This article was published in the "Sanlian Life Weekly" No. 34, 2020, the original title of the article is "Tao Yuanming, Pastoral and Retreat", it is strictly forbidden to reprint it privately, and infringement must be investigated
Returning to the countryside and personally participating in labor has achieved Tao Yuanming's idyllic poems. In those poems, for the first time, he expressed the ordinary and simple and commonplace rural scenes in poetic images.
Reporter/Ai Jiangtao
The painting "Asking Zhengfu to Go Before the Road" of "Returning to Xi Tu", this painting is a Ming Dynasty ma shi cooperating with Li Zai and Xia Zhi to describe the scene when Tao Yuanming abandoned his official position and resigned
Between the hills and the dust net
In the first year of the Jin Dynasty (405), the 40-year-old Tao Yuanming officially resigned from his last official position, Tao Zeling, and returned to the countryside he had in mind. At the beginning of the formal retreat, he wrote "Five Songs of Returning to the Countryside" with a relaxed and pleasant mood, which had such a sentence: "There is no vulgar rhyme, and the sex nature loves QiuShan." Mistakenly fell into the dust net, gone for thirty years. ”
Researchers have found that Tao Yuanming's "thirty years" here have exaggerated elements, but in fact, from the time he first became a priest in Jiangzhou at the age of 29, he was only an official for more than ten years. However, it is not difficult for people to find from this poem that Tao Yuanming was different from the world in his youth and longed for a retired life in the mountains and forests. If this is the case, why did he come out to be an official?
In the era of Tao Yuanming's birth, the Eastern Jin Dynasty Gate Valve Clan was thriving, and the Door Was the first problem that every scholar faced. As Tao Yuanming traced in the poem "Destiny", scholars generally believe that his great-grandfather was Tao Kan, who had made important military achievements in the establishment of neutrality in the Eastern Jin Dynasty and was given the title of Duke of Changsha County. Even such a famous minister of the Eastern Jin Dynasty was still facing the test of the door at that time. Because Tao Kan's father was a general of the State of Wu, as a general who fell to the country, Tao Kan completely lived a life of loneliness and poverty in his childhood, and later he was eager to forge ahead, but he was still not valued by the Shilin at that time. In a commentary in the "New Language of the World", Liu Xiaobiao quoted the record in the "Jinyang Qiu" that once Tao Kan and Yang Huan went to visit Gu Rong, the leader of the Eastern Wu mingshi, in the same car, and was seen by the official Lang Wenya, who actually ridiculed Yang Zhao: "Why carry it with the villain?" ”
After Tao Kan's death, his family's prestige declined. In the historical records, Tao Yuanming's grandfather Tao Mao served as the Taishou of Wuchang, but his father did not leave any records. Scholar Qian Zhixi speculated in the Biography of Tao Yuanming that Tao Yuanming's father was probably not a monk and was himself a hermit. That is to say, according to the division of the door at that time, Tao Yuanming could only be regarded as a Han Sushi, so it seems that it is not difficult to understand why he "loves Qiushan in nature".
Song painting "Three Smiles of Tiger Creek", now in the National Palace Museum in Taipei (courtesy of fotoe)
Also written in the preface to Yi Xi's "Return to Xi Ci" in the first year of Yi Xi, Tao Yuanming talked about the young man's family being poor and not self-sufficient in farming, and his relatives and friends advised him to go out and become an official in order to seek food and clothing. In many later poems, Tao Yuanming explained that his officialdom was mainly forced by life. For this explanation, Qian Zhixi analyzed that another reason was that Tao Yuanming had joined the army as Huan Xuan, and Huan Xuan later usurped the throne as emperor, although when the rebellion occurred, he just left Jiangzhou due to the death of his mother, but for him who promised to clean himself, it could not be regarded as a stain. Because of this, "Yuanming felt that the early and young rate of his career was a complete mistake in his political choice, so he was unwilling to admit that he had the motivation to pursue a political future."
