China and the West

Moore, Marianne. The complete poems [ID D30312].
1920
Moore, Marianne. Picking and choosing. In : Dial ; April (1920).
… Gordon Craig with his "this is I" and "this is mine", with his three wise men, his "sad French greens", and his "Chinese cherry"…

1921
Moore, Marianne. England. In : Moore, Marianne. Poems. (London : The Egoist Press, 1921).
“…The sublimated wisdom of China, Egyptian discernment, the cataclysmic torrent of emotion compressed in the verbs of the Hebrew language…”

1921
Marianne Moore. He made this screen. In : Moore, Marianne. Poems. (London : The Egoist Press, 1921).
He made this screen
not of silver nor of coral,
but of weatherbeaten laurel.
Here, he introduced a sea
uniform like tapestry;
here, a fig-tree; there, a face;
there, a dragon circling space --
designating here, a bower;
there, a pointed passion-flower.

1922
Moore, Marianne. People's surroundings. In : Dial ; June (1922).
…When you take my time, you take something I had meant to use ;
the highway hid by fir trees in rhododendron twenty feet deep,
the peacocks, hand-forged gates, old Persian velvet,
roses outlined in pale black on an ivory ground,
the pierced iron shadows of the cedars,
Chinese carved glass, old Waterford, lettered ladies ;
landscape gardening twisted into permanence…
a green piece of tough translucent parchment,
where the crimson, the copper, and the Chinese vermilion of the poincianas
set fire to the masonry and turquoise blues refute the clock…

1923
Moore, Marianne. Bowls. In : Secession ; no 6 (July 1923).
on the green
with lignum vitae balls and ivory markers,
the pins planted in wild duck formation,
and quickly dispersed –
by this survival of ancient punctilio
in the manner of Chinese carved carving,
layer after layer exposed by certainty of touch and unhurried incision…

1923
Moore, Marianne. Novices. In : The chapbook : a monthly miscellany ; no 36 (April 1923).
… averse from the antique
with "that tinge of sadness about it which a reflective mind always feels,
it is so little and so much"…
Note : Line 15 : "The Chinese objects of art and porcelain disperses by Messrs. Puttick and Simpson on the 18th had that tinge of sadness which a reflective minde always feels ; it is so little and so much". Arthur Hadyn, Illustrated London News, February 26, 1921.

1924
Moore, Marianne. Sea unicorns and land unicorns. In : Dial ; Nov. (1924).
…Thus personalities by nature much opposed,
can be combined in such a way
that when they do agree, their unanimity is great,
"in politics, in trade, law, sport, religion,
China-collecting, tennis, and church-going".

1924
Moore, Marianne. Well moused, lion. In : The Dial ; no 76 (Jan. 1924).
Review of Stevens, Wallace. Harmonium. (New York, N.Y. : A.A. Knopf, 1923).
http://www.jstor.org/stable/441107.
… One feels, however, an achieved remoteness as in Tu Muh's [Du Mu] lyric criticism. : "Powerful is the painting… and high is it hung on the spotless wall in the lofty hall of your mansion"…
In his positiveness, aplomb, and verbal security, he has the mind and the method of China ; in such controversial effects as :
Of what was it I was thinking ?
So the meaning escapes…

1932
Moore, Marianne. No swan so fine. In : Poetry ; vol. 41, no 1 (Oct. 1932).
"No water so still as the
dead fountains of Versailles." No swan,
with swart blind look askance
and gondoliering legs, so fine
as the chinz china one with fawn¬
brown eyes and toothed gold
collar on to show whose bird it was.
Oswald, Elaine ; Gale, Robert L. On Marianne Moore’s life and career.
http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/m_r/moore/life.htm
"No Swan So Fine" suggests that a beautiful china swan, symbol of art, has serenely outlasted Louis XV of France, its cocky whilom owner.

