Chang Xu
ENG 270: American Literature to 1920 (winter, 2009)
Final Paper
Professor Micklus
Jan. 23, 2008
Comparison of Two Romantic Poets in American and China
-Emily Elizabeth Dickinson and Xu Zhimo
Emily Elizabeth Dickinson is a major American Romantic writer in nineteenth-century. Xu Zhimo is one of the greatest Romantic Poets in China during the beginning of twentieth-century. Both as outstanding Romantic writers through their period, they have similarities in expressing their own emotions. Love, death, are among the various themes in both Dickinson’s and Zhimo’s poems. They are both good at capturing peek moments in life.
Both Dickinson and Zhimo’s poems are unique for the era in which they wrote. “Dickinson is widely acknowledged as one of the founders of American poetry, an innovative pre-modernist poet as well as a rebellious and courageous woman.” (Cambridge Companion to Emily Dickinson) According to “The Recognition of Emily Dickinson”, “To some, Miss Dickinson was more easily a “modern” poet than a nineteenth-century one. To others she was of her own time and heritage but also clearly beyond it.” “Emerson called her “the Poetry of the Portfolio,”-something produced absolutely without the thought of publication, and solely by way of expression of the writer’s own mind.” (qtd. in Thomas) Her poems contain short lines and often utilize slant rhyme as well as unconventional capitalization.
While Xu Zhimo, who is generally recognized as the representative of romantic Chinese poet of his generation, is a pioneer in promoting the form of modern Chinese poetry. Kai-yu Hsu says, “The kind of starry-eyed idealism he embraced was expressed in his almost childlike faith in the validity of absolute individualism: to assert oneself, to realize oneself, to find one-sublime and the ecstatic; something above the ordinary yet not of the other world.” His poems are frank, specialized in iconoclastic rejection of conventional morality.
Fractured love is one of their favorite topics. In Dickinson’s case, her love of earthy things was a major deterrent: “It is hard for me to give up the world” .
Miss Dickinson says, (J640, P317)
I cannot live with You-
It would be Life-
And life is over there-
Behind the Shelf…
So We must meet apart-
You there-I-Here
With just the Door ajar
That Oceans are- and Prayer-
And that White Sustenance-
Despair-
As Hu Shi recognized Zhimo, “His (Zhimo’s) poetry expresses the conflict between the ideals of love, freedom, beauty and the world.”
In Zhimo’s poem “Chance”,
I am a cloud in the sky
A chance shadow on the wave of your heart.
Don’t be surprised,
Or too elated:
In an instant I shall vanish without trace.
We meet on the sea of dark night,
You on your way, I on mine.
Remember if you will,
Or, better still, forget
The light exchanged in this encounter.
They both illustrate the pain of separation is what finally lives on. They would like to use small “breaks” to illustrate the “fractured” relationships. In Dickinson’s poem, she uses three dashes to describe the broken relationship between people. In Zhimo’s poem, he uses short sentences to make us take a breath in upset.
However, they have different attitude toward the fractured relationship with love. In Dickinson’s poems, she explains a feeling of taking over her own soul in the relationship as a female. While Zhimo, is more sacrificing towards the “imperfect love”.
Dickinson says, (J754, P369)
My Life had stood- a Loaded Gun-
In Corner- till a Day
The Owner passed- identified-
And carried Me away-
And now We roam in Sovereign Woods-
And now We hunt the Doe-
…
Though I than He- may longer live
He longer mush- than I-
For I have but the power to kill
Without – the power to die-
She admits the fracture between even the fondest lovers, and finds a way to be herself, rather than destroying herself or dying for love. Fred D. White says, “Faced with the resulting isolation and finitude, the individual must direct his or her own life with great deliberateness, despite the fact that there is no certainty of behavior, no divinely sanctioned moral code.” (The Cambridge Companion to Emily Dickinson)
Zhimo says in “This is a coward’s world”,
…
Follow me, my love,
To abandon this world
And die for our love!
I will hold your hand,
My love, follow me;
…
An immense ocean with its unlimited gleaming white,
Let’s be in love and forever free!
He acquires his faith in love, and would rather die for love. He has an unreserved surrender of himself to love. Kai-yu Hsu says, “In his praise of love and life seen in their most beautiful moments, Xu Zhimo time and again betrays his feeling of futility about both and with a sigh sinks back to find comfort in Hardy’s Stoic pessimism.”
