Journal of literature and art studies vo

Journal of Literature and Art Studies Volume 7, Number 10, October 2017 Serial Number 71 Contents Literature Studies Re-examining the Past: Elements of Postmodern Memory in Toni Morr

Journal of Literature

and Art Studies

Volume 7, Number 10, October 2017 (Serial Number 71)

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Journal of Literature

and Art Studies

Volume 7, Number 10, October 2017 (Serial Number 71)

Contents

Literature Studies

Re-examining the Past: Elements of Postmodern Memory in Toni Morrison’s Love 1229

Grzegorz Kotecki

Retaining Truth, Seeking Goodness and Preserving Beauty: Principles of Translating

Tsangyang Gyatso’s Poems Into English 1238

YU Yang, LI Zheng-shuan

Visual Representations in Richard Aldington’s London (May 1915) and Eros and Psyche 1244

Tzu Yu Allison Lin, Mehmet Çiçek

The Influences of American Deep Image on the Third-Generation Poets in China 1251

Jan Haicksz Steen’s Woman at Her Toilet: “Provocative Innuendos” 1279

Liana De Girolami Cheney

Incidents and Accidents in Plein Air Painting: One Path Towards Post-impressionism 1290

Lloyd Bennett

A Study on the Artistic Dimension of Modern Chinese Popular Music 1299

WANG Jing

Translation Studies

Chinese-to-English Translation of Publicity on Chinese Minority Culture: Discourse

Ideology and Translation Strategies 1307

XIAO Tang-jin, XIAO Zhi-peng

Communication—With Case Studies 1314

SONG Xi-xi, LING Qian

Teaching the Non-Chinese Speaking Students Origami to Improve Their Interest and

Concentration in Learning Chinese Language 1331

LEE Kit Fong

Conducting the Task-based Approach With Context Aware Mobile Situated Learning

on Learning English for College Students’ Learning Performance 1337

Ju-yin Yang

A Study of Students’ Opinions About History Subjects in the Social Studies Curriculum 1347

Hamza AKENGİN, Meltem Elif CENDEK

O n Foreign Language Creation and Rootless Back Translation

—A Case Study of Snow Flower and the Secret Fan 1354

Architectural and Urban Communication in Social Identity: The Case Study of Agadir

Morocco: From Colonial Preponderance to Renaissance Which Social Identity? 1383

Amal Ben Attou

Journal of Literature and Art Studies, October 2017, Vol 7, No 10, 1229-1237

doi: 10.17265/2159-5836/2017.10.001

Re-examining the Past: Elements of Postmodern Memory in

Toni Morrison’s Love

as a present-day writer of African American descent, Morrison attempts to reassemble all the fragmentary historical and cultural accounts available to her as a novelist and narrate them in the form of a convincing story With regard

to the above considerations, this article seeks to discuss some of the mechanisms employed by Morrison for

weaving her postmodern, memory-filled narrative on the example of her eighth novel, Love (2003) In particular,

the analysis focuses on the book’s central figure, Bill Cosey, and his Southern ocean-side resort—both seen against the backdrop of the pre- and post-World War II racist America, followed by the 1960s decade of the Civil Rights Movement Finally, it is also demonstrated how the author’s use of split narrative as well as the “I”

narrator-cum-character technique contribute to recounting in retrospect Love’s main, historicized story—one

viewed and judged from a present-time perspective

Keywords: history, Love, memory, (the) past, Toni Morrison

Introduction

The article begins with an introduction of Love by outlining its thematic, compositional structure and

mode of narration Although not very long, the novel is one of Morrison’s structurally most complex and challenging works Generally, the book, one of the two that the novelist herself describes as “perfect” (the other

being Jazz [1992])1, is a study on the theme of love and its multi-dimensional nature; however, it may also be

seen as an attempt at exploring how alive and meaningful the past can be in the present In essence, written

predominantly in a non-linear fashion, Love recounts in a series of personal flashback memories the lives of

several women (Christine, Heed, May, Vida, L, and Junior/Viviane) and their relationships to the late Bill Cosey The novel is both the story of Mr Cosey, a then much-talked about but presently deceased hotel owner, and of the people surrounding him, all affected by his life—even long after his death In fact, each of the female characters portrayed in the book shows some unique and complicated relation to this, as it turns out later,

Grzegorz Kotecki, MA, Ph.D candidate, Institute of English Studies, University of Wrocław Research fields: African American literature, culture and history, African folklore, religions and philosophy

1 Morrison makes this interesting remark in a conversation with journalist Adam Langer in Star Power, Adam Langer, 2003 [in:]

Toni Morrison: Conversations, ed Carolyn C Denard, Jackson, University Press of Mississippi, 2008

D

infamous black entrepreneur and the novel’s axis Since in private Mr Cosey was a promiscuous man, his relationships with the group of women that surrounded him during his life are the guiding points of the novel All that time those females rivaled for his attention, but following his death, their antagonisms only strengthened, as externalized by arguments and speculations over the legacy of his enigmatic (last) will Nonetheless, all the women, with the exception of L, continue to worship Cosey’s memory years after his demise and idealize him as their own “perfect man.” In doing so, however, they remain blind to his duality, hidden secrets and a troubled past

Historical Background and the Narrative Voice(s) in Love

It is important to note here that Morrison historicizes Love, as she does her other novels—be it Beloved (1987), Paradise (1997) or, more recently, A Mercy (2008), in an effort to (re-)construct through fiction the

often fragmented and incomplete records of African American past This time the Nobel laureate reaches for one of the crucial and most formative periods in modern Black American history, namely the (African-American) Civil Rights Movement (1955-1968), making it her eighth novel’s historical backdrop

More specifically, Love presents in retrospect the saga of a well-off, pre- and post-World War II black American family, the Coseys Making temporal shifts, Love’s multi-layered narrative roughly spans the period

from the 1930s to the 1990s (with a particular focus on the 1960s), albeit at times circling back in brief

flashbacks as far back as to the 1920s As the readers learn from Love’s leading story, for nearly four decades

(i.e from the 1930s through the 1960s) Cosey’s Hotel and Resort enjoyed its heyday period as an ocean-side vacation spot in Up Beach, near Silk, at Sooker Bay, being the perfect escape for affluent, upscale black inhabitants of the East Coast in the murky days of segregation.2 Not only did Cosey’s resort offer his guests first-rate entertainment, combined with a sense freedom and untroubled belonging, but it also employed and paid some of the poorly-living local blacks, making the whole community proud of the economic success of one of their own race In result, Mr Cosey’s nonchalant behavior and his philanthropic attitude toward the Up Beach population had earned the wealthy proprietor respect and reverence in the entire neighborhood

Love’s narrative present is mid-1990s on the American East Coast; however, making frequent non-linear

rotations in the plot’s timeline, this nine-chapter novel narrates, in fact, two parallel stories (parallel narration) The book’s present action (the main text), in which bygone mysteries are gradually revealed, is subordinated to the eventful and vibrant past (the subtext), whose joys and traumas are slowly unraveled in a series of lyrical flashbacks Most importantly, though, in her eighth installment, Morrison uses split narrative, which enables her to move back and forth throughout the story, not fully unfolding the events until the very end Only then does she resolve the conflicts and debunk the enigmas, thereby bringing the past and the present together As such, this particular type of storytelling technique foreshadows a late trend in Morrison’s literature, one that

consists in dividing the plot among different time periods Another characteristic feature of Love’s narrative

mode, one that puts it among postmodern works of fiction, is that the novel’s leading story is told in a sequence

2 Morrison mentions the existence of such historically-documented prosperous black-owned businesses/enterprises as her

fictional Cosey’s Hotel and Resort in pre-civil rights America in conversations with several journalists, for example in Star Power, Adam Langer, 2003 [in:] Toni Morrison: Conversations, ed Carolyn C Denard, Jackson, University Press of Mississippi, 2008;

in I Want to Write like a Good Jazz Musician: Interview with Toni Morrison, Michael Saur, 2004 [in:] Toni Morrison:

Conversations, ed Carolyn C Denard, Jackson, University Press of Mississippi, 2008; or in Pam Houston Talks with Toni Morrison, Pam Houston, 2005 [in:] Toni Morrison: Conversations, ed Carolyn C Denard, Jackson, University Press of

Mississippi, 2008

of contrapuntal voices, its component parts being disclosed through the prism of kaleidoscopic viewpoints of the main characters

Nevertheless, the overarching narrative voice in Love, one of the lyrical subtext, belongs to a woman named L, who is narrator and character at the same time (the “I” narrator-cum-character) As the narrative

conduit, she gives her version of the tale of the ocean-side community of Up Beach, with a once popular, black-owned holiday resort at its heart It is through L’s voice that Morrison introduces the reader to a microcosm of people who react to one man, Bill Cosey, and to one another as the businessman casts his shadow over generations of individuals populating this Sooker Bay locality In fact, L is the wise and quiet former first-class chef of Cosey’s hotel and family arbitrator, whose first-person narration weaves and reweaves through the novel, summarizing and judging other characters’ minds and actions

Since L is an insider-narrator, she provides her personal story of the novel’s events that took place over the span of more than forty years She specifically expresses her judgments of the women enamored with Bill Cosey through a series of personal recollections, all the while unfolding her own infatuation with this intriguing man The strong and quiet type, L silently watches everyone and everything, thus witnessing firsthand the dynamic tensions between Mr Cosey and his women Her narration, therefore, is both the bridge to the

narrations led by Love’s other characters and the link that binds the multiple story layers together Moreover,

while the book’s main narrative is mostly written in the third person, L’s segments are given in the first person and italics Finally, even though she never uses her real name, it can be inferred from the context of her biblical

references that L actually stands for Love, and that the novel has been, de facto, written in her name

As Hans-Wolfgang Schaller observes in his article Toni Morrison’s Love: Narrating a World of One’s Own Making, Love begins with an eight-page-long, untitled section in italics in which an unnamed narrator

presents herself as reticent, detached and almost wordless Unwilling to speak, she takes to quiet humming over the life-changing, morally questionable social habits characterizing modern days Not until later do the readers learn that the narrative voice belongs to L, the erstwhile hotel cook, who watches and comments on the proceedings in the Coseys’ household Quite self-contradictorily, reluctant to talk but wishing only to croon,

this narrator’s voice introduces itself in these words:

The women’s legs are spread wide open, so I hum […] Standing by, unable to do anything but watch, is a trial, but I don’t say a word My nature is a quiet one, anyway […] Nowadays silence is looked on as odd and most of my race has forgotten the beauty of meaning much by saying little Now tongues work all by themselves with no help from the mind Still, I used to be able to have normal conversations, […] Not anymore, […] Now? No Barefaced being the order of the day, I hum The words dance in my head to the music in my mouth […] My hum is mostly below range, private; suitable for an old woman embarrassed by the world; her way of objecting to how the century is turning out Where all is known and nothing understood Maybe it was always so, […] (Morrison, 2003, pp 3-4)

Furthermore, Schaller (2007) points out that since the whole opening section as well as the other four lyrical passages scattered throughout the novel are printed in italics, there seems to be an indication of a

controlling narrative voice in Love This voice may be incapable of words, yet it is one knowing and expressing

grief about the current moral life ills Therefore, L might be identified as the novel’s central narrative intelligence, which puts her into a narratological dominant position Given the fact that she is granted the authorial voice (the italics are indicative of her authorial position throughout the narrative), it might be further suggested that L serves as the spokeswoman for the implied author, and that it is actually Morrison herself who

acts as Love’s dramatized narrator and the main story-teller (Schaller, 2007)

Bearing this in mind, it could be useful in this context to recall the reasons that Morrison gave while

explaining her motivation for choosing this apparently innovative, postmodern type of a narrative force in Love,

especially when she likened the novel’s narrating strategy to the experimental method of narration she had

applied in Jazz Thus, in the “Foreword” to the new, 2005 edition3 of her 2003 book, Morrison wrote:

I liked so much the challenge that writing Jazz gave me: breaking or dismissing conventional rules of composition to

replace them with other, stricter rules In that work, the narrative voice was the book itself, its physical and spatial

confinement made irrelevant by its ability to imagine, invent, interpret, err, and change In Love, the material […] struck

me as longing for a similar freedom—but this time with an embodied, participating voice The interior narrative of the characters, so full of secrets and partial insights, would be interrupted and observed by an “I” not restricted by chronology

or space—or the frontier between life and not-life (Morrison, 2005, pp x-xi)

In her illuminating essay “I’ll Tell”—The Function and Meaning of L in Toni Morrison’s Love,

Wen-ching Ho discusses at length the employment of these two distinct, parallel narrators in Morrison’s eighth novel Ho (2006) observes, among others, that the stream-of-consciousness, non-linear, third-person limited narrations of the nine roman-type chapters are supplemented with the five first-person italicized soliloquies before Chapter 1 and at the end of Chapters 3, 4, 6 and 9, respectively More specifically, the point-of-view, interior monologues of May, Christine, Heed, Vida, Sandler, and Junior provided by the third-person, anonymous narrator are indeed “interrupted and observed” by the alternating, first-person narrator and agent—L By this token, it can be argued that apart from being an important character and narrator in her own right, the “nameless woman” helps drive the novel’s narrative structure as well as the plot development (Ho, 2006)

With reference to the above findings, it needs reiterating that L the character plays a pivotal role in the stormy Cosey saga, while L the narrator performs several vital functions in the process of telling the story First

of all, her unique narratological construction gives the fictional L the upper-hand at having the full knowledge

of the family secrets Besides, as character-cum-narrator, L is granted an almost unlimited access to internal and external knowledge of the novel’s events, which provides her with a relatively panoramic, inside and outside, view of the narrative Ultimately, she is even allowed to transcend the ravages of time and, in consequence, her mortal physicality Serving as Morrison’s narrative framing device (she begins and ends the story), this ageless cook who dies as a character in 1975, yet still lives in her ghostly form as narrator in the novel’s fictional present of mid-1990s, being “not restricted by chronology or space,” recounts in lyrical

episodes the whole history of the Coseys’ and brings to light several key questions about Love, all the while

speaking from the perspective of “the frontier between life and not-life.”

