庞德意象派诗歌风格解析

摘要庞德是二十世纪初意象派的领导人，是现代主义文学代表人物。

他在现代诗歌界有深远影响，其意象诗的创作深入人心。

本文首先介绍了意象派的历史由来以及庞德在意象派诗歌发展过程中的地位；再结合意象派诗歌创作理论，指出意象派诗歌的共性；然后通过研读前人从传统修辞学角度对意象诗歌的研究以及庞德本人的诗歌创作理论，结合庞德最具代表性的几篇意象派诗歌这一具体语料，分析概括出庞德意象派诗歌的写作特色，即意象的使用、精炼的语言和音乐性的韵律，并举例证明其写作风格的特殊性；最后讨论了庞德意象派诗歌在国内外的影响。

关键词：意象派；庞德；意象；韵律ABSTRACTEzra Weston Loomis Pound was a major figure of the Modernist movement in the first half of the 20th century. He is generally considered the poet most responsible for defining and promoting a modernist aesthetic in poetry. This paper first introduces the history and the origins of Imagism and Pound‘s status in the process of Imagist Poetry development. It then combines with the creation theory of Imagist Poetry to point out the common characteristics of Imagist Poetry. And then by studying their predecessors‘research and Pound‘s own poetry theory, it analyses the writing characteristics of Pond‘s Imagist Poetry: the use of imagery, c oncise language and musical rhythm. And it uses examples to prove the specificity of these characteristics. It finally discusses the influence of Pound‘s Imagist Poetry in domestic and foreign literature.Keywords：Imagism;Ezra Pound; image; musical rhythmContents1. Introduction (1)2. Ezra Pound and Imagism (2)2.1 Ezra Pound (2)2.2 Imagism ……………………………………………………………………...….. .43. Imagistic features of Pound's poetry (5)3.1 The use of Image (5)3.1.1 Image progress (6)3.1.2 Image superposition (8)3.1.3 Image juxtaposition (9)3.2 Concise Language (10)3.3 Musical Rhythm (11)4. Influence of Pound’s poetry (12)4.1 The impact on domestic literature (13)4.2 The impact on foreign literature (14)5. Conclusion (16)Acknowledgement. (17)Reference (18)1．IntroductionImagism was a movement in the early 20th-century Anglo-American poetry that favored precision of imagery, and clear, sharp language. The Imagists rejected the sentiment and discursiveness typical of much Romantic and Victorian poetry. This was in contrast to their contemporaries, the Georgian poets, who were by and large content to work within that tradition. Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet, critic and intellectual who was a major figure of the Modernist movement in the first half of the 20th century. He is generally considered the poet most responsible for defining and promoting a modernist aesthetic in poetry.[1]3His own significant contributions to poetry begin with his declare of Imagism, a movement in poetry which derived its technique from classical Chinese and Japanese poetry-stressing clarity, precision, and economy of language, and foregoing traditional rhyme and meter in order to, in Pound's words, ―compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in the sequence of the metronome.‖[2]11As the father of Modernism, Ezra Pound plays an important role in Poetry modernization process. Therefore, we can get a clear understanding of imagism poems by studying Pound‘s poems and translation works. The thesis will focus on studying image to analysis Ezra Pound‘s poems. According to Pound's Imagist poems and other predecessors‘studies of his works, this thesis will summarize the language characteristics of Pound‘s poetry and analysis his imagist poetry style, so as to provide some theoretical concept from the view of reading, understanding and appreciating modern English poetry, thus making it easier for Chinese readers to appreciate English poetry.The first part summarizes Ezra Pound‘s life and theoretical basis of Imagism. The second part, as analysis of Pound's poetry, departs into three parts—the use of image, concise language and musical rhythm. It introduces three kinds of combination of images, and uses Pound‘s poems to explain the combination of images. The third part is about the influence of Pound poetry on domestic and foreign literature2. Ezra Pound and ImagismAs the father of modernism which is the main stream of literature in the twentieth century, Ezra Pound definitely plays a predominant role in the evolution of modernist poetry. Its starting point is Imagism.Ezra Pound‘s Imagist theory is mainly based on the aesthetic theories proposed by W. B. Yeats, Ford Madox Ford and T. E. Hulme. Yeats is famous for a symbolist who emphasizes subjective conception and imaginative association，but this school tends to lapse into sentimentality; Ford is famous for an impressionist who emphasizes objective writing with clarity and precision, but this school tends to lapse into the level of description. Pound absor bs the strengths of Yeat‘s subjectivity and Ford‘s objectivity and finds a way to make natural objects convey subjective emotion by virtue of association of the mind.2.1 Ezra PoundEzra Pound(1885一1972)was born in Hally, Idaho, in October, 1885.Then he attended Hamilton College and the University of Pennsylvania，where he majored in romance Philology while reading through a large Portion of classical and European literature. Dissatisfied with the genteel tradition and Popular romanticism dominating the American literary tastes，Pound moved