Another similar topic they choose is death, “It must be observed that the number of poems by Miss Dickinson on this subject is one of the most remarkable things about her.”(Conrad Aiken)
Dickinson mentions “death” in several of her poems, “I died for Beauty” (J449, P216); “Because I could not stop for Death” (J712, P350); “I heard a Fly buzz-when I died-”(J465, P223). “Going to the heaven! I don’t know when- pray do not ask me how!” (J79, P41) “Death sets a Thing significant/ The Eye had hurried by…” (J360, P170) “I could not stop for death”(The Chariot)
Death, and the problem of life after death, obsessed her. She seems to have thought of it constantly- she died all her life. She reflects upon the details comprising a typical day in her life. According to Kierkegaard, “Death is earnest, gives life force as nothing else does; it makes one alert as nothing else does.” Dickinson gives dramatic poignancy to the idea. The content of death in her poems has presented a typical Christian theme in them.
In Zhimo’s poem “Love’s inspiration”,
For a long time I have been gazing at death itself.
Since the day the bond of love was sealed in my heart
I have been gazing at death-
That realm of perpetual beauty; to death
I happily surrendered myself because
It is the birth of the brilliant and the free.
From that moment on I scorned my body
And even less did I care
For the floating glory of this life;
I longed to trust my breath to time
Even more infinite than it.
…
This poem describes a cycle of birth and death. In Zhimo’s opinion, death is the peek moment in life. Death is not miserable when it becomes the perfect unity between spirit and reality. He is not afraid to think of dying and he even called it “easeful death” in another poem.
Emily Dickinson and Xu Zhimo are fundamental Romantic Writers in American and Chinese literature. They write poems about love and death, using their spontaneous inspiration expressing peek moments in life.
Works Cited
Blake, Caesar R, and Carlton F. Wells. The Recognition of Emily Dickinson- Selected Criticism Since 1890. U of Michigan P, 1964.
Joseph S. M. Lau & Howard Goldblatt, eds. The Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Literature second edition. U of Columbia P, 2007.
Hsu, Kai-yu. Twentieth Century Chinese Poetry an Anthology. Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1963.
Thomas H. Johnson. The Complete poems of Emily Dickinson. Little, Brown and Company, 1960.
Wendy Martin. The Cambridge Companion to Emily Dickinson. U Cambridge P, 2002.
Final Paper
Professor Micklus
Jan. 23, 2008
Comparison of Two Romantic Poets in American and China
-Emily Elizabeth Dickinson and Xu Zhimo
Emily Elizabeth Dickinson is a major American Romantic writer in nineteenth-century. Xu Zhimo is one of the greatest Romantic Poets in China during the beginning of twentieth-century. Both as outstanding Romantic writers through their period, they have similarities in expressing their own emotions. Love, death, are among the various themes in both Dickinson’s and Zhimo’s poems. They are both good at capturing peek moments in life.
Both Dickinson and Zhimo’s poems are unique for the era in which they wrote. “Dickinson is widely acknowledged as one of the founders of American poetry, an innovative pre-modernist poet as well as a rebellious and courageous woman.” (Cambridge Companion to Emily Dickinson) According to “The Recognition of Emily Dickinson”, “To some, Miss Dickinson was more easily a “modern” poet than a nineteenth-century one. To others she was of her own time and heritage but also clearly beyond it.” “Emerson called her “the Poetry of the Portfolio,”-something produced absolutely without the thought of publication, and solely by way of expression of the writer’s own mind.” (qtd. in Thomas) Her poems contain short lines and often utilize slant rhyme as well as unconventional capitalization.
While Xu Zhimo, who is generally recognized as the representative of romantic Chinese poet of his generation, is a pioneer in promoting the form of modern Chinese poetry. Kai-yu Hsu says, “The kind of starry-eyed idealism he embraced was expressed in his almost childlike faith in the validity of absolute individualism: to assert oneself, to realize oneself, to find one-sublime and the ecstatic; something above the ordinary yet not of the other world.” His poems are frank, specialized in iconoclastic rejection of conventional morality.
Fractured love is one of their favorite topics. In Dickinson’s case, her love of earthy things was a major deterrent: “It is hard for me to give up the world” .
Miss Dickinson says, (J640, P317)
I cannot live with You-
It would be Life-
And life is over there-
Behind the Shelf…
So We must meet apart-
You there-I-Here
With just the Door ajar
That Oceans are- and Prayer-
And that White Sustenance-
Despair-
As Hu Shi recognized Zhimo, “His (Zhimo’s) poetry expresses the conflict between the ideals of love, freedom, beauty and the world.”
