1923
Publication
# | Year | Text | Linked Data |
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1 | 1923 |
Stevens, Wallace. Six significant landscapes [ID D30307]. I An old man sits In the shadow of a pine tree In China. He sees larkspur, Blue and white, At the edge of the shadow, Move in the wind. His beard moves in the wind. The pine tree moves in the wind. Thus water flows Over weeds. II The night is of the colour Of a woman's arm: Night, the female, Obscure, Fragrant and supple, Conceals herself. A pool shines, Like a bracelet Shaken in a dance. III I measure myself Against a tall tree. I find that I am much taller, For I reach right up to the sun, With my eye; And I reach to the shore of the sea With my ear. Nevertheless, I dislike The way ants crawl In and out of my shadow. IV When my dream was near the moon, The white folds of its gown Filled with yellow light. The soles of its feet Grew red. Its hair filled With certain blue crystallizations From stars, Not far off. V Not all the knives of the lamp-posts, Nor the chisels of the long streets, Nor the mallets of the domes And high towers, Can carve What one star can carve, Shining through the grape-leaves. VI Rationalists, wearing square hats, Think, in square rooms, Looking at the floor, Looking at the ceiling. They confine themselves To right-angled triangles. If they tried rhomboids, Cones, waving lines, ellipses -- As, for example, the ellipse of the half-moon -- Rationalists would wear sombreros. Sekundärliteratur : 1972 David Happell Hsin-Fu Wand : Stevens' 'significant landscape' of the old Chinese in the pine shade projects the 'inner scene' of a man who is Taoist in his orientation through a careful selection of such details as the wind, the water, and the flowing beard. In the context of the poem, everything flows naturally – with the larkspur, the beard, and the pine tree moving in the wind and the water over the weeds. Stevens' choice of such traditional Chinese symbols in landscape paintings as the pine and the water is well justified in his poem. For the gnarled pine, a traditional symbol of longevity in Chinese paintings, underscores the 'venerable' age of the old man. The water image augments the theme of the fluidity of all living matter, as typified by the spontaneous movement of the larkspur, the pine, and the old man's beard in the wind. 1997 Qian Zhaoming : In this poem, Chinese landscape painting is represented in several ways by focus on a single point of sight ('An old man' gazing out forever at those gazing at him) ; by choice of subject of all that is most elemental in nature and in Chinese landscape painting ('a pine tree', 'larkspur', 'wind', 'water' and 'weeds', by reliance on a few simple strokes of description and by an almost monochrome tonality of gray and blue and white ('shadow' and 'blue and white') that is known to have dominated Chinese landscape painting in the eleventh to the fourteenth centuries. The poem, like the Chinese painting represents, portrays a single impression : consciousness of the unity of all created things. The style and sentiment presented a particular school – the Southern Song landscape painting. The work of this school is valued today especially for its power of illustrating obtuse and enigmatic aesthetic beliefs shared by Taoists and Chan Buddhists. One painting that matches Stevens' poem to the smallest detail is the handscroll 'A sage under a pine tree', a thirteenth-century imitation of a masterpiece attributed to Ma Yuan in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 2003 Qian Zhaoming : If Chinese landscape painting aiming to communicate the spirit of Chan or the Dao has a traditional scene. First of all, the old man in Stevens's ekphrastic poem, as in the kind of Song landscape painting it endeavors to emulate, appears sitting in meditation, that is, in a state of active tranquility that opens the way to enlightenment. Second, the figure is shown to be perfectly in harmony with nature. Third, the flowing water in the scene is a perfect symbol of the Dao. |
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