Love’s Main, Historicized Story

From L’s opening, italicized segment at the start of Love the readers learn that she has been silent for the

past twenty years (from the fictional 1970s to the 1990s) In this part, L expresses in a lyrical voice her personal memories about her race’s past and shares a series of observations about its present She puts in a stark contrast the moderate and meaningful life before the 1970s with the roaring and sex-orientated 1990s After that, L comments on the differences between the black women of previous decades and those of now In her view, the women of the past were less talkative but much wiser, while today’s females have a different mindset: they

3 Toni Morrison, Love (First Vintage International Edition), 2005, Alfred A Knopf, Random House, New York

speak loud nonsense, they expose themselves to male promiscuity and, prone to material gains, they worship consumerism Finally, L describes herself as being only the background of the story that the modern world has been making since it decided to take on new, bold directions Therefore, over time, L has become life’s mute observer and commentator; she remains almost speechless in her detachment from the altered, meaningless reality, and so she can only hum to that

After this introductory fragment in which she compares the past and the present of her race, thus setting

Love’s mood, L weaves in retrospect her private story of the original success and ultimate failure of Cosey’s

Hotel and Resort She tells her tale of this segregation-time, black-run business against the backdrop of the crucial political and social changes taking place in 1960s America, ones which are mirrored and retained in the history of the local Up Beach community It is in this intimate past story told in non-linear flashbacks from the present perspective that L reconstructs from her personal memories the living image of this once-flourishing, ocean-side Southern resort, one that would promise its guests for several decades “[t]he best good time this side

of the law” (Morrison, 2003, p 33)

Speaking from the present, beyond-the-grave, perspective, L stands at the crossroads of the world of the living and the world of the dead.4 Having this privileged “life and not-life” narratological position, her ontological world becomes a fusion of past and present Subsequently, not being subject to the limitations of time, L is capable of producing a blended, circular account in which the past and the present events, escaping a traditional temporal trajectory, are free to occur in a “present past” temporum Therefore, after her death as one

of the novel’s characters, she assumes the form of a ghostly figure inhabiting her mother’s old, wooden cabin in

Up Beach (now submerged under water), at times visiting the presently decrepit hotel and resort Upon one of such visits, gazing nostalgically at the remnants of the once vibrant holiday venue, L describes its decaying condition in the following words:

[…] with no more big bands or honeymooners, with the boats and picnics and swimmers gone, […] Sooker Bay became a treasury of sea junk and Up Beach itself drowned […] But it’s forty years on, now; […] Except for me and a few fish shacks, Up Beach is twenty feet underwater; but the hotel part of Cosey’s Resort is still standing Sort of standing Looks more like it’s rearing backwards—away from hurricanes and a steady blow of sand Odd what oceanfront can do to empty buildings (Morrison, 2003, pp 6-7)

However, a little later in this fragment of her soliloquy, looking around the empty spaces and premises inside and outside of this wind-bitten, half-fallen building, L still cherishes her vivid memories of the resort’s life-throbbing past; she recalls the long-gone days when she championed in the hotel kitchen, while Cosey’s guests crowded the dance floor, listening cheek-to-cheek to the band’s “Harbor Lights” under the star-studded, evening sky Therefore, after a while, she lets on:

No matter the outside loneliness, if you look inside, the hotel seems to promise you ecstasy and the company of all your best friends And music The shift of a shutter hinge sounds like the cough of a trumpet; piano keys weaver a quarter note above the wind so you might miss the hurt jamming those halls and closed-up rooms […] There used to be white wicker chairs out here where pretty women drank iced tea with a drop of Jack Daniel’s or Cutty Sark in it Nothing left now, so I sit on the steps or lean my elbows on the railings If I’m real still and listening carefully I can hear his [the ocean’s or, in fact, Bill Cosey’s] voice (Morrison, 2003, pp 7, 106)

4 The problem of frequent (and natural) interconnectedness and interpenetration between the world of the living and the world of

the dead, as seen from the traditional (African) perspective, is discussed in detail in African Religions and Philosophy, John S

Mbiti, Heinemann, Oxford, [1969, 1989], 2006

In another part of her lyrical subtext, L takes a further leap into the past and starts reminiscing about the cleverness of Bill Cosey and the beginnings of his oceanfront She informs the readers that in 1930 Cosey wanted the impossible: when the whole country began to live on Relief (and so did the Up Beach community), and when the local blacks killed themselves or took to the road, he took advantage Having inherited his infamous father’s “114,000 resentful dollars” (Morrison, 2003, p 68) [Daniel Robert Cosey—nicknamed Dark—was a Court-house informer who sold himself to the local white police], Bill Cosey bought a broke-down “whites only” club at Sooker Bay from a white man who, having sworn “never sell to ‘niggers’” (Morrison, 2003, p 102), nevertheless broke his vow and retreated with his family away from “that bird-infested sidewalk for hurricanes” (Morrison, 2003, p 102) In this case, Mr Cosey acted boldly because in the peak time of the (Great) Depression(1929-1932)people in America, andespeciallythose of color, had neither mind nor money for play

or entertainment However, the Up Beach businessman “knew what a harmonica player on a street corner knew: where there was music there was money” (Morrison, 2003, p 102) He also believed that if black musicians were treated well, paid well and their music appreciated, they would come to “a place where their instruments were safe, their drinks unwatered, their talent honored so they didn’t have to go to Copenhagen or Paris for

praise” (Morrison, 2003, p 102) Finally, Cosey too imagined that “[f]locks of colored people would pay to be

in that atmosphere” (Morrison, 2003, p 102), and so make his business thrive

Then L comments on Cosey’s extravagant idea by comparing it to one of a playground for people like himself; for people who, like him, were willing to crave “the best good time” in the time that was hard for his race, and who, like him, “studied ways to contradict history” (Morrison, 2003, p 103) Therefore, the black businessman took all care to make his place excel in private, undisturbed comfort, elegance and etiquette, while his generosity to the clients matched his generosity to the community L recalls vividly those moments of Cosey’s 1930s entrepreneurial glory and the joys of his hart, when she keeps narrating:

Mr Cosey was in heaven, then He liked George Raft clothes and gangster cars, but he used his heart like Santa Claus

If a family couldn’t pay for a burial, he had a quiet talk with the undertaker His friendship with the sheriff got many a son out of handcuffs For years and without a word, he took care of a stroke victim’s doctor bills and her granddaughter’s college fees In those days, the devoted outweighed the jealous and the hotel basked in his glow (Morrison, 2003, p 103)

From L’s further recollections the readers are also informed that as the decades of racial segregation in America continued throughout the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, Cosey’s Hotel and Resort became over time the best vacation spot on the East Coast for the black social elite Many a well-situated, respectable guest came down to this Up Beach beachfront for excellent food, dance and music performed by a sparkling of the most popular black bands and singers of the day Above all, however, they all came, guests and musicians alike, for the best this place could offer: a spirit of freedom and untroubled belonging That was the time when Sooker Bay thrived on the money of the black bourgeoisie and intelligentsia, from the North and the South alike The excerpt below illustrates how enthusiastically L remembers the old, good days of the hotel’s fame and prosperity, as well as summarizes Cosey’s years of bonanza before the upcoming changes of the 1960s:

Those were the days when Cosey’s Hotel and Resort was the best and best-known vacation spot for colored folk on the East Coast Everybody came: Lil Green, Fatha Hines, T-Bone Walker, Jimmy Lunceford, the Drops of Joy, and guests from as far away as Michigan and New York couldn’t wait to get down here Sooker Bay swirled with first lieutenants and brand-new mothers; with young schoolteachers, landlords, doctors, businessmen […] Cosey’s Resort had more handsome single men per square foot than anyplace outside Atlanta or even Chicago They came partly for the music but mostly to dance by the sea with pretty women (Morrison, 2003, p 6)

Love and the Civil Rights Movement

Nevertheless, as the readers learn from a later part of L’s story, even in the turbulent 1960s Cosy’s resort was still making money, although with a different clientele At that time Cosey moved himself and his family out of the hotel to a grand mansion house he had built on Monarch Street (in the nearby Silk), due to the bad smell from the fish and crab cannery in Up Beach, which became a problem and reason for complaints of a new generation of the 1960s guests Thus, Cosey blamed the ultimate ruination of his business, which, over time, had shown signals of a gradual decline, on the fish odor As a matter of fact, he had grown a conviction that he was actually tricked by the whites who had let him purchase all the oceanfront because of the vicinity of the local cannery, which, in consequence, must have made his enterprise turn unprofitable in the end

After all, however, L speculates about several possible reasons for the final failure of Cosey’s hotel and enumerates a series of factors that could have led to it: fish odor, natural disasters, economic trouble and politics Along with these, she mentions the socio-cultural changes which, in the outcome, turned the old Up Beach community into the present-day Oceanside neighborhood Indeed, before the droughts and hurricanes hit Sooker Bay, drowning Up Beach, Cosey’s beachfront had been closed and his acres sold to a national developer, after which the land was plotted for the building of government houses Over time, after the new properties were sold out to outside buyers, urban sprawl came to town, making jobs available across the area In result, all those inevitable changes sealed forever the erstwhile community’s fate, marking the place’s new present and signaling the coming of a modern future

Gazing back into the past, L explains that Cosey was a clever man who helped a lot the local folk—more than forty years of government programs, and that he would never shut down his hotel and sell away his land willingly Thus, the readers learn that it was not actually natural calamities or community unemployment that ruined Cosey’s hotel business, but that it was wrecked because of the civil rights and desegregation5 Indeed, in 1960s, many African Americans, especially in the South, became revolutionary on the wave of protests and riots against the white apartheid politics, and so “were more interested in blowing up cities than dancing by the seashore” (Morrison, 2003, p 8) Additionally, and even more detrimentally, the integration of blacks in the United States, an undeniable socio-political success of the Civil Rights Movement, made it possible in the late

1960 and early 1970s for the rich black families “who bragged about Cosey vacations in the forties [to boast] in the sixties about Hyatts, Hiltons, cruises to the Bahamas and Ocho Rios” (Morrison, 2003, p 8) In consequence, by choosing to mingle in holiday destinations with the affluent whites, the former were inevitably putting Cosey’s Sooker Bay enterprise into economic trouble

It is important to note here that, apart from being subject to other interpretations, Love can be seen as

Morrison’s critique of the political, social and cultural gains and losses of the Civil Rights Movement For

instance, in an essay entitled Toni Morrison’s Quarrel with the Civil Rights Ideology in Love,Gopalan

5 Morrison talks about the advantages and disadvantages of the Civil Rights Movement, naming the integration of Americans blacks as one of the major drawbacks ensuing in the aftermath of the Movement, in several interviews, for example in Star Power,

Adam Langer, 2003 [in:] Toni Morrison: Conversations, ed Carolyn C Denard, Jackson, University Press of Mississippi, 2008;

in I Want to Write like a Good Jazz Musician: Interview with Toni Morrison, Michael Saur, 2004 [in:] Toni Morrison:

Conversations, ed Carolyn C Denard, Jackson, University Press of Mississippi, 2008; or in Pam Houston Talks with Toni Morrison, Pam Houston, 2005 [in:] Toni Morrison: Conversations, ed Carolyn C Denard, Jackson, University Press of

Mississippi, 2008; she also writes about this issue in her essay Rediscovering Black History, 1974, Toni Morrison [in:] Toni

Morrison: What Moves at the Margin, (Selected Nonfiction), ed Carolyn C Denard, Jackson, University Press of Mississippi,

2008

Neelakantan and Sathyaraj Venkatesan describe the novel as a “critique of the American Civil Rights Movement that had a devastating impact on the successful pre-World War II black community”(2007, p 139).