In Zhimo’s poem “Chance”,
I am a cloud in the sky
A chance shadow on the wave of your heart.
Don’t be surprised,
Or too elated:
In an instant I shall vanish without trace.
We meet on the sea of dark night,
You on your way, I on mine.
Remember if you will,
Or, better still, forget
The light exchanged in this encounter.
They both illustrate the pain of separation is what finally lives on. They would like to use small “breaks” to illustrate the “fractured” relationships. In Dickinson’s poem, she uses three dashes to describe the broken relationship between people. In Zhimo’s poem, he uses short sentences to make us take a breath in upset.
However, they have different attitude toward the fractured relationship with love. In Dickinson’s poems, she explains a feeling of taking over her own soul in the relationship as a female. While Zhimo, is more sacrificing towards the “imperfect love”.
Dickinson says, (J754, P369)
My Life had stood- a Loaded Gun-
In Corner- till a Day
The Owner passed- identified-
And carried Me away-
And now We roam in Sovereign Woods-
And now We hunt the Doe-
…
Though I than He- may longer live
He longer mush- than I-
For I have but the power to kill
Without – the power to die-
She admits the fracture between even the fondest lovers, and finds a way to be herself, rather than destroying herself or dying for love. Fred D. White says, “Faced with the resulting isolation and finitude, the individual must direct his or her own life with great deliberateness, despite the fact that there is no certainty of behavior, no divinely sanctioned moral code.” (The Cambridge Companion to Emily Dickinson)
Zhimo says in “This is a coward’s world”,
…
Follow me, my love,
To abandon this world
And die for our love!
I will hold your hand,
My love, follow me;
…
An immense ocean with its unlimited gleaming white,
Let’s be in love and forever free!
He acquires his faith in love, and would rather die for love. He has an unreserved surrender of himself to love. Kai-yu Hsu says, “In his praise of love and life seen in their most beautiful moments, Xu Zhimo time and again betrays his feeling of futility about both and with a sigh sinks back to find comfort in Hardy’s Stoic pessimism.”
Another similar topic they choose is death, “It must be observed that the number of poems by Miss Dickinson on this subject is one of the most remarkable things about her.”(Conrad Aiken)
Dickinson mentions “death” in several of her poems, “I died for Beauty” (J449, P216); “Because I could not stop for Death” (J712, P350); “I heard a Fly buzz-when I died-”(J465, P223). “Going to the heaven! I don’t know when- pray do not ask me how!” (J79, P41) “Death sets a Thing significant/ The Eye had hurried by…” (J360, P170) “I could not stop for death”(The Chariot)
Death, and the problem of life after death, obsessed her. She seems to have thought of it constantly- she died all her life. She reflects upon the details comprising a typical day in her life. According to Kierkegaard, “Death is earnest, gives life force as nothing else does; it makes one alert as nothing else does.” Dickinson gives dramatic poignancy to the idea. The content of death in her poems has presented a typical Christian theme in them.
In Zhimo’s poem “Love’s inspiration”,
For a long time I have been gazing at death itself.
Since the day the bond of love was sealed in my heart
I have been gazing at death-
That realm of perpetual beauty; to death
I happily surrendered myself because
It is the birth of the brilliant and the free.
From that moment on I scorned my body
And even less did I care
For the floating glory of this life;
I longed to trust my breath to time
Even more infinite than it.
…
This poem describes a cycle of birth and death. In Zhimo’s opinion, death is the peek moment in life. Death is not miserable when it becomes the perfect unity between spirit and reality. He is not afraid to think of dying and he even called it “easeful death” in another poem.
Emily Dickinson and Xu Zhimo are fundamental Romantic Writers in American and Chinese literature. They write poems about love and death, using their spontaneous inspiration expressing peek moments in life.
Works Cited
Blake, Caesar R, and Carlton F. Wells. The Recognition of Emily Dickinson- Selected Criticism Since 1890. U of Michigan P, 1964.
Joseph S. M. Lau & Howard Goldblatt, eds. The Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Literature second edition. U of Columbia P, 2007.
Hsu, Kai-yu. Twentieth Century Chinese Poetry an Anthology. Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1963.
Thomas H. Johnson. The Complete poems of Emily Dickinson. Little, Brown and Company, 1960.
Wendy Martin. The Cambridge Companion to Emily Dickinson. U Cambridge P, 2002.
