波士頓與中國---藝術與文學
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2007/10-2008/07
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這個為期三年的計畫〈波士頓與中國:文學與藝術〉延續筆者近三年的國科會研究計 畫〈紐約現代主義與中國藝術〉的研究,以及近年來對於龐德等美國詩人與中國藝術與詩 的興趣之延伸。本研究計畫預計探討波士頓一地與中國藝術的關係,共分三年,第一年, 自九十五年八月至九十六年七月,重點將放在波士頓與中國的歷史淵源,美國在獨立之前 仍是應屬殖民地時即與中國有貿易往來,以及波士頓附近的遠東藝術館(MFA)以及其他藝 術館的東方藝術收藏。館中的收藏對十九世紀末及至二十世紀初出生或活躍於波士頓及附 近其他麻省諸鎮的美國作家、藝術家、藝術史家、藝術教育家、美學家所產生的影響。第 二年,自九十六年八月至九十七年七月,主要重點放在美國作家詩人如Amy Lowell, John Gould Fletcher, John Ficke, Wallace Stevens, e. e. cummings, Henry Adams, Clarence King, John Hay, Witter Bynner 等人與波士頓的淵源;第三年,自九十七年八月至九十八年七月 則重點放在美國中國藝術之收藏以及美國小說家Gertrude Stein 及其美學家、收藏家Leo Stein 及他們在波士頓首度接觸及接受中國藝術之啟蒙及啟發;以及藝術家,如攝影家 Alvin Langdon Coburn 與波士頓中與中國藝術的關聯。 波士頓以及附近麻省港口城鎮,如Salem,如Ipswich,自十七世紀以來就是美國與 中國貿易的重要港口城市,這些城市也是來自英國最早移民聚集發展出來的城鎮。因此, 出生於Salem 的霍桑,他的父親是船長,死在南中國海。出生在紐約的Melville 曾在波士 頓出海當船員,到過日本,在小說中多次提到中國或中國海。Amy Lowell 曾在一首詩裡 寫到從家中的窗口看到波士頓港進港的中國貿易的商船返航。在十九世紀以來,英格蘭地 區產生的「超越論」哲學家如愛默生、梭羅等人對儒家思想、中國典章制度十分推崇,(見 Arthur Versluis 的American Transcendentalism and Asian Religions (1993)、Mansu Qian 的 Emerson and China: Reflections on Individualism (1992)、Eui-yeong Kim 的Thoreau』s Orientalism: A Study of Confucian and Taoist Elements in Thoreau』s Readings and Writings (1991)、Hongbo Tan 的Emerson, Thoreau, and the Four Books : Transcendentalism and the Neo-Confucian Classics in Historical Context (1989)),詩人艾茉莉˙狄金森曾有紀錄於一八四 六年曾至波士頓參觀過中國藝術的展覽(Uno Hiroko, Emily Dickinson Visits Boston),因此波 士頓成為乃至本計畫要研究的多位作家與藝術家首先接觸到中國美學、藝術與文學之地就 不足為怪了。在十九世紀末,波士頓美術館更成為全美第一個收藏,也同時是第一座展出 日本與中國藝術品的博物館。波士頓在十九世紀中葉之後,也開始有較具規模的東方藝術 畫廊兼古董買賣商。十九世紀中下葉之後,由於日本對美國的開放通商,許多新英格蘭家 族盛行坐船前行日本、中國,如Ernest Fenollosa 於一八七八年應東京帝大之邀赴日講學。 美國詩人Witter Bynner (1881-1968)亦是畢業於哈佛,一樣受啟蒙於波士頓的東方藝術收 藏。他在一九一七年畢業後與另一位日後成為詩人的哈佛同學Arthur Davidson Ficke 前往 日本。詩人Amy Lowell 來自英格蘭望族,其兄Percival Lowell 在一八七六年畢業後曾旅 行於遠東各地。一八九五年,Gertrude Stein 的哥哥Leo Stein 在哈佛畢業後,與堂兄弟Fred Stein 及友人Hutchins Hapgood 曾至東方旅行。他們在日本見到日本藝術外,更接觸乃至 收藏收購流落至日本的中國藝術品。Leo Stein 等一行人日本後甚至到過上海、廣東、香 港等地。畢業於哈佛的歷史學家Henry Adams 與畫家John La Farge 亦結伴前往日本。由 於東方行蔚為成風,在哈佛受教育的許多人,如Ernest Fenollosa 在大學畢業後,即前往 東京帝大教授西洋哲學,後來深受日本影響,回美後,任波士頓美術館的首任東方文物主 管部門的主任,他出版過多部有關中國與日本藝術的著作影響深遠,甚至影響及美國年輕 一代的藝術家。遠東部門的收藏在日本時期大量收集日本與中國文物,甚至是許多美國作 家首次接觸中國藝術的窗口。 第一年:(1)波士頓與中國 Isabella Stewart Gardner 地域與文化(Place and Culture) 本研究想要探索新英格蘭地區與中國之間文學、藝術、建築、貿易等許許多多不同的 關聯。它著眼於文學中隱藏或顯在的地圖,無論是過去的或現在的、現實的或想像的。作 家與作品和地方與景物之間,存在密切的連結,而在文學中,我們可以捕捉到某個城鎮或 地區風貌。在最基礎的文學要素中,地方、旅行與探險總是不可或缺的三件事。我們的詩、 我們的小說、我們的戲劇,自身就能繪出世界的圖像。 中國確有其地其國,儘管有許多是出自於想像,但是在「真實」與「想像」、「國度」 與「作品」兩者之間本來就充滿著錯綜複雜的關係,這都是本研究要處理的對象。從古至 今,絲路之旅、馬可波羅遊記、甚至哥倫布之所以發現新大陸;在十九世紀,英法乃至於 後來八國聯軍對中國的征服、探險、帝國殖民主義的入侵,西方對中國的政治經濟的控制, 全部建立在歷史上對「中國」的想像。在西方與中國複雜的帝國擴張的地圖中,美國出現 的比較晚,但其影響力在十九世紀下葉之後,就隨著美國國力的增強而益顯重要了。 本研究第一年將以探討十六世紀至二十世紀初,最早美國在獨立戰爭之前,仍是英屬 殖民地之始,至二十世紀初與中國的貿易往來,文化交通的產生對美國文學、文化、藝術、 建築的影響。為什麼著重於這個時期的斷代呢?因為這個時期是原始的歷史,是日後兩國 文化交通的基礎,而且這個時期的此方面研究仍待開發墾拓,而至二十世紀初年,拜航空 交通便利之賜,東西方的文化交流與影響就更加明顯不疑了。 華盛頓.歐文(Washington Irving, 1783-1859)以化名狄德裡希.尼克爾-包克爾 (Diedrich Knicker-Bocker),寫了一本逗趣的作品-「紐約外史」(A History of New York, 1809)。紐約早年有個別名「燈籠褲之城」(Knickerbocker),此與歐文有關,歐文在此書 中亦多次提到中國。歐文的父親以英國商港利物浦為本營,大作越洋進口生意,因此,歐 文從小亦嫻熟海上貿易事業。Melville 到過日本,航海小說中,也多次提到中國。Amy Lowell 的詩中更直接描寫在Boston 出航自中國的船自Boston 離港的情景。 當時十九世紀末,波士頓人對中國的想像並不陌生,比如說,協助清廷打敗太平天國 的美國軍官Frederick TownsendWard 即是來自距波士頓不遠的Salem。他於一八五九年來 到中國,協助清軍平定太平天國。他到上海時,時年二十八歲,身無分文,歷經三年爭戰, 後來死於太平天國之戰,死後成為當時在中國最受愛戴的美國人,生前並成為歸化的中國 人,娶中國人為妻。 儘管毒品如鴉片是非法的,在十九世紀末中國開始禁鴉片,當時新英格蘭仍有許多美 國港口與中國貿易中仍非法走私,因鴉片而致富的不乏美國巨富世家,如Cabot 家族;美 國作家Amy Lowell, Robert Lowell 的Lowell 家族,出過美國兩任總統的Adams 家族; Clarence King 的King 家族的祖先都與中國貿易有關。 美國十九世紀的新英格蘭波士頓地區的巨富大抵都與中國貿易脫離不了關係。當時時 值英法聯軍,中國海口被迫開放成為通商口岸。美國商人在美國獨立之前即以掛名註冊在 英籍船商之下,進行對華貿易。美華貿易大抵以販賣美國的海獺皮毛(滿清旗人服飾喜飾 以海獺毛皮),人蔘、美華販賣後,交易進口中國的茶、絲、瓷器,當然中國貿易帶來最 大利潤的是鴉片貿易,美國亦對中國販賣鴉片,生產地不在美國本土,而是美國船地自他 地進口當地的鴉片,然後運至中國販售。當時北自緬因,南至南卡,西至密西西比,加州 的有權有錢家族如美國總統喬治.華盛頓,約翰.亞當斯,傑佛遜亦自中國特別訂製有家族 族徽的特殊家用瓷器餐具,形成所謂的貿易瓷。「貿易瓷」(Trade China)與「中國貿易」(China Trade)剛好是顛倒過來的兩個英文字。 中美的貿易影響表現在藝術與文學上主要為:(1)中國藝術的收藏;(2)西方藝評家 對中國藝術的論述;(3)中國詩人與作家在作品及書信中提到有關中國或中國藝術、詩與 文學;(4)在其他方面如建築、攝影、室內設計各方面受到中國的影響。 波士頓與新英格蘭地區的博物館與中國藝術的收藏 有關中國文物的私人蒐藏與公眾蒐藏的博物館在十九世紀末逐漸興起。波士頓市內有 數個與中國藝術有關的博物館。「波士頓藝術館」(Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)是美國第 一個收藏及展出中國及日本藝術的美術館,遠比美國大都會博物館來得早,這原因有二: 一是波士頓原比紐約早開發,在獨立前即已是遠東,尤其是中國的貿易(China Trade)的美 國重要商港;另一個原因當然要歸功於十九世紀末生物學家Fenollosa, Morse Bigelow 等 人從日本帶回來的中國及日本文物與藝術,後來捐贈給波士頓藝術館,具有劃時代的重要 意義。新英格蘭地區除了波士頓藝術館聞名遐邇之外,與中國藝術有關的此外尚有「Salem 的Peabody 博物館」(Peabody Museum of Salem) 、波士頓的「中國貿易館」(Boston China Trade Museum),新英格蘭各地尚有許多大大小小的公眾私人博物館收有中國文物。 其中有一個知名博物館比較會為人忽略的重要中國文物收藏館的是—Isabella Steward Gardner Museum,因為該博物館以歐洲中世紀文藝復興時期的建築風格及中古、 文藝復興收藏品著名,建築物本身是十五世紀威尼斯宮殿的風格,中間是個花朵扶疏盛開 的庭園,美不勝收。博物館中收藏了兩千五百多件的繪畫、雕刻、壁毯、傢俱、手抄本、 珍本、裝飾藝,包括了名家堤香、林布蘭特、米開朗基羅、拉斐爾、波堤切利、馬奈、竇 家、惠施樂等人的作品。由於主人歷經多年的個人風格的設計,整個博物館的陳設像是徜 徉在私人豪宅,而非像在一般博物館整齊冷酷的排列,她的收藏品如雕刻,四處放置於房 間、中庭、以及中庭四週的庭廊之中,與庭園自然花朵或房間牆上的畫及壁毯形成一種隨 性又高雅的協調,奢華中又帶有點浪漫的波西米亞風格。 這樣的擺設反映出主人Isabella Stewart Gardner 的特殊品味。Isabella 本人喜歡藝術 與文學,與同時期的美國滯歐,尤其是滯留在義大利威尼斯的藝術家、文人都有來往,如 Henry James, JamesWhistler 和John Singer 等人,Isabella 當時雅好文藝,作風大膽,引起 頗大爭議。 博物館收藏重點是義大利文藝復興、以及Isabella 同時期的十九世紀末、二十世紀初 的惠施樂以及John Singer Sargent。美術館中亦珍藏著Isabella 與超過一千位通信者的包括 七千多件的書信手稿,這些手中包括了著名作家如美國歷史學家HenryAdams、詩人艾略 特、Sarah Bernhardt (知名莎劇女演員)、Oliver Wendell Holmes,以及珍貴的但丁手搞。 Isabella Stewart Gardner 博物館最特別的是它也收藏多件日本與中國古物。其中一件 西漢(約206BC-91AD)的鎏金銅器,熊型(Mat Weights: Bears),紀錄顯示是1914 年透過 Bernard Berenson 向巴黎的古董商Marcel Bing 購買的。另一件木刻觀音像,宋朝十一世 紀至十二世紀作品, 殘遺鑲金與著色, 這件作品是1919 年購自紐約的古董商 Parish-Watson。另一件東魏作品的佛像碑石像,亦是於1914 年透過Bernard Berenson 購 自巴黎的Victor Gloubew 古董商。 我希望能前往波士頓檢視Isabella 與Bernard Berenson 的書信手稿。Bernard Berenson 是二十世紀最重要的文藝復興藝術史家,也恐怕是影響許多博物館收藏方向與收購的重要 掮客,從晚近法國收藏古董商Joseph Duveen 的傳記出版中和Bernard Berenson 與Duveen 兩人的長期合作看來,Berenson 頗具爭議性,但,可以確定的,他絕非是個超然利益之 外的純藝術史家。Bernard Berenson 本人亦收藏中國藝術。 因此,若追蹤Isabella Stewart Gardner 與Bernard Berenson 的手稿,我們應該可以一 窺二十世紀初中國文物如何外流,如何經手過巴黎與紐約的古董掮客,而後,又如何進入 美國私人美術館如Isabella Stewart Gardner 的收藏之中。這是藝術文化史的重要部份,也 是中西藝術文化交流的重要章節。 (2): Ernest Fenollosa and ArthurWesley Dow 影響到整個波士頓及鄰近居域的美國文人與藝術家對中國產生興趣的最重要人物當 推Ernest Fenollosa,他是MFA 的受任東方藝術部門的主任,以及他的繼任者ArthurWesley Dow,所以第一年的部分研究將探討此二人如何引介日本及中國美學,而對日後的美國藝 術家與作家產生影響。Dow 後來成為一位非常具有影響力的教師,他在哥倫比亞大學的 師範學院指導過Georgia O'Keeffe、Max Weber,以及美國前衛攝影師Alvin Langdon Coburn 以及其他許多當時在紐約的藝術家。受到Fenollosa 的影響,Dow 也相信日本與中國的藝 術教育模式遠勝過西方。 Fenollosa 1853 年出生於麻薩諸塞州的Salem[Salem 離波士頓不遠,同時是美國作家 霍桑(Hawthorne)的故鄉],Salem 同時是美國最早與中國有密切貿易關係的港口,Fenollosa 於1908 年在倫敦過世。他在1874 年畢業於哈佛大學。在劍橋大學,他繼續研究哲學與神 學。在波士頓美術館藝術學院服務一年之後,他在1878 年到日本東京帝國大學教授政治 經濟與哲學,在那段期間他研究了當地的古寺、神龕與藝術珍品,其中有許多都處於棄置 的狀況。他也協助復甦了日本風格的繪畫。在大學任教了八年,他協助成立了東京藝術學 院以及帝國博物館,在1888 年時擔任其董事。後來,他更皈依了佛教。Fenollosa 眾多成 就中,還包括了首部日本國家寶藏的目錄編輯,並在期間發現了數個世紀前由禪師從中國 帶回的古代中國卷軸。日本天皇贈予他日昇與神鏡的勳章。1886 年,在他所收藏的藝術 品應該歸予波士頓藝術館的條件下,他將它們賣給了一位波士頓醫師Charles Goddard Weld (1857-1911)。1890 年時他回到波士頓藝術館的東方藝術部擔任館長,直到1896 年。 在MFA,Fenollosa 於1894 年組織了第一個中國繪畫展覽,並將其部門發展成為訓練學者 的機構。Fenollosa 影響了波士頓地區的遠東藝術的收藏,並且也影響美國其他地區的遠 東藝術的收藏。比如底特律知名的中國藝術收藏家Charles Lang Freer,Fenollosa 即擔任 Freer 的顧問,Freer 畢生收藏的東方藝術品其中又以中國藝術為大宗,在其死後,捐贈給 國家在華盛頓D.C.成立國家畫廊(Charles Lang Freer National Galleries),影響深遠。 Fenollosa 協助累積與建設的波士頓藝術館遠東藝術收藏日後啟發了許多哈佛畢業的 作家,如Leo Stein(Gertrude Stein 的兄弟,也是最早收藏畢卡索與馬諦斯的開創收藏家) 以及意象派詩人John Gould Fletcher。