1933
Moore, Marianne. The plumet basilisk. In : Hound & horn ; vol. 7, no 1 (Oct/Dec. 1933).
In Costa Rica
In blazing driftwood
the green keeps showing at the same place ;
as, intermittently, the fire opal shows blue and green.
In Costa Rica the true Chinese lizard face
is found, of the amphibious falling dragon, the living firework…
As by a Chinese brush, eight green
bands are painted on
the tail – as piano keys are barred
by five black stripes across the white…
Note : Lines 13-15 : Frank Davis, 'The Chinese Dragon', Illustrated London News, August 23, 1930 : "He is the god of Rain, and the Ruler of Rivers, Lakes, and Seas. For six months of the year he hibernates in the depths of the sea, living in beautiful palaces … We learn from a book of the T'ang Dynasty that 'it may cause itself to become visible or invisible at will, and it can become long or short, and coarse or fine, at its good pleasure'." A dragon "is either born a dragon (and true dragons have nine sons) or becomes one by transformation." There is a "legend of the carp that try to climb a certain cataract in the western hills. Those that succeed become dragon."
Sekundärliteratur
1999
Cynthia Stami : In an early manuscript version of 'The plumet basiliks' Moore included four additional stanzas. These lines show that Asia, and particularly China, provide a source of that myth and story so critical to establishing this remove :
"This is the feather basilisk
of travellers' tales, of which a pair stood
bodyguard beside Confucius' crib : aquatic thing
lizard-fairy detested by such dragonhood
as Michael fought."
"When two plumet territories touch,
the masters of them are dramatic
without shedding blood, exerting charm as Chinese dragon –
whiskers in a crystal handle charm ; or as thick-
flowering orchids gather dragons, in the East, by forming
clouds for them."

1934
Moore, Marianne. Nine nectarines. In : Poetry ; vol. 45, no 2 (Nov. 1934).
Arranged by two's as peaches are,
at the intervals that all may live –
eight and a single one, on twigs that
grew the year before – they look like
a derivative ;
although not uncommonly
the opposite is seen –
nine peaches on a nectarine.
Fuzzless through slender crescent leaves
Of green or blue or both, in the Chinese style, the four
pairs' half-moon leaf-mosaic turns
out to the sun the sprinkled blush
of puce-American-Beauty pink
applied to beeswax gray by the
uninquiring brush
of mercantile bookbinding.
like the peach 'Yu', the red-
cheeked peach which cannot aid the dead,
but eaten in time prevents death,
the Italian peach nut, Persian plum, Ispahan
secluded wall-grown nectarine,
as wild spontaneous fruit was
found in China first. But was it wild ?
Prudent de Candolle would not say.
One perceives no flaws
in this emblematic group of nine, with leaf window
unquilted by 'curculio'
which someone once depicted on
this much-mended plate
or in the also accurate
unantlered moose or Iceland horse
or ass asleep against the old
thick, low-leaning nectarine that is the
color of the shrub-tree's brownish
flower.
A Chinese "understands
the spirit of the wilderness"
and the nectarine-loving kylin of pony appearance – the long-
tailed or the tailless
small cinnarmon-brown, common
camel-haired unicorn
with antelope feet and no horn,
here enameled on porcelain.
It was a Chinese
Who imagined this masterpiece.
Notes : (1) "The Chinese believe the oval peaches which are very red on one side, to be a symbol of long life… According to the word of Chin-noug-king, the peach 'Yu' prevents death. If it is not eaten in time, it at least preserves the body from decay until the end of the world." Alphonse de Candolle, Origin of Cultivated Plants (Appleton, 1886 ; Hafner, 1959).
(2) New York Sun, July 2, 1932. The World Today, by Edgar Snow, from Soochow, China. "An old gentleman of China, whom I met when I first came to this country, volunteered to name for me what he called the 'six certainties'. He said : 'You may be sure that the clearest jade comes from Yarkand, the prettiest flowers from Szechuen, the most fragile porcelain from Kingtehchen, the finest tea from Fukien, the sheerest silk from Hangchow, and the most beautiful women from Soochow."
(3) Line 41 : Kylin (or Chinese unicorn). Frank Davis, Illustrated London News, March 7, 1931. "It has the body of a stag, with a single horn, the tail of a cow, horses's hoofs, a yellow belly, and hair of five colours."
Sekundärliteratur
1971-1972
David Happell Hsin-Fu Wand : "Nine nectarines" was originally entitled "Nine nectarines and other porcelain". The might have gained her knowledge of the kylin not only through the Illustrated London news but also through her coinnoisseurship of Chinese porcelain. Moore introduces to her American readers a familiar symbol in classical Chinese art, 'the nectuarine-loving kylin, better known to the Chinese as the qilin, the fabulous beast resembles the Chinese dragon in its appearance. That the kylin is gentle evene benevolent is attested by a description in the Shi jing. Because a kylin 'was seen just before the birth of Confucius', it is regarded as a personal emblem of Confucius.
1995
Lina Unali : The poem is an appreciation of Chinese culture, of Chinese porcelain, of the objects painted on it, of their significance. At the root of Moore's inspiration there is always a need to communicate a dynamic discovery of new values objectified in natural elements and in artefacts, the products of artistic of literary creation. Her attitude is fully positive, surprised, enchanted.
1999
Cynthia Stamy : Moore used only a single Chinese word, in 'Nine nectarines' referring to the 'yu' peach to which the Chinese attribute longevity and life-saving qualities. If she did not understand the fundamentals of pronunciation of the Chinese language, then it is likely that this syllable functioned for her as a proper noun or as and adjective.
2003
Qian Zhaoming : In June 1934, when Moore sent her poem Nine nectarines to 'Poetry' to be published together with The Buffalo, she offered the title 'Imperious ox, imperial dish' for both pieces. Evidently she was aware that her objet d'art adorned with a nectarine or peach motif was once a dish reserved in China for imperial use. Her image goes beyond a single picture to include features of several peach motifs on Ming-Qing wares.
2006
Victoria Bazin : In Nine nectarines the dialectic of the exotic and the everyday is embedded in the Chinese porcelain plate or, more specifically, the image depicted by the Chinese artist on the plate. The poem is a tribute to the art of the Chinese, then in terms of its sources, it becomes possible to trace the exotic back to its everyday origins. The poem reinforces 'china' as a site of exotic difference by repeatedly pointing to its own difficulties in translating this ancient art into its own Western terms. The attempt to translate pictures into words is compared to the attempts of the Western speaker to understand the inscrutable culture of the Orient. Subjects, verbs and conjunctives are excluded from a language intent on reproducing itself as a materially dense and complex moment rather than a sequential narrative. Yet the poem falters frequently in its attempt to imitate its graphic counterpart. In spite of itself, it offers information that refers to narrative sequence and chronology noting that the nectarines grow 'on twigs that grew the year before'. The art of the Chinese becomes not a form of enquiry or 'observation' but a distillation of something ancient, mystical and ultimately untranslatable. The accuracy of the Chinese artist's representational scene is linked rhetorically to the peach, the fruit that, according to Chinese lore, 'cannot aid the dead, but eaten in time prevents death'. Moore's poem is inscribed by the desire, producing an idealized image of Chinese art that is unfathomable and therefore beyond the reach of modernity's rationalizing processes. 'China' represents a Western and distinctly modernist fantasy of ideological immunity, signaling both the desire for and the impossibility of art forms 'untouched' by modernity. The attempt to resist co-opting 'China' to maintain its otherness, its distinctiveness from the Western imagination only serves to reveal the extent to which it is not 'a Chinese who imagined this masterpiece'.

