Liang Qichao said, "Nature is his loving companion and often smiles at him".
Lin Yutang said: "Tao Yuanming is the most harmonious and perfect figure in the whole literary tradition of China. His lifestyle and style are simple and awe-inspiring, and those who are smart and sophisticated are ashamed. " .
This is a celebrity's evaluation of him. Tao Yuanming is a great hermit. I saw poetic seclusion in Tao Yuanming's seclusion, which is poetic and intriguing. For thousands of years, under the background of the whole ancient feudal society in China, the complex of official seclusion has been puzzling and deeply disturbing for many ancient literati. As one of them, Tao Yuanming is no exception, and his unique, distinctive and persistent view of official seclusion is beyond the reach of later scholars.
It is said that he was 42 years old when he resigned from officialdom for the last time. This is the most famous behavior that people talk about, "Don't bend over for five buckets of rice". Since then, he has completely returned to the countryside. However, Tao Yuanming did not withdraw from reality, thus becoming a nihilistic hermit. On the contrary, he loves concrete life more, which is the deep-seated reason why people have never forgotten him for thousands of years. Tao Yuanming just quit his official career, not his life. In other words, he retired from his official career and returned to his more private life. As Mr. Muzhai said, "Life is not death." In this way, Tao Yuanming becomes Tao Yuanming, and only when we are in a real state of life can we become ourselves.
After Tao Yuanming lived in seclusion, he gave his poems a fresh and natural flavor. Tao opened the channel between nature and philosophy, and realized the reconciliation between life suffering and natural purport. Even the most common rural life scene shows an infinite and meaningful beauty in his works. It seems to tell the world without hesitation that his seclusion is as elegant as his poems.
Perhaps Tao Yuanming is lonely, but loneliness is also a kind of beauty. He loves to be an official in seclusion, and he loves to be an official in seclusion. This also marks the maturity of his view of official seclusion. "Truth" can be said to be the whole of Tao Yuanming's philosophical thought, without affectation, hypocrisy and disobedience. Nature, life and humanity are all beautiful. Tao Yuanming can make ordinary life artistic and beautiful because of his insight, philosophical thinking on life and understanding that truth is beauty. It is also the embodiment of "truth".
Tao Yuanming lives in poetry. As a way of life, poetry has become a philosophy of life. During Tao Yuanming's Taoran period, "under the hedge of picking chrysanthemums, you can see Nanshan leisurely." "The weather is getting better every day, and the birds are back." He leads an aesthetic life. This kind of beauty can't be expressed in words, and it is the ultimate aesthetic state, so he "tried to distinguish but forgot to say it."
Apart from Tao Yuanming's moral integrity, philosophy and Buddhist nature of Tao's poems, I admire his unique language beauty between the lines. It is hard to imagine that Tao Yuanming belongs to the Eastern Jin Dynasty. At that time, the style of flashy carving prevailed in the literary world of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, but Tao Yuanming's poetic style was completely opposite, even more simple and natural than the pastoral poetry in the late Tang and Song Dynasties. Those works produced in the Eastern Jin Dynasty have long since failed to stand the test of history and disappeared. Only Tao Yuanming shines brilliantly in the long history of literature. His poems have long gone beyond the shackles of the times and are driven by his thoughts.