Analyzing The Resistance Consciousness Of Death Images In The Shang Qin's Poetry

In the history of 20th century Chinese poetry, Taiwan modern poet Shangqin could be considered as a very extraordinary and significant one. His poetry has distinctive meanings and profound images which have developed a school of his own and he is known as a representative of surrealism experiment in Taiwan modern poetry trend. Because of the influence of history and politics, most studies on Shangqin were formerly conducted by overseas scholars, while in recent years, academic circle in mainland China started to pay attention to him. This paper attempted to take multiple characterization and cultural connotation of the death imagery of Shang's poetry as a starting point and thus tried to analyze the cause of the creation of the imagery, from the perspectives of personal experience and the literary trend, which aimed to reveal the transcendence of rebellion consciousness and the literary significance in his poetry.There are five parts in this paper:The preface emphasizes all Shang's life, creation and his overseas literature influence, and also briefly reviewed the research situation on him in mainland China, thus the paper put forward the problems intended to be explored and then the text is brought out accordingly.The first chapter analyzed the multiple characterization of the"death imagery"in Shang's poetry and has relegated the"death imagery"into three types for discussion: direct appearance, recessive depiction and elegy. The death imagery appeared directly has vividly conveyed the author's intention—the value of life lies in the incessant efforts; recessive imagery implies the connotation of the poetry: constant destruction of life possesses the possibility of unceasing renascence; while in the elegies, the author expressed his resistance against death and meanwhile commemorated his deceased friends. In this section, I have attempted to have a macroscopical understanding and analysis on the death imagery of the author. The second chapter focused on the elucidation of the cultural connotation and deeply explored the cause of the emergence of the death imagery from the aspects of his personal life experience and the influence of western literary trend. Just for the reason of his troubled life, such as being fugitive and pressed into service, his poetry concerned more about the"tragedy consciousness"and his poems mirrored each segment of his unfortunateness; meanwhile, in the 1950s and 1960s, the broad spread of western literary trend has influenced the literary ideas of the poets of the generation, especially Shang's acceptance of the thoughts of surrealism trend has made his poems represent unique art features. Based on the examination of his creation, this paper analyzed the artistic effect of the strategy of"modified tone"and"general view"and thus the complicated connotation conveyed in his death imagery will be elaborated.The third chapter tried to examine the value of Shang's poetry from the view of development route of literary history. The study started with the writing of death subject in western literacy and explicated the influence of tragedy consciousness on Shang's poems. Thus the death imagery in Shang's poetry has been analyzed from philosophical meaning and compared with the works of Li Jinfa, Feng Zhi, and Zhu Xiang, and then the common ground between the previous poets and Shang has been found—to ponder the essence of life and death with intense modern thinking. Meanwhile, under the comparison between Shang and Lu Xun, we found out the works of Shang has interlinked literary spirit"rebellion despair"reflected in Luxun's works: the consciousness of death is not despair or destruction, but the deep insight into the inner relationship between life and death. At this level, the transcendence and literature significance of Shang's poetry are more apparent.The epilogue part has generally summarized the development route of Chinese modernism new poetry in the 20th century and approved the contribution of Taiwan poets, represented by Shangqin, to the continuation of modernism in Chinese symbolism, modernism, and nine leaves poetry. Finally the meaning and value of the study on Shang's death imagery has been reiterated.In brief, Shangqin's poetry can possess his own art world and personal style based on the particular meaning and exquisite imagery; thereby he became a very important poet in Chinese poetic circles. In this sense, the aesthetic ideology of Shang's poetry still deserves our research. The purpose of this paper is to present the death imagery of Shang's poetry and objectively analyze it and make us realize the significance of death imagery in poets'philosophical research and pursuit of life value.