“Marianne Moore and China : Orientalism and a writing of America” (Publication, 1999)
Year
1999
Text
Stamy, Cynthia. Marianne Moore and China : Orientalism and a writing of America. (Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1999). (Oxford English monographs). (Revision of author's thesis, University of Oxford). (Moo2)
Type
Publication
Contributors (1)
Stamy, Cynthia
(um 1999)
Mentioned People (1)
Moore, Marianne
(Kirkwood, Miss. 1887-1972 New York, N.Y.) : Dichterin, Schriftstellerin
[Permission for quotations by Cynthia Stamy and Qian Zhaoming].
[Permission for quotations by Cynthia Stamy and Qian Zhaoming].
Subjects
Literature : Occident : United States of America
/
References / Sources
Chronology Entries (10)
| # | Year | Text | Linked Data |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1905-1972 |
Marianne Moore and China : general. Quellen Animals in paintings from Asia. Boston Museum of Fine Arts (1965). Baynes. Vol. 1-2. (New York, N.Y. : Pantheon Books, 1950). (Bollingen series ; 19). Bynner, Witter. Laotzu. The way of life according to Laotzu [ID D30328]. [With notations]. Candolle, Alphonse de. Origin of cultivated plants. (New York, N.Y. : D. Appleton, 1886). Master bronzes : selected from museums and collections in America. February 1937. Confucius. The analects of Confucius. Transl. and ann. by Arthur Waley [ID D8879]. [With notations]. Confucius. Shih-ching : the classic anthology defined by Confucius. [Transl. by] Ezra Pound. [ID D29062]. Confucius. The unwobbling pivot and The great digest. Transl. by Ezra Pound. [ID D29063]. [1951, With notations]. Confucius to Cummings : an anthology of poetry. Ed. by Ezra Pound [ID D30334]. Costumes from the Forbidden City. Metropolitan Museum of Art (March 1945). Cottrell, Annette B. Dragons. (Boston : Museum of Fine Arts, 1962). Davis, Frank. The Chinese dragon. In : Illustrated London news ; Aug. 23 (1930). Davis, Frank. The unnatural history of China : the lions of Buddha. In : Illustrated London news ; vol. 178 (1931). Eaton, Evelyn. Go ask the river [ID D30339]. Encyclopedia Britannica. European and Oriental sculpture. Anderson Galleries (Dec. 1928). Exhibition of early Chinese paintings and sculptures. Bourgeois Gallery, New York (Nov.-Dec. 1922). [With notations]. Fang, Achilles. Rhymeprose on literature. In : Harvard journal of Asiatic studies (1951). Franck, Harry Alverson. Roving through southern China [ID D3164]. Guang, Rusi. Chinese wit, wisdom and written characters [ID D30337]. Hackney, Louise Wallace. Guide-posts to Chinese painting. (Boston : Houghton Mifflin Co., 1927). Ji, Lu ; Hughes, E[rnest] R[ichard]. The art of letters : Lu Chi's "Wen fu", A.D. 302 [ID D30329]. Lin, Yutang. The Chinese theory of art [ID D30330]. The lost flute, and other Chinese lyrics [ID D30333]. Master bronzes. (Buffalo : Buffalo Fine Arts Academy, Albright Art Gallery, 1937). Paine, Robert Treat. Animals in paintings from Asia. (Boston : Museum of Fine Arts, 1956). Pallister, Bury. The China collectors : Parker companion. (London : Sampson Low, Marston, Low and Searle, 1874). Pound, Ezra. Instigations of Ezra Pound ; together with an essay on the Chinese written character [ID D22141]. Reed, Stanley. Oriental rugs and carpets. (New York, N.Y. : Putnam, 1967). The silent zero, in search of sound. Transl. by Erich Sackheim [ID D30336]. Sitwell, Osbert. Escape with me ! : an Oriental sketch book.[ID D3453]. Studies in Chinese literature. Ed. by John L. Bishop. [ID D10623]. Sze, Mai-mai. The tao of painting : a study of the ritual disposition of Chinese painting [ID D30310]. Sze, Mai-mai. The way of Chinese painting [ID D30335]. [Inscribed "For Marianne Moore this pocket version! Affectionately, Mai-mai Sze, November 24, 1959"]. Topsell, Edward. Historie of foure-footed beastes. (London : Printed by William Iaggard, 1607). The treasure of Luhan. In : Metropolitan Museum of art bulletin. (Dec. 1919). Wilhelm, Richard. The I ching : or, Book of changes. Rendered into English by Cary F. Baynes. Vol. 1-2. (New York, N.Y. : Pantheon Books, 1950). (Bollingen series ; 19). Worcester Art Museum news bulletin and calendar. (1955). [Article on Chinese jades and photos of Zhou dynasty dragon]. Xue, Tao. I am a thought of you [ID D30338]. Sekundärliteratur 1971-1972 David Happell Hsin-Fu Wand : Marianne Moore states in the epigraph to her Complete poems : "Omissions are not accidents". We can assume that she is reticent about what she does not know well and that she will only "talk about them when I understand them". She never makes direct references to or gives quotations of classical Chinese poetry in her work. But we find in her poetry some allusions to Chinese objects d'art. She finds 'precision' and 'fastidiousness' in many things Chinese. 