英文摘要 |
For more than ten years in his middle age, Tao YuanMing served the government and withdrew from posts as much as three to four times, and he left eleven works on the theme of official travel (“Huan You”) during this specific period. By adopting complicated and delicate artifices and strategies, Tao compiled, transformed and rewrote his memories of official travels and withdrawals in these works. I put forth two key conceptions, namely the vision of “Pre-reclusion” and the vision of “Post-officialdom”, so as to expound how Tao represent his memories in poems or rhapsody. In particular works with marks of being written on the way of official travels, Tao composed these on the basis of the vision of “Pre-reclusion” as he depicted the travel and evoked his former or future pastoral career. The present official experience was devalued in the light of his positively transformed memories of withdrawal. On the contrary, in other works with marks of being written after Tao returned to his farmland and homeland, he shifted the former vision to so-called “Post-official” one, as he looked back to his previous stages of official services and travels. Contrasting with his negatively transformed memories of holding office, the present withdrawn life was evaluated and elevated. As for the work written on the specific moment of non-engagement and non-disengagement, the vision of “Pre-reclusion” and “Post-official” had been mixed together, they existed simultaneously and was even reconciled. So far “how the memories were written” is a problem that calls for sufficient analysis in the research of Tao YuanMing. Thus, by revealing a succession of Tao’s “memorial writings” which were disguised as original and authentic experiences or memories, we can penetrate how Tao modifies and explains repeatedly his wavering between serving the government and living as a farmer and recluse, how he make public statement, over and over again, about his disposition and similarity to those recluses in history. All these actions were done with the purpose of convincing the historians and readers to believe in his earnest volition to withdraw. Secondly, we can find the link and overlap between his works on the theme of official travel and other works on the theme of field and garden. At last, by way of tracing back to the reason of how the canonical image of Tao is to be shaped, we can amend some perceptions of traditional historians and critics who deemed Tao as a pure, free from contradiction, and extraordinary exemplar of reclusion. |