“Whitman East & West : new contexts for reading Walt Whitman” (Publication, 2002)
Year
2002
Text
Whitman East & West : new contexts for reading Walt Whitman. Ed. by Ed Folsom. (Iowa : University of Iowa Press, 2002). (Iowa Whitman series).
http://whitmanarchive.org/criticism/current/pdf/anc.01053.pdf. (WhiW130)
http://whitmanarchive.org/criticism/current/pdf/anc.01053.pdf. (WhiW130)
Type
Publication
Contributors (6)
Folsom, Ed
(1947-) : American Literature Carver Professor, Department of English, College of Liberal Arts, University of Iowa
Huang, Guiyou
(Xinjiang 1961-) : Associate Professor of English, Kutztown University, Pennsylvania
Liu, Rongqiang
(um 2002) : Associate Professor of English, Hebei Normal University
Liu, Shusen
(um 2002) : Professor of English, Beijing University
Ou, Hong
(um 2002) : Professor of English, Zhongshan University
Wang, Ning
(um 1985) : Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Qinghua University
Mentioned People (3)
Gu, Cheng
(Beijing 1956-1993 Neuseeland, Selbstmord) : Dichter
Guo, Moruo
(Leshan, Sichuan 1892-1976 Beijing) : Schriftsteller, Dichter, Dramatiker, Übersetzer, Politiker, Präsident Chinese Academy of Sciences
Whitman, Walt
(Long Island, New York 1819-1892 Camden, N.J.) : Dichter, Schriftsteller, Journalist
Subjects
Literature : Occident : United States of America
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References / Sources
Chronology Entries (9)
| # | Year | Text | Linked Data |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1919.1-2000 |
Walt Whitman and China : general. 1955 Achilles Fang : The Imagism-inspired literary revolution of 1917 tolled the bell for the traditional poetry of China ; but it failed to ring in its substitute, probably because it was not even Imagistic. Whitmanism, which propelled literary malcontents toward revolutionary literature, has not succeeded in producing great poetry in China, in spite of the fact that it has been the dominant trait of the new poetry. The search for a workable poetics, a poetics that honestly and earnestly faces the problem of the artist versus society, must go on. 1980 Mark Cohen : Whitman reflected the rise of American capitalism as well as the spirit of democracy. Although Whitman was politically somewhat progressive, as a poet he was often not economical in his diction, too abstract in his ideas, and too confused in his thinking. 1986 Li Xilao : The May Fourth student movement in 1919 is the starting point of modern Chinese literature. Walt Whiman's poetry seemed to be especially commensurate with the spirit of the time. Since Chinese new poets considered themselves to be part of the world new poetry movement pioneered by Whitman, they, and a great number of their readers, turned to him for inspiration. In the 1920s and the first half of the 1930s, Whitman seemed to be enjoying a warm welcome by all the major societies : he was held in great esteem by the Creation Society, appreciated by the Crescent Society, and introduced favorably by the Literary Study Society. 1995 Huang Guiyou : Whitman's reception has reached three peaks : the first was during the 1920s and 1930s when China was undergoing a literary revolution characterized by vernacular literature. The second was during the 1940s and mid-1950s, a period notable for the founding of the People's Republic ; Whitman became a source of inspiration and a symbol of freedom as China was plundered by Japan ; translators concentrated on Whitman's poems that displayed a militant spirit, and the sole purpose of these translations was to call on the Chinese people to stand up heroically against Japanese invaders. The third was during the open door policy since the late 1970s, and important phase in modern Chinese history, when a great demand for democracy and freedom and an increasing desire to know the outside world burst open the heavy Chinese door. 1995 Li Yeguang : In the thirty years before the founding of the People's Republic, those who appreciated and introduced Whitman to China were mainly poets, and most of them advocated and persisted in writing free verse, while some worked for the creation of new metrical patterns for many years and still others became famous for their classical poetic compositions. Their perspectives on Whitman varied, but they all respected him and benefited from his works in differing ways. Since the May Fourth movement, the task confronting the Chinese literature revolution has been one of opposing imperialistic and traditional feudalistic cultures with democratic and scientific spirit in order to build a new national democratic literature. Whitman's completely new democratic ideas and his urgent demand for an independent national literature for the New World aim in the same direction. The advocates of Chinese new poetry eagerly aspire to create a free verse or a new metrical poetry to keep pace with the new era, and Whitman, as the radical revolutionist in poetic patterns and the true creator of free verse in the world history, meets the needs of all schools of new poetry in China. Throughout the democratic revolution in China, under the new condition when writers were exploring and creating in the field of poetic art, Whitman became all the more valuable to them. Whitman's influence is felt in the spirit, in the force, and in the style. In socialist China, the study of Whitman has been more and more widely undertaken by younger translators and scholars. Nevertheless, Whitman's influence on Chinese poets continues to grow, and his poetry – which sings of democracy, freedom, modern civilization, and love of mankind – along with his incessant exploration in the ideological field and his bold creation and experience in poetic art are still gaining popularity and depth, still inspiring and encouraging. 