Tao Yuanming, also known as Tao Qian (365–427) is a Chinese poet of the Six Dynasties poetic period (ca.
220 - 589 CE).
Generally regarded as the greatest poet during the centuries between the Han and Tang dynasties: Tao Yuanming, later known as Tao Qian, is also the foremost of the "recluse" poets, or the poets who seem to have written their best while in seclusion and/or those poets in whose poems the theme of countryside solitude particularly resonates.
In Tao Yuanming's poems can be found superlative examples of the theme which urges to drop out of official life, move to the country, and to take up a cultivated and leisurely life of wine and song.
However, at the same time, Tao's poetry also shows an inclination to fulfillment of duty, such as feeding his family.
Although not new to his predecessors and contemporaries, Tao's deftly skilled handling of his themes won widespread admiration from his time and down through the centuries, in China.
Despite Han poetry foreshadowing of some of his particular symbolism and the general "returning home to the country" theme, much subsequent Chinese painting and literature would require no more than the mention or image of chrysanthemums by the eastern fence to call to mind Tao Yuanming's life and poetry.
Later, his poetry and the particular motifs which Tao Yuanming was such a particular exemplar of would prove to importantly influence the innovations of Beat poetry and the 1960s poetry in the United States and Europe, in the twentieth century, and subsequently, as Tao Yuanming has gone on to occupy a position as one of a select group of great world poets.