Moreover, the scholars underscore Love’s significant role in problematizing African American history (in this

case the civil rights era of the 1960), as well as in re-evaluating the Civil Rights Movement, when they argue the following:

Toni Morrison’s Love, in critiquing the American Civil Rights Movement, problematizes both American and African-American history […] Love reexamines critically the traumatic history of Africans-Americans; it is also stridently political in articulating certain harsh truths about the Civil Rights Movement Love not only reformulates some of the

crucial issues that impinge on African-American interests within American politics, but also departs significantly from the normative triumphalist discourses of the Civil Rights Movement (Neelakantan & Venkatesan, 2007, p 139)

While it is true to say that the most significant achievement of the civil rights period, i.e racial desegregation, gave many African Americans a long-overdue possibility to integrate with American whites, Morrison sees that success as bringing certain negative consequences as well One of such unfavorable impacts

would be the breakdown of the former black integrity and social values This point is clearly reflected in Love’s

narrative by the fact that Cosey’s business could prosper only as long as the blacks worked together and stuck together during the times of the pre-civil rights era, organizing their lives and activities in compliance with the rules of collective solidarity (for example, many wealthy African Americans of the day had chosen Cosey’s East Coast hotel for their vacation escapades over traveling to European, or other continents’, non-segregated resorts), while the desegregation and the civil rights brought on more individualistic and nationalistic attitudes among the American blacks of the late 1960s and early 1970s, agitated by the emergence of such political and racial slogans as “Black Is Beautiful” and “Black Power.”6 In consequence of those inescapable socio-cultural changes, most of the earlier familial bonds and communal values were abandoned in favor of the middle-class consumptionist allures (in the early 1970s the affluent, now desegregated, blacks opted for other, more exotic holiday destinations, thereby making Cosey’s enterprise go bankrupt)

Already in her 1974 essay entitled Rediscovering Black History, Morrison tackled the problem of re-examining the civil rights decade and commented on what was compromised and what was lost during the Civil Rights Movement Ultimately, the fragment quoted below may thus be seen as depicting Morrison’s concluding thoughts on the Movement’s ensuing success(es) and failure(s):

During those intense years, one felt both excitement and a sense of loss […] In the legitimate and necessary drive for better jobs and housing, we abandoned the past and a lot of the truth and sustenance that went with it And when Civil Rights became Black Power, we frequently chose exoticism over reality The old verities that made being black and alive

in this country the most dynamite existence imaginable […] were driven underground—by blacks […] In trying to cure the cancer of slavery and its consequences, some healthy as well as malignant cells were destroyed (Morrison, [1974] 2008, p 41)

Panther Party (1966-1982)—during the revolutionary 1960s and 1970s in Rediscovering Black History, 1974, Toni Morrison [in:]

Toni Morrison: What Moves at the Margin, (Selected Nonfiction), ed Carolyn C Denard, Jackson, University Press of

Mississippi, 2008

oceanfront and the parallel disappearance of the Up Beach community, there came an end to the black world of the pre-civil rights era, whereas the olden, communal values and group bonds became irretrievably lost This truth emerges self-evident from L’s words in which she summarizes her personal story of Bill Cosey and his Hotel and Resort, informing the readers that since the shiny Oceanside grew in the place of Up Beach, the modern neighborhood has been teeming with inhabitants commuting to offices and hospitals over 20 miles north, and that living in their nice, cheap houses and traveling to the malls and movieplexes, this new, happy generation of residents has been free from the (cloudy) thoughts or memories of the past (Morrison, 2003, p 9)

References

Denard, C C (Ed.) (2008) Toni Morrison: conversations Jackson: University Press of Mississippi

Denard, C C (Ed.) (2008) Toni Morrison: What moves at the margin (Selected Nonfiction) Jackson: University Press of

Mississippi

Ho, W.-C (2006) “I’ll Tell”—The function and meaning of L in Toni Morrison’s Love EurAmerica, 36(4), December, 651-675 Mbiti, J S (2006) African religions and philosophy Oxford: Heinemann (1969, 1989)

Morrison, T (2004) Love London: Vintage (2003)

Morrison, T (2005) Love New York: Alfred A Knopf (2003)

Neelakantan, G., & Venkatesan, S (2007) Toni Morrison’s quarrel with the civil rights ideology in Love The International

Fiction Review, 34(1-2), 139-146

Schaller, H.-W (2007) Toni Morrison’s Love: Narrating a world of one’s own making EESE, 2/2007 Retrieved from

http://webdoc.gwdg.de/edoc/ia/eese/artic27/schaller/2_2007.html

Journal of Literature and Art Studies, October 2017, Vol 7, No 10, 1238-1243

translation of his poems and their value We analyze texts of the Tsangyang Gyatso’s Poems (Chinese-English) and

seek to further study the translation principles such as “retaining truth, seeking goodness and preserving beauty”

By doing this, we strive to improve the quality of translation, give consideration to the construction of the four elements such as poetic meaning, emotion, tone and intention, to enable the reader to achieve the senses and the acquisition of images, to provide more perfect translation in the “Tsangyang Gyatso Vogue”, to promote the dissemination and sharing of Tibetan culture and to inject new vitality

Keywords: Tsangyang Gyatso’s poetry, translation; principles

Introduction

In Studies on the Art of Chinese Poetry, Yuan Xingpei, a famous scholar and critic from Peking University,

put forward the concepts of “direct meaning” and “implicative meaning” to explain the ambiguity or polysemy

of Chinese and to announce that Chinese classical poetry mostly focused on implicative meaning However, through a comparison between Chinese poetry and Western poetry, poetry theory and translation theory, we find that English poetry expresses the meaning directly In the view of Xu Yuanchong, Chinese poetry attaches importance to taking advantage of a scene to express one’s emotion, while English poetry often expresses the poet’s own feelings directly In addition, the differences between Chinese culture and Western culture can also

be seen in translation theory Chinese translators emphasize translating the general meaning to demonstrate the poetic art and pursue beauty of oriental culture, while Western translators lay more emphasis on literal translation to re-present the modern scientific spirit and the spirit of seeking truth Therefore, in the course of translation practice, we can see that Chinese and English cannot be completely equal Even if one tries to attain

a forced equivalence, it is not necessarily equivalent And translation of a nation’s classics has a double barrier, and even can be regarded as the threefold imitation of the original author’s meaning: The imitation of the

YU Yang, undergraduate, School of Resources and Environmental Sciences, Hebei Normal University Research interest: geographical translation studies

LI Zheng-shuan, Ph.D., Professor, School of Foreign Languages, Hebei Normal University Research interest: British and American poetry, translation and criticism

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original idea in the Tibetan language, the Chinese version’s imitation of the Tibetan version and the translation

of the English version is an imitation of the Chinese version Therefore, in the process of translation, we should choose the appropriate expression, both shape (form) and spirit, to retain truth, seek goodness and preserve beauty The principle of “retaining truth, seeking goodness and preserving beauty” which we are going to elaborate here is not the same as the principle of “faithfulness, expressiveness and elegance” put forward by Yan Fu in the early twentieth Century Yan Fu, borrowing from the Chinese traditional literary theory and the mode of writing and thinking, emphasizes that objective and complete translation is faithfulness; fluency and appropriateness is expressiveness; elegance means symmetry, unity and similarity in form and spirit The principle “retaining truth, seeking goodness and preserving beauty” is a theoretical summary of previous scholars’ translation practice We think that natural and idiomatic translation is truth, faithful equivalence is goodness, vivid and artistic form and sense is beauty In this way, we can both achieve the combination of the original meaning, emotion, intonation and intention, and can present the translation as an independent work

The Principle of “Retaining Truth” in Translation

“Being natural is the soul of translation” (王宏印, 2005, p 30) As far as poetry translation is concerned,

“truth” means being natural, which is the premise of translation Being natural means to use the proper words, structure, rhetoric, rhyme conversion, authentic, idiomatic, comprehensible and familiar language to convey thought and arouse feeling on the condition that the translator understands the essence and connotation of the poem being translated Therefore, the principle of being natural refers to conveying the content from the source text in authentic, idiomatic and vernacular language It is reader-oriented, taking the strategy of imitating the source language and arousing the resonance in the target language In terms of strategy, this tends to be

naturalized and domesticated In terms of skills, it belongs to free translation In Tsangyang Gyatso’s Poems (Chinese-English), this principle is most reflected in the translation of some Tibetan words, nouns and

sentences with strong ethnic connotations Take the eighteenth poem for example:

The English translation is as follows:

The snow water from the clean Crystal Mountain,

The dew on the root of a straight ladybell,

Plus the manna-turned mellow wine,

The yaksha with wisdom acts as the barmaid

If one drinks them with a saintly vow,

He can avoid any calamity (LI, 2015, p 41)

This poem is full of ethnic and regional characteristics, embodying many legends and images of Tibet The first three lines list the sacred water: snow water, the dew and wine, which make people intoxicated, free of sorrow (李正栓, 2015, p 40) In the first line, the poet compares the pure snow mountain to the crystal mountain, and the English translator translates the crystal mountain as “Crystal Mountain” “Crystal Mountain”

is a sacred snow mountain in India Therefore, it naturally gives the reader a sketch of the vast expanse of snow, presenting a sense of holiness and purity The “铃荡子” in the second line is klu-bdud-rde-rje in Tibetan It is the alias of Adenophora stricta, the root of medicinal plant called straight ladybell often found in Sichuan and Tibet “智慧天女” the Chinese translation in the fourth line is Ye-shes-mkhah-hgro in Tibetan “Ye-shes” means “wisdom” “Mkhah-hgro-ma” means “female flying in the sky” Hence “goddess of wisdom” (李正栓,

2015, p 40) In Dalai Lama VI’s Love Songs: A Collection of Tsangyang Gyatso’s Love Poems, YU Daoquan

explained that “the mkhah-hgro-ma-” is “dakini” when translated into Sanskrit In sutras written in Chinese, it means an inuyasha who can eat the human heart (于道泉, 2011, p 57) On the basis of referring to the Chinese and Western legend, the English translator chose the word “Yaksha” to express mkhah-hgro-ma-, which is exactly in line with the characteristics of Tibetan culture, helping readers capture images of the sentence The detailed and careful handling of the Tibetan vocabularies in this poem makes it easy to understand this poem and cleverly defuses the barrier in constructing the artistic context composed of unfamiliar images In addition,

in other places of this book, we can also see examples of turning the unfamiliar images into natural and authentic images For example, in the first poem, “未生娘” (a girl who has never given birth to a baby) was translated as “the fair girl”; in the twenty-sixth poem, “当垆女子” (“the female serving at the bar”) was translated as “wine-selling women”; in the twenty-eighth poem, “艺桌拉茉” was translated as “an enchanting fairy”, taking the meaning from a fairy that takes away the heart of people; in the fifty-fourth poem, “法王” was translated as Yama, not a king of any sort, and so on Therefore, it is indispensable to adopt a natural attitude and idiomatic wording, which can greatly help the extension of poetry connotation Sometimes, some words may be more consistent with the original text, but it reads a little stiff, rough and difficult to understand Then we must be clear that a flexible conversion is not a desecration of the original works On the contrary, this conversion is suitable and very crucial This is not only responsibility a translator has for the readers, but also the expectation of the author for a translator Just imagine, if the inherent meaning of the source text cannot be obtained, the unique qualities of poetry are more difficult to be found, then how can we talk about the resonance between the reader, and author and translator?

