A Further Exploration Of Ezra Pound's Imagism And Thoughts About Translation

Ezra Pound (1885-1972) is one of the most influential figures in modern American history. He is generally considered a great poet mostly responsible for defining and promoting Imagism in poetry;and he also shows his greatness in translating the classical Chinese poetry. Pound brings the traditional Chinese poetry into the western culture, which promotes the development of new American poetry. Moreover, Pound benefits a lot from the classical Chinese poetry. The ideogramic and pictographic natures of the Chinese characters and the images expressed in the classical Chinese poetry have a great influence on his poetry. He well understands the images and masters the skills how to handle the images that the ancient Chinese poets usually constructed.American critic and poet T. S. Eliot has praised Ezra Pound's translation of Chinese poems and called him "the inventor of Chinese poetry" of the 20th century. However, some Chinese scholars criticize Pound's translations for violating the principle of faithfulness and misreading the original works. In fact, from the perspective of cultural exchanges, the mistakes Pound makes in his translations can be understood. Misreading is inevitable when cultural exchanges are made between heterogeneous cultures. Through analysis of his translations and exploring his translation thoughts, it is interested in finding that Pound intentionally makes some unfaithful translations so as to fulfill his poetic intentions. As a matter of fact, the so-called mistakes he made are none other than his unique ways of creative translations.This thesis, in its essence, attempts to make a systematic research on Pound's translation thoughts and hope to offer a better understanding of his translation works. By taking Cathay (1915) as the case study, the author analyzes Pound's motivations of translating the classical Chinese poetry and explores his translation thoughts from the perspective of the Aesthetics theory and the Skopos theory of translation so as to present an in-depth view of his translation thoughts.Based on the above analyses, the thesis comes to the following conclusions: Firstly, the reason that Pound has great interest in the classical Chinese poetry is the Imagism theory Pound advocates so coincides with the "image" in the classical Chinese poetry.Secondly, three Imagism poetic principles Pound lays down help to develop his translation principles. In the translation of the classical Chinese poetry, the Imagism is permeating through his translations. Thirdly, Pound's translation is for his own skopos which is to serve for his poetic intentions. His Imagism poetics has a great influence on his translations to manipulate translations to fulfill his poetic intentions.