Still, this does not mean that Tao Yuanming did not have the idea of making a meritorious career. The exploits of his ancestors were in front of him, and when he was a young and poor man, he was good at reading and learning, and he was active and enterprising, just as the five of the later "Miscellaneous Poems" wrote: "When I remembered when I was young and strong, I was not happy and self-congratulatory." Fierce ambitions are all over the world, and Qian Fei thinks far and wide. ”
However, soon after serving as a sacrificial liquor in Jiangzhou, he could not bear the life of a vulgar official and resigned and returned home. For a while, he and his step-wife lived a real life of cultivation. It was not until the age of 34 that he became Huan Xuan's staff member. In Qian Zhixi's view, from the perspective of subjective and objective conditions, Tao Yuanming is doomed to be unable to make meritorious achievements like his ancestors: "Tao Kan is a humble man, Qu Gang is soft, and he is a man who folds and knots, starting from a small official in a down-to-earth manner, this ability is something that Yuanming does not have. At the time of the two Jin Dynasties, when the door valve people generally lacked the spirit of hard work and the actual ability to govern the army and administer the government, relying on the political capital accumulated in his early years, he gave full play to his talents in the past in a timely manner and embarked on the peak of his meritorious deeds, which can be said to be a person who is good at seizing opportunities. Yuanming, on the other hand, puts the pursuit of natural personality and the principles of truth and goodness first, and in the chaotic world, he adopts retreat rather than use. ”
In any case, after the first year of Yixi, Tao Yuanming stepped into a truly pastoral and secluded life, no longer bound by the dust net. In fact, in that era, hermits were not uncommon, but there were few true hermits who resolutely broke with the world.
More importantly, unlike other hermits, Tao Yuanming chose a different path of life: ploughing the countryside and supporting himself. Among the scholars at that time, this was definitely a special case. Scholar Ge Xiaoyin found in the book "Landscape Pastoral Poetry School" that the poet Xie Lingyun, who was slightly younger than Tao Yuanming and later became famous for his "landscape poetry", although he owned a manor with mountains and lakes, in which farmland, orchards, mountain forests, and Zepi were readily available, he despised the cultivation of crops, "both laughing and drowning" and "cultivating crops and clouds", turning a blind eye to the pastoral scenery.
This also achieved the "idyllic poem" created by Tao Yuanming. Gong Bin, a professor at the Department of Chinese of East China Normal University, told me his point of view: "Tao Yuanming returned to the countryside and personally participated in labor, so that he had an idyllic poem and achieved a great poet. ”
Tao Yuanming's landscape poems, with simple rural pictures and lofty feelings, were admired by later generations of literati (fotoe photo)
Pastoral reality and ideals
Engaging in farming provided Tao Yuanming with the objective conditions for writing pastoral poems, but the emergence of landscape idylls, that is, the first time that the landscape and pastoral scenery was used as an objective aesthetic expression object, was inseparable from the development of metaphysical thought in that era. As Ge Xiaoyin said: "It is not an accidental coincidence that Chinese landscapes and pastoral poems appeared at the same time at the turn of the Jin and Song dynasties, but the result of the convergence of the spiritual interests expressed by Chinese literati in the two themes of landscape and pastoralism under the catalysis of metaphysical thought." ”
In the development trend of Eastern Jin Metaphysics, Zhi Shuo's new interpretation of the Getaway by invoking Buddhism is a key link. According to Zhi Yue's understanding, only by ensuring the "fullness" of objective matter can we talk about leisure, "material things" and "supreme sufficiency", and be satisfied with the material that has been enjoyed, and naturally innocent and happy. Dai Kui later fully elaborated on this in the "Idle Tour Praise": "The situation is not only appropriate, but also sufficient." He who wanders around, xi and uncomfortable, xi and insufficient. When the shadow reflects the rock flow, the side of the piano book is rested. Sending hearts to pine bamboo, to enjoy the fish and birds, then the indifferent wish is finished. At this point, landscape and water appreciation has become the best way to realize the highest state of "self-sufficiency".
