T’ao
Ch’ien

Tao Qian,
Wade-Giles romanization T’ao Ch’ien, also called Tao
Yuanming, courtesy name (zi) Yuanliang (b. 365,
Xunyang [now Jiujiang, Jiangxi province], China—d.
427, Xunyang), one of China’s greatest poets and a
noted recluse.
Born into an
impoverished aristocratic family, Tao Qian took a
minor official post while in his 20s in order to
support his aged parents. After about 10 years at
that post and a brief term as county magistrate, he
resigned from official life, repelled by its
excessive formality and widespread corruption. With
his wife and children he retired to a farming
village south of the Yangtze River. Despite the
hardships of a farmer’s life and frequent food
shortages, Tao was contented, writing poetry,
cultivating the chrysanthemums that became
inseparably associated with his poetry, and drinking
wine, also a common subject of his verse.
Because the taste
of Tao’s contemporaries was for an elaborate and
artificial style, his simple and straightforward
poetry was not fully appreciated until the Tang
dynasty (618–907). A master of the five-word line,
Tao has been described as the first great poet of
tianyuan (“fields and gardens”), landscape poetry
inspired by pastoral scenes (as opposed to the
then-fashionable shanshui [“mountains and rivers”]
poetry). Essentially a Daoist in his philosophical
outlook on life and death, he also freely adopted
the elements of Confucianism and Buddhism that most
appealed to him.