1995 Lina Unali : Marianne Moore searched in the Orient and in China in particular, for new sources of artistic inspiration and regeneration. Sometimes this only led to a rephrasing of traditional values in more agreeable terms. 1997 Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University http://brbl-archive.library.yale.edu/exhibitions/orient/mod10.htm. Marianne Moore's interest in China stemmed in part from her friendship with a Presbyterian missionary family and her visits to New York galleries. Always intrigued by the exotic, she regularly sought elements of "the wisdom of the East" to illustrate her moral points. 1999 Cynthia Stamy : As a young adult, Moore was experiencing the East as strange and peculiar. China's unfettered ability to resist American religious assimilation, the Christian framework which was so important for the Moore family, must have made it seem seven more alien, and possibly more exotic. Her affinity for scholarly work on Chinese subjects from poetry to painting, calligraphy, chinoiserie, textile design, and religious history is evident not only in her poetry and appended notes, but also in prose work throughout her writing career. Moore was involved in the imaginative production of the Orient ; she posited China as a repository of wisdom, forbearance, peace, and tranquility. At different times, Moore uses Chinese poetry, art, and philosophy to resist the dictates of contemporary verse forms, the influence of European literature and art, the restrictions of a masculine logic, and the imposition of the demands of contemporary politics and mass culture. Moore's fascination with dragons of the Far East can be seen as symptomatic of her apparent need to invest China and things Chinese with an originary potency, to place moral statements against a ground of the ancient and even prehistoric. Moore practices a kind of poetic primitivism in her poems that include Chinese supernatural creatures which allies her work with that of modernist painters who engaged in a similar practice of juxtaposition. Moore's deployment of things Chinese in her poems is augmented by her respect for Chinese ingenuity and tradition. Her selectivity in choosing China's art, but not her history, China's imperial past, but not her peasantry, is itself a dated orientalist response which reflects an impression of China suited to her own needs. Moore's original use of the Chinese 'fu' style of poetry is one successful instance of her consisten ingenuity in finding and employing 'new' form in her poetry. While Moore was not the first modern poet to prefer a Far Eastern form for expressing feelings and truths found in observations of nature, she used the model of the Chinese 'fu' in distinctive ways. The self-conscious antiquarianism of her repeated borrowing of 'fu' techniques exposes Moore's sens of the problematic nature of modernity, as she employed this ancient formal tributary model to pose questions about the moral and cultural significance of the present. Moore's 'fu'-inspired poems exhibit the kind of authority and didacticism which often characterize an ancient poetry. Like the Imagists and the practioners of the 'fu', Moore in her poetry exhibits a sustained use of a form of free verse within a very exacting structure. Her use of syllabic verse does not create its own rhythm and, therefore, the reader's attention is called to prose rhythms within the poem. The influences Moore seems to have absorbed from the 'fu', both in terms of structure and subject-matter, are distributed widely throughout her work and can be found in poems written both early and late in her career. Her interrelationships between the human and the natural were central to both the Confucian and Taoist traditions philosophies which Moore studied and referred to in her prose and poetry. Moore's syllabic verse also forms link with the Chinese language, in which each character is a single syllable. Moore's familiarity with Chinese scrolls was such that she was capable of making references to a specific type of scroll which depicted characteristic scenes of the larger rivers in China. 2003 Qian Zhaoming : Marianne Moore showed a passion for the artifacts of late imperial China – the Yuan, Ming, and Qing products – throughout her long career. Moore is fond of going to Chinese art exhibitions primarily because they promise to educate her eyes. As her correspondence reveals, she takes delight not only in examining the exhibits but also in recounting her prized items. Moore's interest in Chinese art is primarily an interest in Chinese animal pictures illustrating an approach that might be called 'imaginative objectivism'. By studying Chinese animal pictures, Moore benefits more than just recapturing some images in her own poetry. The true value for Moore of the Chinese tradition of treating animals is that it braces up her objection to the Western bias of the animal genre. She had attended many Chinese art shows where she has the freedom of examining for herself how Chinese painters turn themselves into 'instruments' of actual life. The Tao of painting by Mai-mai Sze awakened Moore to its true meaning and possibilities. It encouraged her to rethink the value of her own ambiguity and reserve in some early experiments. From Sze she has learned to overlook the distinction between Confucianism and Daoism / Buddhism. 