Ge Xiaoyin analyzed, "The metaphysics that Tao Yuanming came into contact with should be the trend of thought at this stage of IncreasingLytic and Rationalization after the popularity of Zhi Yuan's 'New Theory'." What can be supported is that although Tao Yuanming's reading and learning were not based on Xuan Tan Lao Zhuang, he was deeply influenced by the Famous Scholar of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, that is, his grandfather Meng Jia. Meng Jia served huan wen as a powerful minister of the Eastern Jin Dynasty. Once, when the crowd was touring Longshan with Huan Wen, the wind blew Meng Jia's hat off during the banquet, and Huan Wen signaled the crowd not to tell him to see how he reacted. Who knew that Meng Jia was unconscious, still personable. Huan Wen ordered Sun Sheng to tease him with this composition, who knew that Meng Jia answered impromptuly and exported into a chapter, which attracted the admiration of the audience. It is conceivable that Meng Jia's self-forgetful and wandering demeanor could not have an impact on Tao Yuanming.
In fact, in addition to the idyllic poems, Tao Yuanming also wrote a small number of landscape and water appreciation works, which is naturally the embodiment of the customs of that era. The second of the "Two Songs of the Master Book of Heguo" is: "Lu Ning has no swimming atmosphere, and the sky is high and the scenery is clear." Ling cen towered over the peak, and the distance was amazing. "What I write about is the scene of autumn in Lushan. "You Xie Chuan" can be seen as a standard landscape poem. Gong Bin also found that the trip clearly had traces of imitating Wang Xizhi's Lanting Yaji. "On the fifth day of the New Year, I took my fellow countrymen to play, brought wine, wrote down my name after writing poetry, and it belonged to the philistine collection. The most famous collection before him was twice, once in the sixth year of the Western Jin Dynasty (296), Shi Chong, in the villa Jingu Garden outside Luoyang, invited 30 celebrities at that time, and after the tour, each of them wrote poems, including Su Shao, the head of the celebrity, who was 50 years old; the second time was Wang Xizhi in the Shanyin Huilanting Yaji, when he was 50 years old. Tao Yuanming's "Poetry Sequence of You Xiechuan" obviously imitates the "Jingu Poetry Sequence" and the "Orchid Pavilion Preface", first writing about the tour location, the beauty of the scenery, then writing about the short life, and then writing about the participants, which is in line with Wang Xizhi's Yaji. This year Tao Yuanming was also 50 years old. ”
"Tao Yuanming Story Diagram", painted by Ming Chen Hongshou, the whole volume is divided into eleven paragraphs, now in the Honolulu Art Institute in the United States (fotoe photo)
Pastoral and landscape are also part of nature. Perhaps it can be said that Tao Yuanming's pastoral poems are the product of the combination of the wind of traveling through the landscape and the pastoral of returning to farming, but in this way, the pastoral is no longer the object of the expression of agricultural sorrow in the ancient Chinese poetry tradition, and for the first time has aesthetic significance. So, what did Tao Yuanming find in his countryside?
Tao Yuanming, who has just returned to the countryside, has a joy of returning to nature, and the rural scenery he concentrates on in "Returning to the Garden and Rural Residence" also seems to have an ideal color. "More than ten acres of square houses, eight or nine grass houses." The eaves of the elm willow shade, in front of the tao li luo hall. Ambiguous distant village, clinging to the smoke in the ruins. Dogs bark in the deep alley, chickens chirp mulberry trees upside down. (First) This idyllic and serene village residence map, in the chaotic world at the turn of the Jin and Song Dynasties, of course, brought a bit of ideal color, but it also became the ideal cultivation and reading life of the literati in later generations.
"Planting beans down the mountain, grass is full of bean seedlings. Morning Xingli is desolate, with the moon lotus hoe return. The road is narrow and long, and the dew stains my clothes. The clothes are not enough to be sorry, but the wish is not broken. Unlike the previous picture, this poem represents a poetic farming life, and it is perhaps in this sense that Ge Xiaoyin describes the narrowly understood idyll pioneered by Tao Yuanming as "a pastoral song that praises the quiet and leisurely life in the countryside."
Tao Yuanming's idyllic poems have become the object of admiration and study of later poets, but also because of his unique and subtle discoveries. In the words of Gong Bin, "Although the Jian'an literati also wrote about the scenes of the idyllic mountains and rivers, they did not have much communication with these scenes in their hearts, and it was mainly a purpose of entertainment." As for going to the countryside to participate in labor, it is even more impossible. Tao Yuanming expressed that ordinary, simple, and commonplace rural scene in poetic images, which was the first one."
