American poetry and Chinese art: new perspectives on a cross-cultural relationship

The Modernist Response to Chinese Art

by Zhaoming Qian

Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2003. 274 pages

It was a common belief among classical Chinese poets that poetry and painting shared the same source of creativity (shi hua tong yuan), one that enabled them to transcend the mundane and capture the sudden revelations of visionary moments in a permanent form of beauty. Thus, to paraphrase the Song poet Su Shi's famous observations on the Tang poet Wang Wei, a good poet possesses the capability of making his verse simultaneously display verbal and visual sublimity. Such a conviction, as Zhaoming Qian suggests in his new book, influenced the American poets Ezra Pound, Marianne Moore, and Wallace Stevens, not only inspiring their creative practices but also constituting the key to an important aspect of American literary modernism that Qian calls the "modernist response to Chinese art." Qian's book is both impressively erudite and highly readable, sustained by lucid writing, insightful perceptions, and cogent arguments. By exploring a hitherto overlooked subject, his inquiry makes significant contributions to several fields, including modernist poetry, comparative literature, and transnational cultural production. More intriguingly, it also raises issues impelling us to reconceptualize the enterprise of orientalism.

Qian's book is intended to appeal to several types of audience in addition to readers of modern American poetry. This intention is reflected in the thoughtful organization of 14 essays in five parts, a framework that allows him to concentrate on a set of primary issues from coherent perspectives, both critical and chronological, rather than on individual poets. For instance, students of Chinese art and art history would find part 1 particularly informative. In addition to shedding fresh light on the three poets' initial encounter with Chinese art, this part reconstructs the intellectual climate of London and New York in ways that valuably facilitate Qian's insight into the Western engagement with Chinese art in the early decades of the twentieth century. Similarly, those who are interested in the interplay between verbal and visual representations would enjoy reading part 3, wherein Qian's analysis of the poems in light of the artworks from which the poets drew inspirations yields a brilliant rereading of modernist ekphrasis. Such an analysis, moreover, is rendered all the more engaging by the large number of exquisite illustrations of Chinese artworks.

Qian's central argument consists of two major claims. The first is that Chinese visual culture played a more significant role in the formation of American literary modernism than has been recognized. Supported by a wealth of new findings obtained from his meticulously conducted research in museums and archives, Qian demonstrates how intensely the impact of Chinese art permeated the creative life of the three poets. From this perspective Qian sets out to reinterpret some of their best-known poems "against radically different, Eastern paradigms" (xvi), and in doing so he greatly enriches our understanding of these poems. His most original interpretations appear in his examination of Pound's poems. Contrary to prevalent critical opinions, Qian argues that in composing "In a Station of the Metro" Pound owes as much to Chinese landscape paintings as to the Japanese haiku, if not more. Qian has also provided the best clarification so far of the complex relationship of Pound's "Canto 49" with the eight painted scenes in the sourcebook the poet used, thus reaffirming the poem's remarkable achievements as representative of modernist ekphrasis. Qian's visual approach allows him to make discoveries where they are least expected. Expert readers of Pound have generally agreed that his early renderings of classical Chinese poems come closer in spirit to the original than literal translations do. But few have been able to explain convincingly how Pound, ignorant of the Chinese language at the time, could accomplish such intuitively perceptive translations. Qian argues persuasively that Pound was able to capture the sensibility of the original Chinese poems because he had been enlightened by his earlier encounter with Chinese art.

Qian's second major claim is that the visual medium of Chinese art played a powerful role in transmitting the Chinese mode of thought into the Western mind. Construed in this light, Moore's "Nine Nectarines" not only posits her "imitation of Chinese imagination" but actually serves as her strategy to reinstate the principles of Chinese aesthetics (120). The most provocative point Qian makes in this regard concerns Pound's early attraction to Confucian ideas. There has been a great deal of speculation as to when and how Pound began to develop his interest in Confucianism. This is a crucial issue in Pound studies because it is relevant to the evaluation of Pound's ideological position before and during the Second World War, a controversial position that many critics believe resulted from his interest in Confucianism starting from the early 1930s. Qian insists that Pound's interest in Confucianism began as early as his London years from 1909 to 1912, during which he "was initiated into Confucian ideals via the British Museum collection of Chinese paintings" (47). While I find Qian's conclusion open to debate, his argument does force us to rethink Pound's relationship with the Confucian tradition.