2006 Victoria Bazin : Marianne Moore deploys imagery and tropes in circulation in the newspapers and literature she was reading on the subject of China and Chinese art and culture. Moore's respect for Eastern difference might appear to be an enlightened attempt to refuse the Orientalist impulse to accumulate knowledge of the 'other' thereby reinforcing Western hegemonic power, the fact that her poetic observations of 'China' reproduce it as a site of exotic and unfathomable otherness suggests its general complicity with European exoticism. |
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| 2 | 1907-1915 |
Moore, Marianne. Notebook. [Notations on two meetings of the local Ladies' Missionary Society]. The meeting was opened with prayer ; after which, the roll was called, each of those present reciting a verse of scripture as her name was called… the subject for discussion - 'The Chinese' was introduced… Mrs. King read an article on the Chinese & their peculiarities…Mrs. Barr & Mrs. Merwood read articles on the easiest ways & means to adopt, to convert the Chinaman… Notebook Pound – Li Po. Epitaph And Li Po also died drunk He tried to embrace a moon In the yellow river. |
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| 3 | 1913-1937 |
Stein, Gerturde. Works. 1913 Stein, Gertrude. Old and old. "Go in pour the chain for it full of China. Full of china choice up. Full of china crossed in. Full of China. Full of chin that has china. Chin and china. China." 1914 Stein, Gertrude. Tender buttons : objects, food, rooms. (New York, N.Y. : Claire Marie, 1914). [Geschrieben 1912]. Cooking "Alas, alas the pull alas the bell alas the coach in china, alas the little put in leaf also the wedding butter meat, alas the receptacle, alas the back shape of mussle, mussle and soda." Food. A centre in a table. "It was a way a day, this made some sum. Suppose a cod liver a cod liver is an oil, suppose a cod liver oil is tunny, suppose a cod liver oil tunny is pressed suppose a cod liver oil tunny pressed is china and secret with a bestow a bestow reed, a reed to be a reed to be, in a reed to be." Rooms "A little lingering lion and a Chinese chair, all the handsome cheese which is stone, all of it and a choice, a choice of a blotter." "China is not down when there are plates, lights are not ponderous and incalculable." Alike and a snail, this means Chinamen, it does there is no doubt that to be right is more than perfect there is no doubt and glass is confusing it confuses the substance which was a color." "China is not down when there are plates, lights are not ponderous and incalculable." 1922 Stein, Gertrude. If you had three husbands. Their end. In : Broom ; vol. 1, no. 3 (Jan. 1922). "Ornaments. And china. It isn’t at all." 1922 Stein, Gertrude. Lend a hand or four religions. MS notebook III. "She attaches it or in that way kneeling in a way in that way, in that way kneeling and being a chinese Christian meditatively." "At first she had always thought she had always fought for the religion and she was kneeling there where the water was flowing and she was a chinese Christian and she could furnish a house as well and the meadows were for men and the orange trees pass and are inclosed with glass." "Is there a stable there and are there chinese Christians not to stare but to kneel in prayer there where the water is flowing…" 1922 Stein, Gertrude. Geography and plays. (Boston : Four Seas Company, 1922). http://www.gutenberg.org/files/33403/33403-h/33403-h.htm. Sacred Emily Next to barber. Next to barber bury. Next to barber bury china. Next to barber bury china glass. Next to barber china and glass. Next to barber and china. Next to barber and hurry. Next to hurry. Next to hurry and glass and china. Next to hurry and glass and hurry. Next to hurry and hurry. Next to hurry and hurry. He said it "Some people like a strong odor like china lilies or almond flowers or even tube-roses. I like them very much. I like them all very much. Do you." Their end Why have they pots. Ornaments. And china. Reflections "China. Whenever he went to the colonies his sister was hurt in an automobile accident. This did not mean that she suffered." Scenes. Actions and disposition of relations and positions "All the time is dark and there is a light and the time to think is the time to paint and the grey blue purple is the red rose color and the pink white cover is the fine broken china." "So much persistance, so much elbow place, so much single authority and able china, so much more and a cold bigger, that means that there is thieves. To be so particular shows that there is a difference in copying and copying is copying a picture, and copying is copying a piece of sugar, and copying is copying china." Mexico : a play "Who has neglected Chinese lillies." The king or something "Can you think about me. Do you think about the Chinese." 