庞德与中国诗歌

Pound and Chinese Classic Poems

1.The coming of image and Chinese poems’ influence on Pound

1.1The social and literature background

At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of 20th century, the west world is changing dramatically. The United States becomes richer and richer, and the social revolution is going on. Old moral codes were breaking down. “Meanwhile, the loss of faith, which began noticeably with Darwin’s theories of evolution and was intensified by the development of modern science, continued with a greater intensity into this century. …In short, people found themselves living in a spiritual wasteland, as T. S. Eliot’s epochal poem suggests, where life was a meaningless and futile affair and man felt homeless, estranged and haunted by a sense of doom.” [1] “The traditional English poetics with its iambic pentameter, its verbosity, and extra-poetic padding can not meet the need of expressing the temper of the age.”[2] In order to change this situation, a small group of English and American poets, such as T. E. Hulme and Ezra pound, came together in the first years of this century to work out some new way of writing poetry. Imagists proposed, “something like an imagist manifesto …in 1912 in which Pound and Flint laid down three imagist poetic principles: (1) Direct treatment of “thing”, whether subjective or objective: (2) to use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation; (3) as regarding rhythm, to compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in the sequence of a metronome.”[3]

1.2Chinese poems’ influence on Pound

“In 1913 he (Pound) became the literary executor of Ernest Fenollosa, the noted American Orientalist, and began his fruitful study of the Chinese language and ancient Chinese culture.”[4]In Fenollosa’s work, Pound found that “Chinese poem is, by virtue of the ideographic and pictographic nature of Chinese language, essentially imagistic poetry. The Chinese language is concrete and direct and metaphorical, and Chinese poem is noted for its virile laconism and austere pregnancy (which also

characterize imagist poetry). The history of Chinese writing conditioned Chinese literature to its conciseness and precision. To make fewer words do more was the cherished aim of literary training in ancient china. Since images need fewer connectives and convey more, it is only natural that they are built into the very texture of classical Chinese poetry. They either juxtapose with, or superimpose or melt into each other, and often form clusters of fused ideas impregnated with power and energy.”[5] It is no wonder that Ezra Pound found a “"New Greece in the culture of China", and a model to recreate，to emulate and to surpass. ·Inspired by the Classical poems Chinese Poetry，Pound found a way to break away from“the poetics of motional slither”, to mold a brand new kind of poetry，and to launch an American cultural revolution.”[6]

One points should be pointed out is that some scholars over emphasized Chinese classical poems s’ influence on Pound and imagism. According to the study of Yuan Xin, the ideas of imagism of Pound has already set up before he started to study Chinese classical poems s and Chinese literature. “It is Pound’s principle of imagism that caused him to be interested in acquiring, understanding and translating Chinese classical poems s, and Chinese classical poems s enhanced his belief in imagism. ”[7] Imagist poems inherit some ideas from Chinese classical poetry, but “the imagist movement drew from a variety of poetic traditions. Greek, Provencal, and Japanese poem are among the many acknowledged sources of imagism and Pound’s poetry.”[8] It is at this point that Chinese classical poem can be compared with imagist poems.

2. A comparative study of Image between Chinese classical poems s and pound’s poems

In this section, the key idea of imagist movement—Image will be discussed to show the common ground and difference between Chinese classical poems s and pound’s poems

2.1the common ground of Chinese classical poems s and pound’s poems

2.1.1 the ideas about image

As the name of the movement--Imagism shows, Image is the core of the movement. “T. E. Hulme said that the image must enable one “ to dwell and linger upon a point of excitement, to achieve the impossible and covert a point into a line.”

[9] Pound defined an image as that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time, and later he extended this definition when he stated that an image was “a vortex or cluster of fused ideas”“endowed with energy.””[10] In Chinese classical poems s, Image also plays an important role for a very long time. The images in the Chinese classical poems express the “subtle momentary felling”and “a complex felling”[11]or “Image is pure sensatory. it is the concretion of felling.” Or “image is the impression of the things left in the mind.”[12] So it is easy to found that the west and east have something in common to some extent.

2.1.2 The presentation of image.

In this section, the method of presentation, like direct treatment, and superposition, used both in Chinese classical poems s and Pound’poems will be discussed.