Tao Yuanming

Life

Tao Yuanming, by Min Zhen,from 18th century China.

• I was born in 365(CE) at Chaisang in Jiangxi province to a formerly prominent southern noble family. My great-grandfather, Tao Kan, had been a Jin Commander, but our station in society had declined by the time of my birth.

• I served many civil and military posts, but none of high position or with any distinction.

• During this period of service in a series of minor posts, my poems begin to indicate that I was becoming torn between ambition and a desire to retreat into solitude.

• One source states I was the first Chinese poet to grapple with the justification of my decision to withdraw from office. [Nienhauser, 193]

• Last position was of county magistrate -- a post I held for only 80 days -- at Pengze, which was not far from my hometown. [Watson, 493]

• In 405 my sister died. This, in addition to my disgust at the corruption and infighting of the Jin Court, lead me to resign. I had become convinced that life was too short to compromise my principles. I have a personal inclination towards a private life of leisure and spontaneity.

• The last 22 years of my life I lived as a farmer with my family (I had 5 sons) near Mount Lu, the famous "southern mountain." [Watson, 493]

• "For the family and appointment details some kind of official source may be presumed, but for the character anecdotes it seems to me probable that T'ao's own writings were in most cases the prime source. Before they were gathered into the histories, they had acquired a greater or less degree of exaggeration and had been sometimes set for the sake of verisimilitude in particular but doubtful contexts. If this view is correct, to use the anecdotal material of the biographies to provide a context for particular poems of T'ao is clearly a risky proceeding." -- A.R. Davis [Tian, 57]

--Jenny R 01:35, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

Poetry

First, what is reclusion? Here is a great quote from Fredrick Mote:

"in Chinese society... [terms designating recluses] signified withdrawal from the active

public life in the service of society that Confucian ethics prescribed as the most suitable course for all whose abilities, cultivation, and learning qualified them for it. To bar one's gates and earn one's own living without reliance on the emolument of office, to display a lack of regard for the social status which could be attained only by entering officialdom, and to devote one's life to self-cultivation, scholarship or artistic pursuits

made one a recluse." [Swartz 79]

• I was not the first to write about reclusion. I had significant influence though: I transformed stock images and normal vocabulary into highly personalized poetry. I alluded to the "here and now" about my particular circumstance rather then generic gentleman reclusion. This made my poems very autobiographical, but not in the normal objective sense. This made quite the impact, for future poems and fu's began to have short prefaces before them, also explaining the author's circumstance around the composition. I also introduced many new topics in my poetry, such as: begging, moving, encountering a fire, and harvesting dry rice. [Chang/Owens 222]
• I was also the first to introduce calendar dates in my extremely long poem titles, something which has become a common practice. (Chang, Owens 221)

• The Peach Blossom Spring

http://chinese.hm68.com/index.php/chinese-classics/153-peach-blossom-spring

Four biographies from later authors covered me in great detail:

1. History of the Liu Song (Song shu)
2. History of the Southern Dynasties (Nan shi)
3. History of the Jin (Jin shu)
4. Biography of Tao Yuanming

They provided accounts for my life and character, and were never questioned as principal guide to reading my works. Written in the late fifth to early seventh centuries, they have been accepted as fact and treated as primary sources. However, when studied against my own works, they do not stand up to the critical analysis, and often contradict one another (Swartz 79).

Principally, authors choose how to present my life, and what characteristics they want to idealize.
An example in the Records of the Grand Historian: The author would narrate one or two key scenes from the subject. Like a half body portrait; the image is not complete but the personality is very vivid (Nienhauser 192).

While all four have very similar content, the process of adding and deleting material shows a very different picture (Swartz 78).
For example, in the Book of Song, Shen Yue uses stories where I am seen drinking, but still trying to show genuineness and candor. From them on these qualities would be adapted as part of my image (Nienhauser 194).

I was portrayed as a lofty recluse, very loyal to the Jin dynasty (simply not true), and one who drinks a lot and enjoys simple poetry. While not entirely false, I was a lot more than that!

Many annotated works from authoritative scholars already exist, and they served as the foundation for most criticism and interpretation. People pay a lot of attention to the allusions, names, and analysis of the syntax in the annotations, but forget about the textual and manuscript variants – we taken them as records (Swartz 79).

However it is these variants that matter. They compete with each other, one trying to beat the other. Is there a legitimate, single, definite version of the text?

• My poems have very many different versions that have been edited to server a particular aesthetic and ideological purpose.

Sadly we do not have the original manuscripts authored by me, so we have to take every version into account (Nienhauser 193). There are many historical, ideological, and cultural contexts in the text. This makes me much more complicated and engaging than previously thought (Nienhauser 194).