1935
Moore, Marianne. Half deity. In : Direction ; no. 1 (Jan.-March 1935).
Defeated but encouraged by each new gust
of wind, forced by the summer sun to plant,
she stands on rug-soft grass ; though some are not
permitted to gaze informally
on majesty in such a manner as she
is gazing here.
Moore, Marianne. Note to Half deity in What are years (1941).
The note cites an interview by Edmund Gillian : 'Meeting the Emperor Pu Yi' (New York Sun ; no 1, Dec. 1934) and Pu Yi's remark : 'It is not permitted'.
Sekundärliteratur
Cynthia Stamy : The half deity is also 'half worm' – a butterfly. The poem takes on a parallel significance, reflecting on the unnatural restrictions which imperial life in China imposed.

1941
Moore, Marianne. He "Digesteth Harde Yron". In : Partisan review ; vol. 8, no 4 (1941).
He "Digesteth Harde Yron"
…in S¬like foragings as he is
preening the down on his leaden-¬skinned back.
The egg piously shown
as Leda's very own
from which Castor and Pollux hatched,
was an ostrich¬ egg. And what could have been more fit
for the Chinese lawn it
grazed on as a gift to an
emperor who admired strange birds, than this
one who builds his mud-made
nest in dust yet will wade
in lake or sea till only the head shows.

