Translation Of Yeats' Poetry In China

William Butler Yeats (June 13, 1865—January 28, 1939), a foremost poet and dramatist of the English-speaking world, was born in a painter's family in Dublin, Ireland. He was a productive poet in all his life. His poems, drawing the essence of romanticism, aestheticism, mysticism, symbolism and metaphysics, have experienced several significant changes and at last evolved into his own unique style. The road of his artistic exploration is considered the miniature of the classical-to-modern transition of the English poetry's mainstream. It is not too difficult to understand Yeats' poems, the languages of which read elegant and fluent with simplicity. However, Yeats' capricious style, profound inner feelings and the great amount of application of symbolism to his poems make it harder for the readers to completely reach the real core of his poems. As a poet who had always been composing poems with heart and soul, Yeats experienced several times of metamorphoses, which involved a painstaking course of thinking and signified the evaporation of his mind. All his life, Yeats consistently worked hard at introspection and self-development, engaging in enriching and extending his writing skill, field and angle through his poetry composing. That's why his poems rejuvenated even when he was old. Having achieved highly in lyrics, drama and literary criticism, the poet, with unique artistic fascination, has attracted a great number of readers all the time. T.S. Eliot, another great poet in his times asserted him as "the greatest poet in the world in the twentieth century".This paper is divided into four parts. In the first two parts I briefly introduce Yeats' life and several major phases of his poetry composing. Meanwhile I make efforts at commenting on the theme and artistic feature of Yeats' lyrics. This is due to the fact that every writer and his works are inevitably affected by the factors such as cultural background of his times, experiences, education and etc. It is impossible for the translator to produce a good version without probing into the writer and his works. In the third part, the history of translation and introduction of Yeats poems and the consequent influence on Chinese modernist poetry are summarized. In the fourth part special efforts are...