Abstract
The seemingly identical artistic terms put forward respectively by the Chinese poet Su Shi and English poet John Keats, “Transforming into Bamboos” and “Negative Capability” contain significant differences due to their distinct cultural context and the poets’ personal experience. Firstly, their subjective mentalities are different. Rather than the total repression of human faculties and the Taoist world-weary attitude, Su Shi advocates an initiative subject, a fully charged mind with a deep humanistic concern; while for Keats, a state of passiveness and receptiveness overwhelms the exercise of intelligence and reason. Secondly, their ways of approaching “Truth” are different. Su Shi values both talent and hard practice, together with a dialectical attitude towards language and media while Keats emphasizes a dispossessed ego, an imaginative soul，a chameleon quality, and a full trust on language and symbols. Thirdly, the claimed “Truth” they are pursuing are different. For Su Shi, the goal of “Transforming into Bamboos” is to catch Li(理) , a Confucian variant or derivation of Tao while what Keats looks for through “Negative Capability” is an aesthetic utopia where he finds justice for his art and himself under an age of industrialization.
Highlights
Literary theories are composed of a set of terms or key words
It will be futile if we just stop at “dressing Chinese poetics with a western suit, or dressing western theory with a Chinese Chi-pao”. (Tong Qingbing, 2016, p.15) Under these principles, What this article provides is a comparison between two important literary terms put forward by the 11th century Chinese poet Su Shi and the 19th century English poet John Keats on art creation
We could see Keats’ sanctification of art as a proletarian revolution in the domain of aesthetic ideology. Both talented Men of Letters and “losers” in life, Su Shi and John Keats simultaneously turned to art for pleasure, satisfaction and worthiness
Summary
Literary theories are composed of a set of terms or key words Those terms have their own origins, developments and variations, and are woven together through the history of literary practice. (Tong Qingbing, 2016, p.15) Under these principles, What this article provides is a comparison between two important literary terms put forward by the 11th century Chinese poet Su Shi and the 19th century English poet John Keats on art creation. Zhou Yanming (2017) and Xu Xiaofeng (2019) explored the Buddhist, Confucian and other elements in Su Shi’s life and writing besides the well-known Taoist influence Some of these studies have built a hidden bridge between these two terms. Each of the perspective will be conducted through contextual analysis and mutual interpretation with an aim of discovering artistic laws
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