1929 Stein, Gertrude. An instant answer or a hundred prominent men. In : transition 13 (Summer 1929). [Geschrieben 1922]. "How do the hours come to be longer. Longer than what, longer than English French, Italian, North and South American Japanese and Chinese." 1932 Stein, Gertrude. Four saints in three acts. In : Stein, Gertrude. Operas and plays. (Paris : Plain ed., 1932). [Geschrieben 1929]. "If it were possible to kill five thousand chinamen by pressing a button would it be done." 1933 Stein, Gertrude. The autobiography of Alice B. Toklas [ID D30410]. "I gave Fernande [Olivier] a chinese gown from San Francisco and Pablo [Picasso] gave me a lovely drawing." "He [Andrew Green] had a prodigious memory and could recite all of Milton's Paradise lost by heart and also all the translations of chinese poems of which Gertrude Stein was very fond. He had been in China and he was later to live permanently in the South Sea islands…" "After that she [Ellen La Motte] and Emily Chadbourne went to China and after that became leaders of the anti-opium campaign." "Some lower their voices, some raise them, some get an English accent, some even get a german accent, some drawl, some speak in a very high tense voice, and some go chinese or Spanish and do not move the lips." "It was wet and dark and there were a few people, one did not know whether they were chinamen or Europeans." 1935 Stein, Gertrude. The gradual making of Americans. In : Stein, Gertrude. Lectures in America. (New York, N.Y. : Random House, 1935). "And so The Making of Americans has been done. It must be remembered that whether they are Chinamen or Americans there are the same kinds of men and women and one can describe all the kinds of them. This I might have done." 1936 Stein, Getrude. The geographical history of America ; or, The relation of human nature to the human mind. (New York, N.Y. : Random House, 1936). "In china china is not china it is an earthen ware. In China there is no need of China because in China china is china. All who liked china like china and have china. China in America like china in America and all who like china in America do not like to have china in china be an earthen ware. Therefore it is not." 1937 Stein, Gertrude. Everybody's autobiography. (New York, N.Y. : Random House, 1937). "We have Chinese servants now and sometimes the name they say they are has nothing to do with what they are they may have borrowed or gambled away their reference and they seem to be there or not there as well with my name and anyway the Oriental, and perhaps a name there is not a name, is invading the Western world." "But of course Saint Therese was not interested she was building convents in Spain why should she be interested in Chinamen." "It is trouble-some, not counting, anybody can count, even if like the Spanish women and Chinamen they count with pebbles what is troublesome is religion when counting gets to be religion it gets to be troublesome." "Fathers are depressing and China was more a land of mothers than it was a land of fathers." "That has of course nothing to do with Trac although Thornton Wilder's childhood was passed in China." "… a Chinese boy probably from the island of Hanau went away first day." "… he said the one the only thing that has always worried me was an old Negro who was killed right near that Chinese corner." "After all the natural way to count is not that one and one make two but to go on counting by one and one as Chinamen do as anybody does as Spaniards do." "Action is now a Chinamen, he has been teaching in China a long time and I imagine he really look and feel like a Chinaman some people can and he will and does and can." |
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| 4 | 1916 |
Moore, Marianne. Notebook 1916-1921. 14 March (1916) Includes notes about the architecture of the Temple of Heaven in the Forbidden City. |
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| 5 | 1920-1966 |