Fenollosa 對美國現代主義者的影響也包括了其他卓 越的藝術家,如Arthur Alvin Langdon Coburn、Max Weber(不是那位知名的德國社會學 者,而是與其同名的美國抽像與立體主義藝術家)、Georgia O』Keeffe,他們都是激進的藝 術家,且都參與Alfred Stieglitz「291 畫廊」以及Pictorialist 攝影分離派運動。Fenollosa 對於美國現代主義的影響似乎完全被低估了。嘗試將Fenollosa 置於較大範圍的波士頓東 方主義與紐約前衛的傳統中,將有助於重新評估Fenollosa 對於美國現代主義的影響,同 時也重新認識到中國與日本對美國現代主義的影響,也將對重新復原美國現代主義的研究 中的東方影響傳統有所助益。 Fenollosa 對於現代主義的影響相當廣泛:在倫敦,他的遺孀Mary 將其手稿遺贈給 Pound,他出版了Fenollosa 的《作為中國藝術媒介的中國文字》,一部深深影響Pound 的 表意文字以及之後意象派發展的著作。藉由Pound , Fenollosa 也影響了Henri Gaudier-Brzeska 與其他人。Fenollosa 的《中國與日本藝術的黃金時期》也影響了英格蘭 的Laurence Binyon、Georgia O』Keeffe與美國的Arthur Dove。 Arthur Dow,一位極具影響力的藝術家、攝影家、設計家與藝術教師,受到Fenollosa 對中國與日本藝術的看法的深刻影響。並於波士頓開始一系列以東方美學為基礎的演講, 後來他轉至紐約的The Pratt Institute 任教,才將波士頓的演講稿於1899 年出版了《結構》 (Composition),一部深入的美學教育的書,對於許多美國的攝影、繪畫、印刷、設計、陶 藝及藝術教育等作品的產生都有廣泛的影響,包括O』Keeffe、Max Weber、John Marin、 Stieglitz 等數不盡的藝術家。看到了西方藝術教育的缺失,Dow 轉向東方的藝術。《結構》 採用了許多中國與日本的觀點:筆觸、濃淡、線條、氣韻生動;他企圖對西方風格的表現 與透視法的根本變更。Dow 對於「結構」的看法植基於東方藝術。在這個觀點中,他便 是受到Fenollosa 的影響。後來,Dow 在麻薩諸塞州的Ipswich 成立了藝術學院,並在哥 倫比亞大學的師範學院授教了許多年,此地產生了許多傑出的藝術家與藝術教師,其中最 出名的便是Georgia O』Keeffe。中國與日本藝術的影響經過Dow 的提倡與教導,在紐約前 衛派與美國藝術上是不能也不應該被忽視的。Dow 長久以來都為其學生的成就光環所遮 蔽,因此重新恢復Dow 在美國藝術教育界與波士頓以及紐約前衛派歷史中的地位是非常 重要的。他搭起了一座東方藝術與美國現代藝術(1900-1950)的重要橋樑。 第二年:九十六年八月至九十七年七月:美國文人與中國藝術 第二年的研究將以作家為主,將包含重要作家如Henry Adams, Edward Sylvester Morse, Herman Melville,William CarlosWilliams、Wallace Stevens、e.e. cummings、Marianne Moore、Amy Lowell 等人。一九00 年至一九四0 年之間的美國詩人Amy Lowell,William Carlos Williams,Wallace Stevens, e. e. cummings 及Marianne Moore 等人對中國藝術、 文化與文學之間的討論,並論及他們的作品中可能受到的中國影響。他們與波士頓關係密 切,如e. e. cummings 就讀於哈佛,Wallace Stevens 等人亦記錄波士頓美術館東方收藏對 其啟發。 我企圖將波士頓放在一個比較文化、跨文化的觀點之下來進行探討。我企圖探討這些 現代藝術家與詩人和中國藝術與文化文學的接觸、對中國藝術的反應,並評估中國藝術與 文化文學對其作品的影響。我最終目的是要提出新的論證:在形塑美國認同的過程中中國 藝術與文化扮演一個十分重要的角色。 HenryAdams, John Hay, Clarence King, and John La Farge HenryAdams 與John Hay, Clarence King, John La Farge 等人是摯友。此一群人與日本 或中國或中國貿易都有點關係。Henry Adams (1838-1918)是美國歷史學家、記者及小說 家。他來自波士頓煊赫的政治世家,他的祖父(John Adams)及曾祖父(John Quincy Adams) 曾任美國總統。他於一八五八年畢業自哈佛,遊歷歐洲。亞當斯本人對中國與日本十分嚮 往。曾與友人,美國畫家John La Farge 前往日本。John Hay 曾於美國總統McKinley 任內 於1899 年確立各國對華的「門戶開放」政策,確立各國在華的政治經濟利益的機會 均等。亨利.亞當斯,在其著名的自傳《亨利.亞當斯的教育》(The Education of Henry Adams)中提及摯友John Hay,Hay 曾是對華事務史上的重要人物,曾自1898 至1895 年 逝世前擔任美國前後總統President Mckinley 及其後的Theodore Roosevelt 的國務卿 (Secretary of the State)。 John La Farge 是出生於紐約州的美國知名畫家。畢生創作以天主教的宗教主題,與日 本佛像宗教主題為主。頭一次前往巴黎時,他進Thomas Couture 畫室習畫,並樂於參加 當時巴黎的文藝沙龍聚會。回美後,早先在羅德島的新港(New Port, Rhode Island)畫風景 為主,並顯現對日本藝術的精研與喜好。在對日本藝術的研究與受其影響的此一脈絡之 中,John La Farge 和惠施樂開啟日本風的風潮。 John La Farge 之引起我們的注意,是他是屬於一群藝術家文人政治家的圈子。這個圈 子包括了Henry James, Henry Adams, Clarance King 及John Hay,他們是很好的朋友。而 這多人中間也都與中國產生某種關連,比如John La Farge 與HenryAdams,兩人曾一起結 伴一起前往日本旅遊,在日本認識Bigelow 及Fenollosa。 一般研究者知道Whistler、John La Farge 與日本的關係密切,但許多人不知道但他 懂中文,而且,Whistler、John La Farge 他們兩人都也收藏瓷器,他們兩人也都喜歡畫中 國瓷器為背景的靜物寫生。在回憶錄中也提及他喜歡中國繪畫與中國顏料(John La Farge: A Memoir and a Study, by Royal Cortissoz, 104, 124, 181)。 Clarence King (1842-1901) 是美國的地理學家及登山家他出生東岸羅德島的新港 (New Port, Rhode Island),祖先與中國貿易有關,他本人是美國地理測量學會(the United States Geological Society)第一任會長,以內華達山探險著名。 King 在一八七九年主持政府的西部測量計畫時在華盛頓特區首都華府時與時任總 統助理的Henry Adams(當時家住白宮後面)成為莫逆。他們的友誼終其一生,由於興趣相 近,對於寫作及歷史都可以分享彼此的樂趣,HenryAdams 在其自傳回憶錄The Education of Henry Adams (1907) 曾多次提及Clarence King。死後,King 歸葬故里,羅德島的新港。 King 家族世居羅德島的新港,新港原本亦是與中國貿易的美國東岸海港。他的祖先 是新英格蘭地區最早的移民墾荒者,他的家族多人從事船具製作,或任船長或船商。他的 祖父是美國最早一批與中國貿易的美國商人之一,他的叔叔也是從事中國與日本的貿易。 鴉片戰爭爆發時,他的父親與叔叔都在中國,被迫返美。Clarence King 父親此時與他母 親約定隔年成親,Clarence King 在他母親懷他的時候他的父親就返回中國。後來他的父 親死在中國,公司也因為一艘載著香料的船沈寂於海上而破產。 Edward Sylvester Morse Edward Sylvester Morse(1838-1925)是美國知名的動物學家與崇尚東方者。出生於新英 格蘭區緬因州的Portland。Portland 是緬因州最大的城市,是該州文化、社會與經濟首都。 Portland 歷史古市區是沿著港口(Portland Harbor)的舊港(historic Old Port),是Fore River 河出海口與Casco Bay 海灣街口一帶是最古老的市區。英國最早移民於一六五八年在此定 居,初期以漁業與貿易為主。他後來對動物學有興趣,後來發現branchiopods 是一種蠕蟲 而非軟骨動物,吸引了達爾文的注意。 他在一八七七年抵達日本,在日本停留長達三年,東京大學延攬成立動物學系。他之 後介紹推薦數位美國人oyatoi gaikokugin(お雇い外國人)(hired foreigners, foreign employers)外國遍及法律、哲學、醫學各行專家、工程師、教授、商人等,受僱至日本, 協助日本明治維新現代化的轉型。當時自德川幕府末期至明治時期,到一八六八年時,共 約三千多外國人獲聘。當時Morse 推薦多名美國友人至日。由於他發現Omori 貝塚,加 上由於他對文物的研究,他替日本開闢了考古學人類學兩大領域。 在日本時候,他出版了一本自己畫圖的日本的家及周圍環境的書,收藏超過五千件陶 片與陶器,而在一八九零年成為波士頓藝術館的陶器部門主任(Keeper of Pottery at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston),館中有他從日本帶回來捐贈給博物館的陶器the Morse collection。他於一八八零年至一九一四年間,長達三十四年擔任Salem的Peabody Museum 的館長。一九二五年歿於Salem。 雖然一般學者比較熟知Morse 與日本的關係,比如說,他出版有關日本建築與環境 的書外,但他亦出版了對中國建築的觀察Glimpses of China and Chinese Homes。本研究將 進一部探討他與中國的關係。 Emily Dickinson Emily Dickinson 十多歲的時候有一次去華府看他父親,當時他是國會議員,她曾在 博物館見到中國人在博物館裡抽水煙,她被他們的自重自持泰若自然的神色,以及不理會 外界的態度所動容。(Johnson, Collected Letters) Dickinson 曾經拜訪並停由在波士頓至少五次。他在一八四四年住在她阿姨Lavinia Norcross 家數週;一八四六年,她再度來到波士頓,停留約四週,這次,她參觀了中國藝 術的展覽,並出席音樂會;再一八五一年,這次大約停留兩個星期,這回,她看Othello 的演出看鐵路五十週年的慶典,爬海關的塔樓,拜訪她姨丈Joel Norcross 在牛奶街(Milk Street)的店,同時去看在Bedford Street 街上的的Dr.Wessekhoeft;一八六四年及一八六五 年,她到波士頓是去Arlington Street15 號的醫生那兒治療眼疾,這一次,她和姨丈的表親 住在劍橋的Mrs. Bang 的民宿。她目睹了一八四零年代、五零年代、六零年代波士頓這個 城市的成長、工業化以及都市化。 本研究將進一部檢閱她的書信,詩與傳記中提及中國的部份。 William CarlosWilliams 在美國任教的中國學者Zhaoming Qian 的Orientalism and Modernism: The Legay of China in Pound and Williams (Duke UP, 1995) 以及The Modernist Response to Chinese Art: Pound, Moore, Stevens (U of Virginia P, 2003)是近年來對美國詩人與中國的關係影響研究 方面做的最成功最徹底的,貢獻良多,替後人的研究下很好的基礎。因此,我在未來一年 對Williams 的研究也將主要放在他與波士頓的關係。 美國詩人John Gould Fletcher 在觀察美國現代詩中的中國影響中指出:除了他自己、龐 德、Amy Lowell 外,其他三位詩人:「William CarlosWilliams,Wallace Stevens, 及Marianne Moore 三人都展現出接近中國人的客觀描寫」(Selected Essays 79)。近年來,陸續有學者, 逐漸注意到美國詩中的中國影響自成一個文學傳統。但截至目前為止,仍尚未有人將這些 詩人放在波士頓中整個一起重新檢驗他們與中國藝術之間的關係,重新將這批活躍於波士 頓的詩人藝術家、視為一個跨文學與藝術的運動,而重新建構出中國影響是如何藉由這樣 一個結合作家與藝術家所綰結織成的一個錯綜複雜的網路在流通的。 Williams曾與David RafaelWang(1931-1977)合作,改編翻譯了三十八首中國詩,(包括 了李白的「長干行」(「Song of Chang-gan」), ( 亦即當年龐德曾身手小試的 「The River-Merchant's Wife」),在Williams死後於一九六六年出版,此譯詩即為The Cassia Tree: A Collection of Translations and Adaptations from the Chinese in Collaboration with David Rafael Wang (CP 2:359-76)。其實Williams早在一九二一年的一首自傳詩<作者的書像> ("Portrait of the Author"),刊登於一九二一年春季的《接觸》Contact 詩刊中,這首詩即已 提及楊貴妃(CP 1:173)。更早一些,一九一八年,詩集Kora in Hell的序言中 ( 「Prologue to Kora in Hell」),他也提到楊貴妃。近來被發現的小詩<向白居易的影子致教>(「To the Shade of Po Chu-i」)(CP 1:133),再加上Williams在一九一五年四月十三日寫給芝加哥《詩》 刊(Poetry) 主編Harriet Monroe 的信中(此信現存於芝加哥大學The Joseph Regenstein Library 特藏),明白寫道:龐德的Cathay是「處理地很好極具價值」的詩集,以及如下的 讚語:「數首最偉大的詩」。由此可以推斷,Williams 大抵受到龐德對中國詩的詮釋的影 響。(按:龐德在一九一三於倫敦推出受到中國詩影響的意象主義,Des Imagistes: An Anthology,於一九一四年出版)。 白居易的<長恨歌>早經數譯,存有英、法、德及其他語言的樣本,吸引西方許多讀 者。在Williams 寫「Prologue to Kora in Hell」,「Portrait of the Author」時,當時白居易的< 長恨歌>存有兩個英譯版,一是英國漢學家H. A. Giles的A History of Chinese Literature (這也是龐德在發現到Fenollosa筆記之前翻譯所賴以依據的版本);另一個版本是(L. Cramer-Byng 的A Lute of Jade(1909)。兩個版本中,Giles的譯本比較具有影響力,而根 據Qian的研究指出,Fairleigh Dickinson University的Williams收藏檔案中收藏了Williams自 身所擁有的一九一四年再版的Giles的《中國文學史》,此書書屝有Williams親筆的文字, 他將此書於一九一六年送給了他的母親,上面寫著「知道妳喜歡所有溫柔的事物--[送 給妳],因為中國古詩人所具有的溫柔」(引自Qian 120-21)。 除了龐德以外,英國漢學家Arthur Waley的《一百七十首中國詩》(A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems, 1919)以及More Translations from the Chinese(1919)二本譯詩中 分別收集了五十九首、五十二首自居易的譯詩。而我們知道,Williams死後他的太太Flossie 將他個收藏的圖書大部份大約六百冊捐給Fairleigh Dickinson University(Heal 21; 引自 Qian 129),其中包括了Waley的這兩本中國譯詩集以及Giles 的《中國文學史》,以及Walter Brooks Brouncer與Fung Yuet Mow合寫的Chinese-Made Easy入門書,以及其他十多本與中 國有關的書(Qian 129-130)。 