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Abstract: T. S. Eliot’s impersonality theory is far more profound compared with his other contemporary poetics. Therefore it touches the acquisitive mind of certain Chinese poets in the great social upheaval of China. In the discussion of two typical instances, we will approach the possibility of the cultural acceptance of Eliot’s impersonal theory in China.
Key words: Impersonality theory T. S. Eliot China Cultural acceptance
Eliot is both a well-known poet and critic. Some Eliot’s early essays concerns the evaluation on his some favorite poets, such as Swinburne, Blake, Marvell and Dante, whose poetics technique will possess something relative to Eliot’s impersonal principle. Eliot attach much importance to the application of this principle: It is conductive for Blake to accessing to the traditional and modern education characteristic of impersonal ration and common sense for Blake’s poems are so indulgent in his philosophy that the works present certain displeasure for reading. As for Swinburne and Dante, it seems they have one point in common with each other, namely, the impersonal inscape in their major poems enables them both to set up a poetic integer. The complete and independent literary world created by Swinburne’s inclines itself to the rationality and eternity, whereas Dante’s embodies, to some extent, certain university, with his imaged characters. The above all concentrates on the benefits the impersonality ideal brings forth. Swinburne may take advantage of it to “integrate the language and object into a whole” with certain sort of healthy and precise words. Blake should have given priority to this principle as to form his moral and spiritual development. We see that whenever Eliot gives comments on other poets, he does not deviate from his own impersonality principle even if to mention a few words. It indicates the vital importance of this poetic ideal in his poetic theories.
“For more than three decades” before the second world war “you could scarcely pick up a poem by a young writer without overhearing Eliot somewhere in the background…In the twenties and thirties one had to follow Eliot in order to win a reputation or an audience”[1] There is no doubt that, as one of the greatest Modernist poets, Eliot has been an important influence on young European poets during this period. The authority of Eliot arrives at its height from 1922, when The Waste Land was published into the 1930s. The works are popular with the younger readers. It seems universal because young poets in another continent have the same yearning mind as those European ones. They are some Chinese young progressive writers. The previous paragraph indicates that Eliot views impersonality as a major literary taste and ideal. Emotion is naturally disordered and must be disciplined.“The ideal of impersonality might mean that the writer does not express his personal emotion at all; more exactly, he should express an emotion derived from and appropriate to whatever he contemplates.”[2] He also assumed earlier that a poet can express his emotion only through an “objective correlative”. The Chinese poets, as Eliot’s faithful accepters, deliberately apply this theory into their productive practice. It seems reasonable for them to seek for an emotional order and external authority in the literary world through their intellectual awareness and control, just as Eliot did because the external world they rooted in is out of order and control. Chinese poets are unable to find a firm social foothold in the darkest historical period of China. In addition they abandon Chinese tradition from many aspects. Therefore these modern poets have recourse to the objectivity and orderliness of the inner world, changing the lyric image of traditional poet into a contemplative observer towards human life and spirit. Take Bian Zhilin for example. In his poems Bian Zhilin consciously obscures the subjective emotional features under the camouflage of writing appearance. As the words in The Decorating Desk says:“While you are decorating your appearance, you are loosing the original looking.” Bian Zhilin is always endeavoring to “loosing the original looking” of the poem’s sentiment. He transforms the traditional poem of lyric style to the one of conveying “the poetic experience”, which characteristic of his imitative “impersonal ideal”.
In Too Much Rain (Lao Wang is reluctant enough to go on sales/Xiao Zhou is waiting under the penthouse/Here comes an old man under an umbrella/“Good morning”, Do you still wanna sell the baked pies?/“I should go around even if there is no good sales.) The writing of several characters, the ordinary greetings or the simple setting all conceals the poet’s sincere sympathy for the working people. We do not hear him sighing a deep sorrow at their sufferings, merely seeing an indifferent representation. So quiet a typical implementation of“impersonal” standard comes into effect. Inherently Bian Zhilin’s words prove this:“I wrote poems and have been writing poems the moment I can’t help expressing my emotion. Nevertheless I incline to control myself as if to deliberately act as a ‘cold-blooded animal’.” [3] Hence controlling the personal emotion is not Bian’s temporary favorite style but his life-long pursuit in writing poems.
