The Aesthetic Interpretation Of Ezra Pound's Poetry

Content: Ezra Pound (1885-1972) was the founder and early leader of modern American poetic innovation in early 20th century. He advocated Imagism and a little later turned to Vorticism. These two poetic movements didn't last for long, but they maintained literary significance in American history of literature. Pound put forward new poetic principles, among which "Image" is the aesthetic core. He stated that poetic image is language, and the image should be concrete and clear. He stressed a sort of precise presentation in poetry. Meanwhile, Pound and the other imagists also valued the musical rhythm and emotional side of poetry.We can see that Pound's poetry had been influenced by Henri Bergson's Intuitionism, the late Symbolism in France, the ancient Greek culture and Oriental culture. On the other hand, Pound had an attitude of anti-symbolism. Particularly, ancient Chinese philosophy and poetry (mainly the Tang Dynasty poetry) affected him greatly. That was reflected in both his early Imagist poems and the Cantos, though, there was a great difference on the aesthetic conception on image between the West and the East. However, Pound translated and rewrote quite a few Chinese poems for sake of his Imagist principles. Thus, many of his poems combines Chinese features and modern western style. He was referred to as the inventor of Chinese poems in the modern west. Pound admired Chinese poetry and began to imitate and rewrote poems, what is more, he marked his so-called "Chinese poems" with modern Imagist features. Therefore, Imagism also had influence on modern Chinese poems in the 1920s. In this way, Chinese and American poetry interplayed and interacted.Pound's another great contribution to poetic aesthetics is the successful application of montage in his poems. A case in point is the skill of superposition and juxtaposition. Montage was used frequently both in his Imagist poems and the Cantos. This is something common between Pound's poems and Chinese poems.Pound sang high praise for Chinese written character and he believed that Chinese written character is a kind of language beyond figure. There were a lot of direct uses of Chinese written characters for his poetic presentation. Of course, Pound had a lot of misunderstandings forChinese written characters.The Cantos was Pound's most important work. It was full of modernism in its language, form and structure. It was also hard to understand, and he demonstrated his view on ancient Chinese culture.In all, the Imagism movement didn't last for long, but Pound and his poetic aesthetics is still worth studying.