Williams在一九二一年的詩集Sour Grapes中的幾首詩就帶有中國寧靜出世的特質,而 事實上,他原本要將他的詩集取名為Picture Poems《圖畫詩》,即顯示出「意象主義」 (Imagism)的影響;再者,如一九五六年,在詩人對自己作品所作的回憶錄:I Wanted to Write a Poem: The Autobiography of the Works of a Poet中,他回憶早年這本書創作的緣由: 這絕對是一本心情書,所有的詩都是即興創作。當某種心情佔據著我,我就寫 下來。不管是一棵樹或一個女人或是一隻鳥,這心情必需被譯成形式。對我而言, 在那個時候,詩是一個意象,圖像是最重要的事。(34-35) 其他多首的詩,如"The Widow's Lament in Springtime"等都具有意象詩的影子;他的 「A black, black cloud」(IWWP 4)則像中國的山水畫。他的名詩("The RedWheelbarrow") (收在Spring and All)中,是被公深具禪意的意象詩。 Wallace Stevens 另一位受中國詩學與美學影響的美國詩人是Wallace Stevens。史蒂文斯不僅熟知道家 的美學(中國的美學深受道家影響),也接觸過宋山水畫,甚至曾以中國山水畫為題作詩。 比如: 「Six Significant Landscapes,」 「Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird」以及 「Anecdote of the Jar」均是其中六首 「Six Signkbicant Landecapes」中風景畫的頭一首是明顯 地描述中國山水畫,後二首則是精神上是中國美學,所謂的「寫意」。 此外,更直接的證據是史蒂文斯在一八九七年至一九一六年之間曾經在波士頓及紐約 見過幾次遠東藝術的展覽。史蒂文斯的例子同時證明了參觀展覽並非唯一接觸中國藝術的 途徑,人們亦可以藉由閱讀展覽的目錄及報紙與雜誌上的報導來瞭解中國藝術。很顯然 地,史蒂文斯並未出席1935 至1936 在倫敦的Burlington House 舉行的劃時代的中國藝術 展覽(止展部份含有故宮藏品第一次放洋),然而他遠在大西洋西岸的康乃狄克州的哈特福 (Hartford)鎮上讀到關於這次展覽的有關報導,很興奮地寫信告訴遠在太平洋彼端的中 國旅行的美國芝加哥的重要現代主義詩刊Poetry 雜誌主編Harriet Monroe:「剛在倫敦揭 幕的中國藝術的展覽定是件美事。我從讀這些對於這樣一個展覽及其展出物品的精采描述 中所得到的樂趣不次於我讀大部分的詩所得到的滿足」(Letters 299)。 史蒂文斯也相當知悉歐洲的中國美術的收藏,如法蘭克福得私人畫廊「中國屋」 (China-Haus)以及巴黎的「奇美」(Guimet),這可以從他和友人通訊中得知。舉例言之, 史蒂文斯的韓裔友人Peter H. Lee 身上帶著一個韓國水墨畫作在歐洲旅行,想要賣掉他的 一些收藏,史蒂文斯在1954 年6 月30 日寫給他的信上說道:「如果你想將你的韓國畫賣 張給我,不要猶疑,因為沒有什麼東西我會更喜歡的了。」甚且史蒂文斯還告訴他那裡去 賣畫:「另外一方面,歐洲到處都有博物館會對那樣的東西有興趣。在法蘭克福曾經有家 『中國屋』。我一點都不懷疑他們會一把把握抓住你提供的東西。然後,我知道,在Cassel 也會有一家類似的美術館。在巴黎正是那個博物館,我相信就是奇美美術館,還有,如你 所知,在斯德哥爾摩也有個很棒的美術館,瑞典人總是對東方來的東西展現出特殊的興 趣。但,我重覆,如果你有任何東西想要捨棄,將它送來給我吧」(Letters 838-39)。巴黎 兩大東方博物館奇美和Cernuschi 一樣都是以中國、日本文物為主要收藏的遠東博物館。 史蒂文斯提到的瑞典人,雖然他沒有明確提及何人,但我們知道當時十分活躍的瑞典東方 收藏家與漢學家考古學家包含了由工程師轉身而變成考古學家的J. G. Andersson(發現仰 韶及甘肅陶器者),Osvald Sirén(從早期文藝復興藝術轉到研究中國藝術的學者),及Orvar Karlbeck,漢學家兼古董商,後來寫了一本回憶錄《在中國的尋寶者》(Treasure Seeker in China)。顯然,史蒂文斯對於中國古物市場的熟悉遠超過我們的想像。 史蒂文斯在日記與書信中亦常提及常至紐約看中國藝術的展覽,常受中國藝術的啟 發。在一九0九年,他在紐約看中國藝術的展覽(他未提及那一個):「九點到那兒。」大 約他一大早,七、八點從Hartford 出發。根據他的說法,這是以織品為主的展出。還有「一 些上古樂器令人感到有趣。有件樂器上有十六弦。有些琵琶鑲著珠母石還有法國的 cornemuses--我看到兩櫃子的玉雕--不管那是些什麼。」史蒂文斯描寫給當時是他未婚妻 的Elsie Moll:「好了,都在這裏了,全都是中國來的,幾世紀前畫的」。他還深深為中國 的顏色所著迷! 「淡橘,綠與深紅,以及白, 及金,及棕,」 以及 「深碧琉璃及橘色,以及不透明的 綠,麑色,黑,及金;」 以及 「琉璃藍及硃砂,白,及金 及綠。」 在這段文字中,史蒂文斯好似在實驗著不同顏色的排列組合,有著蒙太奇的美學效 果。或許吸引史蒂文斯的正是這種異國情調飄遠渺茫的感覺。他告訴他的未婚妻:「我不 知道你是否和我對一個如此遙遠未知的地方如中國的感覺一樣--感覺的不真實。儘管如 此,它的小小的真實〔指這些藝術品〕似乎絕妙的令人難以置信--我才正在讀一本有關中 國人對於風景〔原文landscape 一語雙關,亦可指山水畫〕的感覺」(137) 史蒂文斯的一對友人James and Margaret Powers 住在紐約,如果史蒂文斯到紐約來拜 訪他們的話,Margaret Power 回憶著,通常他們「會一起吃飯,然後看戲或去聽音樂會, 之後,他們會在麥迪遜大街上上下的走,街上有許多古董店,打著燈,因此很漂亮。然後 他會指出這些文物,尤其東方藝術。他對東方藝術懂得很多,他對東方地毯有點探究,花 了不少錢在上頭」(Brazeau 89)。史蒂文斯在哈特堡的辦公室中有一張東方地毯,極可能 是他自己買的(25)。 史蒂文斯事實上也收藏中國畫。韓國友人李說:「史蒂文斯對東方繪畫與古畫有強烈 的品味。當我送他兩幅韓國畫,他很高興告訴我他將它們掛在房間裡方便觀覽」(Brazeau 137)。有一回,李送他一幅中國畫。史蒂文斯寫了一封感謝函給李,在一九五二年二月二 十六日,說:「當我首次打開這幅畫時,這個手卷帶給我相同於中國詩集給我的印象:某 種老古莊嚴令人尊敬的印象,真實且寧詳」(742)。Harriet Monroe 的妹妹Mrs. Lucy Monroe Calhoun,其夫為美國駐中國公使,在一九二二年從中國寄給史蒂文斯一盒五件「真地悅 人的東西」,包括「一尊你所見過最仁慈的老神木刻像,『Hson-hsing』,一件小玉屏風, 二件黑晶獅,及一小件玉石人像」(230)。在一九三五年Harriet Monroe 到中國拜訪Lucy 時,史蒂文斯給她寫信道:「如你所知,我曾有意給Mrs. Calhoun 寄去一些錢,如果我實 行我的計畫的話,我應該在這個時候就可以收到幾大木箱的古山水畫,有木刻插畫的珍本 書,鈞窯瓷器,唐三彩的馬,等等。」雖然很可惜史蒂文斯可能怕麻煩別人而未真的託人 買這些東西,但從此信中我們仍可以得知他喜歡的是早期的中國藝術,那種在一九二○、 三○年代中國新近大量出土或晚近才被西方發現的,而風靡西方收藏家、藝術家及作家的 某些中國藝術的種類:古山水畫、元明之前的陶瓷,尤其是宋瓷及唐墓葬。 史蒂文斯另一個中國藝術影響之來源是討論中國藝術的書籍。在給Henry Church 的 1944 年信上,提及George Duthuit 的一本書《中國神秘主義與現代繪畫》(Chinese Mysticism and Modern Painting,1936),一本討論中國藝術影響到西方現代畫家的書。George Duthuit 是法國人,是Henri Matisse 的女婿。在一九0九年,史蒂文斯讀了《茶經》(The Book of Tea, 1906)的作者Okakura Kakuzo 的另一本書《東方之理想》(The Ideals of the East,1903), 這是一本有關禪宗繪畫的書(Letters 137)。Kakuzo 的書在當時十分流行且影響深遠,將 道及禪佛介紹給廣大的西方讀者,包括了賓揚Laurence Binyon(英國詩人、劇作家兼大 英博物館遠東藝術館員),賓揚在久負盛名的TLS(Times Literary Supplement)中熱切地 引介,寫了相當讚賞的書評,刊登於一九0三年的三月六日(73-74)。史蒂文斯認識賓揚, 因此也可能讀過賓揚有關中國藝術的論述或所譯的中國詩。史蒂文斯在一九0九年五月九 日寄了《抒情詩》(Lyric Poems)中間兩首情詩給他的未婚妻,信中順道提起了賓揚,「一 個聰穎的小伙子,在大英博物館工作,在倫敦--一些碎紙片上塗滿了文字--中國古物,顏 色之名,在如虹的名單上」(Letters 143,亦見Hatcher 160)。 史蒂文斯對中國詩也有濃厚的興趣。「1933 年的聖誕節,史蒂文斯買了一本白色皮革 的中國詩集,花了二百美元,而且非常高興」(Brazeau 37)。韓裔友人Peter Lee 回憶他和 史蒂文斯經常一起討論詩與藝術,提到「史蒂文斯對於東亞文學的知識大部份是根據亞 瑟.韋立(Arthur Waley)翻譯的中國與日本詩。但他對東方繪畫與古畫有強烈的品味。當 我送他兩幅韓國畫,他很高興告訴我他將它們掛在房間裡以便觀覽」(Brazeau 137)。Arthur Waley 也是Williams 在中國方面的影響源頭之一 史蒂文斯曾寫過個獨幕詩劇是以中國人作背景,名為<三個旅人看日出>。《詩》刊 之主編Harriet Monroe 寫信告訴史蒂文斯這個詩劇從80 個獨幕中脫穎而出,穫得芝加哥 實驗性的「演員製作公司」 (Players』 Producing Company)提供的百元首獎獎項。史蒂文斯 的這個劇本是以三個中國賢者坐在賓山之上(Mount Penn),交換著關詩生命與藝術的警 語,直到日出之際,顯露出在他們身後有一個上吊的人,才停止他們對於美學的討論。 未來一年,我亦計畫更加深入探討史蒂文斯與波士頓的關係。 e. e. cummings e. e. cummings 畢業自哈佛大學,與波士頓的關係十分密切。康旻思自始就視自己為 一詩人兼畫家。從一九一七年起,他的畫經常展出,乃至死後,畫廊亦為其作回顧展。文 學學者通常忽略了他在繪畫上的成就與他寫的藝術評論。他當初在Dial 雜誌上出版的畫 被他同時代的人視為與畢卡索、Brague、Derain 及Lachaise 等人齊觀。在一九二○與三○ 年代之間,康旻思經常往來在巴黎與紐約之間。在巴黎的時間,他研究藝術。之後他出版 詩集,亦經常展出繪畫作品,但它們所受到的注目總不如他的文學作品。因此,在一九四 五年在紐約州的羅徹斯特的紀念畫廊(Rochester Memorial Gallery)的個人展覽的目錄中, 康旻思寫了一個藝術家與藝評家之間的對話的寓言。康旻思藉這個寓言表達他的畫未受重 視的感慨,尤其感慨他未生在「詩與畫」並重的中國。 康旻思與中國詩學與美學之間的關係至今仍未有專書或專論出現。就我目前的研究所 知,康旻思與中國的直接證據並不多,但從零星的證據我們得知他對東方哲學有興趣。在 他留給哈佛大學Houghton Library 的文件及檔案筆記資料中,我們得知他對任何有關藝術 的所有面相、東西方哲學、宗教、形上學、乃至科學均感興趣(Cohen 17)。可能如那個 時代的大部份作家一樣,康旻思與中國的間接關係是受到龐德的影響。在哈佛唸大學及碩 士時期,康旻思寫了幾篇作業,一九一五年的「新藝術」(「The New Art」),「沈默的詩」(「The Poetry of Silence」),主要是討論中國與日本詩1,以及「新時代的詩」(「The Poetry of a New Era」)談意象主義,除了修課外,現在在哈佛的檔案中也包含了一篇「最近的一期BLAST」, 顯示康旻思對於正在發生在倫敦的漩渦主義十分關心密切(Cohen 19)。康旻思也讀到高 蒂亞、布希加Henri Gaudier-Brzeska 的美學文字,以及龐德為這位死在第一次大戰中的雕 刻家所寫的《回憶錄》(Cohen 45, 98)2,這本回憶錄有許多地方將這藝術家的作品與中國 藝術作比較。這證明康旻思受到龐德與亨利.高蒂亞.布希加,亦即倫敦的漩渦主義的影 響。這也証明瞭美國現代主義與倫敦現代主義之間的關係,也再確認龐德對康旻思在詩與 畫上的影響。 Marianne Moore 同時期,亦活躍於紐約的前衛運動之中的美國女詩人Marianne Moore 對中國藝術、 文化、宗教的興趣亦極為深刻。東方對她的影響開始很早,早自於她家族的宗教背景與母 親Mary Warner Moore,這點,她家族的清教徒背景深受美國新英格蘭地區超越論者 (Transcendentalists)(包括愛默生、梭羅等人)的影響,美國早年超越論哲學與儒教思想之間 的關係是一脈相承下來的。 根據Zhaoming Qian,當Moore 還在Bryn Mawr College 唸書時,大四時即為賓州大 學博物館裡所展出的東方藝術所吸引。當時美國有股中國熱,紐約的大都會博物館、波士 頓美術館,以及費城美術館、賓州大學博物館,以及紐約許多畫廊、古董商亦經常舉行中 國藝術的展覽以及拍賣展。Moore 參展之後,留下深刻的印象,她留下早年的閱讀筆記中 即記載了包括了許多有關中國繪畫以及中國繪畫方法的許多細節以及藝術史的資訊。根據 Catherine Stamy 的研究,Moore 甚至有一整個檔案,名為「中國藝術」,她的檔案中包括 了一本波士頓美術館出版的書,名為《亞洲繪畫中的動物》(Animals in Paintings from Asia)。Moore 許多詩是以動物為模本、為主題,她對中國繪畫與宗教信仰中的圖騰—龍— 情有獨鍾,多次描寫龍的英姿以及它所代表的象徵,如 「O to be a Dragon」即是。 正如同Stevens, 目前,我們已知Moore 與中國繪畫的關係建立在許多博物館的展覽 上;除了方纔所述,學生時代在賓州大學博物館中有機會見到中國藝術中的動物外,日後, 1 BMS AM1892.6 (94), Houghton Library, Harvard University. 2 Houghton Notes, bms An 1892.6(29)3 nos. 10-11; 「The Latest Blast,」 the E.E. Cummings Papers, Houghton Library, bms AM 1892.6(69) n. 她也深深為倫敦大英博物館、紐約大都會博物館裡的中國藝術所吸引。她尤其喜歡中國畫 中的蟲魚鳥獸,她喜歡的並非中國文人畫的主流—山水,Moore 其實也很清楚這些彫蟲小 技的動物畫,不屬於中國美學傳統裡的主流,而是「總之,是所謂的第二流的自然」(「in short the so-called second nature」引自Qian 71)。 Moore 多首詩中,如 「O to Be a Dragon」以中國動物、中國思想(如道家思想)為主題。 研究中國動物的詩作中真正的價值倒非只是在詩中具體描寫而已,而是這些動物所代表的 宇宙性、思想性的象徵。Moore 後來對道家思想體系十分有興趣—這與龐德對孔子及孟子 的儒家思想信仰相映成趣。 Percival Lowell and Amy Lowell Percival Lowell 與Amy Lowell 來自距波士頓不遠的同名之地Lowell。Lowell 也同時 是地名,與哈佛大學所在的劍橋同屬於麻省的Middlesex 縣。Lowell 是計畫性發展出來的 城市,在一八二六年成為一個村鎮,一八三六年升格為市,以紀念Francis Cabot Lowell, Francis Cabot Lowell 是Percival Lowell, Amy Lowell 的祖先,以其姓命名這市。在十九世 紀時由於當時是新英格蘭地區第二大城,全區觀地進水源合流瀑布(如位於Merrimack 河 的Pawtrckeet Falls 及Cancord 河的Wamesit Falls),更因當時Francis Cabot Lowell 曾遠至 英國曼徹斯特觀察紡織工廠,因此,該市全區成為當時美國工業革命的發源地。當時,據 說在參觀紡織廠時,Francis Cabot Lowell 是被禁止畫圖抄襲下來,所以據信當時Francis Cabot Lowell 是用腦子將圖像記憶在腦海裡。回美後,在Lowell 一區建造出紡織的工廠。 當時紡織亦需要水源,全市運河水力發動的水道長達六公里,在當時是世界最大的運河系 統。