Whitman East and West: New Contexts for Reading Walt Whitman

Modernity and Whitman’s Reception in Chinese Literature

Modernity and Whitman’s Reception in Chinese Literature wang ning
The present era is usually defined as the era of globalization, but while economic globalization, cultural globalization, and mass media globalization are booming, cultural and literary markets are depressed, and the global influence of literature and other forms of elite culture is shrinking. So why are we still discussing Walt Whitman, who should certainly be regarded as a representative of elite culture and literature, albeit with a strong avant-garde sense? It is my view that Whitman’s significance today lies not only in the role he has played in the era of globalization but also in his aesthetics, which encouraged the manufacture of works of art without elaboration and without traditional artistic flourish. Whitman was a literary explorer and adventurer and had one of the most powerful imaginations of the last half of the nineteenth century. He and his poetry played a unique role in the development of Western and Chinese postmodernity and the avant-garde. His poetry anticipated the experimental poetry in the high time of Western modernist literature and in the May 4th period in China, and the latter was strongly influenced by the former. Since modernity is still a heatedly discussed and debated topic in the era of globalization , it is necessary first to place Whitman and his poetry within the framework of modernity before discussing him in a comparative context as a link between Western and Chinese literature. Modernizing Whitman: The West and China Whitman has long been regarded as a romantic poet or as a historically significant proponent of American democracy. But in this essay, I would like to view him in the context of modernity by looking at his poetry from today’s point of view. It is true that literary modernism is a sort of outgrowth of romanticism, and various writers of the nineteenth century contributed a great deal to modernist writers. In speaking of the pioneers of modernism, we usually include Edgar Allan Poe in poetry, Henrik Ibsen in drama, and Gustave Flaubert in the novel. But many twentieth-century literary scholars, in part because they tend to overlook the rise of American literature in the latter part of the nineteenth century and in part because they are stubbornly Eurocentric, seem to have forgotten Whitman, another important figure from the United States, where American literature was at that time still under the shadow of English literature. With poetry as his trumpet, Whitman sounded the strong note of democracy, both in politics and in aesthetics. The basic tone of Whitman’s poetry was romantic, but his was a late version of romanticism whose aesthetic exploration developed a sort of premodern code. Malcolm Bradbury and James McFarlane are among the few insightful scholars who have observed the pioneering role played by Whitman in the process of European modernism. They state, “When the German writers of the late 1880s thought of ‘modern ’ literature, of whom did they think? Of Ibsen, of Zola and Tolstoy, Daudet, Bret Harte, and Whitman.”1 These writers either gave inspiration to the modernists or were themselves pioneers of modernist literature. In Western academic circles, scholars of different critical orientations have appreciated Whitman’s artistic achievements and worldwide impact. Some scholars regard him as “one of the pioneering figures in modern poetry ” or the “innovator of modern free verse,” simply because his works helped cast a sort of American national and cultural identity, uttering a strong American voice in world literary circles. Critics have also found him relevant to the historic avant-garde of twentieth-century literature because of his democratic spirit and his endless search for the true identity of the American nation.2 If we read Whitman’s poetry next to some contemporary American experimentalist poets, we can undoubtedly find the inherent connections between him and postmodernism.3 That is perhaps one of the reasons why he is still read and discussed today not only in the West but in China. Another obvious reason why Chinese scholars discuss Whitman in regard to modern Chinese literature is the unique role he played in the process of China’s political and cultural modernity as well as in the Chinese literary modernist movement. It is well known that during the May 4th period 198 Wang Ning Whitman was one of the very few American poets who had a strong influence on such revolutionary...