There is another instance, Mu Dan, who once interprets his modernized poetic codes:“… to write a poem by means of non-poetic words. There lies the difficulty in producing it, that is to say, it is not stuffed with materials available. The poet is supposed to express the thought in the poem by certain image, which enables the thought more original and sparkling” [4] Here the image described is, in effect, comparable to Eliot’s objective correlative. Its function is to surpass the poetic personality and chronological fluidity, and to achieve the effect generally sensed. In At the Severe Winter Night “a solemn face full of creases”, the cries of boys, the ancestor’s dormancy in the tomb, all imply the repetition of stable life in the countryside. “At the door, those used sickle/pickaxe, oxbow, millstone, cart/is silently bearing the burden of slowly descending snowflake”. By his observation, Mu Dan preserved for us a period of life experience in the northern countryside in the 1940s, a kind of emotional memory. He transferred the routine setting into the artistic structure, signaled by verbal codes. We can figure out that Mu Dan’s emotion transferred in the poem is not personal; it is wholly evoked by the object of contemplates, to which it is adequate for his condensed and detached inscape.
Through the two instances above we can sense that Bian Zhilin and Mu Dan use Eliot’s impersonality theories for reference and contribute to the development of native literary production. They depart from the traditional Chinese poetics and successfully apply western poetics into their poems. Here we see certain possibility of cultural acceptation, namely, in that special historical background, Eliot’s impersonality theory is a superior weapon to solve the conflict between history and presence.
Notes:
[1][2]David Perkins: A History of Modern Poetry-Modernism and After The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press 1987 p4, p14
[3]卞之琳:《雕虫纪历》(自序)人民教育出版社 1989
[4]郭保卫:《书信今尤在,诗人何处寻》,《一个民族已经起来》 江苏人民出版社,1987
Key words: Impersonality theory T. S. Eliot China Cultural acceptance
Eliot is both a well-known poet and critic. Some Eliot’s early essays concerns the evaluation on his some favorite poets, such as Swinburne, Blake, Marvell and Dante, whose poetics technique will possess something relative to Eliot’s impersonal principle. Eliot attach much importance to the application of this principle: It is conductive for Blake to accessing to the traditional and modern education characteristic of impersonal ration and common sense for Blake’s poems are so indulgent in his philosophy that the works present certain displeasure for reading. As for Swinburne and Dante, it seems they have one point in common with each other, namely, the impersonal inscape in their major poems enables them both to set up a poetic integer. The complete and independent literary world created by Swinburne’s inclines itself to the rationality and eternity, whereas Dante’s embodies, to some extent, certain university, with his imaged characters. The above all concentrates on the benefits the impersonality ideal brings forth. Swinburne may take advantage of it to “integrate the language and object into a whole” with certain sort of healthy and precise words. Blake should have given priority to this principle as to form his moral and spiritual development. We see that whenever Eliot gives comments on other poets, he does not deviate from his own impersonality principle even if to mention a few words. It indicates the vital importance of this poetic ideal in his poetic theories.