Lowell 也成為吸引移民的城市。 Lowell 除了Lowell 家族外,同時是美國知名畫家(James MacNeilWhistler)惠施樂出生 之地。 Percival Lowell (1855-1916)是知名的天文學家,數學家,以及作家。他與我們研究相 關之處是他與日本的關係以及他帶回波士頓有關遠來的故事影響了他的妹妹美國詩Amy Lowell。Percival Lowell 是波士頓Lowell 世家的後代。這個世家的祖先雖然不是最早坐五 月花號抵美的清教徒家族,但也是極早抵達波士頓的最早期殖民墾荒者。 Amy Lowell 出生於波士頓古老且在新英格蘭地區深具影響力的家族,她是另一位身 屬波士頓的東方影響傳統下的美國詩人。根據她的傳記,她最早與東方文物的接觸即是出 生於這樣英格蘭上流家族,家中擺設即置有從中國帶回來的中國瓷器與屏風(Gregory 7), 她本人並未親至日本或中國旅行,她是透過她曾至日本旅行的兄長Percival Lowell,與曾 於中國上海住過一段時期的童年友人Florence Ayscough 來理解日本與中國( MacNair 20)。 Percival Lowell 亦是畢業於哈佛,日後是位傑出的天文學家即攝影家。他曾至日本、 韓國旅行,帶回日本的紙扇及浮士繪(Gregory 13)。回來的時候,他告訴Amy Lowell 許多 有趣的旅遊見聞,使Amy 大感興趣。Percival 帶回來波士頓的尚有同行的一位日本友人 Tsunejiro Miyaoka (MacNair 20),這位日本有人同時也是Amy 會對日本浮世繪、傳奇、木 刻、以及文學產生興趣的主要源頭之一。 Amy 的中國源頭則是FlorenceWheelock Ayscough MacNair。Forence 是出生於中國上 海的英國人,在上海住過好些年,能流暢掌握中國語言與文化。她在美國的時候,就家住 在Amy 家住在Amy 家對街,兩人成為兒時莫逆( MacNair 15, 25),Amy 常向她詢問有關 中國的事情。在一九一七年,Amy 開始比較認真學習中文,而Florence 從中國帶回數張 中國書法,她稱之為「書寫的繪畫」。這些「書寫的繪畫」是她稱之為「掛在牆上的詩」, 是一種以手書瞬間捕捉思想的藝術形式,可以掛在牆上以提供在心中的一幅畫。Florence 將這些書法上的中國詩翻譯出來給Amy,Amy 將翻譯轉化為詩。Amy 深深迷戀於這些中 國詩作,兩人決定共同協力合作,將中國詩翻譯出來並修訂。Amy 日後的創作更是大膽 公開地取用日本、與中國師的風格與語彙,如一九一九年收在《浮士繪》(Pictures of the Floating World) 中的多首詩使用日本的主題,The Emperor』s Garden亦是直接取材是日本 傳說與歷史事件,同時亦多首模仿日本俳歌的格律。 Amy Lowell 與Florence Ayscough 則合作出版了《松花箋》(Fir-Flower Tablets),她曾 談及她翻譯中國詩有四個方法: 「一是中國文本,由此,她得以理解其用韻與節奏;二是字典,得以理解字的意 義;三是字的分析;以及第四,Mrs. Ayscough 的仔細義譯,除了義譯外,她會添加 許多註釋以使我熟悉所有的典故、歷史的、神話的、地理的,以及修辭技巧的多方, 她認為我有必要知道的典故」(MacNair 28)。 Amy Lowell 對中國藝術與詩產生的興趣實在是與龐德相近,但翻譯出來的手法與技 巧大異其趣。Amy Lowell 後來於一九一三年注意到龐得取得Fenollosa 的手稿,發表一系 列受到中國詩意象影響的「意象主義」(Imagism),趕至倫敦,卻意外引發出一段爭奪現 代詩運動中的主導權,Amy Lowell 挾其資富,要替「意象派」詩人在美國出選集,而導 致喧賓奪主,而為龐德譏為「艾咪主義」(「Amygism」)。但有趣的是,兩人均受到東方美 學與詩的啟發,而深刻影響到其詩的風格,與美國現代詩的發展。 論者論Amy Lowell 與東方的關係所在多有,但此一研究特別著重她與波士頓的地緣 關係,而且將她放在整個波士頓地區與中國貿易的歷史背景之下,將她放在整個波士頓的 中國風氣的脈絡之下。Amy Lowell 絕非單獨的現象。而綜合起來,所要探討的是整個波 士頓在十九世紀末、二十世紀前三十年這段時間中與中國藝術的接觸,如何影響到許多美 國的作家、藝術家、美學家與收藏家,這是一段日後五、六0 年代抽像表現主義的源頭, 也是中美藝術交流的源頭,這也是中美文化藝術交流史中尚為有人研究的一段時期,同時 也是從中國藝術的觀點切入波士頓的城市史。 Witter Bynner and Arthur Davison Ficke 與Wallace Stevens 哈佛同學的另一位美國詩人Witter Bynner (1881-1968)同樣是受到 波士頓的東方藝術收藏啟蒙。他在一九一七年與另一位也是哈佛的畢業生,日後成為詩人 的Arthur Davison Ficke 前往日本。Ficke 出生於美國的中西部,但他的父親是個律師兼營 古董商,進行遠東藝術的買賣,因此他時常往來日本與美國之間,因此Ficke 從小生長在 四周都是日的浮士繪與東方文物的環境下長大。Bynner 曾說當時Ficke 在乎的是日本浮 士繪,但Bynner 此行帶回來的是購之於日本的中國捲軸。其中一幅〈兩位漁夫〉(「Two Fishermen」)更促使他寫下〈中國毛筆〉(「The Chinese Brush」)( Qian, Modernist 25)。Bynner 曾任Small, Marynard and Company 出版社的編輯,是最早安排龐德在美國出版的人。如 同龐德,Bynner 後來也從事中國詩的翻譯。 Witter Bynner 是美國詩人、作家及學者。出生於紐約的布魯克林區,但長寓麻省的 Brookline (即Amy Lowell 出生之地),今已劃入波士頓市的一區。於1920 年畢業於哈佛大 學,原從事新聞相關工作,在McClure』s Magazine 上班,後遷居Cornish,Hampshire,後 從事寫作。1916 年,他和好友Arthur Davison Ficke 合力提升意象主義的現代詩運動,模 仿意向派出了一本3薄薄的詩集,自稱是「靈派」詩人(「Spectrist」 School of Poets),以匹茲 堡作根據地,化名為Anne Knish (Ficke)及Emanual Morgon (Bynner) 出版了Specttra 詩 集,並網羅了Marjorie Seiffert,她則化名作Elijah 以壯聲勢。「意象主義」是1913 年至 1914 年間發生於倫敦,由美國詩人龐德領導的一個英美現代詩運動,當時龐德定居於倫 敦,無意之中自美國波士頓遠東部門主任Ernest Fenolos 遺孀手中接手過來Fenollosa 當年 在日本參習唐詩的手稿。後來龐德不僅將Fenollosa 的手稿出版外,更自其中的漢詩英譯 中擷取靈感,創作了以先名義象為主、打破英詩傳統格律的現代詩,世稱「意象主義」。 Bynner 及Ficke 的「靈派」詩人運動後來被揭露是一個文學惡作劇的玩笑。因此,在1917 年初,可能為了躲避東窗事發之後的關注,兩人結伴同行前往日本,其實當時美國上流社 會有日本熱的現象,許多波士頓地區的美國人及哈佛畢業生均前往日本旅行或教學研究。 1918 年,回到美國,Bynner 短期任教於加州柏克萊大學,為期一年。之後,他赴中國研 究中國文字,陸陸續續翻譯多手唐詩,並出版唐詩三百首詩集《玉之山》。 Bynner 詩作中顯示出日本與中國詩的影響由以中國詩最為顯著。因此Bynner 後來亦 步上龐德的後塵,與系訪的「義象主義」一樣,深受中國詩的影響,自美國詩中擷取靈感。 Bynner 後來遷居美國西南新墨西哥州的Santa Fe,加入以Mabel Dudge Luhan, Georgia O』Keffee 的文化圈。Mabel Dudge Luhan 收藏中國藝術。而 O』 Keeffe 其實也是深 受日本與中國詩藝術影響的美國藝術家。 第三年:美國藝術家與中國藝術建築與攝影 在1934 年,Francesco Arese 和Andrew Evans 曾合編一本旅遊書,A Trip to the Prairies and in the Interior of North America, 1837-38,在此書中記載了北美新英格蘭地區的 房屋中都陳設有中國瓷器或文物。另外,Anthony Morrison 和Dane Nancy Lusignan Scultz 合編的Salem: Place, Myth and Memory (2004) 中有一篇John V. Goff 的文章「Salem as Architectural Mecca」,該文討論Salem 由於與中國貿易的關係,出現了美國最早一批的百 萬富翁,沿著港口海岸邊的房子都是當時的豪宅,房主通常時船商的老闆,豪宅裡都會擺 設中國的瓷器,家中也常有中國的蝙蝠圖案。波士頓想必亦然。因此,本研究計畫在第三 年觸及中國藝術與文物在波士頓地區一般民間的居家擺飾。 此外,第三年的研究亦將包括藝評家與藝術家對於中國藝術的回應與討論。 Leo Stein and Gertrude Stein 在一八九五年,Gertrude Stein 的哥哥Leo Stein 以及他的堂弟Fred Stein,以及友人 Hutchins Hapgood 環遊世界,曾停駐於日本、上海與廣東。Leo Stein 的重要性是在於他是 最早開始收藏後印象派如塞尚、畢卡索、馬蒂斯的作品。雖然他並未出生於波士頓,但他 大學讀的是哈佛大學,而此時由同是哈佛大學畢業的Fenollosa 方於一八九0 年從日本帶 回大量的東方藝術品,後來進入波士頓美術館,成為重要館藏的一部分,波士頓美術館的 東方館藏大開Leo Stein 的眼界。在現代藝術史中,Leo Stein 家族(包括Gertrude Stein、 Michael Stein、Sarah Stein)最受人矚目的是他們對於現代藝術的收藏,但經常為人所忽略 的是,他們同時也收藏中國藝術。 這個發跡於皮茲堡,遷往三藩市的家族,因父親擔任三藩市纜車公司的總裁致富,致 使Stein 兄妹得以悠遊巴黎,收藏現代藝術的家中常成沙龍雅集,馬蒂斯、畢卡索都是座 上嘉賓。Gertrude Stein 曾解釋道:「在三藩市,中國是再自然也不過了」。在一九七0年 紐約的現代藝術美術館(MOMA)曾為史坦家族的現代藝術收藏作過一次特展《在巴黎的四 位美國人》。 Leo 在一八九二年離開三藩市前往波士頓就讀於哈佛。從那時候開始,他經常出入波 士頓的美術館,並對館藏的遠東藝術產生興趣。他同時也熟悉Ernest Fenollosa 有關東方 藝術的著作(Wineapple 90-91)。Leo Stein 在《鑑賞:繪畫、詩、與散文》一文中自述道: 「一八九二年時,我離開加州上哈佛,盡我的可能花時間於波士頓美術館、大都 會美術館,以及巴爾的摩的華特畫廊,美術館中有中國瓷器、以及Barbizon 畫派中 的精品」(142) 畢業後,Leo Stein 遷居巴黎,Gertrude 尾隨其後,再之後,Michael 及其妻Sarah 亦 隨之遷居巴黎。他們將之前在三藩市即已收集成型的東方文物帶往巴黎(Golson 38)。此 後,Leo 與Gertrude 常渡海前往倫敦收購東方藝術(Four 21)。馬蒂斯曾說他在Stein 巴黎 家中見過中國藝術。Leo Stein 在其書中多處提及中國藝術。 美國攝影師Alvin Langdon Coburn 美國攝影在二十世紀初發展出一支唯美,注重光影、煙霧迷濛的風氣,被稱之為 「the Pictorialism,」 Photo-Cessation (攝影分離派)的一支,為首的人物為Alfred Stieglitz、Alvin Langdon Coburn、Frederick Holland Day、Arthur Wesley Dow 等人。這支唯美風格與日後 亦是由Stieglitz 領銜的抽像幾何,或Steichen 的社會寫實風格大異其趣。Pictorialism 這支 攝影學派深受日本與中國水墨畫與構圖影響,可惜目前討論到Photo-Cessation(攝影分離 派)的歷史時均略而不談(如William Innes Hommer 的Stieglitz and the Photo-Cessation ed. by Catherine Johnson, 2002),因此,這些美國早期現代攝影運動中的攝影家對東方藝術有 興趣就特別顯得令人玩味,非常值得再深入探討,目前就筆者初步研究已得知蛛絲馬跡, 待進一步研究。 先談Alvin Langdon Coburn。Coburn 即出生於波士頓,時間是一八八八年的六月十一 日。在他之前,家族移民至麻省已有十代。在他自傳回憶錄中他特別提到: 「每一個古老的新英格蘭家族都視由中國航行回來的商船所帶回的玉、瓷器、 鑲著象牙與母珠的漆器櫃為珍寶。Alvin 寫道:從非常年幼始,我就對中國的東西 非常有興趣。在我可以用刀叉吃飯的同時我就可以用『筷子』吃飯了。」 Alvin 七歲時父親過世,母親帶他回加州的娘家。在加州,Alvin 碰到的儘是東方的 人、食物、藝術、乃至風景,因為據Alvin 回憶錄的編輯說,加州多霧,沉浸在雲霧中的 加州風景就宛如是一幅中國山水,該書編者繼續說道: 東方持續振奮他的眼力與思想。從一八九0年至一八九七年之間,東方學學者 Ernest Fenollosa 帶回中國與日本的珍寶至波士頓美術館。替代家用品,筆者按〔瓷 器、漆器〕波士頓現代看上的是雕刻、建築、屏風與捲軸、儀典青銅器,法師與皇 帝所穿的袍子。無疑地,波士頓首度理解到中國與日本最高、最純粹的藝術明顯地 即是最簡單的:寫在蒼淡娟絲與紙上的墨色或灰淡的絕妙書法筆力。」 Coburn 在現代主義中的重要性是他於一八九九年(時年十七)前往倫敦,加入龐德的漩 渦主義前衛運動(the Vorticist movement)。這個運動包括了作家與藝術家、攝影家,有些是 英國人,有些是美國人。英國成員中包括了小說家,本身亦是畫家的Wyndham Lewis、 William Roberts、Edward Wadsworth;美國成員則包括從紐約赴英的雕刻家Sir Jacob Eapstein,攝影家Alvin 自己,以及龐德。Alvin 這個時期的攝影作品深受龐德與未來派追 求抽像幾何與力、速度的影響而留下許多深具實驗性的作品。也號稱 「Vortograph」,姑且 譯之為「漩渦攝影」。Coburn 也替許多作家拍攝身影,如亨利˙詹姆士、如葉慈。在一九 一二年,Coburn 移民至英國,最後歸化為英國人。Alvin 後來發展出對禪宗宗教的興趣, 與葉慈晚年對東方宗教產生興趣的時期不謀而合。英國大詩人葉慈也是受到龐德整理 Fenollosa 有關日本能劇的遺作影響,寫了幾部能劇風格融揉愛爾蘭傳奇的戲劇,是愛爾 蘭文藝復興中的中流砥柱。葉慈的 「At the Hawk』s Well」 深受日本能劇影響的劇作今日留 下演出身影的傑作即是Coburn 的作品。 除了龐德、早年波士頓與加州可能對他對東方產生興趣的影響外,另一位可能影響 Alvin 構圖深具東方美學的是他曾於一九0 三年的夏天在波士頓拜Arthur Wesley Dow 為 師,跟他學習攝影與藝術。Dow 的重要性已如前述,他本身是畫家、版畫家、攝影家, 更是傑出的美學教育家,他推崇中國與日本水墨畫,亦積極推介構圖上的東方構圖方法, 寫成了《構圖》(Composition) 一書,此書數版,影響美國藝術家與工藝設計長達數個世 代。
