Exploration Of The Necessarily Different Views On Poetry And Painting In The West And China From The Perspective Of Lessing And Su Shi

Poetry and painting, as two important art forms, have been deeply imprinted with cultures in their course of development. Consequently, different views on relations between poetry and painting have been formed in the west and China. Poetry and painting have come to be considered as of different natures in the west, but as of the same nature in china. Various factors have contributed to the difference in perspectives on relations between poetry and painting, and such a difference is unavoidable.The first one concerns the difference between western and Chinese philosophies. In the west, man and nature are held in opposition, with mankind being the conqueror and the nature the conquered, and there is an inclination toward positivism, rationalism and scientism. The theory of imitation, initiated by Aristotle, therefore, follows as a natural result. In China, the view that man and nature are in union has been in prevalence and the Chinese tend to stress more the importance of sensibility and intuitionalism. The necessary outcome is the emergence of theory of reaction between heart and object. Theory of imitation could be traced back to Aristotle and on this basis, Lessing came to realize that "poetry as painting" theories were biased or even wrong, and consequently established the predominance of "different nature of poetry and painting", paving the way for the development of poetry as well as painting in the west. The theory of union between man and nature and the subsequent development of theory of reaction between heart and object have later on brought about the theory of artistic conception in poetry and painting and led to the merge of poetry and painting in both form and spirit.The different views on poetry and painting are also to be attributed to the differences in their own. Under the influence of scientism and rationalism, western painting has employed various techniques (such as contrast between light and shade, focus of perspective) and almost achieved perfection in imitating the reality. However, Chinese painting has been pursuing the spirit, the Qi and the Yun, which are formless and hard to describe and render the complementary function of Chinese poetry necessary.Chinese poetry mainly consists of short lyric poems while western poems are largely much longer, usually referred to as epics or dramatic poetry. Therefore, the former can merge well with the picture but the later cannot.In the west, the consistency between poetry and painting has been abandoned since the publication of Laocoon by Lessing, while in China, the traditional views that "painting in the poetry" and "poetry in the painting" have survived and thrived.