China and the West

Florence Wheelock Ayscough lebt in Boston und Shanghai.

William Ament hält sich in Owosso, Mich. auf.

Wallace Stevens, as an enthusiastic admirer of Chinese landscape painting, went to a few exhibitions of Far Eastern art in Boston and New York. 1908-1909 : Wallace Stevens' interest in Oriental art spurred him to study the subject extensively. 1909 he did reading about Chinese art in the Astor Library, New York and copied what he considered to be essential in his journal. These included Kakuso Okakura's The ideal of the East and Laurence Binyon's Painting in the Far East. "Kakuzo Okakura is a cultivated, but not an original thinker". In his reading and viewing of Chinese art his taste appeared specially for Song landscape painting that illustrates the Tao or the Chan with unnatural clarity.

Wallace Stevens and China : general
Quellen :
Beal, Samuel. Buddhism in China [ID D8373].
Binyon, Laurence. Painting in the Far East [ID D21512].
Duthuit, Georges. Chinese mysticism and modern painting [ID D30303].
Exhibition of Chinese sculpture, Han (206 B.C.-A.D. 220) to Sung (A.D. 960-1279) [ID D30325].
Fenollosa, Ernest. Epochs of Chinese and Japanese art [ID D5101].
Hackney, Louise Wallace. Guide-posts to Chinese painting [ID D30326].
Okakura, Kakuzô. The book of tea [ID D30306].
Okakura, Kakuzô. The ideals of the East [ID D30304].
Pope, Arthur. An introduction to the language of drawing and painting [ID D30305].

1925
Munson, Gorham B. The dandyism of Wallace Stevens. In : Dial ; vol. 79 (Nov. 1925).
Because of this tranquility, this well-fed and well-booted dandyism of contentment, Mr. Stevens has been called Chinese. Undeniably, he has been influenced by Chinese verse, as he has been by French verse, but one must not force the comparison. For Chinese poetry as a whole rests upon great humanistic and religious traditions : its quiet strength and peace are often simply by-products of a profound understanding ; its epicureanism is less an end, more a function, than the tranquility – may I say – the decidedly American tranquility of Wallace.

1993
Lloyd Haft : It is difficult to imagine a modern American poet whose work would be more difficult to translate into Chinese than that of Wallace Stevens. His esthetic, in which anything like rational understandability seems almost taboo and which continually prefers 'gaiety' or 'gaudiness' to the flat, spare, quasi-'objective' sound affected by many of his contemporaries, poses nightmares even for the native reader seeking comprehension. From the translator's point of view, another troublesome feature of Stevens' poetic world is that his central subjects, the 'mind' and the 'imagination', are terms more specific to the English language than many readers realize.

2003
Qian Zhaoming : Wallace Stevens's Chan-like notions are directly linked to his lifelong interest in Chan art.
In Bevis, William W. Mind of winter : Wallace Stevens, meditation, and literature. (Pittsburgh, Pa. : University of Pittsburgh Press, 1988), William Bevis states, "A number of Stevens' poems seem not only to use meditative issues and points of view, but also to imitate the structure of meditative experience, an advanced, sensate meditative experience that follows the middle way." For Bevis, Stevens's use of meditation is no proof for direct exchange with Chan. To quote his words, "Stevens seems to have arrived at his knowledge without significant help from Buddhists, scientists, or orientalists." In my view, Stevens's innate meditative detachment not only clarifies his well-known fascination with Chan art, but also multiplies the likelihood of an intimate transaction with its message. Chan art is designed to invite viewers to enter into it and lose themselves to its outlook. Stevens's habit of looking at things with meditative detachment almost ensures his entry into the nothing or the no-mind state of Chan art with the thing itself perceived. Okakura's The ideals of the East offers accounts of the origin of Chan, its emphasis on meditation, its disrespect for rituals, and, above all, what it means by 'suchness' . Binyon's Painting in the Far East similarly elaborates on Chan art. The essay on The noble features of the forest and the stream gives a superb insight into the Chan belief that people can enjoy 'the luxuries of nature' even 'without stepping out of their houses'.
It was Chan painting that played a principal role in elevating Stevens' detachment to a higher level of meditative experience.
One is offered three ways to grasp Chan : visual, verbal, and actional. Stevens was involved in all three during his formative years. It was his own meditative nature that inspired his to pursue Chan art. From there he moved on to read about Chan Buddhism.

2007
Huang, Xiaoyan. Guo jia she ke ji jin ke ti de jie duan xing cheng guo zhi yi. [ID D30293].
As a modern American poet, Wallace Stevens apparently assimilated the Chinese Cultural heritage in his poetry writing. We can sense the influences of Chinese culture here and there in his poems, essays, letters and journals as well. This paper attempts to explore the relations between Stevens and China, to analyze Chinese Daoism and the spirit of Chinese art absorbed in his poetry creating, and to find a new way to interpret Stevens and his poems.

