（英语语言文学专业论文）论艾略特与浪漫主义的联系和疏离.pdf

2 acknowledgement i would like to express here my long-cherished gratitude and respect for professor ye huanian, whose meticulous scholarship inspired me both in my undergraduate years and now. i also feel grateful to all the other teachers that offered me kind help in my years of study. without them, i might not have had so smooth a journey during my soon-to-be-gone youth. 3 abstract the purpose of this thesis is to analyze eliots relation to romanticism. on the one hand, some of eliots works, especially his juvenile poems, betray certain traces of the influence of romanticism, and on the other hand, after developing certain theories concerning poetic creation, the mature eliot alienates himself from romanticism and even opposes to it to a certain extent. as for eliots connection with romanticism, this thesis mainly deals with two aspects. one is the subject and feeling and the other is the mood of dejection and escape. through the juxtaposition of some poems of eliots with some of the romantic poets, we can see that when eliot was initiated into poetry, his poems read rather romantic-like because the feelings contained in these poems are simple, spontaneous and straightforward. his poems at a later stage are not totally rid of the shadow of romanticism either, because the feeling of dissatisfaction and disappointment with reality and the resultant nostalgia and wish for escape are reminiscent of the mood in many romantic poems. nevertheless, eliot on the whole is on a different path from romantic poets. first, the use of images is one big difference between eliot and romantic poets. influenced by the french symbolism and the imagism, eliot often chooses to use precise and thought-provoking images to uncover the dark or hidden parts of life. second, a close look at some of his critical essays enables us to see that his impersonal theory of poetry and his insistence on transmuting ones particular emotions into significant emotions in poetic creation are the fundamental causes for his alienation from romanticism. romantic poets believe in the spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling while eliot regards such spontaneous feeling 4 as crude and unfit to appear in poems. he believes in making good poems with deliberate intellectual mediation. actually certain parts of the impersonal theory of poetry also reflects eliots attitude toward tradition and individual talent, which is touched upon a little at the end of the thesis. it is eliots conviction that a poet must be conscious of the past and the tradition throughout his career. and it is the hope of the author of this thesis that such an exploration in terms of the relation between tradition and individual talent can be expanded to the scope of the whole humanity. key words: eliot, romanticism, image, emotion, objective correlative 5 摘要 本篇论文的目的是分析艾略特与浪漫主义的关系一方面艾略特 的一些作品尤其是他年轻时的作品体现出了一点浪漫主义的影 响另一方面在形成了自己关于诗歌创作的一些理论以后成熟时 期的艾略特变得渐渐与浪漫主义疏离甚至对浪漫主义持有一定的反 对意见对于艾略特与浪漫主义的联系本文主要论述两个方面一 个是主题与情感另一个是诗歌中体现的失望与想要逃离的情绪通 过比较部分艾略特的作品与部分浪漫主义诗人的作品我们可以看到 当艾略特一开始接触诗歌时他的诗歌读来有些浪漫主义倾向因为 诗中体现出的情感较为简单直接未经雕琢他的较后期的作品也 同样没有完全摆脱浪漫主义的影响因为诗中反映出的对现实不满 失望的情绪以及想要逃离的愿望也是与许多浪漫主义诗歌中体现的 情绪遥相呼应的然而艾略特却又的的确确与浪漫主义诗人走的是 截然不同的道路首先他与浪漫主义诗人最大的不同体现在对意象 的运用上受了法国象征主义以及意象主义影响的艾略特经常在诗歌 中通过精确并发人深省的意象来揭示生活中晦暗的一面其次如果 仔细读一下他的文学评论文章我们不难发现他的诗歌客观化理 论以及对在诗歌创作中把个人的具体情感转化为诗歌中有特定意义 的情感的主张是致使他与浪漫主义疏离的根本原因浪漫主义诗人信 奉强烈感情的自发流露而艾略特却认为这样自然流露的感情比 较粗糙不适宜用在诗歌中他信奉好作品是通过慎重的理智思考而 产生的其实艾略特的诗歌客观化理论中还有一些部分是涉及到 6 艾略特对传统与个人才能的态度的本文在结尾处对此也稍有涉及 艾略特坚信一个诗人在他一生的创作生涯中必须注重历史和传统本 文作者希望象艾略特这样对传统和个人才能之间关系的思考能够成为 所有人都乐意做的事情 关键词 艾略特浪漫主义意象情绪客观对应物 7 on eliots connection with and alienation from romanticism i. introduction eliots view on romanticism seems to be complex. on the one hand, he voiced his opposition to romanticism on more than one occasion. there are such stark comments of his as there may be a good deal to be said of romanticism in life, there is no place for it in letters,i the romantic age is a period of intellectual chaos,ii etc. if we look for information about eliot in books that deal with the history of english literature, we will also be frequently informed that eliot was once under the influence of irving babbit who lectured against romanticism.iii yet on the other hand, in spite of his preference for classicism over romanticism, he also admitted that a poet in a romantic age cannot be a classicalpoet except in tendency,iv and some critic even holds the view that his criticism urged a program of the classical, the traditional, and the impersonal, while he was producing a poetry which is poignantly romantic, strikingly modernist, and intensely personal.v i personally doubt whether eliot can have really escaped the influence of romanticism even if he is an utter anti-romanticist. the romantic period produces poetry that bears very obvious distinctions from 8 its predecessors, and such distinctions are more of an astonishing change in sensibility and ideology than a change in literary styles. certain characteristic attitudes of romanticism include a deepened appreciation of the beauties of nature; an emphasis upon imagination as a gateway to transcendent experience; a heightened examination of the self and human personality; a new view of the artist as a supremely individual creator, whose creative spirit is more important than strict adherence to formal rules; etc. these changes can even see their influence today. our ideas about the natural world, the society we live in, the nature of the individual, and the role of art in society, all owe some heritage to the romantic period. i do not think eliot would be an exception who stays totally unaffected by it. this speculation of mine leads me to have a rather close look at eliot and i do discern some traces of romanticism in his works. so in this thesis i would like to share with readers my discovery as to eliots connection with romanticism and i will illustrate my point mainly through juxtaposing some poems of eliots with some of the romantic poets. besides, i will also review some of eliots differences from the romanticists through analyzing a few of his works and discuss whether it is these differences that cause eliots alienation from romanticism. 