Moore, Marianne. The complete poems [ID D30312]. 1920 Moore, Marianne. Picking and choosing. In : Dial ; April (1920). … Gordon Craig with his "this is I" and "this is mine", with his three wise men, his "sad French greens", and his "Chinese cherry"… 1921 Moore, Marianne. England. In : Moore, Marianne. Poems. (London : The Egoist Press, 1921). “…The sublimated wisdom of China, Egyptian discernment, the cataclysmic torrent of emotion compressed in the verbs of the Hebrew language…” 1921 Marianne Moore. He made this screen. In : Moore, Marianne. Poems. (London : The Egoist Press, 1921). He made this screen not of silver nor of coral, but of weatherbeaten laurel. Here, he introduced a sea uniform like tapestry; here, a fig-tree; there, a face; there, a dragon circling space -- designating here, a bower; there, a pointed passion-flower. 1922 Moore, Marianne. People's surroundings. In : Dial ; June (1922). …When you take my time, you take something I had meant to use ; the highway hid by fir trees in rhododendron twenty feet deep, the peacocks, hand-forged gates, old Persian velvet, roses outlined in pale black on an ivory ground, the pierced iron shadows of the cedars, Chinese carved glass, old Waterford, lettered ladies ; landscape gardening twisted into permanence… a green piece of tough translucent parchment, where the crimson, the copper, and the Chinese vermilion of the poincianas set fire to the masonry and turquoise blues refute the clock… 1923 Moore, Marianne. Bowls. In : Secession ; no 6 (July 1923). on the green with lignum vitae balls and ivory markers, the pins planted in wild duck formation, and quickly dispersed – by this survival of ancient punctilio in the manner of Chinese carved carving, layer after layer exposed by certainty of touch and unhurried incision… 1923 Moore, Marianne. Novices. In : The chapbook : a monthly miscellany ; no 36 (April 1923). … averse from the antique with "that tinge of sadness about it which a reflective mind always feels, it is so little and so much"… Note : Line 15 : "The Chinese objects of art and porcelain disperses by Messrs. Puttick and Simpson on the 18th had that tinge of sadness which a reflective minde always feels ; it is so little and so much". Arthur Hadyn, Illustrated London News, February 26, 1921. 1924 Moore, Marianne. Sea unicorns and land unicorns. In : Dial ; Nov. (1924). …Thus personalities by nature much opposed, can be combined in such a way that when they do agree, their unanimity is great, "in politics, in trade, law, sport, religion, China-collecting, tennis, and church-going". 1924 Moore, Marianne. Well moused, lion. In : The Dial ; no 76 (Jan. 1924). Review of Stevens, Wallace. Harmonium. (New York, N.Y. : A.A. Knopf, 1923). http://www.jstor.org/stable/441107. … 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… 1932 Moore, Marianne. No swan so fine. In : Poetry ; vol. 41, no 1 (Oct. 1932). "No water so still as the dead fountains of Versailles." No swan, with swart blind look askance and gondoliering legs, so fine as the chinz china one with fawn¬ brown eyes and toothed gold collar on to show whose bird it was. Oswald, Elaine ; Gale, Robert L. On Marianne Moore’s life and career. http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/m_r/moore/life.htm "No Swan So Fine" suggests that a beautiful china swan, symbol of art, has serenely outlasted Louis XV of France, its cocky whilom owner. 1933 Moore, Marianne. The plumet basilisk. In : Hound & horn ; vol. 7, no 1 (Oct/Dec. 1933). In Costa Rica In blazing driftwood the green keeps showing at the same place ; as, intermittently, the fire opal shows blue and green. In Costa Rica the true Chinese lizard face is found, of the amphibious falling dragon, the living firework… As by a Chinese brush, eight green bands are painted on the tail – as piano keys are barred by five black stripes across the white… Note : Lines 13-15 : Frank Davis, 'The Chinese Dragon', Illustrated London News, August 23, 1930 : "He is the god of Rain, and the Ruler of Rivers, Lakes, and Seas. For six months of the year he hibernates in the depths of the sea, living in beautiful palaces … We learn from a book of the T'ang Dynasty that 'it may cause itself to become visible or invisible at will, and it can become long or short, and coarse or fine, at its good pleasure'." A dragon "is either born a dragon (and true dragons have nine sons) or becomes one by transformation." There is a "legend of the carp that try to climb a certain cataract in the western hills. Those that succeed become dragon." Sekundärliteratur 1999 Cynthia Stami : In an early manuscript version of 'The plumet basiliks' Moore included four additional stanzas. These lines show that Asia, and particularly China, provide a source of that myth and story so critical to establishing this remove : "This is the feather basilisk of travellers' tales, of which a pair stood bodyguard beside Confucius' crib : aquatic thing lizard-fairy detested by such dragonhood as Michael fought." "When two plumet territories touch, the masters of them are dramatic without shedding blood, exerting charm as Chinese dragon – whiskers in a crystal handle charm ; or as thick- flowering orchids gather dragons, in the East, by forming clouds for them." 1934 Moore, Marianne. Nine nectarines. In : Poetry ; vol. 45, no 2 (Nov. 1934). Arranged by two's as peaches are, at the intervals that all may live – eight and a single one, on twigs that grew the year before – they look like a derivative ; although not uncommonly the opposite is seen – nine peaches on a nectarine. Fuzzless through slender crescent leaves Of green or blue or both, in the Chinese style, the four pairs' half-moon leaf-mosaic turns out to the sun the sprinkled blush of puce-American-Beauty pink applied to beeswax gray by the uninquiring brush of mercantile bookbinding. like the peach 'Yu', the red- cheeked peach which cannot aid the dead, but eaten in time prevents death, the Italian peach nut, Persian plum, Ispahan secluded wall-grown nectarine, as wild spontaneous fruit was found in China first. But was it wild ? Prudent de Candolle would not say. One perceives no flaws in this emblematic group of nine, with leaf window unquilted by 'curculio' which someone once depicted on this much-mended plate or in the also accurate unantlered moose or Iceland horse or ass asleep against the old thick, low-leaning nectarine that is the color of the shrub-tree's brownish flower. A Chinese "understands the spirit of the wilderness" and the nectarine-loving kylin of pony appearance – the long- tailed or the tailless small cinnarmon-brown, common camel-haired unicorn with antelope feet and no horn, here enameled on porcelain. It was a Chinese Who imagined this masterpiece. Notes : (1) "The Chinese believe the oval peaches which are very red on one side, to be a symbol of long life… According to the word of Chin-noug-king, the peach 'Yu' prevents death. If it is not eaten in time, it at least preserves the body from decay until the end of the world." Alphonse de Candolle, Origin of Cultivated Plants (Appleton, 1886 ; Hafner, 1959). (2) New York Sun, July 2, 1932. The World Today, by Edgar Snow, from Soochow, China. "An old gentleman of China, whom I met when I first came to this country, volunteered to name for me what he called the 'six certainties'. He said : 'You may be sure that the clearest jade comes from Yarkand, the prettiest flowers from Szechuen, the most fragile porcelain from Kingtehchen, the finest tea from Fukien, the sheerest silk from Hangchow, and the most beautiful women from Soochow." (3) Line 41 : Kylin (or Chinese unicorn). Frank Davis, Illustrated London News, March 7, 1931. "It has the body of a stag, with a single horn, the tail of a cow, horses's hoofs, a yellow belly, and hair of five colours." Sekundärliteratur 1971-1972 David Happell Hsin-Fu Wand : "Nine nectarines" was originally entitled "Nine nectarines and other porcelain". The might have gained her knowledge of the kylin not only through the Illustrated London news but also through her coinnoisseurship of Chinese porcelain. Moore introduces to her American readers a familiar symbol in classical Chinese art, 'the nectuarine-loving kylin, better known to the Chinese as the qilin, the fabulous beast resembles the Chinese dragon in its appearance. That the kylin is gentle evene benevolent is attested by a description in the Shi jing. Because a kylin 'was seen just before the birth of Confucius', it is regarded as a personal emblem of Confucius. 1995 Lina Unali : The poem is an appreciation of Chinese culture, of Chinese porcelain, of the objects painted on it, of their significance. At the root of Moore's inspiration there is always a need to communicate a dynamic discovery of new values objectified in natural elements and in artefacts, the products of artistic of literary creation. Her attitude is fully positive, surprised, enchanted. 1999 Cynthia Stamy : Moore used only a single Chinese word, in 'Nine nectarines' referring to the 'yu' peach to which the Chinese attribute longevity and life-saving qualities. If she did not understand the fundamentals of pronunciation of the Chinese language, then it is likely that this syllable functioned for her as a proper noun or as and adjective. 2003 Qian Zhaoming : In June 1934, when Moore sent her poem Nine nectarines to 'Poetry' to be published together with The Buffalo, she offered the title 'Imperious ox, imperial dish' for both pieces. Evidently she was aware that her objet d'art adorned with a nectarine or peach motif was once a dish reserved in China for imperial use. Her image goes beyond a single picture to include features of several peach motifs on Ming-Qing wares. 