Year

2010

Text

Type

Publication

Contributors (1)

Mentioned People (1)

Subjects

Chronology Entries (6)

#	Year	Text	Linked Data
1	1917	Amy Lowell was invited by Florence Ayscough during one of her customary visits to America, to shape into poetry, her transliterations of Chinese poems, whch would accompany the exhibition of Ayscough's own collection of Chinese paintings (now at the Art Museum Chicaco). Lowell grew enthusiastic about the reading of Chinese poetry and about a translation project with her old friend.	Person: Ayscough, Florence Wheelock Person: Lowell, Amy
2	1919	Letter from Amy Lowell to Florence Ayscough ; Aug. 16 (1919). The great poets of the T'ang Dynasty, particularily Li T'ai Po, are without doubt among the finest poets that the world has ever had. He seems to me to rank second to none in any country in lyric poetry, and it seems to me as though Tu Fu were equally fine.	Person: Ayscough, Florence Wheelock Person: Lowell, Amy
3	1919	M. Review of Fir flower tablets. In : The journal of the Royal Asiatic Society North China ; vol. 1 (1919). In many ways Florence Ayscough is a pioneer, and this idea of hers to extract all she can, and more than others thought they sould, may be justified in the end. The character invites such a method as the one suggested. Of course the Chinese protests vigorously against such a treatment. Itself eing under rigid rules, and governed by inexorable laws it seems to object at every port at the idea often being carried too many feet, or being left as short measure. At present we are neutral and stand by to wait and see.	Person: Ayscough, Florence Wheelock
4	1921.4	Fir-flower tablets : poems [ID D29140](4) Sekundärliteratur Janet Roberts : Fragrance in flowers such as orchids, the plumb blossom, the peach, and the peony play a dramatic role in Chinese literature. It is not only the 'flower' itself, as a natural item, in its botanical specificity ; the poet is concerned with the act of the memory evoked in an image of petals falling, associated with a woman, and the scent which lingers, in her passage. Like fragrance in Chinese verse, many Chinese poets write the words 'to a tune', or mention a musical instrument. Amy Lowell was serious about music, about music transmitted and transformed into poetry, and certainly she was concerned, in Fir Flower Tablets, about rhythms. Given Amy Lowell's love of music, her effort to translate music into her poems, in her words, "reproduce the effect of the music in another medium. I wanted to try something more, something less obvious than mere rhythm, and closer to the essence of musical speech". When the composer and violinist Charles Loeffler invited Lowell to his home in Medford, his playing of the d"Indy violin sonata in his music room inspired Lowell to conflate Chinese imagery and musical notations. Refashioning the poems in English, first required knowledge of the laws of Chinese versification, but then Amy Lowell says she had to respect the technical limits but found it impossible to follow either the rhythms or rhyme schemes of the originals as she had no experience of the spoken language. Since she did not hear the idiom of Chinese speakers, and did not step foot on Chinese soil, it is no wonder, that given she worked with the English transliterations, she could hardly exactly replicate the original rhythms. Lowell, intrigued by the Chinese classical poems, was inspired by what she saw that Pound was able to achieve, without knowing Chinese language. Lowell acknowledges that the study of Chinese, as well as the study of poetry, require lifelong learning, and clafifies that she has not taken up the Chinese language or the field of sinology, as had Florence Ayscough.	Person: Ayscough, Florence Wheelock Person: Lowell, Amy
5	1922	Witter Bynner, as president of the Poetry Society, invited Chang Peng-chun as the principal speaker who contrasted American and Chinese attitudes towards poetry.	Person: Chang, Peng-chun
6	1926	Catel, Jean. Review of Fir flower tablets. In : Le mercure de France (1926). Catel praised the accuracy and flavor of the English renderings of Chinese poems. However, after reading the McNair publication of the letters between Florence Ayscough and Amy Lowell, he recants : "Chinese poetry was to Amy Lowell the most delicate of dishes, her collaborating with Florence Ayscough a means of justifying her approach to it. The oriental flavor has evaporated under the touch, however, delicate, of a Western hand."	Person: Ayscough, Florence Wheelock Person: Lowell, Amy

Cited by (1)

#	Year	Bibliographical Data	Type / Abbreviation	Linked Data
1	2007-	Worldcat/OCLC	Web / WC