Bai Ju-yi's Consciousness of Reclusion in His Early Life

Bai Ju yi, a famous poet in Mid Tang Dynasty, led a life full of contradictions. Longing for a life of reclusion, he never retired from politics, which reflected a complicated ambivalence. Researchers used to regard his exile in the tenth year of Yuan Dynasty as a turning point, marking two periods of the development of his thought, in the second half of which his thinking of reclusion budded. A serious study of poems in his earlier life led to the discovery that Bai's idea of reclusion sprouted at the very beginning of his political life and developed gradually into the thought of being a hermit with ambitions to benefit and self perfection in the secular world.