In the second year of Emperor Yuanxing of Jin 'an (403), Tao Yuanming's "Two Songs of ancient tianshe in the first spring of the decaying year" written two years before his official retreat described the simple and natural rural customs. Two of them, "The flat domain is far away from the wind, and the good seedlings are also new", which is the most praised by posterity. A gentle distant wind blows from the open field, and the feeling is sometimes felt, and the seedlings of Tanaka also emit new shoots. For the first time, these simple but rural scenes radiate infinite poetry in Tao Yuanming's poems.
However, is pastoral life really that good? I am afraid this is not the case. In June of the fourth year (408) of the Jin Dynasty, the poet encountered a fire at shangjingzhiju near Chaisang, and had no choice but to temporarily take refuge in a boat in the water in front of the gate. Soon after, he moved to Xilu again. In the eleventh year of Yixi (415), Tao Yuanming completed his last move and moved to Nancun in Xunyang. Due to the increasing family, old age and illness, and repeated disasters, poets often even risk cutting off cooking. In the poem "Begging for Food", he writes: "Hunger comes to drive me, and I don't know what it is." Walk to Sri, knock on the door and make a clumsy remark. The master was relieved, and the bequeath was vain. Talk about harmony all day and night, and pour the cup. Driven by hunger, the elderly poet, with trepidation and shame, had to ask the townspeople for food. However, once there was wine to drink, he quickly forgot about the hardships.
Tao Yuanming's pastoral style seems to have always oscillated in the ideal realm of turbidity and sorrow and "peach blossom garden", which is similar to the distance between the helpless reality of his more than 10 years as an official and the lament that "the sun and the moon throw people away, and there is no ambition to get rid of it". What can be asked is what is the inner strength that has supported him to cultivate the countryside for more than twenty years?
"Yuanming Drunken Return Map", painted by Ming Zhang Peng, whose poems are mostly related to wine, depicts Tao Yuanming (fotoe) who returned home drunk.
Chrysanthemums and the tao behind the wine
It is well known that Tao Yuanming loves chrysanthemums and wine. "Qiu Ju has a good color, and The maolu is full of qiying." Pan this forgetfulness, far away from my legacy. Although the cup is alone, the cup is pouring out of the pot. The sun enters the group and the birds flock to the forest. Xiao Ao Dongxuan, talking about regaining this life. ("Twenty Drinking Songs", seven) This poem seems to best express the position of Chrysanthemum and wine in Tao Yuanming's heart. Lu Xun said of Tao Yuanming in the article "Wei Jin's Demeanor and the Relationship between Articles and Medicine and Wine": "His attitude is to drink and beg for food casually, and when he is happy, he will talk and write articles, without complaint. So now some people call him 'pastoral poet', a very peaceful pastoral poet. ...... Such a natural attitude is really not easy to imitate. He was so poor that his clothes were in tatters, and he was still picking chrysanthemums under the eastern fence, and when he accidentally raised his head, he leisurely saw The South Mountain, how natural it was. Now rich people live in the concession, hire gardeners to plant dozens of pots of chrysanthemums, and then compose poems called 'Autumn Chrysanthemums And Tao Pengze Body', thinking that they are in line with the wisdom of Yuanming, I think it is not quite like it. ”
Why is it not easy for Yuanming to follow suit? Gong Bin's view is, "Tao Yuanming's poetry is the crystallization of his entire personality thought, if there is no such high personality and thought as his, how can he reach his level?" Chen Yinke was probably the first scholar to regard Tao Yuanming as a big thinker. In a long essay in the 1940s, "The Relationship between Tao Yuanming's Thought and Qing Tan", Chen Yinke summed up Tao Yuanming's thought as "Confucianism outside and inner Tao, renouncing Shakya and Sect Heavenly Master", which is a kind of creative thought: "Yuanming's thought is a new natural theory that inherits the results of the evolution of Wei Jin's Qing tan and is based on his family's belief in Taoist nature." ...... The new nature theory is not like the old nature theory of raising this tangible life or learning from other gods and immortals, but seeking to integrate the spirit into the operation, that is, to become one with nature. Because of this, there is no stagnation of the old natural theory of the skeleton material, and it will not be disturbed by the famous teachings of Zhou Kong's entry into the world. ”
