The Research About The Review And Acceptance Of Whitman's Poetry In China

Whitman and his Leaves of Grass has gone through a process from denial,rejection to acceptance and popular in the world literature, while in China thetranslation, introduction and acceptance of Chinese scholars to Whitman is unusuallysmooth, this has a great relationship with requirements of the background of times inChina. During the period of May 4thMovement, everyone was yearn for democracy,equality and freedom, it's quite natural for Chinese people to accept Whitman who wasknown as democratic poet. While in different historical period in China, Whitman andhis poetry have different function. During the May 4thMovement period, many peoplewith lofty ideals in China fiercely pursuit democracy and science and to shed one'sblood and lay down one's life just for overturn feudalism and establish a democraticcountry. During this period, new poets in China focused their attention on the otherside of the shore far away and tried to find spiritual sustenance to motivate Chinesepeople from the"free country". Therefore Whitman's idea and his poetry started tospread in China. Whitman became the pilot of the new democratic period. While in the30s and 40s, the Chinese nation was struggling in the danger, the war became evenmore violent and it was testing the Chinese people's courage and determination.During that time Whitman was brought in Yan'an revolutionary base where his call forfreedom and console for humanity served as stabilizer in the smoke of the war. NewChina was established after the war of liberation, the burden on Chinese poets was offwith the disappearance of the war. The poets of this period started to their ego andexpressed their inner emotion, and Whitman who promoted self-conscious served as the spiritual food for the new period poets. In consideration of Whitman's historicalfunction in China's different periods, this dissertation tried to based on the main themeof the review and acceptance of Whitman and his poetry in China to analyze theacceptance of poets from different period to Whitman and Whitman's impact on poetsfrom different period in order to understand Whitman more profoundly and providetheory foundation and practice from his affect on Chinese Literature.Whitman's life and his literature achievements were introduced first. Whitman'slife was full of frustrations. He used several decades to create Leaves of Grass whichwas also experienced rises and falls as his life. The big differences of several versionsof Leaves of Grass were also explained. The literature thought of Whitman are mainlyreflected in this poetry collection. He advocated democracy and freedom and hispoetry not only reflects the strong democracy atmosphere also shows intenseindividual characteristics. In the aspect of form, Whitman's poetry broke the bound ofthe metrical pattern of English poetry in Victorian era and created a free and boldpoetry style. He is not only one of the initiators of American national literature, butalso is the initiator of the worldwide popular modern free verse. In the aspect of poetryart, he showed the intense individual characteristics. The images he put in use wereunique, which include the universe image, sea image and city image, etc.After Whitman and his poetry were introduced in China, it had a huge influenceto the development of Chinese new poetry.The review and acceptance of Whitman and his poetry as the main content, thetime period as the mainline, the situation of translation and introduction as well as theaccepted poets at that time were elaborated through five periods which are May 4th,30s and 40s, new China period after liberation, culture revolution, open and reformuntil contemporary.During May 4thperiod, Whitman was not a poet admired by someone in China,Tian Han, Guo Moruo, Hushi were the typical representatives during May 4thmovement. Poetry is the carrier and tool that poet expresses the expression and feeling, it also can be said feeling is the inner motive for poetry creation. And poet's expressionof the feeling is closely connected with poetry style. The aesthetic literature of Chineseancient poetry was deeply influenced by Confusion culture, the feeling of most poetswere depressed, or their feeling expression was over implicit, which lack of indirectionand courage, and it was constrained rather then thoroughly. This leads to many poetsexpressed more about sadness and not being understood, negative mood and feeling intheir poetry creation. Chinese poetry seemed lack of things of positive, optimistic andcourage for creation. Not bounded by tradition and Whitman's rebellious poetry styleto strongly express glowing feeling stroke the deep soul of many Chinese mainlandpoets. To the Chinese poetry circles, Whitman's poetry brought new spiritual element,and it is a new way of expressing feelings. The first group Chinese romantic poetsdeeply influenced by Whitman were represented by Guo Moruo, Wen Yiduo.In 1930s, the translation, comments and research of Whitman's poetry in Chinaemerged large in amount, wide in scope, covering comprehensive. During this period,Whitman was gradually accepted widely in China, this means the place of Whitman inChinese poetic circles gradually consolidated and confirmed. During this period,Whitman continued to influence Chinese poets, those scholars who struggled for thenation liberation, with his generous long poetry. The outstanding representatives inChinese poetry circles of this period are Ai Qing, Pu Feng, He Qifang etc.Since the new China established, especially the 100 anniversary of Whitman'sLeaves of Grass,the acceptance and inherit of Whitman in China became more andmore popular. During the 100 anniversary of Leaves of Grass period, Chinese literaturecircle held large-scale commemorative activity, and many scholars made Whitmanbecame more popular again and consistently approved and accepted to Whitman andhis poetry. The reviews of Whitman's poetry were growing as well as some debates.The research of new poetry development during culture revolution was almost blank,during this time new poetry was not undeveloped, but totally served as the tool forpolitics, even to the extent that the real soul or essence poetry proposed was replacedby the warmly praised"empty words". During the open and reform period, the acceptance for Whitman in China mainly reflected on two groups who had paidattention to him. One reflected on the experts who warmly introduced and researchedon Whitman. For example, Zhao Luorui, Huang Wu, Zhou Yuliang, Li Yeguang, ChuTunan ect. Besides, the difference from Western poetry is the 80s misty poetrydeveloped differently from Western poetry. Chinese new poetry developed only shortlyfor ten years, and it was not simply from one school to the other, until 80s, Chinesenew poetry had appeared the characteristics of those poetry schools of Western,including symbolism school and impressionist school.At last, this dissertation tried to think further based on the above historicalresearches. Our thoughts concentrated on two aspects. First, from the acceptanceaesthetics point of view, we tried to analyze the history of Whitman's acceptance andinfluence in China, its period characteristics and some significant enlightenments forthe influences and exchange of Chinese and foreign literature revealed from this.Second, due to our entire research focused on the influences of Chinese newpoetry writers, we tried to make future conclusion on this. On one hand, we think thefree verse and its translation and introduction of Whitman had a great influence for thedevelopment and maturity of Chinese free verse and meanwhile we also think furthercognition of Whitman's poetry style, especially the cognition of its unique form ofmetrical pattern can promote the construction of Chinese new poetry with metricalpattern. On the other hand, we think the poetry creation of Whitman kept a goodbalance between society involvement and individual writing and achieved a greatachievement, which had the reference value for the creation of contemporary Chinesepoetry.