China and the West

Moore, Marianne. Well moused, lion. In : The Dial ; no 76 (Jan. 1924). [Review of Wallace Stevens' Harmonium. (New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 1923].
In this book, Stevens calls imagination "the will of things", "the magnificent cause of being", and demonstrated how imagination may evade "the world without imagination"… 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,
And certainly in dogged craftsmanship. Infinitely conscious in his processes, he says
Speak even as if I did not hear you speaking
But spoke for you perfectly in my thoughts.
Note : Tu Muh [Du Mu] : Tang period Chinese poet whose work Marianne Moor4e had seen at the Metropolitan Museum in an exhibition of Chinese paintings, 7 April 1923.