to Europe in1908一first to London，then to Paris，and finally to Rapallo, Italy. In 1909，Pound met W. B. Yeats and Ford Madox Ford. He was greatly influenced by these two and tried to combine Yeat‘s symbolism with Ford‘s i mpressionism. About the same period of time, Pound got in touch with T. E. Hulme and became interested in his Poetic theory.All these ideas became the theoretical basis of the well-known Imagist and V ortieist Movement. Later，inspired by American sinologi st Ernest Fenollosa‘s theory on the Chinese writing characters，Pound proposed the Ideogramic Method which was based on the chief principles of the Imagist and V orticist Movement. As the advocate and leader of the movement Pound exerted a great influence on the Imagist poetrywriters. Pound also attempted to combine poetry with music, painting and scu1pture.V ortieism was such a typical example.Ezra Pound is generally considered the poet most responsible for defining and promoting a modernist aesthetic in poetry. In the early teens of the twentieth century, he opened a seminal exchange of work and ideas between British and American writers, and was famous for the generosity with which he advanced the work of such major contemporaries as W. B. Yeats, Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, H. D., James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway and especially T. S. Eliot. Pound also had a profound influence on Irish writers W. B. Yeats and James Joyce.Pound is not only a poet, but also a translator, essayist and literary critic. His own significant contributions to poetry begin with his promulgation of Imagism, a movement in poetry which derived its technique from classical Chinese and Japanese poetry which are stressing clarity, precision, and economy of language, and foregoing traditional rhyme and meter in order to, in Pound's words, ―compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in the sequence of the metronome.‖ His later work, for nearly fifty years, focused on the encyclopedic epic poem he entitled The Cantos, which was regarded as poetic masterpiece of the twentieth century. He is really an original and creative poet in the twentieth century, a literary giant who plays a prominent role in the development of modernist poetry.2.2 ImagismImagism was a poetic movement which flourished in London between 1910 and 1917 and had an enduring and pervasive influence on English-language poetry in the twentieth century.The Imagists published four annual anthologies from 1914 to 1917, with a final anthology in 1930. They were led by Ezra Pound who first called them ―Les Imagists‖, choosing a French term to associate the group with the various French avant-garde movements which became the Roger Fry‘s influential Post-Impressionist exhibition in 1910. The group included Hilda Doolittle, John Gould Fletcher, Amy Lowell, Richard Aldington, and, marginally, D. H. Lawrence, but they had only a loose and shifting affiliation and it was mainly Pound‘s talents as a promoter and critic that gave a semblance of unity.Pound‘s favored spelling of Imagists was a gesture of homage to the first school ofmodern poets, the symbolists, whose best-known members were Baudelaire, Mallarme, Verlaine, and Rimbaud, but Pound criticized the French Symbolists as often as he praised them. The first principle of Imagism was ―Direct treatment of the thing‖[3]72, clearly in contrast to Mallarme‘s famous dictum that to name a thing was to take away half the pleasure and whereas Verlaine in his ―Art of Poetry‖advised an ―indefinite music‖. Pound spoke for an ―absolute rhythm‖, a rhythm that is in poetry which corresponds exactly to the emotion or shade of emotion to be expressed.Nonetheless, Pound‘s ascorbic but well-judged criticism of his contemporaries, his accurate sense of what was good in verse, and his own aphoristic brilliance, gave this small movement (which was not really even a movement outside of Pound‘s rhetoric) a formative role in defining the twentieth-century poet as someone who was in the intellectual avant-garde, purifying the language of the tribe, spurning flaccid and self-important and merely derived patterns of language use, and generally breaking with the idea of fixed metrical rules. Many of these principles were clearly articulated in the essay ―Imagism‖ in Poetry (Mar ch 1913) which was offered as an interview-cum-report by F. S. Flint but shows the hand of Pound throughout. According to Flint, the three principles of Imagism were:―1. Direct treatment of the ―thing‖, whether subjective or objective.2. To use absolutely no word that did not contribute to the presentation.3. As regarding rhythm: to compose in sequence of the musical phrase, not in sequence of a metronome. ‖[4]12In an essay ―A Few Don‘ts b y An Imagist‖ by Pound in the same issue offers a definition o f the Image as ―that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time‖[5]54, the key point being the compression of intellectual and emotional experience into an instant. He