A Study Of Pound’s Cathay Based On Zhu Guangqian’s Poetics

Ezra Pound (1885-1972) is a famous American poet, the starter of the “ImagistMovement”. In order to achieve his poetic conception, to promote the renaissance of theEnglish poetry, he made friends with many poets, propagandized his poetic ideal andfinally made a great contribution to the formation and development of the modernistideological trend.At the end of the19th century the early20th century, English poetry wascharacterized by the exaggerated, rhetorical, and sentimental style, which Pound constantlyfought against with. All the time, he devoted himself to finding a new way to poetize. In1913, he got a notebook about the research of the oriental culture. Through this notebook,he had found out the “Imagism” which happens to be the way out for the new poetry. Withthis book, he began to study on Chinese culture and the “Imagism” in the Chinese poetry.In1915, Pound had translated19of Chinese poetry, named Cathay. After published, thebook immediately caused a sensation in the English poetry. However, the famous works isunexpectedly criticized by some Chinese experts and scholars. Unfamiliar with Chinese,Pound had to consult the English paraphrase made by others in the process of translation.As a result, the free translation and mistranslation has indeed occurred in his works fromtime to time. To some extent, the Chinese experts’ comment is reasonable. As a result, thisfamous, but criticized works is in urgent need of a fair and objective commentIn this thesis, the author chooses Zhu Guangqian’s Poetics as the criterion, and makesa comparison between the Pounds’ poetry theory and the Chinese poetry theory throughclose reading. This thesis is divided into four parts; the first part is the introduction. It states the overseas and domestic research status of Cathay and Poetics. The second partintroduces that the translation study turns to the direction of the comparative literature.Afterwards, the specific research method is chosen, i.e. the Zhu Guangqian’s poetics as the“common mold”，and analyzes the reason why this book is chosen. The third part, underthe guidance of the Poetics, from three aspects, i.e. the essence of poetry, the state ofpoetry and the music of poetry, the author analyses the homogeneity of the Poetics andPound’s poetic thought through the close reading v. The forth part draws a conclusion. As atranslated works, Cathay conveys the image and interest that are unique to Chinese poetry,and it is a perfect translation. As poetry, it has both the Chinese poetic essence and theEnglish poetic essence, and it belongs to the classical poetry. In addition, Pound’s Cathayhas very good reference and directive significance for both the translation study and thetranslation practice.