Playlist: Tao Qian (365-427 Ce): Tao Qian and the Tradition of Retreat

Transcript

Robert Oxnam: Tao Qian lived from 365 to 427 and gave voice to the tradition of retreat in his poetry.

Stephen Owen: Tao Qian starts off as someone who is supposed to go and be an official. And he takes an official post, and he discovers he's not happy. Well, the society told him you were supposed to be happy being an official. But he isn't happy, and in this complex process, this new notion of nature, he is able to look inside and say, this is not the way I want to live my life. And he can make a decision: I am going to quit this post, go back to my farm, to my home, and live in a way that makes me happy.

Paul Rouzer: When Tao Qian decided to abandon public service and become a recluse, this did not mean for him going off and living in a cave and severing all contact with other human beings.

Rather, Tao Qian chose to go back and live on a small farm that he owned and to plow the fields along with his fellow peasants, to form a bond of union and a friendship with those particular peasants.

And this particular union, this particular bond of friendship with these people, served for him a replacement of the bonds of friendship earlier poets had formed with members of their own particular class.

Transcript

"Returning to Dwell in Gardens and Fields," by Tao Qian

My youth felt no comfort in common things,

by my nature I clung to the mountains and hills.

I erred and fell in the snares of dust

and was away thirteen years in all.

The caged bird yearns for its former woods,

fish in a pool yearns for long-ago deeps.

Clearing scrub at the edge of the southern moors,

I stay plain by returning to gardens and fields,

My holdings are just more than ten acres,

a thatched cottage of eight or nine rooms.

Elms and willows shade eaves at the back,

peach and plum spread in front of the hall.

The far towns of men are hidden from sight,

a faint blur of smoke from village hearths.

A dog is barking deep in the lanes,

a rooster cries out atop a mulberry.

No dust pollutes my doors or yard,

empty space offering ample peace.

For a long time I was kept inside a coop,

now again I return to the natural way.

Stephen Owen: And it's perhaps the first occasion in the Chinese tradition we have a long sustained meditation on what makes a person, what makes one happy in life, and again very much following, realizing what one's nature is, and making the decision to live that way. And poetry plays a very important role in this process. Tao Qian writes poetry to affirm his decision, to reflect on everyday events, to live this life he's decided to live; this kind of life which society thinks is a bad choice, a strange choice, and to declare in his poetry: I'm happy living this way. I like farming. I like finishing up hard work and reading my books.

And so poetry becomes something like autobiography that supports him through his life, this solitary decision, this decision to go against conventional values. And it declares his decision, his choices, to other people.

Transcript

Robert Oxnam: One of Tao Qian's poems is particularly famous for its influence on later generations of poets. It is the fifth in a series entitled "Drinking Wine."

In this poem, Tao Qian meditates upon the meaning of retreat.

"Drinking Wine, #5," by Tao Qian

I built my hut on the realm of men

yet I hear no rumble of horse and carriage.

Pray, sir, how can this be true?

When the mind's far away, your land too is remote.

Paul Rouzer: At the beginning of this poem, Tao Qian mentions that his own particular hut of reclusion still exists in the realm of men. And yet he goes on to say in a form of paradox that he can no longer hear the sounds of the people who pass by his own particular place.

Why is this? Why does this happen to be so? he asks. The reason, he says, is that reclusion is really a state of mind and not necessarily a question of physical occupation of a remote place. So in other words, Tao Qian is suggesting that a man can live in a state of reclusion, yet continue to participate in the realm of men. He illustrates this by a particularly powerful couplet. A couplet which in many ways is a couplet which has been influential on many Chinese poets.

"Drinking Wine, #5" (continued)

I pick chrysanthemums by my eastern hedge;

far off I see the southern hills.

How fine the sunset through mountain mists,

and the soaring birds come home together.

There is some real meaning in all of this,

though when I try to grasp it I forget the words.

Paul Rouzer: In between Tao Qian's hedge and the southern mountains is precisely this world of men, which, through a sheer act of will, he's able to ignore. He then elaborates on this particular image to some extent, further on in the poem.

And then goes on to suggest, as many Daoist philosophers have suggested, that ultimate truth cannot be conveyed in language.