goes on to offer his own set of ―Don‘ts‖: ―Use no supe rfluous word, no adjective, which does not reveal something.Don‘t use such an expression as ―dim land of peace”. It dulls the image. It mixes an abstraction with the concrete. It comes from the writer‘s not realizing that the natural object is always the adequate symbol.Go in fear of abstractions. Don‘t retell in mediocre verse what has already been done in good prose. Don‘t think any intelligent person is going to be deceived when you try to shirk all the difficulties of the unspeakably cliff cult art of good prose by chopping your composition into line. ‖[6]313. Imagistic Features of Pound's PoetryImagist poetry has three distinctive artistic characteristics. First, the Imagist poems request to convey the complex imagery directly, use sculpture and painting in the performance of imagery. It objects to musical and mystery object to lyrics. It advances the ―Do not say‖ and ―Do not you narrative‖[6]9, only to show without comment. Second, the Imagist poems use concise language, no adjectives and qualifier, no decorative ―lace‖and flaunting words. It writes short lines, with imagery. Third, the Imagist poetry Images focus on the intrinsic rhythm of imagery combination, blend the imagery and the contained idea.3.1 The use of ImageThe word ―Image‖ used in the field of literature is derived from the theory of Chinese poetry. It is an important linguistic terms which have been widely used in Chinese poetry. Therefore, when people refer to ―image‖ in literature, it also refers to ―image‖ poetry. P oetry image is the basic constituent element of poetry. It is the soul and essence features of poetry, and it plays a vital role in poetry.Pound‘s work as poet, critic，editor，and promoter of the new style was crucial to its initial period，in the decade around the First World War，and what was most essential to his conception of what was truly modern was a single word: Image. Pound‘s best poems were assured achievement in the Imagist Movement when literature in English became recognizably modern. The modern revolution in literary style came from a main impulse一focus on the image.Aesthetic theorist and imagist poe t T. E. Hulme must be credited with the initial emphasis on the image，for he first formulated the doctrine that ―Images in verse are not mere decoration, but the very essence of an intuitive language.‖[7]79 But Hulme thought of himself as primarily a philosopher, using images as illustrations of ideas. While Pound was always primarily a poet，seeking philosophical justification for his intuitions;and it was Pound who pointed out the best working definition: ―An Image is that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an inst ant of time‖.[8]2It was also Pound who showed in practice how far this definition could be carried into the making of short and then longer poems. Pound emphasized the concentration of intellectual and emotional content possible in a poetic image, though it mirrored only a brief moment of experience. He took the image to be the poet‘s ―primary pigment‖and stressed the hardness, or concreteness, of sensory language, telling poets to ―Go in fear of abstractions‖. Besides concreteness, Pound stressed exactness of diction, the mot just of Flaubert, and clarity, and ―As regarding rhythm: to compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in the sequence of the metronome‖. Thus, along with the image emerged free verse, newly understood as an appropriate organic rhythm, suited to the mood of the individual poem.In short, Pound‘s Imagism was intended to carry symbolism forward towards a greater poetic realism, keeping the poet‘s vision always in touch with the world of his senses, holding firmly to the principle that truth should be visible in things, rather than in visible beyond them.As we all know ancient Chinese poetry and Japanese haiku had an important influence on Pound, especially the ancient Chinese poetry. Pound didn‘t just pay attention to the ‗exotic surface‘ of the Chinese language but its linguistic nature and the abstract feelings that lie behind it. He not only translated lots of Chinese poems but also learned the useful and particular writing techniques. It can be seen clearly the imitation of the style of Chinese poetry from Pound‘ poems.In the following text I will focus on three types of combination of image--image progress, image superposition and image juxtaposition. These three modes of combination of image are very typical East or Chinese-style image, which is characterized by only using nouns rather than verbs. This image processing techniques in ancient poetry in China is nothing unusual or surprising. And they are also wildly used in Pound‘s poetry and become his representative features.3.1.1Image ProgressImage progress is a combination of images which structured in accordance with the objective rule. It is a common writing technique used by ancient Chinese poets.For example, the famous Chinese poetry《敕勒歌》：“敕勒川，阴山下，天似穹庐，笼盖四野。