Abstract
In The Spirit of the Age William Hazlitt distinguishes Wordsworth’s unique poetic approach with these words: “This is the sole triumph of his art. He takes the simplest elements of Nature and of the human mind ... and tries to compound a new system of poetry from them .... He has described all these objects in a way and with an intensity of feeling that no one else had done before him, and has given a new view of aspect of nature. He is in this sense the most original poet now living”.2 What Hazlitt typifies as Wordsworthian may be succinctly rephrased by a key idiom of Chinese poetics: “the fusion of feeling and nature”. If Wordsworth has initiated the emotive treatment of nature in Western poetry, such a poetic approach has prevailed in the Chinese poetic tradition ever since the compilation of the Shi Jing (The Book of Poetry, ca. 1,100–600 B.C.):3 from thence many modes of blending subjective and objective elements have evolved over the centuries. Here, a comparative explication of six poems will seek to demonstrate that Wordsworth’s three major modes of fusing feeling with nature bear parallels to those employed by classical Chinese poets living at different times. The ensuing review of criticism will furnish further evidence of the similarities as noted by Western and Chinese critics.
This is a condensed version of my M.A. thesis written under the guidance of Prof. Dai Liu-ling at Zhongshan University, China in 1982.
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Notes
William Hazlitt, The Spirit of the Age (Oxford, 1970), pp. 131–6. Walter Raleigh characterizes Wordsworth’s poetic approach in similar terms: “Wordsworth wished to reproduce and communicate the highest raptures and the most exalted moods that result from this two-fold agency — to show how the mind of man is affected by the external world, and in its turn reacts upon it, and how the heart of man may be so disposed as to be lifted on the ware of circumstances”. Wordsworth (London, 1928), p. 124.
In accordance with to the latest MLA Style Manual, Chinese words and names are transliterated into Pinyin. Thus Shih Ching becomes Shi Jing; Ou-yang Hsiu, Ou-yang Xiu; T’ao Ch’ien, Tao Qian, etc.
Wordsworth, “Preface to Lyrical Ballads (1800)”, Poetical Works ed. Thomas Hutchinson, revised by Ernest de Selincourt (London, 1952), pp. 735; 738. All other citations of Wordsworth’s poetry and prose are from this edition.
Ibid., p. 737.
Wordsworth, “Essay, Supplementary to the Preface”, op. cit., p. 743.
Hazlitt, op. cit., p. 135.
Wordsworth, op. cit., p. 377
Wordsworth, “Essay, Supplementary to the Preface”, op. cit., p. 743.
“Preface to The Poetical Works of Mei Sheng-yu”, Ou-yang Wen Zhong Quan Ji (Complete Works of Ou-yang Xiu), Si Bu Bei Yao edition, 42.7a. The translations of his poem and prose passage are mine. The original texts of this and other Chinese citations are given in the appendices.
Ou-yang Xiu, op. cit, 3.1a.
Wordsworth, op. cit, p. 163–64.
R.O.C. Winkler, “Wordsworth’s Poetry”, The Pelican Guide to English Literature, ed. Boris Ford (London, 1957), p. 166.
Jingjie Xianshengji (Works of Tao Qian), Si Bu Bei Yao edition, 3.1a. My translation is adapted from Arthur Waley’s in his Chinese Poems (London, 1962), p. 105.
Cf. “... Neighbouring countries may be within eyesight so that one can hear the cocks crow and the dogs bark on either side. And yet shall people die at great age without having travelled hither and thither.” (Chapter 80) Lao Zi, Si Bu Bei Yao edition, part II, 24–25. Trans. Richard Wilhelm Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching, translated from German into English by H. G. Ostwald (London, 1985), p. 64.
“Tintern Abbey”, op. cit., pp. 163–65.
Wordsworth, op. cit., p. 7.
Wordsworth, op. cit., p. 7.
Wang You-cheng jizhu (Collected Commentaries to the Works of Wang Wei), Si Bu Bei Yao edition, 25.3a.
Wang Wei, op. cit., 13.4a. My translation. For other translations, see Pauline Yu, The Poetry of Wang Wei (Bloomington, 1980), p. 202; and Marshu L. Wagner Wang Wei (Boston, 1981), p. 134.
John Ruskin, “Of the Pathetic Fallacy”, Modern Painters, III, pt. iv., collected in Allen & Clark, ed. Literary Criticism: Pope to Croce (New York, 1941), pp. 452–61.
Wang Guo-wei, Renjian Cihua, collected in Guo Shao-yü & Wang Wen-sheng ed. Zhongguo lidai wenlun Xuan (An Anthology of Chinese Literary Criticism) 4 vols. (Shanghai, 1980), vol. 4, p. 371.
William K. Wimsatt and Cleanth Brooks, Literary Criticism: a Short History (New York, 1957), p. 400.