9 ii. eliots connection with romanticism as i have mentioned in the introduction, the romantic period witnessed a drastic change in sensibility, the causes of which should be mostly attributed to social changes. during that time, under the impetus of the industrial revolution and the french revolution, the stability of the old agricultural economy and the monarchical government was shaken up, and cries for democracy were louder than ever. one of the impacts of such social changes, when reflected in literary works, was that people became more expressive of their own individual experiences and feelings. this phenomenon is very significant in the development of english literature, because in the preceding years when classicism was the norm, literary works seemed like a game of complicated rules, didactic and extravagant, with much emphasis on providing presentations of ideals for the purpose of enlightening. the famous critic herbert read even divides the whole literature of english history into two halves, the classical and the romantic, and concludes in his the true voice of feeling, published in 1953, that modern poetry begins with romanticism because romantic poetry is the true voice of feeling. i personally agree with this view, and one of the reasons for my agreement is that i find even eliot, such a manifest opponent to romanticism and leader of the modernist movement in poetry, is not absolutely independent of romanticism in his development as a poet. his boyhood enthusiasm for poetry was just kindled partly by his discovery of the romantic poetry. after he attempted poetry and was deeply impressed and excited by byron when he was sixteen years of age, he took intensive courses in byron, shelley, keats and other 10 romantic writers for quite a few years. to him, these years are no doubt, a period of keen enjoyment . at this period, the poem, or the poetry of a single poet, invades the youthful consciousness and assumes complete possession for a time . the frequent result is an outburst of scribbling which we may call imitation . it is not deliberate choice of a poet to mimic, but writing under a kind of daemonic possession by one poet.vi therefore, in his juvenile poems, it is not difficult to gather evidences of his imitations of romantic poems. and reading his mature poems, i find they are occasionally reminiscent of certain romantic poets as well. now let me spend some ink on the notable traces of the influence of romanticism that i have found on some of eliots poems and i am going to discuss mainly two aspects. one is the subject and feeling, the other the mood of dejection and escape. 1. subject and feeling through reading romantic poets works, we will find that the range of things that can be written into poetry is broadened to a remarkable degree. not only is an abundant variety of flowers, trees, weathers, and other natural effects introduced into poetry, common people and scenes of their daily life gain footage in it as well. wordsworths daffodils and a solitary reaper are very celebrated examples. it is not exaggerating to say that anything, so long as it provokes a feeling or a thought to a poet, justifies the treatment of it as a subject in romantic poetry. and in frequent close connection with this wider-than-ever range of subjects is, as wordsworth put it, spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings. 11 these two features in terms of subject and emotion can almost be regarded as trademarks of romantic poetry. then i invite readers to take a look at some early works of eliot. i find it interesting that for all his opposition to romanticism in his later development as a poet, he showed great potential of becoming a romantic when he was initiated into his poetic career. for instance, through reading his works, i find that young eliot seemed to be very interested in flowers, which are much favoured by romantic poets. in the poem a lyric (1905), his first poem ever shown to others, there are flowers: 当露水还在藤蔓上颤抖时 我给你的那朵鲜花 已经枯萎了而野蜂还未飞去 把那野玫瑰吮吸一下 那么让我们快去采撷新的花朵 看到花朵凋零也不会泪下 虽然生活中的花朵寥寥无几 但让它们放出神圣的光华 in song: when we came home across the hill (1907) there are also flowers: 灌木丛中花朵依然姹紫嫣红 不见飘零的花瓣躺在丛中 12 但你花环上的野玫瑰啊 叶子棕黄早已凋谢枯萎 then in song: the moonflower opens (1909) there are still flowers: 白月光菊向白飞蛾绽开花瓣妖娆 . 爱啊你手中捧着花朵 比海面上的薄雾更为洁白 难道你没有鲜艳的热带花朵 紫色的生命给我吗 i should say the feelings contained in these poems, sincere and emotive as they are, appear a little too straightforward and simple: simple in the sense that all the flowers in these poems evoke the sole, and rather trite, association with love. such a flower-love comparison is short of the intensity and thought-provocativeness shown in eliots later works, for instance those of the spring flowers in his portrait of a lady, which will be discussed in the later part of my thesis. and the major reason for the shortage is, according to my analysis, that at that time eliot was just expressing the immediate feelings aroused at the sight of certain objects, and his critical mind, so crucial in the formation of the guidelines of his poetic creation after approximately the year 1920 the impersonal theory of poetry and objective correlative which will also be discussed later in my thesis, was yet waiting to be aroused and developed. therefore these