This three-year project, 「Boston and China: Art and Literature,」originates from, and extends, from my earlier, also three-year, NSC research project on 「New York Avant-Garde and Chinese Art.,」and can be traced further back to my interest in Pound and his source of influence in Chinese art and culture in general. This 「Boston and China」project will continue my concern with American perceptions of Chinese art, literature and culture, and this project will focus on the connection between New England, Boston, particularly, and China. It will be divided into three years—the first year, August 2007 to July 2008, will cover the historical context of the China Trade, and its impact on American art, culture, literature and architecture, and also the formation of Chinese art collections in the Boston area. Starting from the mid-nineteenth century, after compelling opening door of Japan by Commodore Matthew Perry in 1854, many New Englanders, especially Bostonians, traveled to the Far East, Japan and China, and started the fashion of collecting Japanese and Chinese art and objects. The second year of the research, August 2008-July 2009, will explore the inspiration of Chinese art collections and translation of Chinese poetry upon American writers, based in Boston and its surrounding area, such as Salem, Portland, Newport, Lowell, and other port-cities, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These writers include Amy Lowell, John Gould Fletcher, Witter Bynner, John Ficke, Henry Adams, Wallace Stevens, e. e. Cummings, Gertrude and Leo Steins. Also included will be the writers who were born in these port cities: for example, Nathaniel Hawthorne, from Salem, whose father was a captain and died in the South Asian Sea; Herman Melville, born in New York City in 1819, who was forced to work as a sailor to support family when his father passed away. Although he only traveled to Japan, and never reached China, but he mentioned several times in his novels about China and the China Seas. Once his ship departed from Boston. The third year of this project, August 2009-July 2010, will cover the American artists in the larger Bostonian area, who were interested in Japanese and Chinese art and philosophy, including James Albott Whistler and Alvin Langdon Coburn. Included also in this section is the impact of Chinese decorative art upon American interior designs and architecture façade. Chinese porcelains have decorated many houses in the New England area and Chinese architectural symbols have also impacted the interior and outside designs of the houses in New England area. Boston and its neighboring port-cities, such as Salem, Ipswich, Portland, had been the major trading ports between the American colony and China since the seventeenth century, and these cities are also the earliest settlement cities for the European immigrant. With no surprise, therefore, New England produced the Transcendentalists, such as Emerson and Thoreau, who admired Chinese Confucianism, civil system, and thought. Because the subject of American Transcendentalism and Chinese thought has been quite thoroughly studied, and well-established, this project henceforth will not cover this part, but those writers beyond American Transcendentalists. Emily Dickinson visited Boston in 1846 and stayed for about four weeks, during which time she viewed a Chinese art exhibition, presumably in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (see Uno Hiroko, Emily Dickinson Visits Boston; An Emily Dickinson Encyclopedia 28.) Boston』s Japanese and Chinese collection and Oriental connection brought inspiration for many writers and artists covered in this project. In the 1880s and 1890s, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston became the first American museum to collect and exhibit Chinese and Japanese art, and more and more Oriental art dealers and galleries opened their shops in Boston, and nearby New York and Philadelphia. After compelling Japan to open its door by Commodore Matthew Perry in 1854, many New Englanders, especially Bostonians, many Harvard-graduates, sailed to Japan, such as Morse, Earnest Fenollosa, Percival Lowell, Leo Stein with his cousin, Fred Stein, Henry Adams went together with John La Farge, Weld. Bigelow. Morse started zoology, archaeology and anthropology in Tokyo University, and Fenollosa taught Hegelian philosophy in Tokyo University as well. Many were invited by the Japanese emperor during Meiji Reformation and Modernization period, and they stayed many years in Japan. Some even went on China. For example, Leo Stein after Japan continued to travel to Shanghai, Canton, and Hong Kong. In Japan, they explored and collected Japanese and Chinese art and objects. After they returned to Boston, they brought back many Japanese and Chinese art and objects amassed in Japan, many of which went into public collections in Boston and Salem museums. Returning back to Boston, Fenollosa became the director of the Department of Far Eastern Art in the Boston Fine Arts Museum and published many books about Japanese and Chinese art. His collection and publications exerted a far-reaching influence upon American collectors, artists and writers. Charles Freer was inspired and advised by Fenollosa to collect Chinese art, now bequeathed to the National Freer Galleries in Washington, D.C. Many American writers such as Wallace Stevens, Harriet Monroe, and Marianne Moore, and Bernard Berenson would describe that their first window to Chinese art was through the Chinese art collections at the Boston Fine Arts Museum. The First Year: August 2007-2008: (1) Boston and China Trade (2) Ernest Fenollosa and Arthur Wesley Dow (1) Boston and China Trade: In this part of the first-year research, I will focus on the historical context of the China Trade which gave rise to the Bostonians』fascination with Chinese art. Historical background will also help contextualize the American discourse and views of Chinese art. (2) Ernest Fenollosa and Arthur Wesley Dow Fenollosa was born in 1853, in Salem, Massachusettes, died in 1908 in London. He served as Curator of Oriental art at the Boston Museum of Fine Art, 1890-96. He was the son of Manuel Francisco Ciriaco Fenollosa and Mary Silsbee. He attended Hacker Grammar School in Salem, Massachusetts, and the Salem High School before graduating from Harvard in the class of 1874. He continued study at Cambridge University in philosophy and divinity. After a year at the art school at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, during which time he married Lizzie Goodhue Millett, he traveled to Japan in 1878 (at the invitation of American zoologist and Orientalist Edward Sylvester Morse) to teach political economy and philosophy at the Imperial University at Tokyo. He studied the indigenous ancient temples, shrines and art treasures, many of which were in a neglected state. He helped revive the Nihonga (Japanese) style of painting together with Japanese artists Kan H (1828-1888) and Hashimoto Gah (1835-1908). After eight years at the University, he helped found the Tokyo Fine Arts Academy and the Imperial Museum acting as its director in 1888. He converted to Buddhism, and changed his name to Tei- Shin. He also adopted the name Kan Yeitan Masanobu, suggesting that he had been admitted into the ancient Japanese art academy of the Kan. Among Fenollosa's accomplishments were the first inventory of Japan's national treasures, and in so doing he discovered ancient Chinese scrolls brought to Japan by traveling Zen monks centuries earlier. The Emperor of Japan decorated him with the orders of the Rising Sun and the Sacred Mirror. In 1886 he sold the art