The Ander-streben Of Music And Literature

Cathay is a collection of Chinese classical poems creatively translated by Ezra Pound based on the cribs of Ernest Fenollosa. Being an artist and critic on both music and literature, Pound devoted his pursuit of music of poetry and musical aesthetics to this collection by virtue of his hallucination of China. This collection written from 1912 to 1915, therefore, provides us with an excellent text for the examination of Pound's theories and works on Anders-streben during the phrase between Imagism and Vorticism.Pound's theory of interweaving music into poetry echoed the mainstream of the nineteenth century aesthetic principles which emphasize the music of poetry and emotion. As to the aural dimension of Cathay, Pound recreates the enchantment of the Chinese classical poetry in vers libre based on his concerns about "absolute rhythm" which based fundamental human emotions beyond the fissure of languages, cultures, times and spaces. Close scrutiny reveals that the four main themes (war, women's sorrow, remembrance and Setting-off) are consciously organized in Cathay, thus interplaying with each other, structurally much the way the movements function in a classical symphony. In addition, the section concerning the "silence situation" of Cathay is devoted to tracing its influence by Mallarméand the correspondence to Taoist aesthetics, and it also elucidates how Pound's (mis)reading of classical Chinese poetry led him to put his musical aesthetics into Cathay. Pound continued practicing his musical aesthetics during the Post-Cathay period, however, he polarized the experimental pursuit of music of poetry, rendering comprehension difficulties to readers. This attempt for Anders-streben exerts a far-reaching influence on modernists and postmodernists in the realms of music and literature.The author of this thesis, based on the contemporary literary and musical trend when Cathay was written, chiefly attempts to investigate Pound's efforts in weaving music into poetry in terms of rhythm, structure of themes and silent situation. Meanwhile, this author also inquires into whether Pound's Chinese hallucination plays an essential role in this poetry, and discusses what profound influences his claim of poetic techniques pertaining to music during this period had on his later works and other modernists' in the domains of literature and music. Then the author seeks to reach a further understanding of Cathay, and to explore some romanticists, modernist, and even postmodernists' projects on Anders-streben.