The Principle of “Seeking Goodness” in Translation

J A Cuddon wrote in the literary dictionary compiled in 1979: “style is the mode of expression in poetry

or prose.” And he pointed out that the analysis and evaluation of the author’s style includes diction, rhetoric, sentence patterns and paragraph structure (邓景茹, 2012, p 124) Talking about the importance of translation style, LV Shuxing has made a point that “Verse translation, even when the meaning is the same, the style is

different” In 1984, XU Yuanchong expressed a different view in the preface of One Hundred and Fifty Poems

of the Tang Dynasty, he believed that if the verse translation takes the same meaning from the source text, it

must be better to preserve the style of the original poetry than a prose translation and he put forward his concept

of translation: “translating poetry into poetry” (张智中, 2005, p 52) The translation principle put forward by

XU Yuanchong had a great influence on later poetry translation and was widely accepted Therefore, we should know that in translation, we should preserve the style and features of the source text as much as possible, but not to encourage the so-called re-creation only according to the translator’s own wishes and understanding To

a certain extent, in translation, the principle of “seeking goodness” is a restriction to the principle of “retaining truth” described above That is, although the translator restates the idea of the author, he should still keep to the style of the source text, he should not alter the style of the source text.“The translator cannot exert his

subjective initiative without principle” (李正栓, 2004, p 36) A real good translator should be “invisible” in his translation, which is to make the reader feel warm and touched when reading the translation, which accords to style of expression of the source text, which causes the reader to get the illusion of reading the source text Therefore, in translation style, we believe that the emphasis is on loyalty rather than transcendence

In Tsangyang Gyatso’s Poems (Chinese-English), the translator attaches great importance to this principle

Let’s take the seventh poem as an example to analyze and explain the truth from the form of faithful equivalence

The original text is as follows:

花开的时节已过，

“松石蜂儿”并未伤心，

同爱人的因缘尽时，

我也不必伤心。 (李正栓, 2015, p 14)

The translated text is as follows:

When flowers fade after having bloomed,

The bees do not feel sad to depart

When our love ends as is doomed,

Neither will I have a heavy heart (LI, 2015, p 15)

First of all, from the semantic meaning of Chinese translation and English translation, we can learn that, a distinct analogical relationship is formed between Lines 1 and 2 and Lines 3 and 4, or we name it metaphoric structure By using the relationship between flowers and bees in nature, the poet makes people associate the closeness with the unwillingness to part between lovers And the English translation uses rhyme scheme of ABAB to suggest correspondence of content In addition, from the perspective of sentence structure, the corresponding principle is reflected more obviously At the beginning of the first line and the third line the translator uses the adverb “when” to guide the reader to two concepts, namely “after having bloomed” and “our love ends”, the expressions “flowers fade after…” and “love ends…”, seeming to say that it is quite natural that flowers do bloom and fade as determined by the law of nature It is true of human beings The beginning of the poem establishes the tone of helplessness and melancholy Look at the subject of these two lines “flowers” and

“our love” and the verbs “fade” and “ends” The flowers wither and karma ends They correspond with each other It is clear that the sentence structure is the same and the use of words and expression of meaning are also equivalent Look at the second line and fourth line and you will find that the equivalence is obvious “The bees” and “I” correspond, comparing the bees to humans “Feel sad” and “heavy heart” correspond The bees have no heart but the humans have Facing the fate that the karma is to end, the poet has to borrow ideas from nature to comfort him besides sighing It can be said that style of translation and style of the source text are the same The rhymes are also the same The style of the source text and the target text are close to each other

The Principle of “Preserving Beauty” in Translation

Language, the backbone of a text, undertakes the main means of expression of the author’s narration But poetry, as a literary genre expressing emotion and ambition, is composed of highly condensed and extremely artistic language This artistic language is embodied not only in the appreciation of semantic resonance and poetic lines but also in the vividness of rhyme and imagery

This is especially true of the choice of language in poetry translation Similarity in meaning is undeniably important, but similarity in sound and form should not be ignored XU Yuanchong, when illustrating the theory

on beauty in three aspects, thus talks about literary translation, “in literary translation, especially poetry translation, one should convey the beauty in meaning, sound and form as much as possible So poetry translation is a comprehensive art” (张智中, 2005, p 52) Then when talking about beauty of recreation, he further pointed out that “literary translation is to convey the beauty of the source text into the beauty of the target text” (张智中, 2005, p 52) From a close study of Tsangyang Gyatso’s Tibetan version, namely the original woodcut version at Lhasa, from which Yu Daoquan derived his version in 1930, we can find that the original poems were composed with proper arrangement of poetic rhythm, meter and rhyme, repetition and reduplication of words In terms of rhythm, the poet used the Tibetan folk song style called “legshe”, also called the four and six style, two syllables forming a pause, the rhythm being neat, sonorous and forceful (荣立

宇, 2013, p 44) And the arrangement of syllables is the orderly six syllables Sometimes it is 6665 or 6565 structure The 6665 structure is usually used in philosophical poems, with no intention to express powerful feelings In meter, iambic meters are used, consisting of an unstressed syllable and a stressed syllable, in a neat and rhythmic way to form a strong sense of poetic music, so that people often called Tsangyang Gyatso’s poems “love songs” In terms of rhyme scheme, the poet’s choice is varied and the English translator uses the approximate alternating English poetic rhyme scheme of ABAB, sometimes using interlaced rhyme scheme of AABA, often using internal rhyme

In addition, when writing poems, Tsangyang Gyatso focused not only on the beauty of rhyme, but also on expressing the poetic formal beauty through a use of repetition of words including initial reduplication, medial reduplication and terminal reduplication (荣立宇, 2013, p 46) Therefore, we should pay special attention to this Take the first poem of Tsangyang Gyatso’s poetry as an example

The original text is as follows:

Shar phyogs ri bo’i rce nas

Dkar gsal zla ba shar byung

Me skyes ya m’i zhal ras

Yid la’khor’khor byas byung (1930年 木刻版转写)

The English translation is as follows:

From the top of the eastern hill

The bright moon rises into the sky

The cheeks of the fair girl

Gradually appear in my inward eye (LI, 2015, p 3)

In this poem, Tsangyang Gyatso chose the rhyme scheme of ABAB: “nas” in the first line rhyming with “ras”

in the third line, “byung” in the second line rhyming with “byung” in the fourth line The English translator reproduced the rhyme scheme: “hill” rhyming with “girl”, “sky” rhyming with “eye” In the repetition of the words, the Tibetan “shar” (meaning East) in the first line and the second line and “Byung” (meaning arrival) in the second line and fourth line can be understood as “the moon has arrived at the mountain peaks in the East”, and at the same time, the moon in the east has reached the poet’s heart And the repetition of the Tibetan word

“Khor” (a term intended for wheel-like rotation, here translated freely for continuous use) in the fourth line is used for emphasis and onomatopoeia, to show that “love gradually appeared in the poet’s mind”

All in all, the principles of translation as “retaining truth, seeking goodness and preserving beauty” lie in the construction of image differences in different cultural contexts, combining the semantic structural features

to achieve the reproduction of artistic styles These three complement each other and restrict each other However, the components or weight of the three theoretical principles are not equal, nor fixed Sometimes, the specific circumstances need the translator to make adjustments according to the actual text, for example, when the national characteristics of poetry are quite distinctive, the translator should lay stress on “retaining truth” while the principles of “seeking goodness” and “preserving beauty” should make way to some extent

Conclusion

In 1930, YU Daoquan published Tsangyang Gyatso Dalai Lama VI’s Love Songs This was the first book

with Tibetan, Chinese and English Since then, translations of Tsangyang Gyatso’s poems have been published all over the world, mainly in English, French, German, Russian, Italian and other languages

In recent years, influenced by a television program, a “Tsangyang Gyatso Vogue” has been formed There also appeared many poems in the name of “Tsangyang Gyatso”, such as “That Day”, the “Poem of Ten Commandments”, “To See or Not to See”, etc Although this caters to the taste of popular culture to some extent, we think we should be serious and careful in dealing with ethnic culture and maintain a cautious attitude and a clear mind especially when engaged in selection of a source text for translation Therefore, on the basis of evading pseudo works, the translator should attach great importance to Chinese characteristics and ethnic characteristics to display the essence and beauty of Tibetan culture in translation In the strategy of international cultural exchange, the translator should assort with the “Top-level Design” (谭成兵, 赵涛, 冯华, 2015, p 17)

As a scholar, the translator should assume the important task of cultural communication In terms of the strategies, in compliance against cultural aggression, as translators, we should choose with pertinence the reader or audience with power and right to speak to display the essence of our ethnic culture At the same time,

we should take advantage of the “Belt and Road” background, exchange with and learn from countries along the belt and road We should do our utmost to grasp the rare historic opportunities to enhance the international influence of Tibetan culture, build a better spiritual link between nationalities and countries

Journal of Literature and Art Studies, October 2017, Vol 7, No 10, 1244-1250

doi: 10.17265/2159-5836/2017.10.003

Visual Representations in Richard Aldington’s

London (May 1915) and Eros and Psyche

Tzu Yu Allison Lin, Mehmet Çiçek

Gaziantep University, Gaziantep, Turkey



Through reading Walter Benjamin’s critical essay, Surrealism: The Last Snapshot of the European Intelligentsia,

the authors of this research would like to trace the key point of Surrealist aesthetics, particularly the juxtapositions

of visual objects in the city of London Richard Aldington’s two poems, London (May 1915) and Eros and Psyche,

come to depict Surrealist image spheres, as their visual representations in words would show The dialectical optic

of the poet comes to reveal an allegorical synthesis, giving birth to new meanings The city of London shows the irrational fusion of the opposites, in a way which a Surrealist reading of these two poems is able to construct a critical virtue

Keywords: London, surrealism, object, allegory, love

Introduction

The aim of this research is not to claim that Richard Aldington should be catagorised as a Surrealist poet; his poems are specifically Surrealist Rather, in this article, the authors want to show the possibilities of reading two

of Aldington’s poems: London (May 1915) and Eros and Psyche through a Surrealist perspective Focusing on

visual objects, love and allegory, Aldington’s two poems can be read in terms of the way in which images and colours come to form a dream-like cityscape of London

Nevertheless, as J H Matthews has pointed out that the English Surrealists “show their close alliance with surrealism in France” (Matthews, 1964, p 59), just as Breton keeps his admiration to M G Lewis and the

Tzu Yu Allison Lin, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Faculty of Education, Gaziantep University

Mehmet Çiçek, Ph.D., Professor, Faculty of Education, Gaziantep University

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English “Gothic novels” (Matthews, 1964, p 57) In writing, Surrealism can be defined as such, representing

“psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express—verbally, by means of the written word,

or in any other manner—the actual functioning of thought”, as the reader can see in the Manifesto of Surrealism,

when André Breton published it in Paris, in 1924 (Woodruff, 2003, p 191; Matthews, 1975, p 1)

The free association of visual objects, no matter how striking the image would be, the Surrealist perspective somehow comes to show us a method of artistic and literary creation, in a way which the visible objects can be twisted, juxtaposed, and re-represented, in order to construct an imaginary world of fancy In poetry, specifically,

as Nicholas Calas has observed that this imaginary world of fancy can be revealed, as the poet’s “disorderly passion” comes to give a “greater freedom” (Glicksberg, 1949, p 303) to poetic writings The disorderly passion

is inspired by love, indicating an unconscious desire, in a way which deep emotions are aroused The visual and the verbal representations of this “bizarre imaginative effect” (Baldick, 2008, p 324)—in a surreal sense—come

to depict a romantic transition between the present and “a remote, primordial past” (Glicksberg, 1949, p 303), as the readers can see in Aldington’s two poems

Indeed, the psychological and intuitive motifs of Surrealism come to show the reader a way in which the oppressed can be released, as Surrealist aesthetics can be understood as a form of representing “an absolute

reality”—“a surreality” (Wolin, 1997, p 97) The juxtaposition of visual objects is the key for the dialectical

moment to happen, embracing each visual object even when it is out of its own original cultural context, as the new meaning emerges In this respect, in semiotic terms, a visual object contents not only its “informational” (Barthes, 1997, p 52) meaning—on the first level Rather, the very visual object serves as a symbol, on the second level, as “the signifier” (Barthes, 1997, p 53) It should have a new meaning to be read, in a way which it

is not what it is signified, as Barthes called it, “a poetical grasp”—on the third level (Barthes, 1997, p 53)

Love

In Richard Aldington’s London poem, Eros and Psyche, the reader can see that the statue of Eros and Psyche

is a good example, which comes to show our “poetical grasp”, in Barthes’s term It is worth it to read the whole poem:

Eros and Psyche

In an old dull yard near Camden Town,

Which echoes with the rattle of cars and ’buses

And freight-trains, puffing steam and smoke and dirt

To the steaming sooty sky—

There stands an old and grimy statue,

A statue of Psyche and her lover, Eros

A little nearer Camden Town,

In a square of ugly sordid shops,

Is another statue, facing the Tube,

Staring with heavy purposeless glare

At the red and white shining tiles—

A tall stone statue of Cobden

And though no one ever pauses to see

What hero it is that faces the Tube,

I can understand very well indeed

That England must honour its national heroes,

Must honour the hero of Free Trade—

Or was it the Corn Laws?—

That I can understand

But what I shall never understand

Is the little group in the dingy yard

Under the dingier sky,

The Eros and Psyche—

Surrounded with pots and terra-cotta busts

And urns and broken pillars—

Eros, naked, with his wings stretched out

Just lighting down to kiss her on the lips

What are they doing here in Camden Town

In the midst of all this clamour and filth?

