The Influence Of Xu Zhimo's Poetry Translation On His Poetry Writing——a Functional Stylistic Perspective

Xu Zhimo is a famous poet and poetry translator in modern China, whose literary career is only11years long (1921-1931). But in these11years, Xu Zhimo not only translated many foreign poems but also wrote a large number of modern Chinese poems, which makes a great contribution to the formation of modern Chinese poetry. This thesis discusses mainly the influence of Xu Zhimo's poetry translation on his poetry writing from a functional stylistic perspective.Based on functional stylistics, the stylistic features, or in other words, the important literary elements can be confined in an exercisable scope at the three levels of language. According to functional stylistics, there are three levels of language:the realization level refers to the tangible language, that is, its visual and audible aspects, which includes the phonological and graphological system of language; the form level means the language entities are organized into meaningful discourse through the lexical and grammatical system of language; the semantic level refers to the content to be expressed. Functional stylistics also considers style as the prominent result of a series of choices, motivated by the context of situation, from the language system at the three levels of language. Therefore, the influence of Xu's poetry translation on his poetry writing can be instantiated as the influences of stylistic features at each level of language.After a detailed analysis and comparison of how those stylistic features are realized in both his translations of foreign poems and his own creative poems, those stylistic features disposed in a same or similar way in both his poetry translation and writing are attached to great importance, as they are just the influences of Xu's poetry translation on his poetry writing to a certain extent. The influences at the realization level are mainly the borrowing and innovation of English poetic rhyme schemes, the use of Yin Chi as the basic unit of rhythm, the borrowing and innovation of English poetic genres, and the borrowing of the arrangement of lines in English poetry. The influences at the form level are mainly the unique transliterations like "沙(sha)扬(yang)娜(na)拉(la)", the poetic frame constructed by functional words, the Europeanized expression, the repetition of poetic lines or the structure. The influences at the semantic level are mainly about the topics of love, death, and life:the open expression and eulogization of love, the bold sexual description, the optimistic attitude to death, the sanctification of death, the pessimistic attitude to life, and the aversion and condemnation of war.