2002 Wang Ning : If we read Whitman's poetry next to some contemporary American experimentalist poets, we can undoubtedly find the inherent connections between him and postmodernism. That is perhaps one of the reasons why he is still read and discussed today not only in the West but in China. Another obvious reason Why Chinese scholars discuss Whitman in regard to modern Chinese literature is the unique role he played in the process of China's political and cultural modernity as well as in the Chinese literary modernist movement. During the May 4th period Whitman was one of the very few American poets who had a strong influence on revolutionary Chinese poets. Because the critical and creative reception of Whitman's poetry was absolutely relevant to the Chinese social revolution and to Chinese literary innovation, he as for a long time classified in the tradition of nineteenth-century romanticism. Whitman is now viewed more as a pioneering figure of literary modernism than merely as a romantic poet, for his appearance in the nineteenth century actually anticipated the rise of modernist poetry in the twentieth century, and many of his prophetic and insightful ideas paved the way for the process of modernism in Western culture and Western thought. Compared with what has been achieved in the Western academic circles, Whitman studies in China have a very different orientation : in China, he has always been introduced and studied as a merely romanticist or, as a revolutionary romanticist with his poems of social change highlighted and his symbolic poems virtually neglected. Although the mysterious and symbolic elements in his poems are sometimes mentioned, they are usually dealt with in a cursory way. |
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| 2 | 1919.3 |
Tian, Han. Ping min shi ren Huiteman bai nian ji [ID D29796]. Li Xilao : Arguing that the greatness of Walt Whiman lay in the fact that he was 'but an ordinary man, an American of the new world and a child of Adam', Tian equates Whitman's Americanism with democracy and humanism. He was equally impressed by Whitman's originality in creating free verse : 'He never knows what art poetique is nor diction for the sake of rhyme'. Thus, from the spirit to the form of expression, Whitman offered what the iconoclastic noew poets had been looking for. Tian went so far as to liken the Chinese new poetry to Leaves of grass, claiming both to be a 'barbaric yawp', a 'drunk's songs'. He concluded his article : "Once Whitman's ship of democracy navigated into the Pacific, she startled the so-called dragon king of the East sea, stirring up countless demons and stormy waves alike. Now the Pacific knows no peace any more. Can the ship ever reach our East Asian continent ? That's a question. However, fellows ! Fellows of the Young china ! This ship is bound to carry us Asian people – let alone Chinese compatriots – with her. Those of us already aboard should 'steer then with good strong hand and wary eye, O! ' Long live Walt Whitman ! Long live the Young China !" Wang Ning : Tian not only introduced Whitman's life and work but places particular emphasis on his democratic thought and aesthetic ideals. Obviously, for Tian and other Chinese intellectuals and writers at the time, the greatest significance of Whitman to modern China as well as its literature lies not merely in his forman innovations, necessary as they are, but, more important, in the democratic thought inherent in his poetry, which becomes one of the two most stimulating factors. Huang Guiyou : Tian's analysis spread throughout China. Guo Moruo worte, that he had read and admired the article. Tian and Guo read and translated Whitman and began to greatly value his work. |
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| 3 | 1920 |
Tian, Han ; Zong, Baihua ; Guo, Moruo. San ye ji [ID D11262]. Enthält : Letter from Guo Moruo to Zong Baihua ; March 30 (1920). Guo Moruo translated the first eight lines of The song of the open road von Walt Whitman aus Leaves of grass. Guo Moruo schreibt : "Heine's poems are beautiful but not vigorous ; while Whitman's poems are vigorous but not beautiful." The poem was translated by Guo to describe his strong feeling of freedom gained during a train journey in Japan. |
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| 4 | 1921 |
Guo Moruo. Nü shen = The goddesses [ID D11264]. Guo Moruo : "It was Whitman who made me crazy about writing poems. It was in the year when the May 4th Movement broke out that I first touched his Leaves of grass. Reading his poems, I came to see what to write and how to voice my personal troubles and the nation's sufferings. His poems almost made me mad. Thus, it was possible for me to have the first poetry collection The goddesses published." [Enthält] : Guo, Moruo. Chen an. [Good morning]. I greet you with a Good Morning, Atlantic Ocean Flanked to the new World, Graves of Washington, of Lincoln and of Whitman. Whitman, Whitman ! Whitman who was similar to Pacific ! Pacific Ocean !... Sekundärliteratur 1929 Caochuan, Weiyu [Zhang, Xiuzhong]. Zhongguo xin shi tan di zuo ri jin ri he ming ri. (Beijing : Hai yin shu ju, 1929). [China's new poetry]. 