A Research Evaluation of Ezra Pound’s Poems

2015-02-14ZhuangYuanYuXueyong

语文学刊 2015年18期

关键词：庞德电子科技外语教学

○ Zhuang Yuan Yu Xueyong

(Hangzhou Dianzi University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, 310018)

A Research Evaluation of Ezra Pound’s Poems

○ Zhuang Yuan Yu Xueyong

(HangzhouDianziUniversity,Hangzhou,Zhejiang, 310018)

Ezra Pound, American poet, is the leading role of Imagist and Vorticist poetry. Pound wrote multitudinous works all his life, including his poetry works and translations. Influenced by ancient Chinese poems and Japanese haiku, Pound’s imagist poems ingeniously connect eastern and western culture, which has received a wide range of attention and analysis in academic circles. Based on Pound’s influence in the poetry field, this paper will make a literature review on the researches of Pound’s poems, with the purpose of making a summary of the existing researches and finding a new research standing point.

Ezra Pound, Pound’s poems, literature review

I. Introduction

Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30October 1885 ～ 1 November 1972) was an American expatriate poet and critic of the early modernist movement. Born in Hailey, Idaho, Pound got education from various schools early in his age. It was at that time that he wanted to be a poet. He published a limerick about American politician for the first time in 1896. Later, he completed two years of college at the University of Pennsylvania and earned a degree from Hamilton College in 1905. Having been teaching at Wabash College for two years, he travelled to Spain, where he worked as the literary executor of the scholar Ernest Fenellosa. During this period of time, he became interested in Chinese imagist poems and Japanese ones, which left an influence on his later poetic career. In 1913, he finishedIntheStationofMetro. In it, superfluous words and particularly adjectives were to be avoided. It was this poem that became one of the most famous imagist poems in the world later. After his marriage with Dorothy Shakespeare in 1914, he was selected to be the editor of the little review in 1917. Among this period, he finishedCathay. In 1924, he moved to Italy and did not return to the United States until 1945. In the year 1945, he was arrested on charges of treason for broadcasting fascist propaganda by radio to the United States during the Second World War. He was released the next year, but declared mentally ill. In 1958, he returned to Italy and settled in Venice, where he died, a semi-recluse, in 1972.

Throughout his life, Pound has created copious poems with his own style and translations of large amounts of Chinese poems. His contribution to poetry began with his promotion of two movements: Imagism and Vorticism. The previous was a movement that called for a return to more classical values, stressing clarity, precision and economy of language. The later one was a short-lived modernist movement in British art and poetry of the early 20th century, stressing powerful characteristics. Owing to this, Pound can be named as one of the most innovative American poets in the twentieth century.

Ⅱ. Studies Abroad

Hugh Kenner’sThePoundEra(1973) shows us the analysis of literature, biography and history in Pound’s poetry, which is generally considered the most famous guide to Pound’s creations.[1]Hugh Kenner’s another workThePoetryofEzraPound(1985) first presents us a comprehensive examination of the Cantos and Pound’s other major works that strongly influence the course of contemporary poetry, which also helps readers greatly to understand Pound’s works.[2]Rebecca Beasley’sEzraPoundandtheVisualCultureofModernism(2007), by exploring Pound’s early poetry in the context of American aestheticism and middle-class education and an overview of Pound’s Imagism, gives a detailed description of Pound’s education in visual culture.[3]TheCambridgeCompaniontoEzraPound(1999) edited by Ira B. Nadel ,consists of fifteen chapters by leading international scholars’ explanations on the poetics, foreign influences, economics, politics and publication history of Pound’s entire corpus, which is a authoritative and sustained research center of the versatile, influential and controversial modern poet.[4]

Along with the critical and textual discussions, there have been many important editorial projects, of which T. S. Eliot’s Literary Essays of Ezra Pound (1968)[5], Biographiq’s Ezra Pound - Modernist man(2008)[6]and T.S. Eliot’s Ezra Pound: his metric and poetry[7]are the most well-known ones.

Ⅲ. Studies in China

In China, Chinese scholars pay more attention to the influence of Chinese culture on Ezra Pound’s poetics and poetry writing.

Ezra Pound and Chinese poetry by Wang Jun compares the translation and creation of Pound with ancient Chinese poems and shows the importance of the beneficial cultural effect on Pound’s works.[8]51-56The Comparative Study of the Images in Imagist Poetry and Chinese Classical Poetry (2004) by LuoLang, compares the differences between the ancient Chinese imagist poems and those of Pound’s.[9]69-73He emphasizes the color effect, the sound effect, the dynamic effect of images as a typical case of western and oriental culture blending appearing in Pound’s poems. Ezra Pound and the formation of modernist poetry in English and American world by DongHongchuan, examines in details Pound’s advocacy of modern literary ideas. Other modern poets, growth with the assistance of Pound, Pound’s devotion to some modernist publications and periodicals.[10]34-38The Features of Chinese Poetry in Ezra Pound’sInaStationoftheMetro(2007) by Wu Di.[11]53-57In it, Wu analyzes the typical parallelism and the intervention of the concept of the Chinese “word” on the versification in the poemInaStationoftheMetro, which comes out to be the cultural significance in the course of China-Western cultural exchange. Ezra Pound’s Translation of Chinese Poetry as a Manifestation of Inter-subjectivity by He Xiaojia, WangYu (2013) studies the interaction among numerous subjects involved in Pound’s translation, the confluence of Chinese and western cultural elements, and mixed poetic theories in his translation, pointing out that although far from perfect, Pound’s translation of ancient Chinese poetry has unique aesthetic value as a manifestation of inter-subjectivity.[12]89-93

Ⅳ. Conclusion

According to the studies above, we can see that most of the studies abroad focus on the research of Ezra Pound as a modernist poet and the guided study of Pound’s big works, such asTheCantosandCathay. These studies are mostly standing in a general point of view. For the Chinese scholars, they prefer to emphasize the relationship between Chinese culture, Chinese ancient poems and Pound’s imagist poems, the influence of Chinese culture to Pound’s works. They concentrate on the study of Pound’s translation of Chinese ancient poems and essays. Some specific poetry researches are limited to one or two typical ones, suchasInaStationoftheMetro. However, as an advocate and promoter of Anglo-American modernist poetry movement, in fact, Pound has created numerous poems with a great value. These valuable works, till now, haven’t been examined well-rounded enough. As a result, more poetry works of Pound need to be studied.

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[2] Hugh K. 1985. The poetry of Ezra Pound[M].University of Nebraska Press.

[3] Rebecca B. 2010. Ezra Pound and the Visual Culture of Modernism[M].Cambridge University Press.

[4] Ira. B. Nadel. 2008. The cambridge introduction to Ezra Pound (1st.ed)[M].Cambridge university press & Shanghai foreign language education press.

[5] T. S. Elipt. 1968. Literary Essays of Ezra Pound[M].New Directions Publishing Corporation.

[6] Biographiq. 2008. Ezra Pound - Modernist man[M].Filiquarian Pub Llc.

[7] T. S. Elipt. 2004. Ezra Pound: his metric and poetry[M].Kessinger Publishing Co.

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