“William Carlos Williams and traditions in Chinese poetry” (Publication, 1975)
Year
1975
Text
Wells, Henry W. William Carlos Williams and traditions in Chinese poetry. In : The literary half-yearly ; vol. 16, no 1 (1975). (WillW6)
Type
Publication
Mentioned People (1)
Williams, William Carlos
(Rutherford, N.J. 1883-1963 Rutherford, N.J. ) : Dichter, Schriftsteller
Subjects
Literature : Occident : United States of America
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References / Sources
Chronology Entries (2)
| # | Year | Text | Linked Data |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1909-1966 |
William Carlos Williams : Allgemein Quellen : Brouner, Walter Brooks ; Mow, Fung Yuet. Chinese made easy. (New York, N.Y. : Macmillan, 1904). Confucius. The unwobbling pivot and The great digest [ID D29063]. Fenollosa, Ernest. Instigations [ID D22141]. Giles, Herbert A. A history of Chinese literature [ID D7726]. The new poetry : an anthology. Ed. by Harriet Monroe and Alice Corbin Henderson. (New York, N.Y. : Macmillan, 1918). Pound, Ezra. Lustra [ID D29059]. Rexroth, Kenneth. One hundred poems from the Chinese [ID D29176]. Waley, Arthur. A hundred and seventy Chinese poems [ID D8884]. Sekundärliteratur Henry W. Wells : William Carlos Williams's poetry is based on irony, paradox and contradiction. He became a violent partisan of the moral and aesthetic standards of the West and scarcely less in accord with those of the East. With the Chinese he cultivates violent transitions. Connectives are flagrantly omitted, stimulating imagination, prohibiting redundancy. Like the Chinese poets when seen through Western eyes, Williams tolerates no stale, flat, conventional word order. Like so many of his poems as well as poems by Du Fu and Li Bo, the subject is a landscape with a few buildings as supplementary features. The major theme is certainly the devastation of the landscape. Like the Chinese poets, he favors ambiguous, especially the earliest days of spring, when, in the chill, clear air one doubts whether spring has actually arrived or winter still lingers. His own verse does not even give evidence that he had at any time digested the full meaning of any Chinese poems. Some real influence, either direct or indirect, is highly probable and the close analogies are instructive for the reader of Williams of the typical Chinese poem, or of both. It is certain that Williams had no conception of the 'fu' or of any of the more complex forms of Chinese verse. In general way Williams might have known of these poems but the probability is that even in this respect he remained thoroughly ignorant. There are striking analogies between his accomplishments as poet not only between his brief lyrics and the Chinese short poems but between his most complex art firms and those of the ancient Chinese. In their views of both art and life, in the practice of their craft and their attitudes toward living, they often hold remarkably similar positions. Williams's verse might not have been materially different from the achievement that it is had China remained in the twentieth century as unknown to the West as it was in the Middle Ages. |
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| 2 | 1921 |
Williams, William Carlos. Portrait of the author. In : Contact ; spring (1921). [betr. Yang Guifei, letzte Strophe ; englische Version von Bo Juyi's Chang hen ge] http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/56467/. The birches are mad with green points the wood's edge is burning with their green, burning, seething--No, no, no. The birches are opening their leaves one by one. Their delicate leaves unfold cold and separate, one by one. Slender tassels hang swaying from the delicate branch tips-- Oh, I cannot say it. There is no word. Black is split at once into flowers. In every bog and ditch, flares of small fire, white flowers!--Agh, the birches are mad, mad with their green. The world is gone, torn into shreds with this blessing. What have I left undone that I should have undertaken O my brother, you redfaced, living man ignorant, stupid whose feet are upon this same dirt that I touch--and eat. We are alone in this terror, alone, face to face on this road, you and I, wrapped by this flame! Let the polished plows stay idle, their gloss already on the black soil. But that face of yours--! Answer me. I will clutch you. I will hug you, grip you. I will poke my face into your face and force you to see me. Take me in your arms, tell me the commonest thing that is in your mind to say, say anything. I will understand you--! It is the madness of the birch leaves opening cold, one by one. My rooms will receive me. But my rooms are no longer sweet spaces where comfort is ready to wait on me with its crumbs. A darkness has brushed them. The mass of yellow tulips in the bowl is shrunken. Every familiar object is changed and dwarfed. I am shaken, broken against a might that splits comfort, blows apart my careful partitions, crushes my house and leaves me--with shrinking heart and startled, empty eyes--peering out into a cold world. In the spring I would drink! In the spring I would be drunk and lie forgetting all things. Your face! Give me your face, Yang Kue Fei! your hands, your lips to drink! Give me your wrists to drink-- I drag you, I am drowned in you, you overwhelm me! Drink! Save me! The shad bush is in the edge of the clearing. The yards in a fury of lilac blossoms are driving me mad with terror. Drink and lie forgetting the world. And coldly the birch leaves are opening one by one. Coldly I observe them and wait for the end. And it ends. Qian Zhaoming : At the time when Williams wrote Prologue to 'Kora in hell' and Portrait of the author, English version of Bo Juyi : Quelle : Giles, Herbert A. A history Williams owned a copy of Giles' book (14th print.). A note in his hand on the front endpaper shows that he gave the book to his mother in 1916. Williams : "Bob McAlmon, my co-editor on Contact rescued it from the wastebasket. I threw it away because I thought it was sentimental and I was afraid I was imitating Pound. I hated to imitate. But Bob said it was good so I let it survive." Henry W. Wells : Williams casually refers to one of the chief figures in Chinese history : Xuanzong. |
Cited by (1)
| # | Year | Bibliographical Data | Type / Abbreviation | Linked Data |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2000- | Asien-Orient-Institut Universität Zürich | Organisation / AOI |
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