Reading "The Besieged City", ordinary readers may not notice the comment on the famous Western symbolist poet T.S. Eliot in the book, but if you find this passage and read the book carefully, It is also interesting to speculate on Qian Zhongshu's attitude towards Eliot.
Mr. Qian Zhongshu said this about Eliot in the third section of "The Besieged City" on page 74: Miss Su Wenwan introduced a new school to Fang Hongjian and others
The poet Cao Yuanlang brought a collection of poems to Miss Su for advice. Fang Hongjian "held the collection of poems over respectfully, opened it and saw the neat Song Dynasty calligraphy written with a brush. The title of the first sonnet was "Platter Couple Mix", with the word '一' written below." The poem goes like this:
The stars last night and tonight are swaying in the wind that floats to tomorrow night (2)
The plump and fat pregnant belly is trembling in the sky (3)
When did this widowed fugitive woman get a new husband (4)?
Jug! Jug! (5) In the mud——E fango e il mondo! (6)——
The nightingale sings (7)...
The last couplet of the poem is:
On the summer night after the rain, fill and wash , the earth is fertile and new,
The smallest blade of grass joins in the silent cry: "Wir sind!" (Thirty)
The source of the words is specified in detail at the end of the poem, Among them, Eliot is translated as "Eliot" (Does this translation indicate Qian Zhongshu's attitude and evaluation of Eliot?). The sentence "Jug! Jug! In the mud - E fango e il mondo! - the nightingale sings" in Cao's poem directly quotes Eliot's famous poem "The Waste Land": "There the nightingale's voice cannot be insulted. There the nightingale filled all the desert with inviolable voice／And still she cried, and still the world pursues,' Jug Jug'to dirty ears). Here, Qian Zhongshu randomly picked up famous lines from Eliot's "The Waste Land" and used them in the writings of the new-school poets he ridiculed. Does this indicate the author's ridicule of Eliot? We know that Eliot's "The Waste Land" is famous for being difficult to understand. Almost no one could understand the poem when it was first published in 1922. Therefore, the poet had no choice but to add more than 50 notes to the poem, but , when the reader hoped that the poet would re-explain certain annotations, the poet realized that he might fall into the trap of endless annotations, so he refused to make any more annotations for the poem and said, "I don't know the original meaning." What does the word 'mean'! I just want to say what I feel in my heart. I don't know what I will say before I say it. I won't definitely use the word 'original meaning'. on my work or that of other poets." In this way, Eliot's notes on poetry are almost as famous as his poems themselves. A short sonnet by Cao Yuanlang actually used 30 notes, which is probably even better than Eliot in this regard. No wonder Fang Hongjian said: "There are really no words and no origin, as is the so-called by people who make old poems." "Poems of Scholars" is almost there." Miss Tang, who was standing by, "read the poem" and couldn't help but said: "Mr. Cao, you are too cruel to the foreign people in the poem. "I don't know any of the words." In fact, this is another characteristic of "The Wasteland". "The Wasteland" uses references frequently, involving 35 writers and 56 works, using English, French, German, Spanish, Greek, Seven languages, including Latin and Sanskrit, adopt five forms: popular language, written language, ancient language, dialect and foreign language. In Eliot's view, poetry is "the separation of personality", "the elimination of personality", "the past determines the present, and the present will also modify the past". There is a continuous parallel between modernity and ancient times, so Eliot naturally Borrow other people's poems to speak your own words, borrow other people's wine glasses to pour out the blockages in your heart. Mr. Cao and Eliot seem to have a "heroic vision". When explaining the foreign characters in his poem, he said: "The style of my poem can be appreciated more by people who don't know foreign characters. The title is The meaning of "Zabaner" and "Shibazha" is that sometimes one person's poem is used, and sometimes that person's poem is used, and Chinese is mixed with Western words, so you will naturally have the impression of a mixed bag. Miss Tang, you can understand this. Mixed impressions, isn't it? That's how you can grasp the essence of the poem. There is no need to seek the meaning of the poem. The meaning of the poem is the misfortune of the poem!" Finally, Mr. Cao advised Fang Hongjian, "You should think about Eli. As for the poems about bad virtues, you know that modern Western poets’ poems also have their own origins, but we don’t say that they plagiarize.”
