and Taoism, and cultivated two different interests of "fierce ambition and escape" and "sexual love of qiushan".

In the seventh year of Taiyuan (382), when Tao Yuanming was 18 years old, he went to join his father's close friend Xie Xuan. Xie Xuan was holding an important position in the history of Yanzhou at that time. He warmly entertained Tao Yuanming and asked Tao Yuanming to study and learn martial arts with his son Xie Huan, preparing to officially use Tao Yuanming after a while. Unexpectedly, soon Tao Yuanming received a letter from home, saying that the mother was not safe and asked her to return quickly. Soon after Tao Yuanming returned home, Xie Xuan was depressed and died suddenly due to the suspicion and attack of Sima Daozi and others who were the emperor of the imperial family at that time. Tao Yuanming was overwhelmed by this sudden and huge blow, so he borrowed wine every day to pour sorrow. Slowly, Tao Yuanming became addicted to alcohol, and every time he drank, he always got drunk. When he was drunk, he would sit under the house tree or chant poetry, or let out a long whistle, which was the case for many years, and he became a habit. Tao Yuanming likes to drink, and he directly wrote more than twenty poems about wine, but he did not drink as much as his life, but "drank without chaos". Later generations described the degree of people's extreme love and fascination with certain things, using the term "Tao (Yuanmingzhi) drunk", which also proved that his good taste of wine stopped at intoxication. The stories he left behind about alcohol can also bear witness to his distinction between drunkenness and wakefulness.

Tao Yuanming not only loves wine, but also loves chrysanthemums. Tao Yuanming's ex-wife Chen Shi, Zhishu Dali, gentle and virtuous, she and Tao Yuanming married for six years, had four sons, due to overproductive, coupled with daily overwork, weak and weak, in a year of famine incense and jade death, the soul returned to heaven. Chen's early death was a heavy blow to Tao Yuanming, so Tao Yuanming pinned all his love for his wife on the chrysanthemum, and he combined the chrysanthemum with the wine and brewed itself into chrysanthemum wine, which not only satisfied his appetite, but also satisfied his spiritual sublimation.

Because the situation in his family was also worse than a day, since The Zhai Clan entered the door, his hurtful body and mind had been cared for and comforted, and he could not bear to let the Zhai Clan also repeat the mistakes of the Chen Clan and follow himself to suffer poverty. Under the repeated persuasion of his friend Pang Zun, In the fourth year (400) of Emperor An's reign, he went to Jingzhou and threw himself into Huan Xuanmen as a subordinate official. However, Tao Yuanming discovered Huan Xuan's ambition to usurp power, so he resigned and returned home through his mother's funeral.

Later, Huan Xuan rebelled against Jin, and after being defeated by Liu Yu and Liu Yi, he took Emperor An of Jin hostage to Jiangling, and Tao Yuanming defected to Liu Yu's side, but soon he found that Liu Yu had cut off dissidents and nepotism, which disappointed him, so he planned to resign and live in seclusion.

Tao Yuanming's cousin Tao Fu disagreed with Tao Yuanming's seclusion and said to him: "It is good that you go back to the hermitage garden, but have you thought about it, you are old, you are not good at financial management, your children are still small, and your family is poor, how should you maintain your life in the future?" In my opinion, you might as well take a hidden path. "What is Cain? It refers to being a petty magistrate in the locality. Tao Yuanming thought twice and accepted his appointment to the imperial court for Pengze County. After making the county order for more than eighty days, due to the difficulty of the postmaster, Tao Yuanming sighed: "How can I bend my waist to the children in the township for five buckets of rice?" So he left the official field and really embarked on the road of returning to his hometown and living in seclusion.

After Tao Yuanming learned that Liu Yu had usurped power and became emperor after retreating, which completely frustrated his dream of reviving the Eastern Jin Dynasty, he changed his name to Tao Qian and refused any official contacts. Tao Yuanming's wife, Zhai Shi, was like-minded with him, poor and happy, "the husband cultivated in front, and his wife hoeed in the back", working together and maintaining a living. At the beginning of the return to the field, life was still acceptable. "More than ten acres of square houses, eight or nine grass houses, the eaves behind the elm willow shade, and the front of the Tao Li Luo Hall." Tao Yuan Caritas chrysanthemums, chrysanthemums are planted all over the house. "Picking chrysanthemums under the eastern fence, leisurely seeing the South Mountain" ("Drinking") is still popular among the population. In the fourth year of Yixi's reign, his residence in Shangjing (in the foothills of Yujing Mountain in the west of present-day Xingzi County) caught fire and moved to Lili (present-day Hoshiko Hot Springs Lili Tao Village), where life was more difficult. If there is a good harvest, you can also "drink spring wine and pick vegetables in my garden". In the event of a disaster year, "summer long hunger, cold night column sleep." In his later years, his life became increasingly impoverished. Some friends took the initiative to send money to help him, and sometimes, he did not have to come to the door to ask for a loan. His old friend Yan Yanzhi (燕延之), who served as the Taishou of Shi'an Commandery (司安郡太守) in the first year (423) of the Liu Song Dynasty's Shao Emperor Jingping, passed through Xunyang and went to his house every day to drink. Before leaving, he left twenty thousand dollars, and he sent all of them to the restaurant and drank wine one after another. However, his request for loans or acceptance of goodies is principled, and he does not change his mind when he is poor, nor does he seek "food that comes to him." Once, the new Jiangzhou Assassin Shi Tan Daoji sent him a generous gift and advised him: "The sage is alive, and if there is no way in the world, it is hidden, and if there is a way, it will come." Now that the Son (you) was born in a civilized world, why should he suffer like this? He said, "How dare you look forward to the sages, but you can't reach them." "He refused to accept it because he had no merit.

In mid-September of the fourth year of Yuan Jia (427), when Tao Yuanming was still conscious, he wrote three "elegy poems" to himself, and the last two sentences of the third poem said: "Death is the way, the body is the same as the mountain." "It shows that he sees death so plainly and naturally." Soon, Tao Yuanming completed his 63 Spring and Autumn life journey. Su Dongpo once commented on Tao Yuanming: "If you want to be a soldier, you are not suspicious of seeking it; if you want to hide it, you are hidden, and you do not want to go to it as high." Hungry people lock the door and beg for food; when they are full, they welcome guests. Ancient and modern sages, noble and true. "People are precious, poetry is also precious, which is the main reason why Tao poetry has enduring charm."

Tao Yuanming was buried in the Tao family cemetery at the foot of Nanshan Mountain, at the foot of Mount Mianyang at the junction of today's Jiujiang and Xingzi counties in Jiangxi Province. Nowadays, Tao Yuanming's tomb is well preserved, and the tombstone is composed of a total of three stele stones, one large and two small, with the inscription "The Tomb of Mr. Tao Gongjingjie of jin zhengshi" in the middle of the book, the epitaph inscribed on the left and the "Return to Xi Ci" on the right, which was erected by the descendants of Tao surnamed Tao in the first year of the Qianlong Dynasty of the Qing Dynasty.