collection he had amassed to Boston physician Charles Goddard Weld (1857-1911) on the condition that it go to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. In 1890 he returned to Boston to be curator of the department of Oriental art at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. There Fenollosa organized the first exhibition of Chinese painting at the MFA in 1894 and developed the Department into a training center for generations of scholars. His public divorce and immediate remarriage to the writer Mary McNeill Scott (1865-1954) in 1895 outraged the Boston community, leading to his dis al from the Museum in 1896. He was replaced by his student and fellow buying companion, Okakura Kakuzo (1862-1913). Fenollosa published Masters of Ukioye (浮世繪大師), a historical account of Japanese paintings and color prints which were exhibited at the New York Fine Arts Building, in 1896. In 1897 he journeyed back to Japan to be professor of English literature at the Imperial Normal School at Tokyo. After three years he returned to the United States to write and lecture on Asia. After his death, his wife compiled the two-volume Epochs of Chinese and Japanese Art from his notes. His literary executor, Ezra Pound, compiled from notes and manuscripts, Cathay (1915); Certain Noble Plays of Japan (1916); and 'Noh', or, Accomplishment, a Study of the Classical Stage of Japan (1916). His last years were spent creating a collection for the Detroit railroad baron Charles Lang Freer, the basis of what is now the Freer Collection, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. Fenollosa brought a curator's enthusiasm to the study of Asian art in the United States. He inspired Boston collectors to venture into the relatively new field of Far Eastern art, endowing the Boston Museum of Fine Art with one of the earliest and best Asian art collections in the United States. His books were widely read, but unfortunately are full of errors. Epochs, for example, was completed from notes after his death by his earnest, but less-knowledgeable, wife. The study of Japanese art in the United States was at such a dawning point that much information taken as correct by scholars has since been corrected. Assessments of Fenollosa's lasting contribution to the study of Asian art have varied greatly. Estimations that he both discovered the subject and that he made no important contribution to it exist. Fenollosa, together with Weld and another society physician-turned collector, William Sturgis Bigelow (1850-1926) formed what were known as the 「Boston Orientalists.」 This three-year project will place Ezra Pound within the matrix of Bostonian Orientalist tradition. Pound』s connection with Boston seems tangential, through Ernest Fenollosa. Fenollosa』s untimely death in London seems in hindsight, portentous of ushering a new, important phase of Chinese influence for Pound more immediately in his 1913 Imagist movement, and more permanently throughout his life. Throughout his life, Pound was fascinated with Confucius thought. He later even translated Confucian Classics into Italian. His indebtness to Fenollosa, which has long been well documented by Poundian scholars, was enormous. However, this paper will place Pound-Fenollosa』s connection within a slightly different light. I will place Pound within the tradition of the influence of Fenollosa, as well as within the entire generations of American artists and writers who came directly or indirectly under Fenollosa』s influence. The Far Eastern art collection that Fenollosa helped amass and establish inspired Harvard-educated Leo Stein, Gertrude Stein』s brother, and John Gould Fletcher. Fenollosa』s influence on American modernists includes other prominent artists as well, including Arthur Alvin Langdon Coburn, Max Weber (not that famous German Sociologist, but the namesake American abstractionist and cubist), Georgia O』Keeffe, the artists who were active and involved in the Alfred Stieglitz 「291 Gallery」and Photo-Cessession Movement. Fenollosa』s influence on American modernism seems wholly underestimated. Attempting to place Pound within the larger Bostonian Orientalist and New York Avant Garde traditions will help re-estimate Fenollosa』s influence on American Modernism, hence the Chinese and Japanese influence on American Modernism, and will help reinstate Pound within this American tradition of Oriental influence. After Fenollosa』s untimely death, Pound published his Chinese Written Characters as the Medium of Chinese Art, a work which deeply influenced Pound』s ideas of ideographs and the later development of Imagism. Through Pound, he also influenced Henri Gaudier-Brzeska and others. Fenollosa』s Epoches of Chinese and Japanese Art also influenced Laurence Binyon in England and Georgia O』Keeffe and Arthur Dove, among others, in America.) Later, Dow established an art school at Ipswich, Massachusetts, and taught for many years at the Teachers』 College, Columbia University, which has prided itself on the time-honored tradition of producing many outstanding artists and art teachers, the most famous of whom is O』Keeffe. The influence of Chinese and Japanese art, via Dow』s promotion and teaching, on the New York avant-garde, and on American art at large, cannot and should not be overlooked. Dow』s significance has for a long time been overshadowed by the success of his students, and therefore it is important that Dow』s status be restored in the history of the New York avant-garde (and not just in American art education, where he is generally recognized). He was a pivotal link between Oriental art and the New York avant-garde. Meanwhile, Pound was born in 1885 in Hailey, Idaho, but he moved with the family when his father Homer Pound found a job at the National Mint, Philadelphia, an extremely important China Trade city in the nineteenth century, as the studies by Jonathan Goldstein』s seminal 1978 Philadelphia and the China Trade, 1682-1846: Commercial, Cultural, and Attitudinal Effects. In his college days, as Qian Zhao-ming reveals, Pound had exposed to the Japonisme fad in the family, and to Japanese and Chinese art collection in the University of Pennsylvania from 1901 to 1906. Pound left the United States for Europe in 1907, and in 1908 he arrived London not long before Fenollosa died untimely in London. Pound was more involved with London avant5 gardist movements, Imagist and then the Vorticist movements. His influence on American free-verse was enormous although he was absent from United States. He exerted his influence in absence on Chicago』s Poetry magazine, and Margaret Anderson』s the Egoist as a foreign correspondent. The Imagist anthologies were published in the States, although the main testing ground and arena took place in London. He helped publish the works of the upcoming influential American poets and writers. Although he was absent from the scene, he was an enormous influence on American modern poetry. Between then and 1945 when he was arrested in 1945 for the treason charge, and was repatriated to the United States to stand trial, he was absent from the American scene for a major part of his long-duration careen. In 1908, Fenollosa』s