2009
Devin Zuber : Stevens assembled a private art collection that included Japanese and Chinese prints, paintings, and Buddhist statues, as well as an impressive array of costly exhibition catalogues on Oriental art, in addition to numerous other books related to Buddhism and Eastern religions.
Stevens shared with Zen Buddhism a deep skepticism towards language as a system of representation ; one reason Zen painting developed as a kind of didactic tool in the way that it did stemmed from a strong conviction that words were woefully inadequate for the totality of experience.

Voynich, E.L. Works.
1897
Voynich, E.L. The gadfly. (New York, N.Y. : H. Holt, 1897).
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3431/3431.txt.
His manner was so bright and pleasant that Arthur felt at ease with him
at once. After some desultory conversation, the Director inquired how
long he had known Montanelli. "For about seven years. He came back from China when I was twelve years old."… "I can well believe it; he is a man whom no one can fail to admire—a most noble and beautiful nature. I have met priests who were out in China with him; and they had no words high enough to praise his energy and courage under all hardships, and his unfailing devotion…
This was the room where she had died. Her portrait was on the wall beside the bed; and on the table stood a china bowl which had been hers, filled with a great bunch of her favourite violets…
My father was generous enough not to divorce your mother when she confessed her fall to him; he only demanded that the man who had led her astray should leave the country at once; and, as you know, he went to China as a missionary…
"THE OTHER PEOPLE? The gamblers and the people of the house? Why, you don't understand! They were negroes and Chinese and Heaven knows what; and I was their servant--THEIR PROPERTY…
I suppose you have a humanitarian feeling about negroes and Chinese. Wait till you've been at their mercy !...

1901
Voynich, E.L. Jack Raymond. (London : W. Heinemann, 1901).
http://books.google.ch/
His sense of order would not tolerate useless growth of any kind ; therefore he was clean-shaven, showing the nakedness of the worst thing in his face - a Chinese insensitiveness, at the corners of the mouth…
He drew out of it first a little book, villainously printed on bad paper, and glanced at the title. It was in English, but might as well have been in Chinese, for all he understood of it…

1904
Voynich, E.L. Olive Latham. (London, W. Heinemann, 1904),
They all looked to him as much alike as so many Chinese idols, rather the worse for wear.

Voynich, E.L. The gadfly. (New York, N.Y. : H. Holt, 1897).
This novel was very popular in the Soviet Union and was the top bestseller and compulsory reading there, and was seen as ideologically useful; for similar reasons, the novel has been popular in the People's Republic of China as well.
Der Spiegel ; 16.7.1958 : Allein in der Volksrepublik China wurden bereits 700 000 Exemplare gedruckt. Der Vorsitzende des mongolischen Schriftsteller-Verbandes schrieb, die Autorin sei das Idol der dortigen Jugend.

Lü Haihuan ist Gesandter der chinesischen Gesandtschaft in Berlin.

Crane, Stephen. The third violet. (New York, N.Y. : D. Appleton and Co., 1897).
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/19593/19593.txt.
He lay back in the long grass and contemplated the clouds. "You should have been a Chinese soldier of fortune," she said…
"I have always said that you should have been a Chinese soldier of fortune," she observed musingly. "Your daring and ingenuity would be prized by the Chinese."
"There are innumerable tobacco jars in China," he said, measuring the advantages. "Moreover, there is no perspective. You don't have to walk two miles to see a friend…
"No," she answered; "I had forgotten it completely. Did we ride behind your father's oxen?"
After a moment he said: "That remark would be prized by the Chinese…

Johan Wilhelm Normann Munthe wird zum offiziellen chinesischen Mandarin ernannt.

Aleksei Ivanovich Ivanov studiert Chinesisch und Mandjurisch an der Universität St. Petersburg.

Heinrich Cordes ist Dolmetscher an der Botschaft in Beijing.

Nigel Oliphant kommt 1897 in Beijing an und arbeitet 1899-1900 für den Chinese Postal Service.

Rounsevelle Wildman ist Konsul des amerikanischen Konsulats in Hong Kong und Macao.

Chinesische Malereien auf Papier und Seide aus der Sammlung des Herrn Professor F. Hirth. Ausstellung der Sammlung Friedrich Hirth im Zoologischen und Anthropologisch-Ethnographischen Museum in Dresden.

Pierre Bousquet wird als Missionar ins Tal des Oujiang-Flusses geschickt.

Michie Forbes Anderson Fraser ist nach Heimurlaub Konsul des britischen Konsulats in Wuhu (Anhui).

Henry Bax-Ironside ist Sekretär der britischen Gesandtschaft in Beijing.

Thomas Bryan Clarke-Thornhill ist Sekretär der britischen Gesandtschaft in China.

Walter James Clennell ist handelnder Chief clerk des Supreme Court in Shanghai.

Everard Duncan Home Fraser ist handelnder Konsul des britischen Konsulats auf Pagoda Island.