They, who should stand in a sun-lit room

Hung with deep purple, painted with gods,

Paved with dark porphyry,

Stand for ever embraced

By the side of a rustling fountain

Over a marble basin

Carved with leopards and grapes and young men dancing;

Or in a garden leaning above Corinth,

Under the ilexes and the cypresses,

Very white against a very blue sky;

Or growing hoary, if they must grow old,

With lichens and softly creeping moss:

What are they doing here in Camden Town?

And who has brought their naked beauty

And their young fresh lust to Camden Town,

Which settled long ago to toil and sweat and filth,

Forgetting—to the greater glory of Free Trade—

Young beauty and young love and youthful flesh?

Slowly the rain settles down on them,

Slowly the soot eats into them,

Slowly the stone grows greyer and dirtier,

Till in spite of his spreading wings

Her eyes have a rim of soot

Half an inch deep,

And his wings, the tall god’s wings,

That should be red and silver

Are ocherous brown

And I peer from a ’bus-top

As we splash through the grease and puddles,

And I glimpse them, huddled against the wall,

Half-hidden under a freight-train’s smoke,

And I see the limbs that a Greek slave cut

In some old Italian town,

I see them growing older

And sadder

And greyer (Ford, 2012, pp 525-526)

In this poem, the dialectical optic of the poet comes to reveal a Surrealist effect, as the montage of different visual objects would show: old statue verses the shinning one, England national hero verses Greek mythology, the honourable verses the dingy, the glory Free Trade verses the filthy London reality The statue of Eros and

Psyche represents the “punctum” (Barthes, 1993, p 47), in a way which a visual object comes to disturb the

critics, to make him and her “dream” (Barthes, 1993, p 49) The statue itself, among other visual objects in London, as the viewer comes to “peer” (Ford, 2012, p 526) from the top of a double-decker London bus, is that

special “something” (Barthes, 1993, p 49), which has a Greek origin—a past which comes to refuse all signs of

the viewer’s cultural present, as London Camden Town can be represented by an “old dull yard”, with some “ugly sordid shops” in it, near a Tube station

As Barthes claims, in his Camera Lucida, the “studium is ultimately always coded” (Barthes, 1993, p 51)

The statue of Eros and Psyche also has its own original cultural meaning, in its own context And yet, in London, the statue can be read as a Surrealist appeal, as Eros and Psyche should be

[b]y the side of a rustling fountain

Over a marble basin

Carved with leopards and grapes and young men dancing (Ford, 2012, p 526)

Eros and Psyche should be in its own cultural context, just like the “tall stone statue of Cobden” (Ford, 2012, p 525), in its own cultural context in London, as a national hero—although “no one ever pauses to see” (Ford, 2012,

p 525)

And yet, in the poem, there are two images come to suggest the original meaning of the statue which are deconstructed by the same question, asked twice by the viewer:

What are they doing here in Camden Town

In the midst of all this clamour and filth?

[…]

Or growing hoary, if they must grow old,

With lichens and softly creeping moss:

What are they doing here in Camden Town? (Ford, 2012, pp 525-526)

“They”—Eros and Psyche, because of these two questions, immediately, become the “punctum” in

Barthes’s term They should be in their own cultural context, as in the viewer’s dream-like image Eros and Psyche “should stand in a sun-lit room/[…]/Stand for ever embraced” (Ford, 2012, p 525) However, in London

Camden Town, they are the “punctum”, because they are not “[b]y the side of a rustling fountain/Over a marble

basin/Carved with leopards and grapes and young men dancing” (Ford, 2012, p 526) In London Camden Town, their young love and young flesh, for the viewer, are like the “essence (of a wound)” (Barthes, 1993, p 49), teasing the viewer’s feeling

As the critical viewer sees in Camden Town, among all other visual objects, the statue of Eros and Psyche reminds the viewer the “sweat and filth” of London’s reality It is a cityscape of commodity, Free Trade, and the national hero’s “tall stone statue”—standing there, in red and white, “shinning” (Ford, 2012, p 525) In reality,

the viewer can only see the statue of Eros and Psyche shows, as a part of Camden Town, covered by “a rim of

soot”, and eaten “softly” by the “creeping moss” (Ford, 2012, p 526) The statue of Eros and Psyche, in London,

is ironically freed from its past, its once-upon-a-time, as we come to understand Benjamin’s concept of “the

historical object-world” (Steinberg, 1996, p 92) Aldington’s dialectical optic is able to see the statue of Eros and Psyche, once, the “heroic” object, juxtaposing among the “ordinary” (Scott, 2007, p 131) London visual

objects—such as shops and commodities The statue, again, implies that love in London is somehow visually represented as some erotica, which is located within the conscious materialist practice

Allegory

In the poem, the Surrealist status of the statue, Eros and Psyche, comes to reveal the reality of “sweat and

filth” (Ford, 2012, p 526) of London Camden Town “Free Trade”, modernization, urbanization—all visual objects of the social milieu come to indicate the degeneration of love—from Greek mythology to “Greek slave” (Ford, 2012, p 526), from the aura of love and the beauty of a work of art, as the statue itself once represented, to

a skin-deep kind of “young fresh lust” and “youthful flesh” (Ford, 2012, p 526) The young lust and young flesh

can be visualized as in Walter Sickert’s sketch, Study for L’Affaire de Camden Town (Robins, 1909, p 67), as the

woman’s naked body under the gaze would show

The “Greek slave cut” that the poet sees on the “limbs” (Ford, 2012, p 526), comes to remind the viewer the

statues of a pure commodity of a female body, as Jean Léon Gérôme’s Roman Slave Market (Higonnet, 1884, p

407) would show The lover’s “naked beauty” becomes “young flesh lust” (Ford, 2012, p 526) in London Camden Town, indicating a “profane illumination” (Woodruff, 2003, p 198) of the city The word “lust”, in the

poem, reveals a pure sexual desire As in Breton’s Paris, in his novel Nadja, one can see that “man and woman

indifferently continue making love” (quoted in Woodruff, 2003, p 198) Lust, in a sexual way, is an attitude of being indifference, as the female body is commodified, which is exchangeable, in the urban market

If we read the statue of Eros and Psyche as a visual representation of love, even it is a sad one, as the ending

of the poem suggests, somehow, in the context of London Camden Town, it has an allegorical meaning As the viewer’s gaze shows, the passion in the city is more visual rather than verbal Through reading Baudelaire, Benjamin also reveals the way of seeing salvation and redemption via the ruination of the poetic object In Aldington’s poem, as the reader can see that the statue—the poetic object itself—is “slowly” (Ford, 2012, p 526) eaten by the rain and the soot, becoming dirtier, in a colour of “ocherous brown” (Ford, 2012, p 526) The dialectical optic transforms the poet’s London into a dialectical moment, in a way which the spatial and the temporal gaps are gone, as Eros’s “tall god’s wings” lose their “red and silver” colour, Psyche’s eyes “have a rim

of soot” (Ford, 2012, p 526) All visual objects and their meanings are crumbled in this dream-like image sphere,

as they are commodified, and getting weaker London, at this point, is “a site overlaid with myth and peopled with

unrecognized sphinxes” in Aragon’s words (Abbas, 1989, p 48) Eros and Psyche can be read as the London

experience of Benjamin’s phantasmagoria The overwhelming juxtaposition of the modern and the premodern is sad and grey, because one can see the disappearing aura of a work of art is the image of the shock Somehow, the ugly shops are the visual representations of the new and the now—indicating the modern myth of progress The question of “What are they doing here in Camden Town?” somehow represents the tension of modernity

in the city, in a way which the nowness of the Tube station and the ugliness of the shops come together with the

ancient Eros and Psyche statue, creating a kind of shock As the bus passing, the visual image of the statue becomes blur, “[h]alf-hidden under a freight-train’s smoke” (Ford, 2012, p 526) At this very moment, the viewer seems to have a dream-like image, representing the visual form of the statue We are not sure whether this image is a dream, or an illusion, or a memory, as the viewer sees “the limbs that a Greek slave cut/In some old Italian town”—Eros and Psyche seem to become “older”, “sadder” and “greyer” (Ford, 2012, p 526) Here, the salvation and redemption of the visual image seem to come from a dialectical moment of revelation, as the viewer’s present is engaged to an illusionary past, as the statue of Eros and Psyche loses its ancient mythological meaning They are, indeed, just like a normal human couple who share a common human fate—to grow old together, and to die

In the poem London (May 1915), the reader can see that the city of London is visually represented as the

dialectical moment of dream and allegory, when day comes to synthesize with night, “dingy” with “white”, the ancient comes to inspire the present, when “ruins” come to exist with the myth of urbanization—mess production, industrialization, and “chimneys” (Ford, 2012, p 523) Through Surrealist visual representations, love comes to transit the past and the present, bringing beauty and ecstacy Now we read the poem:

Holds up a little brass cock

To peck at the blue wheat fields

Roofs, conical spires, tapering chimneys,

Livid with sunlight, lace the horizon

A pear-tree, a broken white pyramid

In a dingy garden, troubles me

With ecstasy

At night, the moon, a pregnant woman,

Walks cautiously over the slippery heavens

And I am tormented,

Obsessed,

Among all this beauty,

With a vision of ruins,

Of walls crumbling into clay (Ford, 2012, p 523)

The Surrealist perspective reveals the dialectical optic, in a way which the reality of a city is viewed as a dream, a world of “monumental ruins” (Abbas, 1989, p 48) The city of London represents the dialectical moment of dream and allegory, when the poet’s visual ecstacy comes to “trouble” him (Ford, 2012, p 523) In

Benjamin’s Surrealism essay, the reader can see that the intensity of the sensual experience towards “a mystical

beloved” (Benjamin, 1986, p 181) somehow becomes the very energy of revolution, in a “world of things” (Benjamin, 1986, p 182), in terms of Surrealist visual and verbal representations The “broken write pyramid” in

“a dingy garden” in the day time (“[l[ivid with sunlight”) comes to juxtapose with the image of the night—“the moon” and the walk of “a pregnant woman” (Ford, 2012, p 523) In the Surrealist aesthetic sense, the walk of the pregnant woman in the night time indicates a desire of creation, coming from the unconscious, in the darkness, in the dream The vision of heaven, representing in London, at this dialectical moment, has an allegorical meaning

of beauty and love, even it is found in “ruins/Of walls crumbling into clay” (Ford, 2012, p 523) The calling and the envision of a “rebirth” (Buck-Morss, 1999, p 255) of the ancient ruins, on the dream level, reveal a subversive creative power over the “systematic rationalization” (Buck-Morss, 1999, p 254) of the industrial city

statue: Psyche and her lover, Eros The statue of Eros and Psyche in Eros and Psyche, together with the white pyramid in London, come to represent the punctum, in Roland Barthes’s term, in a way which they both

deconstruct the existing cityscape of London—“dingy”, “clamour”, “filth”, and “lust” The viewer, with his allegorical optic, perceives the dialectical moment, as in a snapshot, which comes to synthesize the opposites in the world of visual objects

References

Abbas, A (1989) On fascination: Walter Benjamin’s Images New German Critique, 48, 43-62

Baldick, C (2008) Oxford dictionary of literary terms Oxford: Oxford University Press