widow, Mary, bequeathed his unpublished notes to Pound. Pound, inspired by these notes, decided to publish them with the aid from Arthur Waley, the noted British translator and Oriental art curator in the British Museum. This mysterious and predestined meeting between Fenollosa』s widow and Pound took place in London. Behind Fenollosa, however, is the long Bostonian Orientalist tradition that went far back to the early days of China Trade. This is not a far-fetched argument, because the long China Trade tradition behind Boston, New York, and Philadelphia when the young American artists, photographers, poets, writers, aestheticians grew up and they were very familiar with this Orientalist background. This paper intends to relocate Pound』s connection with the Bostonian Orientalist tradition, and with New York avant-garde movements, and Boston』s Orientalist tradition also has a profound bearing upon New York avant-garde movement, and to reassess Pound』s influence on theindigenous American movements. Fenollosa comes from a city near Boston, Salem. Salem had long been the harbor city of China Trade since the eighteenth century. Arthur Wesley Dow comes from Ipswich, northern to Salem. Amy Lowell and her brother Percival Lowell comes from Brookline, in today』s larger Boston metropolitan area. Tracing the modernists』 encountering of Chinese art back to the early colonial China Trade is not too far-fetched. In the late 1870s and early 1880』s, New Englanders such as Ernest Fenollosa and William Sturgis Bigelow (1850-1926) went to Japan. Fenollosa went to Japan as a professor of philosophy, and Bigelow was a physician. Shortly they became fervent collectors of Japanese Buddhist art. In 1895, Leo Stein, his cousin, Fred Stein, and Hutchins Hapgood went on the tour of the world and stopped in Japan. Fenollosa established the Oriental Wing in 1890-95, but that time the Oriental art collection consisted mainly of Japanese art. Okakura Kakuzo (1862-1913) was Fenollosa』s successor at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA). During Kakuzo』s term, he rapidly expands its Chinese art collection with the aid of Hayasaki Kokichi (1874-1956), a dealer who bought for MFA in China. The Oriental Art collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, has inspired the entire generation of the modernists. John Gould Fletcher, Percival Lowell, and Leo Stein all noted the importance of the Oriental art collection in the MFA, opening their eyes to the East. Pound, Williams, Stevens, Amy Lowell, John Gould Fletcher, even Leo Stein, the whole modernist generation had read Ernest Fenollosa』s works on Oriental art, or were frequent visitors of the Far Eastern art section where Fenollosa worked in the Boston Fine Arts Museum. In his Life, John Gould Fletcher wrote that in 1914 he visited Boston Fine Art Museum, and 「The time I sent in the Far-Eastern department, with the new eyes to see the masterpieces of Sung and Kamakura (鐮倉) period, reeducated me to know that the aim of their visual arts were akin to my own poetry in spirit, and it also educated me that the purpose of the poetical artists is to reform the world. They [Sung painting and painting of Kamakura (鐮倉時代) remade me to immerse myself in the lively instinct and natural soul」(Life 185). Bernard Berenson (1865-1959) chronicled one of his exhibitions' startling effects. After viewing forty-four Chinese Buddhist paintings loaned from Kyoto's temple Daitoku-ji to the MFA, December 1894 through March 1895, the renowned art historian commented: 「To begin with they had composition of figures and groups as perfect and simple as the best we Europeans have ever done. . . . I was prostrate. Fenollosa shivered as he looked, I thought I should die, and even Denman Ross who looked dumpy Anglo- Saxon was jumping up and down. We had to poke and pinch each other's necks and wept. No, decidedly I never had such an art experience.」As Bernard Berenson has testified, the forty-four Luohan paintings 「spoke」to him. Berenson had studied countless European masterpieces; yet he said that he 「never had such an art experience.」In front of the Buddhist images, he 「thought [he] should die.」 Georgia O』Keeffe, the most famous American female painter in the twentieth century, had many books on the subject, including a special, fully illustrated edition of Fenollosa』s books on Japanese and Chinese art, which she enjoyed showing to friends. (Rose, Barbara, John Marin: The 291 Years 36) Arthur Wesley Dow Fenolloa』s influence through Pound on Anglo-American writers were enormous, but his influence through Dow is underestimated. Fenolloa』s influence through Dow was passed down on Max Weber, Georgia O』Keeffe. Both Fenollosa and Dow taught at the Pratt Institute. Dow also taught at the Columbia University. Arthur Dow, an influential artist, designer, and art teacher, was deeply influenced by Chinese and Japanese art. In 1899 he published Composition, an in-depth study that has had far-reaching influence on several generations of American photography, painting, prints, designs, pottery, and art education, by artists such as O』Keeffe, Max Weber, John Marin, Stieglitz, and innumerable others. Seeing the insufficiencies in western art education, Dow turned to eastern art. Composition adopts many Chinese and Japanese ideas: brushwork, notan (濃淡), lines, 「rhythmic vitality」and 「chi」(氣韻生動); it was a radical departure from western-style representation and perspectives. Dow』s idea of 「composition」was rooted in Oriental art. In this aspect, he was influenced by Ernest Fenollosa, the curator of Japanese art in the Boston Museum of Fine Art. (Fenollosa』s influence upon modernism was very far-reaching: in London, his widow, Mary, bequeathed his manuscripts to Pound, who published Fenollosa』s Chinese Written Characters as the Medium of Chinese Art, a work which deeply influenced Pound』s ideographs and the later development of Imagism. Through Pound, he also influenced Henri Gaudier-Brzeska and others. Fenollosa』s Epoches of Chinese and Japanese Art also influenced Laurence Binyon in England and Georgia O』Keeffe and Arthur Dove, among others, in America.) Later, Dow established an art school at Ipswich, Massachusetts, and taught for many years at Teachers College, Columbia University, which has produced many outstanding artists and art teachers, the most famous of whom is Georgia O』Keeffe. The influence of Chinese and Japanese art, via Dow』s promotion and teaching, on the New York avant-garde and on American art at large cannot and should not be overlooked. Dow has for a long time been overshadowed by the success of his students, and therefore it is important that his status in the history of the New York avant-garde (and not just in American art education, where he is generally recognized) be restored. He was a pivotal link between Oriental art and the New York avant-garde. (Arthur Dow』s archives are scattered in Columbia University and UCLA.) Dow acknowledged Fenollosa』s influence on him in Composition: 「In experience of five years in the French schools left me thoroughly dissatisfied with academic theory. In a search for something more vital I began a comparative