The Selected Poems of T'ao Ch'ien. Tao Chien

the three-year-old Sun En rebellion when, at the end of 403, Huan Hsüan led his armies down the Yangtze from the west, overrunning and surely devastating the Hsün-yang region where T’ao was living, and finally taking control of the capital. Loyal forces regrouped, and again led by Liu Yü, soon defeated Huan Hsüan. Had T’ao remained in Huan’s service, he may very well have lost his life in these affairs. Although Liu Yü returned Emperor An to the throne, it was clear that he held the power now.

      By 405, the T’ao family was apparently destitute. That spring, desperate for a means of supporting his family, T’ao took a job on the staff of Liu Yü, although the circumstances are unclear. Then in the fall, he took a position as magistrate in P’eng-tse, thirty miles northeast of his home. His resignation of this post after only eighty days was recounted in the early biographies and became a quintessential episode in the T’ao Ch’ien legend:

      Positions meant nothing to him, and he wasn’t subservient to high officials. At the end of the year, an inspector was sent to his district. When his assistants told him that he should put on his belt and visit this man, T’ao moaned and said, “I’m not bowing down to some clodhopper for a measly bushel of rice.” He untied his seal-ribbon that same day and left office. And to explain how he felt, he wrote “Back Home Again Chant.”

      “Back Home Again Chant” (p. 32) gives a somewhat contradictory account of what happened, but whatever T’ao’s reasons for resigning, this time he left public life for good, even though he had no means of support other than farm work, which had proven painfully unreliable. Although he received several requests to serve in the government, T’ao farmed in the Ch’ai-sang/Hsün-yang area until his death twenty-two years later.