“For more than three decades” before the second world war “you could scarcely pick up a poem by a young writer without overhearing Eliot somewhere in the background…In the twenties and thirties one had to follow Eliot in order to win a reputation or an audience”[1] There is no doubt that, as one of the greatest Modernist poets, Eliot has been an important influence on young European poets during this period. The authority of Eliot arrives at its height from 1922, when The Waste Land was published into the 1930s. The works are popular with the younger readers. It seems universal because young poets in another continent have the same yearning mind as those European ones. They are some Chinese young progressive writers. The previous paragraph indicates that Eliot views impersonality as a major literary taste and ideal. Emotion is naturally disordered and must be disciplined.“The ideal of impersonality might mean that the writer does not express his personal emotion at all; more exactly, he should express an emotion derived from and appropriate to whatever he contemplates.”[2] He also assumed earlier that a poet can express his emotion only through an “objective correlative”. The Chinese poets, as Eliot’s faithful accepters, deliberately apply this theory into their productive practice. It seems reasonable for them to seek for an emotional order and external authority in the literary world through their intellectual awareness and control, just as Eliot did because the external world they rooted in is out of order and control. Chinese poets are unable to find a firm social foothold in the darkest historical period of China. In addition they abandon Chinese tradition from many aspects. Therefore these modern poets have recourse to the objectivity and orderliness of the inner world, changing the lyric image of traditional poet into a contemplative observer towards human life and spirit. Take Bian Zhilin for example. In his poems Bian Zhilin consciously obscures the subjective emotional features under the camouflage of writing appearance. As the words in The Decorating Desk says:“While you are decorating your appearance, you are loosing the original looking.” Bian Zhilin is always endeavoring to “loosing the original looking” of the poem’s sentiment. He transforms the traditional poem of lyric style to the one of conveying “the poetic experience”, which characteristic of his imitative “impersonal ideal”.
In Too Much Rain (Lao Wang is reluctant enough to go on sales/Xiao Zhou is waiting under the penthouse/Here comes an old man under an umbrella/“Good morning”, Do you still wanna sell the baked pies?/“I should go around even if there is no good sales.) The writing of several characters, the ordinary greetings or the simple setting all conceals the poet’s sincere sympathy for the working people. We do not hear him sighing a deep sorrow at their sufferings, merely seeing an indifferent representation. So quiet a typical implementation of“impersonal” standard comes into effect. Inherently Bian Zhilin’s words prove this:“I wrote poems and have been writing poems the moment I can’t help expressing my emotion. Nevertheless I incline to control myself as if to deliberately act as a ‘cold-blooded animal’.” [3] Hence controlling the personal emotion is not Bian’s temporary favorite style but his life-long pursuit in writing poems.
There is another instance, Mu Dan, who once interprets his modernized poetic codes:“… to write a poem by means of non-poetic words. There lies the difficulty in producing it, that is to say, it is not stuffed with materials available. The poet is supposed to express the thought in the poem by certain image, which enables the thought more original and sparkling” [4] Here the image described is, in effect, comparable to Eliot’s objective correlative. Its function is to surpass the poetic personality and chronological fluidity, and to achieve the effect generally sensed. In At the Severe Winter Night “a solemn face full of creases”, the cries of boys, the ancestor’s dormancy in the tomb, all imply the repetition of stable life in the countryside. “At the door, those used sickle/pickaxe, oxbow, millstone, cart/is silently bearing the burden of slowly descending snowflake”. By his observation, Mu Dan preserved for us a period of life experience in the northern countryside in the 1940s, a kind of emotional memory. He transferred the routine setting into the artistic structure, signaled by verbal codes. We can figure out that Mu Dan’s emotion transferred in the poem is not personal; it is wholly evoked by the object of contemplates, to which it is adequate for his condensed and detached inscape.
Through the two instances above we can sense that Bian Zhilin and Mu Dan use Eliot’s impersonality theories for reference and contribute to the development of native literary production. They depart from the traditional Chinese poetics and successfully apply western poetics into their poems. Here we see certain possibility of cultural acceptation, namely, in that special historical background, Eliot’s impersonality theory is a superior weapon to solve the conflict between history and presence.
Notes:
[1][2]David Perkins: A History of Modern Poetry-Modernism and After The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press 1987 p4, p14
[3]卞之琳:《雕虫纪历》(自序)人民教育出版社 1989
[4]郭保卫:《书信今尤在,诗人何处寻》,《一个民族已经起来》 江苏人民出版社,1987