Year

1997

Text

Type

Publication

Contributors (2)

Subjects

Chronology Entries (21)

#	Year	Text	Linked Data
1	1905.1	Letter from Marianne Moore to Mary and John Warner Moore ; Thursday, November 2, 1905. A great many of the girls have Atlantic City plush bears and every girl I know has a China animal or grotesque likeness of one.	Person: Moore, Marianne
2	1915	Letter from Marianne Moore to John Warner Moore ; December 12, [19]15. http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16808. Zaroubi Himurjian took us for luncheon to a Turkish restaurant, the Constantinople. We had soup and pieces of meat roasted on skewers and meat fried in grapeleaves and rice and pastry and ice cream. We then saw some ancient Chinese rugs at an Armenian wholesale rug place and an importer there took us to see the processes of silk making.	Person: Moore, Marianne
3	1919	Letter from Marianne Moore to John Warner Moore ; Nov. 2, 1919. Yamanaka's had enormous lengths of silk, a red one, a white one, and a blue one hanging in the window and then to fill in the space, a venetian red one which made the whole thing kook neither American nor Chinese.	Person: Moore, Marianne
4	1923	In March and April Marianne Moore visited and revisited the Exhibition of Chinese paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Fine Arts, New York, whose dragons, horses, buffaloes, and insects gave her a lesson on how seriously and artist might go about portraying nonhumans. Letter from Marianne Moore to John Warner Moore ; March 25, 1923. Tuesday we went to the Metropolitan with Mr. Wheeler to see the Chinese paintings. We pored over them, read the descriptions and made a complete survey of the collection. The animals were beautiful, a dragon appearing in a cloud, horses, water buffaloes and insects. There is a white falcon which as Mr. Wheeler said somewhat overrating it : 'it's like hammered silver'. Letter from Marianne Moore to John Warner Moore ; April 8, 1923. Yesterday we called on Mr. Faggi's friend, Miss Rubenstein, whom he asked us to call on about Christmas time. She was out and as she lives near the museum, we went over to look again at the Chinese paintings, stopping first to see the armor. One of the attendants took charge of us and discanted on history, armor making, the relative size of collections, the silk flags hanging from the roof and we were much benefitted. Letter from Marianne Moore to Bryher ; May 5, 1923. We have seen a loan exhibition of very old Chinese paintings at the Metropolitan, which would I think, interest you ; one of 'spirited horses' – a series of white horses with scarlet pompoms and smoky manes and tails ; one of a dragon in the clouds, concealed but for a few claws ; Enjoying the Breeze in a Fishing-Boat which made me think of the Oxford punt, and one of supremely delicate brush work called Herd Boys Returning Home in which two elderly peasants are mounted on water oxen upon whose skin whorls are indicated with minute brush strokes in a darker colour so blended as to be imperceptible except upon scrutiny. We also examined the manuscript of a poem on Wang Wei : 'He took ten days to paint a river and five days a rock. A masterpiece cannot be4 produced in haste or by pressure. It was after bestowing such pains as these that Wang Tsai allowed his work to remain. Powerful is the painting of the Fang Hu mountains of the Kuen Lun Range, and high it is hung on the spotless wall in the lofty hall of your mansion'. Since seeing the pictures, my only diversion has been the circus.	Document: Qian, Zhaoming. The modernist response to Chinese art : Pound, Moore, Stevens. (Charlottesville : University of Virginia Press, 2003). http://books.google.ch/books/about/The_Modernist_Response_to_Chinese_ Art.html?id=S0AHhe2a0NoC&redir_esc=y. S. 72. (SteW10, Publication) Person: Moore, Marianne
