The Poetics of Discontinuity: East-West Correspondences in Lyric Poetry

Abstract

AbstractThis article discusses some characteristic methods and structures shared by modern Western and classical Chinese poetry, focusing on the works of Georg Trakl and major poets of the T’ang dynasty. Among the similarities examined are the preference for concrete imagery over abstract, discursive statement; the paratactical juxtaposition of images, which leaves their logical, temporal, and grammatical relationships unspecified and often ambiguous; and the tendency for images to become “ciphers” that suggest, but do not support, metaphorical interpretation. There is also a reluctance to obtrude a first-person speaker onto the scene, and this has led some critics to label Symbolist-post-Symbolist and Chinese poetry “impersonal”; this essay argues, however, that the hidden subjectivity of even the most “impersonal” poem should not be overlooked. Nevertheless, the omission of subject does frequently increase ambiguities among the other elements of a work and contributes to the “poetics of discontinuity” common to the two traditions.