Barthes, R (1993) Camera Lucida London: Vintage

Barthes, R (1997) The third meaning Image music text (S Heath, Trans.) New York: Hill and Wang

Benjamin, W (1986) Surrealism: The last snapshot of the European intelligentsia Reflections (E Jephcott, Trans.) New York:

Schocken

Ford, M (Ed.) (2012) London: A history in verse Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press

Gilloch, G (1997) Myth and metropolis: Walter Benjamin and the city Cambridge: Polity

Glicksberg, C I (1949) The poetry of surrealism Prairie Schooner, 23(3), 302-313

Higonnet, P., & Margaret, A (1984) Façades: Walter Benjamin’s Paris Critical Inquiry, 10(3), 391-419

Lin, T Y A (2016) London poetics Taipei: Showwe

Matthews, J H (1964) Surrealism and England Comparative Literature Studies, 1(1), 55-72

Matthews, J H (1975) Fifty years later: The manifesto of surrealism Twentieth Century Literature, 21(1), 1-9

Buck-Morss, S (1999) The dialectics of seeing: Walter Benjamin and the arcade project Cambridge, MA: MIT

Robins, A G (1996) Walter sickert: Drawings Hants: Scolar

Scott, C (2007) Street photography: The appropriateness of language and an appropriate language Street photography: From Atget

to Cartier-Bresson London: I B Tauris

Steinberg, M P (Ed.) (1996) Walter Benjamin and the demands of history Ithaca: Cornell University Press

Wolin, R (1997) Benjamin, Adorno, surrealism In T Huhn and L Zuidervaart (Eds.), The semblance of subjectivity Cambridge,

MA: MIT

Woodruff, A (2003) The shape of a city: Recollection in Benjamin’s A Berlin Chronicle and Breton’s Nadja Journal of Narrative

Theory, 33(2), 184-206

Journal of Literature and Art Studies, October 2017, Vol 7, No 10, 1251-1257

doi: 10.17265/2159-5836/2017.10.004

The Influences of American Deep Image

Keywords: The Third-Generation Poetry, Deep Image, influence, irrational association, leaping image

Introduction

The relation between American poetry and Chinese poetry has a long history, just as many American modernist and post-modernist poets were influenced by Chinese classical poetry, the rising and development of China’s New Poetry also couldn’t escape the impact of Western literary trends of thoughts and theories, especially American poets A long list may be present, from Longfellow, Whitman, Dickenson, to T S Eliot, Pound, Plath, Lowell, Bernstein and Robert Bly The Third-Generation poetry initiated with the introduction and translation of lots of Western literary concepts, thoughts, and modernist and post-modernist poetry into China in 1980s American Confessional poetry and Deep Image poetry (New Surrealist poetry) privileged the influence on WANG Yin and CHEN Dongdong, important members of Maritime poem group

In 1980s, Western modernist and post-modernist literary trends and works were introduced into China, and the Misty poetry represented by BEI Dao and SHU Ting gradually declined Some of Misty poets and a number

of young poets began to rethink and even revolt against the heroism, awareness of hardship and critical spirit in the Misty poetry In their opinion, the Misty poetry was just a start in the exploration of Chinese modern poetry, which had no bounds of potential and possibility; however, at that time, that the circle of poets tended to



Acknowledgements: This paper is supported by The Humanities and Social Science Project of the Ministry of Education

[Project mode: 12YJA752034]

All the Chinese poems in this paper are translated by the author

YIN Gen-de, Professor of School of Foreign Languages at Jinggangshan University His major field is American poetry

D

classicalfy the Misty poetry aroused a sense of anxiety in them They were particularly concerned with a lack of awareness of text among contemporary poets’ creation (they endowed the poetry with too much social ideology and social ethics spirit), and the potentials and possibility of Chinese words and expressions, they believed, had large rooms for exploration and experiments As a result, it is inevitable that new poetry and new poets which differentiated from Misty poetry came into being as a rebellious attitude against Misty poetry They took “passing Bei Dao” and “ Down with Shu Ting” as their slogan, and launched a splendid poetic nationwide movement Their creation career lasted until 1990s, and literary critics named them in different terms, such as, “Post-misty poetry”, the Third-Generation poetry”, or “Avant-garde poetry” from which more than ten poetry schools or poetry tribes derived, like “Maritime poem group”, “The Holism”, “Boorism”, and “Feifeism”, etc The Third-Generation poets advocated revolutionary experiment, consequently, their poetry characterized by diversification under the banner of “experiment” and “innovation” “American poetry of 20th century, with its great contributions in theory and specific artistic ideas, is universally acknowledged by the Third-Generation poets, who combined with their creation practice, and transformed creatively into their writing” (JIAN, 2008, p 108), for instance, LI Yawei and Boorism were influenced by the Beat Generation, ZAI Yongming by American Confessional poetry, WANG Yin and CHEN Dongdong by American Deep Image

Influenced by different schools of American post-modernist poetry, the Third-Generation poets developed their own characteristics in poetics and practice Generally speaking, the Third-Generation poetry shares some similarities presenting a trend of anti-ration, anti-loftiness and anti-hero; advocating civilian consciousness; emphasizing the reflection of survival psychology and survival situation of human in poetry; stressing aesthetically an elimination of subject and an exile of subject’s emotions; writing out a mental process of individual’s vagrant and wandering experience; proposing an individual writing, an automatic writing and a purified poem writing They argue that the Misty poetry has not penetrated into a place where one’s psychology and physiology could be fused together, not touched the core of human life They propose a realization of inward movement toward inner life itself in poetry which was definitely anticipated by Robert Bly in his famous essay

“A Wrong Turning in American Poetry”

American Deep Image in China

As one of the most important schools of post-modernist poetry, Deep Image was a rebellion against New Criticism, including mainly Robert Bly, James Wright, Louis Simpson, William Stafford, and Galway Kinnell Unlike the imagism’s publication of manifesto, and definite proposal of three principles in poetry writing, Deep Image is a loose organization, which has no systemic poetics Its poetics is mainly present in Robert Bly’s books

like American Poetry: Wildness and Domesticity, Talking Poetry All the Morning, Leaping Poems, and some of

his interviews, letters, and prefaces of poem collections Bly, defines a poem as “something that penetrates for an instant into the unconscious” (Bly, 1990, p 33) and initiates the concept of deep image which, according to Bly, emerges from “within”, purportedly contained in unconscious, delusion, dreams and disorderly association (Davis, 1992, p 71) In Bly’s eyes, the image hidden in one’s deep heart is rather true, valuable, and enlightening

at its best, and can also best reflect the essence of modernism, so it is most poetical “The core of Bly’s theory is that through the exploration of unconscious, the leaping of imagination and transformation of metaphor could become possible, and images could also jump out of psyche” (WANG, 2002, p 221) Bly proposes “free

association” and “leaping”, and thinks, “The poet who is leaping makes a jump from an object soaked in latent or instinctive psychic substance One real joy of poetry—not the only one—is to experience this leaping inside a poem” (Bly, 1990, p 47) What is leap? “That leap can be described as a leap from the conscious to the latent intelligence and back again, a leap from the known part of the mind to the unknown part and back to known” (p 42) That Robert Bly proposed an inward movement in poetry is closely related to the situation after World War Two, when American poetry presented a declining trend under the impact of T S Eliot and Academism style As Bly mentioned in several interviews, American poets of his generation argued that Academism poetry could only touch theory but never penetrate into emotion, only touch the formula but not innovation

In China, it was WANG Zuoliang, a famous scholar, that first translated and introduced American Deep

Image poems In 1980, he translated our poems of Bly and published in the 1st issue of World Literature,

followed by a short interview: “Talking with Robert Bly All the Evening”; in 1981, he translated James Wright’s poems and published in the 1st issue of Foreign Literature During the next thirty years, more and more Deep Image poems, along with some prose poems and essays were translated and published in literary journals Among the translators, Dong Jiping is undoubtedly the most outstanding one who devoted himself to the translation of Deep Image for more than twenty years In 1998, he translated and published a collection of Bly’s poems in which more than 140 poems were selected from Bly’s ten volumes of poetry In 2012, based on the former, DONG Jiping published another book in which he not only revised the previous version on a large scale, but also supplemented nearly 60 poems from five volumes published after 1998, and added a preface, two letters written

by Bly designedly for Chinese readers, and a latest long interview There is no denying that it is by far the most authoritative and complete Chinese edition of Bly’s poems to date In addition, in 2003, DONG Jiping was authorized by W S Merwin, another important member of Deep Image, to selected 380 poems and proses from all the volumes of Merwin and translated and published

An Analysis of the Influences of Deep Image on the Third-Generation Poets in China

During the early years of 1980s, when those famous scholars like WANG Zuoliang, ZHENG Min, and ZHAO Yihen translated and introduced American Deep Image, the Misty School poetry was just splitting up Some of Misty poets and other freshman in the field of poetry were reflecting on Chinese modern poetry, and were in painstakingly exploration Most of them were college students for whom reading the lately translated

Western modernist and post-modernist works in those journals on foreign literature like Foreign Literature, World Literature, and Foreign Literature and Art could be regarded as a splendid experience Moreover, at that

time, the break of traditional literature and art, and the declining of the Misty poetry aroused in them a skepticism about their creation and an anxiety for the future of Chinese poetry in the early 1980s, which could be found in Bly when he published “A Wrong Turning in American Poetry” (JIAN, 2008, p 108)

Chen Dongdong, an important member of “Maritime Poem Group”, recounted by himself:

When my college life proceeded to the second or third year, my notebooks copying poems amounted to over ten…during my college years, I had never taken class notes, but I persisted in copying poems almost everyday, at least every week My copies were classified with poetry’s nations and schools, while most of them were restricted to individual poems, of course including Elytis …The individual copies lately were dedicated to Wallace Stevens whom I loved more than Elytis, and to Pound who inspired me so much The list of poets endowed with my dedication also covered Locard, Paul Eluard, Robert Bly, Gary Snyder, Neruda… As you presume, copying is not only a way of close reading, but also

conscientious imitation Thus those copies, I don’t know where to hide, exactly remain my honest practice as a poet apprentice (CHEN, 2008, p 76)

During the period, American Deep Image poetry and poetics had been translated and introduced on a large scale, seldom in the whole American postmodernism No wonder the Deep Image would exert so great influence

on the Third-Generation of poets in China, especially on “Maritime Poem Group” represented by WANG Yin and CHEN Dongdong

WANG Yin, another important member of “Maritime Poem Group”, had showed great interest in foreign literary works since studying in middle school due to the influence of his parents After entering college, especially having read Robert Bly and James Wright’s poems, unconsciously he imitated their style, beginning with a long title of a poem which was regarded as a distinglished feature of most of Bly and Wright’s poems (In fact, Bly and Wright borrowed it from Chinese classical poetry, such as Du Fu’s poems) As a result, WANG Yin

created quite a few poems entitled with a long phrase or sentence, such as, Remembering a Czech Movie but Forgetting Its Name, After Taking an Exam of Rhetoric, Students Sit on an Bench Having Their Shoes Repaired

Afterwards, imitation gradually changed to an influence which diffused slowly into Wang’s poetry writing In

1986, Wang wrote and published a poem entitled Talking with Robert Bly All the Evening—a title of an interview

of Bly by WANG Zuoliang—to express his appreciation for Bly

The grass flourishes in the moonlight / For a long time, there remained uninhabited / For a long time, I’ve never thought of him / Like the red star in the sky, his lonely chin is shining // Sitting still in the thick grass against night, / with fingers crossed together,/ I forgot the dawn’s coming, / and parting from with books for years // A white horse heads its way to us, a white butterfly treads daintily through insects’ twittering and fireflies’ light

In this poem, with an extremely cool narration, precise details and a lively rhythm, the poet depicts a scene where in the night he remembered an anchoret poet or a thinker poet in distance Obviously “Talking with Bly All the Evening” is an inter-text to Bly’s “Chrysanthemum” (planted for TAO Yuanming who likes them)

Tonight I rode again in the moonlight! / I saddled late at night / The horse picked his way down a dead-furrow, / guided by the deep shadow // A mile from the yard the horse rears, / glad How magnificent to be doing nothing, / moving aimlessly through a nighttime field, / and the body alive, like a plant! // Coming back up the pale driveway, / how calm the wash looked on the line! // And when I entered my study, beside the door, / while chrysanthemums in the moonlight!