2006 Victoria Bazin : In Nine nectarines the dialectic of the exotic and the everyday is embedded in the Chinese porcelain plate or, more specifically, the image depicted by the Chinese artist on the plate. The poem is a tribute to the art of the Chinese, then in terms of its sources, it becomes possible to trace the exotic back to its everyday origins. The poem reinforces 'china' as a site of exotic difference by repeatedly pointing to its own difficulties in translating this ancient art into its own Western terms. The attempt to translate pictures into words is compared to the attempts of the Western speaker to understand the inscrutable culture of the Orient. Subjects, verbs and conjunctives are excluded from a language intent on reproducing itself as a materially dense and complex moment rather than a sequential narrative. Yet the poem falters frequently in its attempt to imitate its graphic counterpart. In spite of itself, it offers information that refers to narrative sequence and chronology noting that the nectarines grow 'on twigs that grew the year before'. The art of the Chinese becomes not a form of enquiry or 'observation' but a distillation of something ancient, mystical and ultimately untranslatable. The accuracy of the Chinese artist's representational scene is linked rhetorically to the peach, the fruit that, according to Chinese lore, 'cannot aid the dead, but eaten in time prevents death'. Moore's poem is inscribed by the desire, producing an idealized image of Chinese art that is unfathomable and therefore beyond the reach of modernity's rationalizing processes. 'China' represents a Western and distinctly modernist fantasy of ideological immunity, signaling both the desire for and the impossibility of art forms 'untouched' by modernity. The attempt to resist co-opting 'China' to maintain its otherness, its distinctiveness from the Western imagination only serves to reveal the extent to which it is not 'a Chinese who imagined this masterpiece'. 1935 Moore, Marianne. Half deity. In : Direction ; no. 1 (Jan.-March 1935). Defeated but encouraged by each new gust of wind, forced by the summer sun to plant, she stands on rug-soft grass ; though some are not permitted to gaze informally on majesty in such a manner as she is gazing here. Moore, Marianne. Note to Half deity in What are years (1941). The note cites an interview by Edmund Gillian : 'Meeting the Emperor Pu Yi' (New York Sun ; no 1, Dec. 1934) and Pu Yi's remark : 'It is not permitted'. Sekundärliteratur Cynthia Stamy : The half deity is also 'half worm' – a butterfly. The poem takes on a parallel significance, reflecting on the unnatural restrictions which imperial life in China imposed. 1941 Moore, Marianne. He "Digesteth Harde Yron". In : Partisan review ; vol. 8, no 4 (1941). He "Digesteth Harde Yron" …in S¬like foragings as he is preening the down on his leaden-¬skinned back. The egg piously shown as Leda's very own from which Castor and Pollux hatched, was an ostrich¬ egg. And what could have been more fit for the Chinese lawn it grazed on as a gift to an emperor who admired strange birds, than this one who builds his mud-made nest in dust yet will wade in lake or sea till only the head shows. 1941 Moore, Marianne. Smooth gnarled crape myrtle. In : Moore, Marianne. The collected poems. (New York, N.Y. : Viking Press, 1941). A brass-green bird with grass- green throat smooth as a nut springs from twig to twig askew, copying the Chinese flower piece – business-like atom in the stiff- leafed tree's blue- pink dregs-of-wine pyramids of mathematic circularity… as in the acrobat Li Siau Than, gibbon-like but limberer, defying gravity, nether side arched up, cup on head not upset – China's very most ingenious man. 1951 Moore, Marianne. Critics and connoisseurs. In : Moore, Marianne. Collected poems. (New York, N.Y. ; Macmillan, 1951). There is a great amount of poetry in unconscious fastidiousness. Certain Ming products, imperial floor coverings of coach- wheel yellow, are well enough in their way but I have seen something that I like better… 1956 Moore, Marianne. Logic and "the magic flute". In : Moore, Marianne. Like a bulwark. (New York, N.Y. : Viking Press, 1956). Up winding stair, here, where, in what theater lost ? was I seeing a ghost – a reminder at least of a sunbeam or moonbeam that has not a waist ? by hasty hop or accomplished mishap, the magic flute and harp somehow confused themselves with China's precious wentletrap… 1956 Moore, Marianne. Tom Fool at Jamaica. In : Moore, Marianne. Like a bulwark. (New York, N.Y. : Viking Press, 1956). "Chance is a regrettable impurity." Sekundärliteratur David Hsin-Fu Wand : Marianne Moore has the habit of quoting from other writers, including such lines from the Yi