Ibid., p. 401.
Collected in M. H. Abrams, ed. English Romantic Poets: Modern Essays in Criticism (Oxford, 1960), p. 30.
Wang Guo-wei, op. cit. vol. 4, p. 371.
Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, eds. James Engell & W. J. Bate, 2 vols. (Princeton, 1983), vol. 2, p. 5.
Ibid., p. 148.
Canglang Shihua, collected in Zhongguo lidai wenlun Xuan, vol. 2, p. 424. Translated by James J. Y. Liu, SPI in Chinese Theories of Literature (Chicago, 1975), p. 39.
Collected in O. B. Hardison, Jr. Modern Continental Literary Criticism (New York, 1962), p. 23.
J. Shawcross, ed. Biographia Literaria, (London: Oxford, 1954), pp. 257–58.
Canglang Shihua, op. cit., vol. 2, pp. 424; 423. Translated by James J. Y. Liu, op. cit., pp. 38; 37.
Newton P. Stalknecht, “Ideas and Literature”, in Comparative Literature: Method and Perspective (Southern Illinois, 1971), pp. 153; 175.
Paul Edward ed., The Encyclopedia of Philosophy (New York, 1967), vol. 6, p. 34.
For Spinoza’s influence on Coleridge and Wordsworth, see Melvin Rader, Wordsworth: A Philosophical Approach (London: Oxford, 1967), pp. 58–66.
See the entry on Spinoza, Colliers Encyclopedia, vol. 21 (London, 1979).
M. H. Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp (New York, 1958), p. 55.
Lao Zi, op. cit, part II, 5. Slightly altered translation by D. C. Lau. Tao Te Ching (Hong Kong, 1982), p. 63. Note that in Lao Zi’s terminology, One stands for Tao itself; Two for the yin and yang cosmic forces; and Three for the myriad creatures.
Cf. “As a thing Tao is Shadowy, indistinct. Indistinct and shadowy, Yet within it is an image; Shadowy and indistinct, Yet within it is a substance. Dim and dark, Yet within it is an essence. This essence is quite genuine And within it is something that can be tested.” (Chapter 21). “There is a thing confusedly formed, Born before heaven and earth. Silent and void, It stands alone and does not change, Goes round and does not weary. It is capable of being the mother of the world.” (Chapter 25). Lao Zi, op. cit., part I, 11–14. Trans, by D. C. Lau, op. cit., pp. 31–33; 37.
S. F. Gingerich, Essays in the Romantic Poets (New York, 1929), p. 101.
Oeuvres Complètes (Paris, 1959) Edition Pleiade, II, p. 78. Translated by Lilian R. Furst, Romanticism in Perspective, (London, 1979).
Rousseau, Nouvelle Héloïse, pt. iv. Lettre xi, trans and quoted by Irving Babbit in his Rousseau and Romanticism (Boston, 1919), p. 276.
Laurie Magnus, English Literature in its Foreign Relations 1300 to 1800 (London, 1927), p. 220.
Zhuang Zi, Si Bu Bei Yao edition, 1.25. Trans, by E. R. Hughes, Chinese Philosophy in Classical Times, (London, 1944), p. 184.
Ibid., p. 181.
Irving Babbit, op. cit., p. 269.
Zhuang Zi, op. cit., 1.21. E. R. Hughes, op. cit., p. 181.
Irving Babbit, p. 293–4.
A. C. Bradley notices the obvious correspondences between Wordsworth’s poetry and the German Romantic philosophy; Oxford Lectures on Poetry (1909), p. 129.
J. W. Beach suggests that the Germans might have influenced Wordsworth; The Concept of Nature in Nineteenth Century English Poetry (New York, 1956), p. 101. E. D. Hirsch argues against Beach’s view and asserts that “Schelling’s philosophy in no way influenced Wordsworth’s fundamental attitudes and ideas”. His argument is founded on (1) Wordsworth’s poor knowledge of German, (2) the lack of relevant information in diaries and correspondences, and (3) the chronological closeness between Ideen Zu einer Philosophie der Natur (1798) and Lyrical Ballads (1797). Despite his distrust of Schelling’s possible influence on Wordsworth, he does not hesitate at all to “clarify Wordsworth’s cloudy concepts by translating them into the idiom of German romantic philosophy”, mostly into Schelling’s. See his Wordsworth & Schelling: A Typological Study of Romanticism, (Yale University Press, 1960).
The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, vol. 7, p. 306.
Encyclopedia International, (Philippines, 1979), vol. 16, p. 250.
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Zong-Qi, C. (1990). Fusion of Feeling and Nature in Wordsworthian and Classical Chinese Poetry. In: Tymieniecka, AT. (eds) The Elemental Passions of the Soul Poetics of the Elements in the Human Condition: Part 3. Analecta Husserliana, vol 28. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2335-5_25
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