Bo Hua once discussed the relation between Wang Yin and Bly in “Looking on and experiencing”:

In “Chrysanthemum”, Bly uses the image “chrysanthemum” to combine Tao Yuanming with himself, which assembles a tone of poetry pal in China’s classic poetry It conveys a specific relation or a deep involvement, or an interlinked attitude in culture and ideology, between the narrator and the readers Similarly, Wang Yin also adopts the same tone, regarding Bly as his poetry pal The title “Talking All the Evening” and “For a long time I’ve never thought of him” in the poem clearly indicates the “closed” relation As a result, firstly, the poem is considered as a kind of self-identification, that is, the Taoist spirit of hermits that Bly has been seeking was also accepted by Wang Yin Secondly, Wang’s poem explicitly revived the artistic prospect in Bly’s lines (LIU, 2013, p 89)

In addition, both of them use some similar images, such as, “night”, “horse”, “grass”, and the “white” color,

to describe a kind of “stillness”, “missing”, and “thinking”, which conveys an interaction of poets’ psyche CHEN Dongdong, was born in Shanghai He began to write poems shortly after entering college—Department of Chinese Language and Literature, Shanghai Normal University In his second college

year, he started a poetry periodical Poetry along with his classmates and poets WANG Yin, LU Yimin, etc So far,

he has published 10 collections of poems, represented by “One Night of Sea-god”, “Clear Part”, and “Variation of Words”, and nearly a thousand poems, represented by “Lighting Up”, “Horse in Rain”, “Moon”, “Autumn”, “In Sick” His early poems, influenced by Misty Poetry, devoted particular care to musicality and imagery Later, his poems, influenced by Robert Bly and Deep Image, deliberately created almost unreal artistic conception through words game, free combination and association of images, to interpret the outer world Many scholars mistake his style as influenced by French Surrealism As CHEN Dongdong recounted, Robert Bly and Pablo Neruda are among those who were copied, read, and imitated, but there is no Breton WANG Guangming argued that most of CHEN Dongdong’s poetry does not give expression to great themes and sharp thoughts but powerful imaginations (WANG, 2008, p 230) The “power of imagination” refers to leaping of images and free association Robert Bly often engages image and imagination in discussion, and holds that imagination helps poets create images, which imply certain logics and connect the world of life and the world of death (Bly, 1990, p 279) When a poet is trying to release a poem’s images from a prison built with numerous objects, imagination should go through the whole poem Once it is done, the poem would naturally go into unconsciousness (p 34)

An image differentiates from a picture in that an image is imagination expressed in natural words, incapable of drawing from or putting in a real world (p 32) The major distinction of Robert Bly’s Deep Image (New Surrealism Poetry) from Surrealism in terms of creation is: Breton favors utmost exploration of unconsciousness and utter release of reason, and advocates automatic writing Robert Bly and his school “also claim exploration of unconsciousness, but unlike French Surrealism, they don’t repel consciousness thoroughly Instead, they hope to find kind of hidden connection between consciousness and unconsciousness” (WANG, 2002, p 221) The hidden connection just lies in his so-called logical imagination CHEN Dongdong is obviously inclined to hold the latter In an interview, CHEN Dongdong (2008) remarked, “Poetry is the humanity, and I define it as an instinct of non-animality within a man The reason that I write poems is that I attempt to explore and discover the poetry hidden in the psyche” (p 75) CHEN Dongdong’s definition of poetry and his explanation of the purpose

of writing poem is surprisedly in accordance with Bly’ statement Above all, a detailed process of his poetic creation, as he describes as follows, seems all the more to agree with creation mode of Deep Imagism

I sit at the desk beside window in the morning and start my writing At the beginning, I find no particular direction walking in the field, with my pen point acing as a dog’s nose on the paper Then the repeated smear gives light to your discretion, just like your eyesight has already been adapted to darkness Near the end, your creation turns explicit and steadfast, and finally shaped, … A poem is always automatically born in the complot of paper and pen, but it does not prove that my writing is totally accidental and at random, without preparation and conception Nevertheless, conception for me would not be a considerate design It is just a fancy, or an imagination (CHEN, 2008, p 77)

Chen Dongdong’s The Beast of Fantasy is a typical deep image poem

The beast of fantasy, lonely and beautiful, walks through / twelve sleepy porches It throws shadow on / the autumn’s tune, and its blue fur / looks like the heavy snow in nocturne arising from a piano // The beast lives in the dream of a player / and steps into a circular drama / considering daylight as a horse, as the sun of lion body / A fire of roses sprays from rainy season / the full moon is shining on Scheherazade, while a big lizard idled a nice night away in Sudan / The player walks out of a stone palace / A full blooming flower as the shadow of flame, sings constantly with a voice-pattern.// … … … … awaked in the morning, he caught a winding chimney in the sunlight / a walnut up in the autumn standing / By whom the beast of fantasy would be widely read (ZHANG, 2002, p 76)

In this poem, the poet presents more than twenty images, such as, beast, porches, player, horse, piano, drama, roses, big lizard, stone palace, chimney and walnut It is inferred from the beast that the poet lives in a beautiful dream Those images which are seemly in no way related indicate a fantastic memory jumping out of the poet’s unconsciousness Unlike imagism poets’ creating visual images, CHEN Dongdong produces a series of imaginative leaping Understanding this poem needs a grasp of the convert connection between conscious and unconscious The imagination in unconsciousness could be like a dream moving through twelve porches, coming

to the autumn tune, and hearing cold and beautiful piano music from the snow The piano player seems to be in a dream playing constantly a poetic drama in an illusory world, where days flash by as the glint of a white horse across a chink in the door and as the red sea of roses in summer Under the moonlight, the heroin of Arabian Nights is telling her faithful love story The player comes to a stone palace dreamily which will be melted down in

an moment, while Scheherazade is singing with her sweet and illusory tune At last, awaking from the fantasy dream, and seeing city polluted by modern industrial civilization, the poet could’t help wondering, “Will the illusory poem be read forever?” Through “free association” and “leaping images”, the poet firstly praises the wild imagination to produce a sweet and moving story, then shows his anxiety for the future of poetry by the end of 20th century

In his another poem The Clear Part, CHEN Dongdong uses an unconscious delusion to interpret the objects

in the outer world In the poem, the involved and abstruse images and leaping irrational association with implied logic obviously demonstrate the characteristics of American Deep Image poetry

Bluish green ancient records, / and the saved Sunday, the courtyard is in the sea-light / When the lilac blossoms under the shining sun, the well remains still and cold / When the singingbirds gather round in the gilded sunlight, / the bell is ringing and extolling / the white temple separates itself from shadow, and raises its wings (ZHANG, 2002, p.78)

Conclusion

Among the Third-Generation poets, not only WANG Yin, and CHEN Dongdong by far may be influenced

by American Deep Image, others including WANG Jiaxin, XI Chuang, SONG Lin, BO Hua, LU Yimin, and MENG Lang are more or less affected directly or indirectly, in form or in thought After 1980s, due to the influence of American post-modernist poetry represented by Deep Image and Confession poetry, along with the experimental poetic creation of lots of contemporary poets like ZHOU Lunyou, HAN Dong, OYANG Jianghe,

YU Jian, XI Chuan, WANG Yin, LI Yawei, and HAI Zi, Chinese modern poetry ushered in a golden age in the middle of 1980s in poetic theme and poetic skill, and many a poetry school emerged one by one, which together brought up a new glorious prospect in the field of Chinese poetry with a hundred flowers blossoming, a hundred schools of thought contending

References

Bly, R (1990) American poetry: Wildness and domesticity New York: Harper & Row, Publishers

CHEN, D D (2008) Practice replaced by real players at a moment Shanghai Literature, (9), 2108

Davis, W V (1992) Critical essays on Robert Bly New York: Macmillan Publishing Company

DONG, J P (2012) Robert Bly: Selected poems.Yinchuan: Ningxia People Press

JIAN, N (2008) American poetry of 20th century and the creation of the Third-Generation Poets in China Literary Education, (5),

87

LIU, C (2013) A history of individual poetry (Vol III) Nanning: Press of Guangxi Teachers University

WANG, G M (2008) A reading space of open poetry: An appreciation collection of reading Beijing: Press of Social Science

Documents

WANG, S R (2002) A history of American literature (Vol IV) Shanghai: Shanghai Education Press

ZHANG, Y S (2002) A miracle of Chinese Kunming: Yunnan Poeple’s Press

Journal of Literature and Art Studies, October 2017, Vol 7, No 10, 1258-1263

doi: 10.17265/2159-5836/2017.10.005

Father-Child Relationship in Shakespearean Comedies and Romance

Shakespeare’s plays: The Merchant of Venice, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest I will analyze how

the father-son relationship differs from the father-daughter relationship as exploring the love stories taking place in lives of our heroes and heroines Additionally, I would like to bravely suspect Shakespeare’s intention to overturn the patriarchal frame in an exotic territory while depicting the struggle and entanglement of a father character who realizes the lonely emptiness he has to face after fulfilling the happiness of his child

Keywords: relationship, love, father-son relationship, father-daughter relationship

Introduction

“Relationship,” in the eyes of many critics, could be a central theme for Shakespeare’s plays, including comedies and romance However, what Shakespeare intends to present is definately not just the relationship about love but the relationship in a family This paper therefore aims to discuss the child-father relationship in the

families depicted in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest I

will analyze how the father-son relationship differs from the father-daughter relationship as exploring the love stories taking place in lives of our heroes and heroines I would also like to bravely suspect that Shakespeare tries

to overturn the patriarchal frame while casting his characters in the non-govermental territory, in which Shakespeare depicts the struggle and entanglement of a father character who chooses to fulfill the happiness of his child even though realizing the lonely emptiness he has to face

Father-Son Relationship

Anthony J Lewis, in his essay The Spirit of My Father, notes that Shakespeare’s version of the typical New

Comedy love story usually begins with the separation of a young man from his father This father-son separation though has no sign on the son’s or the father’s loyalties, it has a profound effect on the young man’s social position, attitudes and feelings It even has a huge impact on his relationship with the lady whom he will soon meet and wish to marry (Lewis, 1992a) The device of “father-son separation,” according to Lewis’s research, is

Shuyu Yang, Adjunct Assistant Professor of the General Education Center of R.O.C Air Force Academy

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traditional and of various origins, most from Greek New Comedy through Roman comedy, and some from medieval romance Such a method can also be found throughout Elizabethan drama and in continental Renaissance comedy, as well as in the non-dramatic literature of the period Shakespeare’s plays, however, unlike the Roman comedy, which focus on simple external motives, winning a father’s blessing, scheming for a large allowance, undermining parental authority, tend to focus on the consequential matters, those that are internal and psychological, for instance, the force of memory, conflicts arising from the contradiction between a son’s financial independence and his immaturity, inhibitions and loss of confidence that result from invidious comparisons between father and son Even in plays in which a young man’s father is alive, his power to affect the son in tangible ways is considerably diminished, primarily because Shakespeare physically distances the two; for

instance, in The Tempest, Ferdinand and Alonso each thinks the other dead and they are on different parts of the

island for most of the play

Though sorrowing for the loss of father, as Lewis maintains, the fatherless young men of Shakespearean comedies, usually accept the harsh reality quickly and occasionally turn the negative sadness into something positive—that is—the coming of an entire new world with independence and adventure “This, in fact,” as Lewis tells,

Is the critical aspect of the death of the father in Shakespearean comedies: the young man is now responsible for, and

to, himself, especially with regard to marriage and money matters, which were, of course, intimately related for the nobility and the rising middle class in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries The death of the father, therefore, very often ‘makes’ the son… a financially independent adult.” (Lewis, 1992a, p 13)

While the loss of father, in other words, symbolizes the disappearance of the old authority; it also means the rise

of the new As Lewis borrow Lawrence Stone’s words, “If a boy was the heir to the estate, he was then more or less free to suit himself” (Lewis, 1992a, pp 13-14)

In The Tempest, Ferdinand at his first appearance was terribly suffering from the loss of his father, he was

“Sitting on a bank”, and “Weeping again the King my [his] father’s wrack” (I ii 393-394) Nevertheless, his distress at what he believes—the King’s death—has soon disappeared at his first sight at Miranda and his personal sorrow has soon transformed into a lover’s plea:

FERDINAND: My Prime request,

Which I do last pronounce, is, O you wonder!

If you be maid or no?

MIRANDA: No Wonder, sir,

But certainly a maid

FERDINAND: My Language? Heavens!