Although Chen Yinke has already elaborated on the "new nature theory", how to understand this, Gong Bin further explained to me: "The new nature theory is aimed at the old nature theory represented by Ji Kang. The old nature said that there was a problem of trade-offs, taking nature and abandoning the famous religion, which was an important proposition of Ji Kang: 'Let nature go as you please'. Another point, Ji Kang's old nature theory, believing in the existence of immortals, his famous treatise "Health Theory", believes that the ancient gods and immortals written in the book must exist. Since it is believed that immortals exist, how can they become immortals? Just play out the method of health maintenance. Old and new, there are two words for nature, which means that they are all affirming nature. What's the difference? Ji Kang's nature is human renunciation, laughing and scolding, mood and sorrow. Tao Yuanming is a great poet who also attaches great importance to feelings, but his nature is to obey and migrate, to change with the changes of all things in nature. ”
Tao Yuanming's idea of "New Nature Theory" is concentrated in the poem "Shadow God". In the first article, "Shape and Shadow", it is written that "I have no Tenghua Technique, and I will not doubt it again", which negates the theory of the immortals and affirms the natural end of life; in the third "Divine Interpretation", he even puts forward the essence of his philosophy of life: "In the great wave, I do not like it or be afraid." It should be done, and there is no need to worry about it. In Gong Bin's view, this new view of nature actually comes from the Confucian "staying in the ordinary" and Zhuangzi's "happy death". Now that you have an understanding of life and death and obey the transformation of all things, what can you be anxious about and confused?
The interesting thing is that in Chen Yinke's view, even in the Eastern Jin Dynasty, when Buddhism developed greatly, Tao Yuanming had no connection with Buddhist thought. It should be known that Lushan Mountain near Tao Yuanming's residence was a major center of Buddhism, and he had a relationship with the famous monk Hui yuan at that time. This may be seen in a record in the Biography of the High Sages of the Lotus Society: "Master Shi Yuan formed the Lotus Society with the sages and used books to attract Yuanming. Yuan Ming: If you are allowed to drink, go. Xu Zhi, so he made a yan. Suddenly, he raised an eyebrow and left. In July of the tenth year (414) of the Jin Dynasty, Hui Yuan, the abbot of The Eastern Forest Temple of Lushan, and others formed the White Lotus Society, and Liu Chengzhi, who was also a member of the "Xunyang Sanyin" with Tao Yuanming. Why did Tao Yuanming "raise his eyebrows and go away" and not respond to their solicitations? Gong Bin believes: "The core reason is that there is a deep contradiction between Tao Yuanming's thought and Buddhist thought. One contradiction is that Hui Yuan believes that 'the form of God is not extinguished', because God does not perish, there is karma. However, Tao Yuanming believes that 'the form is exhausted', the body is finished, the soul is gone, the so-called 'death is the way, the body is the same as the mountain'. On the other hand, Hui Yuan advocated the Buddhist theory of good and evil karma, while Tao Yuanming doubted the karma of good and evil, and he said in the second part of the "Twenty Songs of Drinking": "There is a reward for the clouds of good and evil, and Uncle Yi is in the Western Mountains." Good and evil should not be, and nothing is said! 'Think that the retribution of good and evil is empty words. ”
Tao Yuanming is famous for good wine, and Gong Bin roughly counted that among the more than 120 poems he has survived, more than 50 have written about wine. Drinking alcohol was more of a way for him to realize his true and natural outlook on life. As it is written in "Drinking Alone in the Rain": "Therefore, when the old man gives the remaining wine, he drinks immortally; he tries to drink a hundred emotions and far away, and he forgets the sky." Oh my God! Ren Zhen has no first. ”
(This article is written with reference to books such as "Tao Yuanming Collection" compiled by Shao Changman and others, "Tao Yuanming Biography" by Qian Zhixi, "Tao Yuanming Biography" by Gong Bin, and "Landscape Pastoral Poetry School" by Ge Xiaoyin.) Thanks to Hu Xiaoming and Li Yajuan for their help in the interview)
【Sanlian Life Weekly】2020 No. 34 1101 Wei Jin demeanor Shi clan, hermit, pastoral ¥15 purchase