The Close-and-Distant Relationship between Lu You and Tao Yuanming’ Poems

Generally speaking, late poets never love TaoYuanming’poems with ordinary content and prosaic style until they get old. Su Shi and Huang Tingjian, who most interested by Tao’poems,do it thus. Lu You is an exception. The relationship between Lu and Tao goes through a complicated process as close-distant-close. Lu You takes great pleasure in Tao’s poems in early youth, drifts away from it since becoming an official in middle age, and takes it as example in poem writing after going into retirement in his later years. The article exposes the reason and meaning of the phenomenon from the angles of historical background, life experiences, and literature mind.