Returning Home: Poems of Tao Yuan-Ming

Tao Yuan-ming stands first in the line of China’s great lyric poets.

Tao Yuan-ming, who lived around 400 A.D., stands first in the line of China’s great lyric poets. Just as the Impressionists taught us to see in a new way, Tao taught the Chinese a lyrical attitude toward life. Creator of an intimate, honest, plain-spoken style, Tao was a man whose life spoke as eloquently as his art. Indeed, no poet’s life and art have ever been more of a piece.

Born into corrupt and turbulent times, Tao resigned his post as Magistrate, choosing to live the humble and difficult life of a farmer. He and his family would pay dearly for this choice, enduring hunger, cold and poverty. But he never wavered from it, holding steadfastly to the Confucian virtue of “firmness in adversity.” For a scholar to live this kind of reclusive life, giving up wealth and power, represented the highest moral virtue to the Chinese Tao was given the posthumous title “Summoned Scholar of Tranquil Integrity.” Integrity is certainly the first word that springs to mind in thinking of Tao.