jing. 1959 Moore, Marianne. O to be a dragon. (New York, N.Y. : Viking Press, 1959). If I, like Solomon, … could have my wish – my wish … O to be a dragon, a symbol of the power of Heaven – of silkworm size or immense ; at times invisible. Felicitous phenomenon ! Note : Dragon : see secondary symbols, Volume II of The Tao of Painting, translated and edited by Mai-mai Sze, Bollingen Series 49 (New York : Pantheon, 1956 ; Modern Library edition, p. 57). Sekundärliteratur 1972 David Happell Hsin-Fu Wand : Moore was appropriating a symbol commonly found in both classical Chinese art and literature. For the dragon as a symbol in her poetry is not the evil Occidental dragon, it is the benevolent Chinese dragon which befriends the people, and especially the framers, to whom it brings rain and fertile crops. Moore's wish 'to be a dragon' is an invocation to 'the power of heaven' to help her become adaptable or flexible in her own writing. Although she uses the symbol of the Chinese dragon, she does not sound like any classical Chinese poet. This is because the form and rhythm of her poem are idiosyncratically Moore's and do not bear the slightest resemblance to those of any Chinese poem. She utilized the Chinese symbol to serve her own purpose, since she harnesses the Chinese dragon as her muse in her poetic journey. 1995 Lina Unali : Moore describes the mythical animal of the Chinese tradition as a symbol of power and expresses her wish to identify with it. The meaning of the poem is to be found in the relationship between two different artistic and intellectual experiences, both acquired by the poet, that of the Chinese iconographic tradition and of Taoism as expounded by Chinese masters such as Laozi and Zhuangzi. In Moore the dragon became the emblem of a multiplicity of elements that she probably felt Western culture had not been able convincingly to produce though most of her favourite animals shared some of the traits of the Chinese dragon. In her poetic imagination the dragon's power lies in the immense number of its often contrasting all-positive capacities. The dragon is interpreted by Moore as a powerful symbol of all beneficent tendencies, of all vitality, beauty, respect for human life, elevation, power on earth and in the heavens. 1999 Cynthia Stamy : Moore chose from among several species of a dragon the 'long' dragon, a bringer of rain and a whimsical spirit of changeable aspect. 1962 Moore, Marianne. Blue bug. In : The New Yorker ; May 26 (1962). … bug brother to an Arthur Mitchell dragonfly, speeding to left, speeding to right ; reversible, like "turns in an ancient Chinese melody, a thirteen twisted silk-string three-finger solo". There they are, Yellow River-scroll accuracies. 1966 Moore, Marianne. Tell me, tell me. (New York, N.Y. : Viking Press, 1966). … It appeared : gem, burnished rarity and peak of delicacy – in contrast with grievance touched off on any ground – the absorbing geometry of a fantasy : a James, Miss Potter, Chinese "passion for the particular", of a Tired man who yet, at dusk, Cut a masterpiece of cerise… |
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| 6 | 1923 |
Moore, Marianne. Review of Hymen by H.D. [Hilda Doolittle]. In : Broom ; no 4 (Jan. 1923). "In this instinctive ritual of beauty, at one old and modern, one is reminded of the supernatural yellows of China." |
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| 7 | 1927 |
Moore, Marianne. Comment. In : The Dial ; vol. 83 (Aug. 1927) "Among all the kinds of serpents there is none comparable to the Dragon." [Edward Topsell, 1658]. |
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| 8 | 1952 |
Letter from Ezra Pound to Marianne Moore ; 29 Jan. (1952). 'If the esteemed ed eggregia Marianne will merember [sic] that Kung [Confucius] did not claim invention but transmission only'. |
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| 9 | 1954 |
As a response to a letter from Ezra Pound, dated 7 September 1954, Marianne Moore refers on the envelope to Confucius. Shih-ching : the classic anthology defined by Confucius. [Transl. by] Ezra Pound : "4 misdemeanors in one letter profanities & blasphemy But I confess, Confucius, Well as my French sage has said, 'Sweet speech does no harm None at all'. I refer to The anthology." |
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| 10 | 1957 |
Letter from Ezra Pound to Marianne Moore ; March 9, 1957. Pound noted an 'immensely important' book : Belden, Jack. China shakes the world. (New York, N.Y. : Monthly Review Press, 1970). |
Cited by (1)
| # | Year | Bibliographical Data | Type / Abbreviation | Linked Data |
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| 1 | 2007- | Worldcat/OCLC | Web / WC |
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