A Study Of Chinese Elements In Wallace Stevens’ Poems

Wallace Stevens was an American poet in the twentieth century as well as one of the representatives in the movement of Imagism. At that time, American traditional values lost their dominating position. American intellectuals began to absorb various cultures and thoughts around the globe. Chinese elements to a large extent fascinated American poets including Wallace Stevens. In a world of disorder and disbelief, he pursues order and a novel perception toward the world. In a number of letters and poems written by Stevens, he greatly shows his affection to Chinese cultures embodying Chinese philosophy, art, literature and so forth.This thesis mainly studies the Chinese elements in Wallace Stevens’ poems. The first chapter introduces Wallace Stevens’ acquaintance with Chinese culture including Chinese ancient poetry, Chinese ancient philosophies and Chinese landscape paintings. The second chapter analyzes Wallace Stevens’ poems which embody the Chinese influences, particularly that of the essence of Zen and Chinese Taoism on his poetry. The philosophy of Taoism advocates that human beings should banish all fixed perceptions about the natural world and have equality with nature, thus achieving the reconciliation with the physical outer world. Some of Stevens’ poems are imbued with Chinese philosophy between the lines. This chapter expounds the influence of the essence of Zen and Chinese Taoism on his poetry writing, including the philosophical ideas of “nature’s own self,” “nothingness,” “unity of man and nature,” “meditation” and “moksa.” The third chapter mainly analyzes the creating methods and poetic perceptions of Chinese ancient poetry in Wallace Stevens’ poems from the characteristics of “juxtaposition of images,” “eremitic mode,” “relation between the self and the external world” and “visual poetics.” This chapter tries to illustrate the similarities between these elements and some of Stevens’ poems. Based on Wallace Stevens’ fondness of Chinese landscape painting and his own poetic viewpoints on the relations between poetry and painting, the fourth chapter aims to study Stevens’ assimilation of the essence of Chinese landscape painting and to analyze the elements of it in Stevens’ poems by utilizing the technique of careful reading along with the perceptions of “poetry and painting’s combination.” The Chinese landscape elements that are absorbed include Chinese landscape images and creating techniques. This chapter respectively explores the use of the artistic techniques of “scattered perspective” and “whitespace,” as well as the aesthetic spirit of “harmony between man and nature.” In addition, this chapter tries to elaborate the reasons of the research on Wallace Stevens’ poems and painting art from the perspective of psychology.