Chinese Culture And The Formation Of Amy Lowell’s Modernist Poetry

Amy Lowell was a famous female modernist poet in America,and her ties to Chinese culture were very close.But previous studies mainly focused on her translation of Chinese poetry,the influence of Chinese culture on her poetry was rarely studied.This paper argues that it was the appreciation and absorption of Chinese classical culture that made Amy Lowell a renowned modernist poet.Initially,Lowell was heavily influenced by Romanticism,and the readers as well as the critics did not recognize Lowell as a poet.However,by persisting learning of Chinese classical culture and art,especially Chinese classical poetry,the techniques of Lowell’s poetry improved a lot,and she finally became a leading modernist figure.In the meantime,Lowell borrowed from Chinese culture,and renovated the aesthetics of American literature.Lowell not only formed her own style of modernist poetry,she also promoted the progress of Anglo-American modernist poetry.This paper is divided into three chapters.In the first chapter,this paper studies Lowell’s approaches to Chinese culture and her understanding of Chinese culture by studying documents and literature.Her first contact with Chinese culture was Percival Lowell’s gifts from Japan,including Japanese paintings and haiku,and collection of books about China.Later,the plethora of the Lowell family’s book collections provided for her further reading about Chinese culture and Chinese classical poetry.What’s more,Lowell had friends who lived in China,and they brought books about Chinese culture and classical poetry to Lowell.Last,the correspondences with Wen Yiduo also introduced Chinese culture to Lowell.Apparently,from the angle of cultural communication,the multiple approaches made Lowell’s cognition of Chinese culture diversified,and these were the basis of the gradual knowledge about the distant culture.The second chapter focuses on Lowell’s translation of Chinese classical poetry The Fir-Flower Tablets,and studies her understanding of Chinese classical poetry,as well as her selective acceptance of it.Lowell was in a stagnation of creative writing,but through this practice,she gained more inspiration from Chinese classical poetry.To be more specific,in Lowell’s practices,she highlighted the vivid images of Chinese classical poetry,and ditched the rigid rhymes,and as a result,Lowell preserved the lasting and implicit aura.Due to her avid love for Chinese culture,Lowell read a lot of books about Chinese history and culture during her translation,so that she could know Chinese classical poetry more systematically.Lowell’s translation represented the resonation between the nature and man’s emotions to some extent.Although there were still some misunderstandings of the poetry,the poetry regarded as an exclusive whole,or regarded as the translated work,was quite successful.More importantly,through this intensive reading of Chinese culture,history and poetry,Lowell imbibed the images in Chinese classical poetry,and learned the poetic art of Chinese poetry,so Lowell’s later creative writings were improved a lot compared to her early writings.The third chapter studies the Chinese elements in Lowell’s later works,and proves that it was through the learning of Chinese culture that Lowell formed her own style of modernist poetry.The language in Chinese culture was reticent and pure,yet the reader could connect with the images and meanings more intimately.So,her later works proved a great deal of progress: her creative writings were pithy,accurate and meaningful.Finally,Lowell was recognized as a modernist poet.Compared to other modernist poets like T.S.Eliot and Ezra Pound,Lowell’s style was one of a kind.The former’s style was grim and bleak,and the objects were largely confined to the decadence of the industrial cities,in order to express the despair of the modern man.However,though Lowell preferred the free verse form like other modernist poets,her poetry stood out for its pithiness,lightness and serenity.This paper holds that,it was the persisting learning of Chinese culture that formed Lowell’s unique style of pithiness and implicitly.