Tao Yuanming

365 AD - 427 AD

Tao Yuanming, also known as Tao Qian or T'ao Ch'ien, was a Chinese poet and politician who was one of the best-known poets during the Six Dynasties period. He was born during the Eastern Jin dynasty and died during the Liu Song dynasty. Tao Yuanming spent much of his life in reclusion, living in the countryside, farming, reading, drinking wine, receiving the occasional guest, and writing poems in which he often reflected on the pleasures and difficulties of life, as well as his decision to withdraw from civil service. Tao's simple and direct style was somewhat at odds with the norms for literary writing in his time.
Relatively well-known as a recluse poet in the Tang dynasty, during the Northern Song dynasty, influential literati figures such as Su Shi declared him a paragon of authenticity and spontaneity in poetry, that Tao Yuanming would achieve lasting literary fame. However, Tao Yuanming's inclusion in the 6th century literary anthology Wen Xuan argues for at least a beginning of fame in his own era, at least in his own birth area. Tao Yuanming would later be regarded as the foremost representative of what we now know as Fields and Gardens poetry.
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“My temples are grey, my muscles no longer full. Five sons have I, and none of them likes school. Ah-shu is sixteen and as lazy as lazy can be. Ah-hsuan is fifteen and no taste for reading has he. Thirteen are Yung and Tuan, yet they can't tell six from seven. A-tung wants only pears and chestnuts—in two years he'll be eleven. Then, come! Let me empty this cup, if such be the will of Heaven.”

Tao Yuanming
365 AD - 427 AD
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