Translations of Poetry

Steady Rain, Drinking Alone (Translation 1993, David Hinton) Life soon returns to nothing. The ancients all said it circles away like this. And if Sung and Ch'iao ever lived in this world without dying, where are they now? Still, my old neighbor swears his wine makes you immortal, so I try a little. Soon, those hundred feelings grow distant. Another cup, and suddenly I've forgotten heaven. O, how could heaven be anywhere but here? Stay true to the actual, yielding to all things, and in a moment, unearthly cloud-cranes carrying immortals beyond all eight horizons return. Since I first embraced solitude, I've struggled through forty years. And yet, in this body long since lost to change, my thoughts remain, quite silent after all.

Drinking Alone during Incessant Rain (a translation from Xiaofei Tian's text, 2005) The cycle of life will revert to its end; people from all times have said so. Red Pine and Prince Qiao existed in the world, and yet what do we hear about them now? An old fellow gave me this gift of wine – he actually said drinking makes an immortal out of a man. I take my first cup: a hundred cares fade away; the second cup is down: all of a sudden I forget Heaven. How can Heaven be far away from here? so long as one follows natural impulses, and takes that as the priority. The crane (or swan) of cloud with marvelous wings can reach the eight limits of the earth and return in an instant. Ever since I harbored this solitude, struggling hard, it has been forty years. My form and body were transformed long ago,/ (My form and body follow the transformation,)/ (My form and spirit were dead long ago,) but the mind is still here/(it is in my mind) and what more is there to say?

• Both are translations of the same poem, but with changes of key words or ideas, they seem to be two different themes on the same idea. While neither author (presumably) is trying to put words into my pen, it seems that authors take liberty with what I may have meant or will freely interpret what he or she thought I was trying to say, but to attempt to "say it better." In the Tian text, she equates the hero worship Su Shi felt toward Tao Yuanming as one who is a bit fanatical in their devotion to, say, a pop star like a Michael Jackson or something. I (Jenny, not Tao Yuanming) could say that I understand M.J. better than anyone else on the planet. I could interpret his lyrics and even change a word because that superstar is not alive today to tell me that I am either wrong or right. Sure, the copyright laws could have a say in that, but I understand him better than anyone and that is the basis of my authority to change words to fit my perception of that artist.

A key line from an "unclassified poem", actually the fifth in a series of twenty poems entitled "On Drinking.":
"I built my cottage in the human world,
yet there is no noise of horse and carriage.
How then did you manage to achieve this?
When the heart is far away, the locale naturally
becomes remote.
Picking chrysanthemum flowers by the eastern hedge,
I gaze at South Mountain in the distance.
The mountain air is lovely at dusk,
and birds fly back with one another.
In this return there is a fundamental truth,
I am going to explain it, but already forgot the words."
[Tian, 23]

There are many different readings to the italicized sentence, and Su Shi was confident that he had interpreted the true meaning when he said "see" was more spontaneous than "gaze". This is because of the importance of "possessing" in Song culture. People were very anxious about the authenticity of texts and about receiving the genuine edition. There is speculation that it is this controversy over the exact meaning of my work which actually made my poetry so important, because the argument still continues.

References

1. Hinton, David (translator). The Selected Poems of T'ao Ch'ien, Copper Canyon Press, 1993, print

2. Kang-i Sun Chang, Stephen Owen, eds., The Cambridge History of Chinese Literature 2 volume set (Hardcover), 1704 pages, Cambridge University Press; 1st ed. March 31, 2010.

3. Lau, Joseph S.M., Minford, John, eds., Classical Chinese Literature An Anthology of Translations Volume I: From Antiquity to the Tang Dynasty, Columbia University Press, New York, The Chinese University Press, Hong Kong, 2000, Print.

4.Nienhauser, Jr., William H. "Reviewed Work(s): Tao Yuanming and Manuscript Culture: The Record of a Dusty Table by Xiaofei Tian." Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews 28 (2006): 191-95. JSTOR. Web. 4 Feb. 2012.

5. Swartz, Wendy. "Rewriting a Recluse: The Early Biographers' Construction of Tao Yuanming." Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews (CLEAR) 26 (2004): 77-97. JSTOR. Web. 1 Feb. 2012.

6. Tian, Xiaofei, Tao Yuanming & Manuscript Culture: The Record of a Dusty Table, University of Washington Press, 2005, print

Classroom presentations

• Media:Tao_Qian.pptx Powerpoint by Arnold Q
• Media:Tao_Yuanming_by_Jenny_R.pptx Powerpoint by Jenny R