three poems are all quite true to the 13 romantic wordsworths definiton that all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling. eliots la figlia che piange (the weeping girl) (1917) is a poem that bears a strikingly close affinity with wordsworths the solitary reaper. as is shown from the titles, both poems are about some anonymous nobodies. or to be more exact, both poems are about the poets chance meeting with the nobodies and the consequent emotions and impressions. it is true that eliots nobody, the weeping girl, is an inanimate sculpture, but i consider this fact insignificant here since eliot actually calls his imagination into play to allow the girl life in the poem. what i am trying to convey through comparing these two poems is that both poets seem to be not a little touched by the accidental experiences. in the solitary reaper, wordsworth chants, and, as i mounted up the hill, the music in my heart i bore, long after it was heard no more. and in la figlia che piange, eliot admits, she turned away, but with the autumn weather compelled my imagination many days, many days and many hours . sometimes these cogitations still amaze the troubled midnight, and the noons repose. 14 i cannot say that eliot is influenced by wordsworth to a very significant extent. nevertheless, i find that the early eliots response to the weeping girl is quite similar to the romantic wordsworthian response to the reaping lass: the impressions of the two girls stirred the two poets respectively long after they were out of sight. such emotional kind of expression is fairly characteristic of the romantic poetry. besides, i find the end of eliots la figlia che piange is not only close to that of wordsworths the solitary reaper, but perhaps even more so to that of his the daffodils. the excitement shown in the last two lines in the above quoted stanza bears a particularly close correspondence with that in the end of the daffodils for oft, when on my couch i lie in vacant or in pensive mood, they flash upon that inward eye which is the bliss of solitude; as a result, i am inclined to believe that eliots similar response is an obvious evidence of his writing under a kind of daemonic possession by one poet at that stage and in the above case the poet is likely wordsworth. talking of wordsworth, i remember another poem of his the prelude. as we all know, major romantic poets are the pioneer in the experiment of granting poetry the function to give an unexpected splendour to familiar and common-place things, to incidents and situations from common life just as a prism can give a ray of commonplace sunlight the manifold miracle of colour.vii actually, apart 15 from being a prism, romantic poetry is also a mirror faithfully reflecting poets themselves. this is because romantic poets often relate their own experiences in their works and as a result, when we are reading romantic poems we can see constant revelation of the poets selves. i regard wordsworths autobiographical the prelude as the best proof of this statement. the prelude was composed after wordsworth retired to his native mountains. the revisit to the old haunts apparently brought the poet into an exalted poetic mood, so much so that the so-called prelude should be of the scale of an opus, in which wordsworth took a deep review of his mind and examines how far nature and education had qualified him for such an employment as a poet. and wordsworth accomplished the scrutiny of his spiritual development, as well as that of his spiritual crisis and recovery, through reflexions on some influential factors and occasions in his life, such as the lessons he learned from books and nature, his days in cambridge, his sojourn in london and france and so on. after we read this epic, it is not difficult for us to achieve a modest familiarity with the processes that wordsworth has undergone towards his maturity. what is interesting is that eliot also composed a masterpiece with materials gathered from certain commemorative places in his life the four quartets. needless to say, the four quartets is far more complex than the prelude. a quartet, being contrapuntal in nature, involves elaborate arrangement of musical instruments and emotional transitions. and so is eliots literary quartets, in which we can hear the language of homely colloquy and erudite oratory, the tone of light calmness and perturbed confusion, the ideas obtained from personal reflexion and extensive philosophy, etc. so by similarly in the 16 beginning of this paragraph, i only refer to one aspect of the quartets in comparison with the prelude, that is, the tracing of ones past and personal development. in the poem, eliot, like what wordsworth did in the prelude, explored in retrospection the paths that his heart had taken. each of the quartets takes its name from a place having for eliot some personal or family association: burnt norton is a country house where eliot stayed as a visitor in the summer of 1934; east coker is a village from which the eliot family emigrated to america; the dry salvages, as the note to the poem states, are a small group of rocks, with a beacon remembered by eliot from summer holidays in his childhood; little gidding is the seat of an anglican religious community three times visited by king charles. the music in the quartets presents to its audience a fact sufficiently evident that it was for the significance of these places to eliots personal career and beliefs that eliot chose them as the subjects of each part of the suite. actually eliot once intended to make this fact even more obvious by using the title the south kensington quartets, taken from his own one-time residence, for this poem. i see this coincidence of eliot and wordsworth i