Mr. Cao’s words are another paraphrase of Eliot’s literary and artistic thoughts. Eliot believed that specific perceptual experiences caused by specific things, situations, or combinations of events can often evoke specific emotions. In this way, the only way for writers to express emotions in their works is to find and describe these objective counterparts. The entire "The Waste Land" is the "objective counterpart" of the poet's inner state.
In this way, poetry becomes a symbol. To understand the work, people are no longer limited to understanding the meaning of words, but must grasp the symbolic meaning of things and scenes. Eliot said that poets should bypass the extreme abstraction of rationalist thought and capture the reader's "cerebral cortex, nervous system, and digestive tract." "The poet should not appeal to the reader's mind: it is irrelevant what a poem actually means. Meaning is just a distraction thrown at the reader; poetry, meanwhile, speaks in more concrete and unconscious terms The way quietly affects readers. "Therefore, the meaning in Eliot's poem is just a deception. When people do not try to understand and translate this deception, they may be understanding Eliot in some unconscious way; When people think they have grasped the meaning of Eliot's poems, they often fall into the trap without realizing it.
Qian Zhongshu’s ridicule of Poet Cao’s lame imitation of Eliot’s poems in the novel is obvious, and is an attempt to criticize some foreign students for their indifference, arrogance, self-righteousness, and stupidity. The sarcasm and ridicule of Fang Hongjian are also clear at a glance. In Fang Hongjian’s words, it is “simply incomprehensible. And he is not an honest and contented unreasonable person. He bullies others, is confident and unreasonable, and unreasonable has a big background.” However, the author’s Eliot's attitude toward symbolist poetry and New Criticism theory is unclear in the novel. However, the limitations and shortcomings of Eliot's poetry are clearly revealed through poet Cao's imitation. However, at the same time, the advantages and significance of Eliot's poetry are also in danger of being ignored and obliterated.
Therefore, it is obviously not enough to just talk about Eliot in terms of "The Besieged City". If we can find Qian Zhongshu's comments on Eliot from his theoretical works, it will undoubtedly help us to understand it correctly. Understand Eliot, and we can further understand the meaning of "The Siege" from this. In "Talking about Art", a work written almost at the same time as "Fortress Besieged", we quickly discovered Qian Zhongshu's discussion of Eliot, "Today's Eliot (here is not translated as 'Eili Bade'" ) on the metaphysical school of poetry in England in the 17th century, saying that being able to understand the truth and reality through the senses is the hint of Hegel's theory." Qian Zhongshu spoke highly of "Hegel's theory", "Things are based on reasons, reasons are based on things, reality and reality are mutually intertwined, principles are intertwined, signs are integrated, and colors reveal principles. Take this truth to describe poetry The principles and interests in it are as great as those created by heaven and earth.” Later, Qian Zhongshu discussed Eliot's "objective correlative" theory many times in "Tan Yi Lu Supplement" and "Guan Zhui Bian", "The one who 'narrates things and romances' is not him. It is said that "things should be right" in poetry, and the method is "emotions and thoughts must be right." Qian Zhongshu compared this theory with the "meaning of things", "hidden meaning of profound texts", and " Comparing it with the poem "asking for things to express feelings", it illustrates the rationality and interest of poetry, "the principles are embedded in things, the things are wrapped in the principles, the things are based on the principles, and the principles are manifested by the things", both at home and abroad. Qian Zhongshu obviously made a more objective and detailed comparison and explanation of Eliot's theory here, and gave full affirmation.
From this point of view, there should be no problem for Cao Yuanlang to learn from Eliot. The problem lies in that he went to extremes. When Qian Zhongshu discussed the "poetry of scholars" in "Tan Yi Lu", he said that the truly outstanding "poetry of scholars" should be "dropping the text without dropping the bag. Although there are strange words and hard words, it is not the original poem." The ridiculous thing about Cao Yuanlang is probably that he "dropped his book bag" in a pretentious manner and "made people proud of his hidden things".