A Comparative Study On Gu Cheng’s Poetry—Gu Cheng’s Inheritance And Transcendence Of Walt Whitman

Ever since the American poet Walt Whitman was introduced into China by a great Chinese poet Tian Han in 1919, he has exerted an significant influence on Chinese poets,and the outstanding Chinese misty poet Gu Cheng was one of them. As a representative of the Misty Poetry, Gu Cheng won the title of the "fairy-tales" poet with its distinctive aesthetic images and coloring and implications of dreamy fairy-tales in his poetry.However, the aesthetic significance of his poetry is not only about the fantasy art, in fact those fantasy lyrics implied his exploration towards nature, society, self, life and death. In the world of Gu Cheng’s poems, he was a human being while an insect, a ghost while a god. He searched the ultimate question of life by adopting the ever-changing “self” and bringing art into life itself. Thus his philosophical contemplation was beyond all contemporary misty poets. Whitman was naturally freedom-loving and romantic.Therefore “self” was one of the most important theme repeatedly rendered in his classic Leaves of Grass. Whitman’s “self” was different from that of traditional European Romanticism for the one Whitman advocated was both physically powerful and mentally immortal. It was this “self” that was deeply engraved in the spiritual core of Gu Cheng and reflected in his works. Gu Cheng even divided this ever-changing “self” in his works into four types: the natural self; the cultural self; the anti-cultural self and non-being self.Apparently his poetry undergone several significant changes if read in chronological order, which was directly bound up with the influence of Whitman.Although achievements had been made in the research of both Whitman and Gu Cheng’s poetry at home and abroad, there was a vacancy for comparative study of the two poets. As a consequence, this thesis will adopt the method of influence study and take the angle of Gu Cheng’s strong interest towards Whitman to establish the inner connection between Gu Cheng and Whitman, analyzing the similarity of aesthetic images, poetic techniques and philosophical thoughts and exploring Gu Cheng’s inheritance of Whitman as well as his transcendence towards Whitman in his creation of later period from the perspective of Gu Cheng’s four different “selves”.This thesis, based on the previous detailed analysis, comes to the conclusion: Gu Cheng’s great attachment towards Whitman resulted from their similar inner personality and life experience. Gu Cheng picked out different features and themes in Whitman’spoetry based on his own needs in different social conditions and times, therefore Gu Cheng’s inheritance towards Whitman turned out different characteristics in each of his self phase: the similar natural aesthetic images and metaphorical features in the natural self phase; the publicity in poetry in the cultural self phase; the transcendentalism in the anti-cultural self phase as well as Gu Cheng’s transcendence towards Whitman’s philosophical thoughts in the non-being self phase.