5	1930	Mei Lanfang toured the United States. Marianne Moore saw a program of four short plays by him and his company. She was overwhelmed by Mei Lanfang's performance in female roles. Letter from Marianne Moore to Monroe Wheeler ; Brooklyn, March 18, 1930. I have seen Across the World with Mr. and Mrs. Martin Johnson, and tomorrow I expect to go to a program of four plays and dances by the Chinese actor, Mei Lan-Fang and his company.	Document: Qian, Zhaoming. The modernist response to Chinese art : Pound, Moore, Stevens. (Charlottesville : University of Virginia Press, 2003). http://books.google.ch/books/about/The_Modernist_Response_to_Chinese_ Art.html?id=S0AHhe2a0NoC&redir_esc=y. S. 118. (SteW10, Publication)
6	1932	Letter from Marianne Moore to Monroe Wheeler ; November 20, 1932. Japan I am sometimes interested in, but China is the magic place. I have just recently been trying to write something about dragons, 'true' dragons and the malign variety.	Person: Moore, Marianne
7	1933	[While in Paris, Monroe Wheeler sent Marianne Moore and her mother some Chinese handkerchiefs and writing paper with matching envelopes.] Letter from Marianne Moore to Monroe Wheeler ; March 3, 1933. The word of China's glores – that is to say of your having them – rejoices us. It is so possible to go to a country and see the proffered wonders, missing the true ones ; not to mention being swallowed up in population and seeing nothing of the people who are wonders. You epitomize China – for us in your comparison of it with Japan ; not that one doesn't admire the special proficiencies of Japan, the dexterity, sense of scenery, concise imagination and so on, but for sagesse as Lachaise called it, one takes China ; and of course at present our sympathies establish new loyalties. The handkerchiefs almost frighten us by their perfection. Even a bungler must see that maintained rectangles in drawn-work so tenuous and complicated, required genius and many years' apprenticeship ; and the fineness of the material is to begin with a constant wonder. This paper was a piquant sight to western eyes – the etched red dog on the green cover sheet not being the least feature. I think the two red gum leaves are perhaps the masterpiece, though one has leanings toward the frog - & toward both envelopes. To think of hazarding two such birds near P. Office cancellation marks seems blasphemy. Accuracy and liveness so remarkable – presented freely in this was as if it were an everyday affair, make one breathe eastier having set up for a writer rather than as a painter. (If I could read Chinese I might be in deeper trouble)… To have seen Mei Lan Fang would in itself be enough reward for going to China – let alone several times, and personally, as you have. I liked him so much the one time I saw him in New York, that I was well satisfied not to go to anything else at the theatre afterward that season… I was lured to New York to make a call, and of my own accord went to the Institute to a lecture on American, Spanish, and Chinese alpine flora and to a series of bird and animal motion pictures by Drs. Bailey and Niedbrock of Chicago… Mother has been scorning me for writing a letter to a child in Samoa, on Chinese paper…	Person: Moore, Marianne Person: Wheeler, Monroe
8	1933	Letter from Marianne Moore to William Rose Benét ; August 21, 1933. I was born pro-Chinese and bombs busting in air from Japan have not reversed my allegiance ; but I feel that the shrinking Noguchi was a song-bird murtured by Cuckoos.	Person: Moore, Marianne
9	1934	Letter from Marianne Moore to William Carlos Williams ; January 26, 1934. So bless the collective wheelbarrow ; with Wallace Stevens beside it like a Chinese beside a huge pair of oxen.	Person: Moore, Marianne
10	1935	Letter from Marianne Moore to George Plank ; June 25, 1935. Thank you for thinking of me when you see dragons, and for being as willing to encourage me about my book now that it is out, as you were before.	Person: Moore, Marianne
11	1935	Letter from Marianne Moore to George Plank ; August 14, 1935. As for not being Persian or Chinese ; you spoke the truth – if not in the sense in which you meant it – when you said you would never add to the bad prose which is being written.	Person: Moore, Marianne
