Blossoms From The East

Ezra Pound, the founder of Imagism, published his Cathay in April 1915, which caused quite a stir among literary critics. The success of Cathay in the United States actually meant the West's widespread acceptance of classical Chinese poetry, and it was considered to be Pound's "most enduring contribution" to the English poetry as well. Pound applied "image", one of the traditional elements of classical Chinese poetry, to the modern Western poetry, which accordingly promoted the development of imagism. In Cathay, Pound gradually mastered the techniques of handling images by direct presentation, and managed to apply them to his own work.The Chinese scholars who are concerning themselves about Cathay mainly tend to handle Cathay from the angle of translation. Actually, Cathay itself is an independent and entire work. This thesis will analyze the images from the text of Cathay patiently and appreciate Cathay from images. The classical Chinese poetry is specialized in expressing theme through the presentation of the images. In the process of translating Chinese poetry, Pound concentrated on images to present the themes of poetry. The study on images in Cathay will wake up human beings'instinctive aesthetic sense.This thesis firstly reviews the current status of research on Cathay at home and abroad. With Pound's Imagism and the "image" in classical Chinese poetry, the function of the image in the Chinese and Western poetry is interpreted. According to the contents of Cathay, this thesis generalizes the poems with five themes:soldiers'sorrow, maiden's grievance, departure between friends, indulgence and solitude. In the second chapter, from the perspective of images the writer analyzes the soldiers'loneliness and suffering one by one. Considering the special significance of time in the war, this chapter seeks for images with time significance and analyzes how these images become the clue to express the theme of war. In the third chapter, maiden's sorrow is presented implicitly from the perspective of images. Because of the expressive force of space, the images with space significance are interpreted to express the theme of maiden's sorrow. Chapterâ…£is about the unwilling departure between friends. The classical Chinese poetry is picturesque and the unwilling departure between friends is presented in this sort of picturesque poetry. This chapter interprets how the images build the departing circumstance like paintings and shows the expressive force of images with picturesque significance. Chaptersâ…¤andâ…¥list the poems about indulgence and solitude and make a brief analysis about images. Chapter VII, the conclusion of this thesis, summarizes that Cathay, endowed with special significance because of the special background, provides readers a new perspective to appreciate the poetry. The juxtaposition and superposition of images and images'function as building circumstance make images run through the theme of poetry.