I am the best of them that speak this speech, Were I but where’tis spoken (Shakespeare, 1992, pp 428-433)

At the moment of being astonished by the beauty in front of him, Ferdinand soon leaves his previous sadness behind and accepts the death of his father as well as reminds himself of his social status and being the successor to the throne of his father Ferdinand, though suffering from the loss of his father, soon realizes the benefits he receives afterward—the heritage, the kingdom of Naples He, therefore, introduced himself, “I am the king of Naples” (Shakespeare, 1992, p 446) and proposed to Miranda directly: “I’ll make you the Queen of Naples” (p

451) It is the loss of father that makes the young man have confidence of his financial wealth, convinces the young man his social position and his self-independence as a grown up

Father-Daughter Relationship

The parent-child relationship for the heroines is totally different from that of the heroes The loss of father helps the young man to be free and independent or in other words to become the new power The situation of the lady’s side is completely opposite Father has the power to dominate his daughter, treating the daughter as his own property, controlling her life and even her marriage especially at the beginning of the play Even though the heroine is far away or separated from her father, the young woman, unlike the young man who could completely make decisions of his own, still receives huge impact from the patriarchic authority

The love story of Lysander and Hermia in A Midsummer Night’s Dream begins with a father-daughter

argument Egeus, Hermia’s father, wants his daughter to marry Demetrius; nevertheless, Hermia loves no one but Lysander Therefore, the enraged father brings his daughter to a higher authority: Theseus The father says, “As she is mine, I may dispose of her/ Which shall be either to this gentleman/Or to her death.” (MND I i 41) Theseus’ judgment of the case is more objective, less impassioned than either of these In essence, he suggests that wise father must choose husbands for obedient daughters When Hermia says, “I would my father looked but my eyes,” he replies, “Rather your eyes must with his judgment look” (I, I, 56-57) And his case is demonstrated by his description of the father-daughter relationship (Hart, 1972, pp 51-62):

THESEUS: What say you, Hermia? Be advised fair maid:

To you your father should be as a god;

One that composed your beauties, yea, and one

To whom you are but as a form in wax

By him imprinted and within his power

To leave the figure or disfigure it (I i 46-51)

The world of Thesues is a world of reason and law The father character in Thesues’ world is then the representative of reason and law While the father, in Hart’s words, can consider multiple aspects and is guided

by concern, love, maturity and sense, the daughter is merely led by her emotions or her love towards the man she chooses The father therefore is a more reliable person to select a husband for his daughter than the daguher herself Additionally, it is believed that the father has the determinative power to dominate his daughter’s destiny Theseus directly exposes Hermia’s result of disobeying her father’s words:

THESEUS: Either to die the death or to abjure

For ever the society of men

Therefore, fair Hermia, question your desires;

Know of your youth, examine well your blood, Whether, if you yield not to your father's choice, You can endure the livery of a nun,

For aye to be in shady cloister mew’d,

To live a barren sister all your life, Chanting faint hymns to the cold fruitless moon

Thrice-blessed they that master so their blood,

To undergo such maiden pilgrimage;

But earthlier happy is the rose distill’d,

Than that which withering on the virgin thorn Grows, lives and dies in single blessedness (I i)

Nevertheless, Hermia insists on her will, she chooses to escape the world where the father and the law exist Unfortunately, things do not run so smoothly as she expects In the wood, there is no father, no reason and law, only imagination, magic, and irrationality However, the young lovers cannot overcome the difficulties on their way to pursue love, for there is another power dominating the woods, that is, Oberon Oberon, another authority symbolizes the patriarchy power in the wood It seems that the lovers can never escape from the patriarchy domination, even they have already eloped from the world of mankind, and they still cannot escape the net of patriarchy authority It is the magical drops from Oberon that still controls the lovers

Additionally, in The Merchant of Venice, we can see two cases of father-daughter relationships contrasting

with one another In both cases, we may, again, see the wishes of daughters to marry and the attitudes of their fathers Jessica, in the beginning of the play, is restrained by her father, Shylock Shylock believes that his order

is everything, and as his daughter Jessica has no right to say no “Do as I bid you,” Shylock demands, “Shut doors after you; / Fast bind, fast find” (pp 53-54) This is the way Shylock instructs his daughter Obviously, the patriarchy pressure from Shylock to Jessica is not less than that from Egeus to Hermia Nevertheless, Jessica’s break from her father is much sharper than what Hermia does to Egueus Whereas Hermia and Lysander, before eloping, have tried to persuade Egeus, “Jessica’s elopement comes like a thunderclap to Shylock”

Hart has discussed what Jessica’s elopement means to Shylock in his essay

He [Shylock] is so isolated from Jessica, … so little aware of her as a person, that we tend to feel that he deserves the heartache her elopement brings to him Yet the lack of concern arises simply from his complete conviction that she is the girl he thinks her to be When he speaks his foreboding to her, when he orders her to “Lock up my doors… Let not the sound of shallow foppery enter My sober house: (II, v, 29, 35-36), he is expressing an attitude towards Venetians which

he expects her to share Whatever we read into their relationship, whether Shylock is to be considered villain or persecuted alien, the failure of understanding and feeling between father and daughter, except at some incommunicable and unrealized level, stands out (Hart, 1972, pp 51-62)

It is the failure of understanding between father and daughter that contributes their later separation; moreover, it is this failure that helps to define the nature of love between Lorenzo and Jessica

The other case of father-daughter relationship in the play happens to Portia and her dead father Although her father passed away, she accepts the strict requirements imposed by her father for the young men who want to woo her “If I live to be as old as Sibylla, I will die as chaste as Diana unless I be obtained by the manner of father’s will” (I ii, 116-118) As Hart tells, what Portia does is exactly what Thesues requests Hermia, that is, to follow her father’s judgment instead of hers Though Portia’s father is no longer in the world, she could follow her own will or set up whatever rules she likes, she chooses to obey the strick requirement which might threathen her happiness Portia follows her father’s judgment which is believed to be certain and trustworthy in Thesues’ words The risk, as Hart depicts, is great but Portia lives by it and she triumphs

While the fathers in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Merchant of Venice regard their daughters as their possessions and presume that their girls ought to follow their orders; the father in The Tempest possesses his

daughter entirely to himself from her infancy through twelve years to the verge of womanhood on a desert island

In fact, Miranda is much like the Hermia in Theseus’ words: “To you your father should be as a god; / One that

composed your beauties, yea, and one / To whom you are but as a form in wax / By him imprinted and within his power /To leave the figure or disfigure it (I i.)” Miranda, since grown up in the island, has no idea on what the world outside the island is According to Prospero, he is the “schoolmaster” who “make thee [her] more profit / than other princess…” (I ii 172-173) In Theseus’ words, she is the wax and Prospero is the imprinted power that forms the wax into whatever figure he likes

Not only Miranda’s life, but also her love romance and the difficulties in love are composed by Prospero It

is Prospero’s order that makes Ariel use his music to lead Ferdinand to the presence of Prospero and Miranda And these two young people are quickly appealed to each other As Lysander tells “The course of true love never did run smooth” (I i 134), “Prospero”, though seeing these two young people being infatuated with each other,

“understands the needs to play the father’s mock role as the barrier to young love, the need to make Ferdinand realize the value of his daughter through laboring to earn her lest ‘lest too light wining / make the prize light (II ii

pp 452-453)” “He also understands the need for the daughter to choose her husband over her father, ….When he commands Miranda not to talk with his prisoner or reveal her name, he is purposely acting to fulfill both roles” (Boose, 1982, pp 325-347)

As Theseus maintains, Father is the god of the daughter; the father roles in Shakespearean plays seem to have the inclination of controlling, restriction, but hardly ever being willing to set their daughters free, except Prospero In the love stories of Shakespearean comedies, usually, it is the daughters who disobey the fathers’

authority and escape from the patriarchic control, for instance, Jessica elopes with Lorenzo in The Merchant of Venice; Hermina elopes with Lysander in A Midsummer Night’s Dream While the father characters enact their

role to restrict their daughters, Prospero is definately not an exception His purpose has always been to educate

and discipline Miranda However, at the end of The Tempest, we see a father who has learned what nature

requires of him: the father must take part with his nobler reason against his fury and let his beloved Miranda go Yet doing so leaves Prospero with the lonely emptiness apparent in his confession to Alonzo: “I / Have lost my daughter…In this last tempest” (V i 147-148) Recongizing his lost of the only family bonding, Prospero, despite the loniness he has to face and, sets his Miranda free, which makes him different from other fathers in Shakespearn plays

Conclusion

To sum up, father, for generations, is always the central authority of the family In Shakespearean play, young man, to attain another patriarchic power, is set to be divided from his father With deprivation of father’s protection, the young men have the chance to grow up and have the real independence physically, spiritually and financially By contrast, to expose the patriarchic authority in the family, daughter is the one to obey the father’s restriction As mentioned above, father has dominating power towards the daughters Obviously, the mission for fathers in Shakespearean plays is to select their daughters’ husbands, or to create difficulties on their daughters’ way to marriage arbitrarily or purposely In the world of Thesues, fathers are born to decide their daughters’ marriages even though the father does not exist in the same world as his daughter

Take Portia as the example; since her father died, there seemed to be no strict limitation for her to go on the rules her father set while alive; if she wanted, she could have free will to choose whomever she wants, to live in whatever way she prefers She is like the heroes in Shakespeare’s plays, inheriting the heritage and owning the

freedom of making their own choices; nevertheless, she decides to follow the father’s last arrangement for her future marriage As Portia being willing to accept the father’s judgment, Hermia and Jessica decide to elope while facing the restraint from their father while choosing their husbands It seems that the sterner the father is, the further the daughter escapes The only way to keep the love between father and daughter is to let go of the

daughter Therefore, at the end of The Tempest Prospero, though sighing the loss of his daughter, is the only

father who keeps the daughter’s heart with him Even though Shakespeare always portrays the father characters

in the frame of patriarchy society, he intends to masquerade a patriarchy authority in portraying the Prospero charcter In the extotic island, Prospero himself is the source of authority, he therefore masquerades the strick father roles in forbidding Mirada from contacting her lover while knowing that the difficulties he sets purposedly are the necessary evil a father charcter should possess Mirada seems to disobey her father’s words as other heroies discussed above, she however is stepping on the way her father sets intentionally Prospero, though putting on the mask as the patriarchy authroity, cannot disguise his inner sorrow At the end of the play, his words

to Alonzo expose the weakness of the patriarchy authority, which I believe is Shakespeare’s intention to overturn the father image of his time, being strong and tough always Prospero’s sigh and sorrow for losing her daughter in front of the other man is hardly seen in the patriarchy society, not to mention his decision to let go of her daughter

By doing so, Sheakespeare exposes the credo of father-daughter relationship, which again reverses the traditional one in the patriarchy society Though taking over the daughter in the patriarchy society is the mission of fathers; however, domination will never work; to let go of the daughters is the only way of having them

References

Boose, L E (1982) The father and the bride in Shakespeare PMLA, 97(3), 325-347

Ford, J M (1998) The Triangle in William Shakespeare Patriarchy and incest from Shakespeare to Joyce (pp 36-53) Gainesville:

University Press of Florida

Hart, J A (1972) Father-Daughter as device in Shakespeare’s romantic comedies Carnegie Series in English, (12), 51-62 Hoy, C (1978) Fathers and daughters in Shakespeare’s romances Shakespeare’s Romances Reconsidered (pp 77-90) C M Kay

and H E Jacobs (Eds.) Lincoln: The University of Nebraska Press

Leggatt, A (1983) Shakespeare’s comedy of love Bristol: J.W Arrowsmith Ltd

Lewis, A J (1992a) The spirit of my father The Love Story in Shakespearean Comedy (pp 11-30) Lexington, Ky.: The University

Press of Kentucky

Lewis, A J (1992b) We cannot fight for love The Love Story in Shakespearean Comedy (pp 31-47) Lexington, Ky.: The

University Press of Kentucky

Shakespeare, W (1992) The Tempest F Kermode (Ed.) London and New York: Clay Ltd

Shakespeare, W (1994a) A midsummer night’s dream London: Penguin Books

Shakespeare, W (1994b) The merchant of Venice London: Penguin Books

Strindberg, A (1985) Miss Julie Masters of modern drama (E Sprigge, Trans.) Block and Shedo, (Eds) New York: Random

House

Sources online

http://www-tech.mit.edu/Shakespeare/

http://www-tech.mit.edu/Shakespeare/midsummer/midsummer.1.1.html