中國新詩壇的昨日今日和明日 Caochuan denigrates Guo Moruo's Whitmanesque poems, claiming the The goddesses [ID D11264] is a failure for two main reasons : abstractness and verbosity. 2002 Liu Rongqiang : To Guo Moruo, Whitman believed that all things that exist are equally divine, and all are God's self-expressions. Such ideas became significant for Guo when his concerns turned to China's movement toward becoming a nation building up a democratic system. Reading Leaves of grass, he was inspired by Whitman's embrace of democracy, individualism, and science. He found that what Whitman exalted was identical to the ideals in China in his day, and he came to believe that Whitman's poetic techniques were the best way to express those ideals. Under Whitman's influence, Guo became a pioneer in writing Chinese vernacular poems. He exalted democracy, individual emancipation, and science in many of his poems, and he also made creative use of Whitman's dynamic techniques, including repetition, parallelism, enumeration, and even foreign words. 2006 Yang Liping : Guo Moruo was intoxicated for a time by Walt Whitman's stormy poems in Leaves of grass. These poems offered him an ideal form for expressing his strong sentiments about himself and China, and directly inspired him to pen such 'masculine and violent poems'. Guo was fascinated with Whitman's poetry : Whitman's style, which has broken with all conventional rules, is by and large in tune with the spirit of 'Sturm und Drang' sweeping across China during the May fourth and New Culture movements. Under the influence of Whitman, Guo paid little attention to rhyming and broke away from the metrical stricture of traditional Chinese poetics. Both Whitman and Guo attached great importance to spontaneity in emotional expression in their poetry and believed that the spirit of a poem always takes precedence over the letter. |
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| 5 | 1959 |
Guo, Moruo. Xu wo de shi. In : Moruo wen ji ; vol. 13 (1959). [Preface to my poetry]. "When I approached Whitman's Leaves of grass, that was the year of the May 4th Movement. The repression of my feeling and that of the whole nation now found the outlet and the way of release. At the time I was almost paranoiac." |
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| 6 | 1959 |
Guo, Moruo. Wo de zuo shi jing guo. In : Moruo wen ji ; vol. 11 (1959). [My experience in writing poetry]. "The unconventional style of Whitman's is very much in harmony with the stormy and progressive spirit of the May 4th era. I was thoroughly overwhelmed by his vigorous, uninhibited and sonorous tone." "Whitman's poetic style, characterized by getting rid of all the conventions, coincides with the sprit of 'Sturm und Drang' of the May 4th period. I was totally shocked by his grand and eloquent tone. Influenced by him, I wrote all these poems full of masculine violence." |
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| 7 | 1959 |
Guo Moruo. Tong zhi da qing nian wen. In : Wen xue zhi shi ; May (1959). [Reply to some young people]. "At that time, I was not quite clear about the nature of the universe and the life, and believed in pantheism for a certain period of time. I was fond of Tagore, and Goethe as well. As a result, I came into touch with the philosophy of pantheism." 同志答青年問 |
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| 8 | 1983 |
Gu Cheng traces his first reading of Whitman to his adolescence in the 1960s, but he claimed that the dynamic impact of Leaves of grass never really hit him until 1983, when he was in search of a new poetics. "Eager to unveil the page of heart But I happened to pen Selected poems from Leaves of Grass With the shadow of the eupatorium Shading a live-oak." |
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| 9 | 1984 |
Gu Cheng : Interview with a Hong Kong poet. "Whitman is transcendental ; he manages to have straight access to the ontological being. I first read Whitman's poems at an early age but got reawakened much later. I was a curbed person. It was not until one morning in 1983 that the electricity of my anguish dissolved my skin, which had been as stiff as lead, and as a result I came to perceive the great ontological being - Whitman. His sound came down vertically from the air, blowing on me and shaking my every hour and minute. The century between us no longer exists ; nor does the Pacific Ocean, leaving Whitman himself – the visible but untouchable 'I' and himself only – the eternity that was getting nearer and clearer. I was stunned, almost desirous to throw myself away and give up my work grinding flowers on the glass of images. I was shaken again and again, lying there and feeling like a wooden piece in a piano. From morning to evening I was just listening to the sound of the falling raindrops. On that day I ate nothing." |
Sources (1)
| # | Year | Bibliographical Data | Type / Abbreviation | Linked Data |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1919 | [Whitman, Walt]. [Out of the rolling ocean the crowd]. Guo Moruo yi. In : Xue deng ; Dec. 3 (1919). Übersetzung von Whitman, Walt. Out of the rolling ocean the crowd. In : Whitman, Walt. Leaves of grass. (Brooklyn, New York : Walt Whitman, Printed by Andrew and James Rome, 1855). | Publication / WhiW131 |
Cited by (1)
| # | Year | Bibliographical Data | Type / Abbreviation | Linked Data |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2000- | Asien-Orient-Institut Universität Zürich | Organisation / AOI |
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