12	1935	Letter from Marianne Moore to Elizabeth Bishop ; December 20, 1935. Your word of the pigeons in the blue cage, and of the Chinese collection of Mr. Loo – his dragons with movable eyes and ears especially – delighted me beyond measure.	Person: Moore, Marianne
13	1936	Letter from Marianne Moore to Elizabeth Bishop ; March 14, 1936. I have wished I might know something of the Chinese exhibitions and should surely like when you come home…	Person: Moore, Marianne
14	1936	Letter from Marianne Moore to Elizabeth Bishop ; Norfolk, Virginia, August 28, 1936 With regard to Virginia, although I think I tend to overdraw beauty that my friends are not present to verify, the Cape Henry sand-dunes, the beach and its follies, the Chinese strangeness of the waterbirds, would be hard to exaggerate.	Person: Moore, Marianne
15	1936	Letter from Marianne Moore to Elizabeth Bishop ; October 1, 1936. Respecting your theatre-engagement, without knowing about it, the impression left on me was that you did just right, sorry as I was not to see more of you and have Mother see you both. It is a pleasure to have the Chinese art longer.	Person: Moore, Marianne
16	1941	Letter from Marianne Moore to Louise Crane ; June 5 [1941?]. Mr. [Chester] Page is a virtuoso, certainly, in the humor of his manner - 'his happy starling posturings' – as well as with the trumpet. I thought, as he was playing, of the lecturer on Chinese music, Mr. Leavis, who said that a Chinese flute-player must practice rigorously – maybe months – with a reed and bowl of water, to learn how to keep taking air in without ever stopping the current of breath coming out.	Person: Moore, Marianne
17	1945	Letter from Marianne Moore to Elizabeth Mayer ; April 30, 1945. The Chinese book is an invitation to perfection, a constant poem, is it not, - the crescent moon 'one stroke less than the moon', the three beats of the heart set down like the footsteps of some woodland creature, the moon added to the sun to represent 'brilliant' and the inexpressible brush effects in the writing. I have admired Chinese writing all my life. It is a joy to have this book and to be able to study the precision and apparent simplicity of the English wording. [Betr. Guang, Rusi. Chinese wit, wisdom and written characters [ID D30337].]	Person: Moore, Marianne
18	1952	Letter from Marianne Moore to Robert McAlmon ; February 23, 1952. Yes, I sometimes hear from Ezra Pound or Mrs. Pound and I certainly agree about Ezra P's translations… I don't know a more expert study than Sacheverell [Sitwell] 's book on Domenico Scarlatti nor do I know the equal for humor and irony of Osbert Sitwell's Escape with Me !, about China.	Person: Moore, Marianne
19	1953	Letter from Marianne Moore to Dorothy Pound and Ezra Pound ; July 31, 1952. I take an avid interest in Mommsen, in the zealous Achilles Fang ; could he be a relative of Mei Lan Fang ? a masterpiece of whom I would be ignorant had it not been for Gilbert Seldes, who warned me not to miss him. And (an interest in) The Great Digest – one of the principal reasons for my coming to Washington (and in facsimiles of Vivaldi manuscripts).	Person: Moore, Marianne Person: Pound, Ezra
20	1957	Letter from Marianne Moore to Hildegarde Watson ; January 25, 1957. It was a very regal party given by Mrs. Clark Williams (no relative of WCW) – 150 Central Park South. She is a dear lady, very old with snow white hair, very strong, and a skilled hostess – in black velvet with two large salmon roses at the waist. Chinese bird and butterfly wall paper, china figurines ; 'rare' Martha Washington plates and tea-pots, jade dishes ; and pale Chinese brocade settees.	Person: Moore, Marianne
21	1968	Letter from Marianne Moore to Mary-Louise Schneeberger ; New York, [postmarked Febr. 16, 1968]. I am so happy that Harry Belafonte happened to pick me for his show – so handsomely surprising me by his end-dance : "Marianne, Carry On". I love the thought of Carmel and you, Mary-Louise in your Chinese vermilion dress !	Person: Moore, Marianne

Cited by (1)

#	Year	Bibliographical Data	Type / Abbreviation	Linked Data
1		Zentralbibliothek Zürich	Organisation / ZB