1941
Moore, Marianne. Smooth gnarled crape myrtle. In : Moore, Marianne. The collected poems. (New York, N.Y. : Viking Press, 1941).
A brass-green bird with grass-
green throat smooth as a nut springs from
twig to twig askew, copying the
Chinese flower piece – business-like atom
in the stiff- leafed tree's blue-
pink dregs-of-wine pyramids
of mathematic
circularity…
as in the acrobat Li Siau Than,
gibbon-like but limberer,
defying gravity,
nether side arched up,
cup on head not upset –
China's very most ingenious man.

1951
Moore, Marianne. Critics and connoisseurs. In : Moore, Marianne. Collected poems. (New York, N.Y. ; Macmillan, 1951).
There is a great amount of poetry in unconscious fastidiousness. Certain Ming
products, imperial floor coverings of coach-
wheel yellow, are well enough in their way but I have seen something
that I like better…

1956
Moore, Marianne. Logic and "the magic flute". In : Moore, Marianne. Like a bulwark. (New York, N.Y. : Viking Press, 1956).
Up winding stair,
here, where, in what theater lost ?
was I seeing a ghost –
a reminder at least
of a sunbeam or moonbeam
that has not a waist ?
by hasty hop
or accomplished mishap,
the magic flute and harp
somehow confused themselves
with China's precious wentletrap…

1956
Moore, Marianne. Tom Fool at Jamaica. In : Moore, Marianne. Like a bulwark. (New York, N.Y. : Viking Press, 1956).
"Chance is a regrettable impurity."
Sekundärliteratur
David Hsin-Fu Wand : Marianne Moore has the habit of quoting from other writers, including such lines from the Yi jing.

1959
Moore, Marianne. O to be a dragon. (New York, N.Y. : Viking Press, 1959).
If I, like Solomon, …
could have my wish –
my wish … O to be a dragon,
a symbol of the power of Heaven – of silkworm
size or immense ; at times invisible.
Felicitous phenomenon !
Note : Dragon : see secondary symbols, Volume II of The Tao of Painting, translated and edited by Mai-mai Sze, Bollingen Series 49 (New York : Pantheon, 1956 ; Modern Library edition, p. 57).
Sekundärliteratur
1972
David Happell Hsin-Fu Wand : Moore was appropriating a symbol commonly found in both classical Chinese art and literature. For the dragon as a symbol in her poetry is not the evil Occidental dragon, it is the benevolent Chinese dragon which befriends the people, and especially the framers, to whom it brings rain and fertile crops. Moore's wish 'to be a dragon' is an invocation to 'the power of heaven' to help her become adaptable or flexible in her own writing. Although she uses the symbol of the Chinese dragon, she does not sound like any classical Chinese poet. This is because the form and rhythm of her poem are idiosyncratically Moore's and do not bear the slightest resemblance to those of any Chinese poem. She utilized the Chinese symbol to serve her own purpose, since she harnesses the Chinese dragon as her muse in her poetic journey.
1995
Lina Unali : Moore describes the mythical animal of the Chinese tradition as a symbol of power and expresses her wish to identify with it. The meaning of the poem is to be found in the relationship between two different artistic and intellectual experiences, both acquired by the poet, that of the Chinese iconographic tradition and of Taoism as expounded by Chinese masters such as Laozi and Zhuangzi. In Moore the dragon became the emblem of a multiplicity of elements that she probably felt Western culture had not been able convincingly to produce though most of her favourite animals shared some of the traits of the Chinese dragon. In her poetic imagination the dragon's power lies in the immense number of its often contrasting all-positive capacities. The dragon is interpreted by Moore as a powerful symbol of all beneficent tendencies, of all vitality, beauty, respect for human life, elevation, power on earth and in the heavens.
1999
Cynthia Stamy : Moore chose from among several species of a dragon the 'long' dragon, a bringer of rain and a whimsical spirit of changeable aspect.

1962
Moore, Marianne. Blue bug. In : The New Yorker ; May 26 (1962).
… bug brother to an Arthur
Mitchell dragonfly,
speeding to left,
speeding to right ; reversible,
like "turns in an ancient Chinese
melody, a thirteen
twisted silk-string three-finger solo".
There they are, Yellow River-scroll accuracies.

1966
Moore, Marianne. Tell me, tell me. (New York, N.Y. : Viking Press, 1966).
… It appeared : gem, burnished rarity
and peak of delicacy –
in contrast with grievance touched off on
any ground – the absorbing
geometry of a fantasy :
a James, Miss Potter, Chinese
"passion for the particular", of a
Tired man who yet, at dusk,
Cut a masterpiece of cerise…