study of the art of all nations and epochs. While pursuing an investigation of Oriental painting and design at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts I met the late Professor Ernest F. Fenollosa. He was then in charge of the Japanese collections, a considerable portion of which had been gathered by him in Japan. He was a philosopher and logician gifted with a brilliant mind of great analytical power. This, with rare appreciation, gave him an insight into the nature of fine art such as few ever attain. (Dow, Composition 4) An experience of five years in the French schools left me thoroughly dissatisfied with academic theory. In a search for something more vital I began a comparative study of the art of all nations and epochs. While pursuing an investigation of Oriental painting and design at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts I met the late Professor Ernest F. Fenollosa. He was then in charge of the Japanese collections, a considerable portion of which had been gathered by him in Japan. He was a philosopher and logician gifted with a brilliant mind of great analytical power. This, with rare appreciation, gave him an insight into the nature of fine art such as few ever attain. (Dow, Composition 4) As imperial art commissioner for the Japanese government he had exceptional opportunities for a critical knowledge of both Eastern and Western art. He at once gave me his cordial support in my quest, for he also felt the inadequacy of modern art teaching. He vigorously advocated a radically different idea, based as in music, upon synthetic principles. He believed music to be, in a sense, the key to the other fine arts, since its essence is pure beauty; that space art may be called 「visual music」, and may be studied and criticised [sic] from this point of view. Convinced that this new conception was a more reasonable approach to art, I gave much time to preparing with Professor Fenollosa a progressive series of synthetic exercises. My first experiment in applying these in teaching was made in 1889 in my Boston classes, with Professor Fenollosa as lecturer on the philosophy and history of art. The results of the work thus begun attracted the attention of some educators, notably Mr. Frederic B. Pratt, of that great institution where a father』s vision has been given form by the sons. Through his personal interest and confidence in these structural principles, a larger opportunity was offered in the art department of Pratt Institute, Brooklyn. Here during various periods, I had charge of classes in life drawing, painting, design and normal art; also of a course for Kindergarten teachers. Professor Fenollosa continued his lectures during the first year. (Dow, Composition 5) In the above preface to his Composition, Dow paid homage to Fenollosa. In Boston, Dow also started to apply what he learned from Fenollosa』s Far Eastern art teaching to his art lessons. He summarized Oriental art teachings into his Composition. Composition contains thee main lessons: 1. Line. The chief element of beauty in architecture, sculpture, metal work, etching, line design and line drawings. 2. Notan. The chief element in illustration, charcoal drawing, messotint, Oriental ink painting and architectural light and shade. 3. Color. The chief element in painting, Japanese prints, textile design, stained glass, embroidery, enamelling and pottery decoration. Dow』s influence upon later generations of artists and art teachers was wide-spread. William S. Rice, Bertha Lum, and many others were influenced by him. For instance, in the catalogue of the 1999 exhibition Arthur Wesley Dow and American Arts and Crafts, featuring Dow』s role as an art teacher, Nancy E. Green and Jessie Poesch note: Although William S. Rice did not study with Dow, he was profoundly influenced by Dow』s work at this time, as he frequently acknowledged. Rice』s first encounter with Japanese color woodcuts came at the 1915 Pan Pacific Exposition in San Francisco; he later wrote a manual for use in art schools that incorporated many of the principles in Dow』s Composition. (Green and Poesch 68) Bertha Lum, a California who spent much of her time living abroad— first in Japan, then in China—and who made prints with great skill and intelligence, probably first encountered Dow』s ideas while a student at the Art Institute of Chicago. (Green and Poesch 68) Later on, Dow went to teach at the Pratt Institute in New York. As Nancy E. Green and Jessie Poesch note in an exhibition catalogue, Arthur Wesley Dow and American Arts and Crafts, featuring Dow』s influence upon later artists, such as O』Keeffe, Max Weber, and many other artists and art teachers across the United States: Dow』s Composition was compiled from articles originally published in the Pratt Institute Monthly. There, Dow discussed in depth the thoughts on aesthetics he had developed with the Asian art scholar Ernest Fenollosa. The book was heavily illustrated with examples of objects from Asian, Aztec, African, Egyptian, Oceanic, pre-Columbian, and Western cultures, thereby encouraging the student to learn—and learn well—from the decorative principles of design of every culture. (58) II: Men of Letters』Response to Chinese Art Henry Adams, John Hay, Clarence King, and John La Farge Henry Adams, John Hay, Clarence King and John La Farge were close friends. And this group of friends to some extents were all involved with China Trade. The powerful Adams family, from which Henry descended, was involved with China Trade, so was Clarence King』s family. Clarence King established the 「Open Door」policy of China for American government, while John La Farge went to Japan with Henry Adams, but learned to master mandarin Chinese while in Japan, and while he loved Japanese art and Buddhist shrines, he also loved Chinese painting and colors. Henry Adams (1838-1918) was a famed American historian, journalist, and a novelist. He came from one of the very powerful 「Boston Brahmins」—politically influential—his grandfather, John Adams, and great grandfather, (John Quincy Adams, were the American Presidents. Henry Adams graduated from Harvard in 1856. He afterwards traveled in Europe, and later he went with the Impressionist painter, also a devoted Catholic and deeply religious American, John La Farge, to Japan. Henry Adams planned to further travel to China, and all his later life, he desired to visit China. He collected Chinese porcelains and other objects while he was in Paris and in Washington, D.C. In The Education of Henry Adams, he mentioned many times about China, and expressed his concern for his friend, John Hay, and Hay』s 「Open Door」policy. Clarence King (1842-1901) was an American geologist and a mountaineer. He was born in New Port, Rhode Island. His ancestors were engaged with the China Trade. He was the first President of the United States Geological Society,famous for his exploration of Sierra Nevada. He graduated not from Harvard, but from Yale』s Sheffield Scientific School with a degree in Chemistry in 1862. After graduation, he joined the California Geological Society. In 1864, King and Richard Cotter reported their amounting the tallest Mount Tyndall in the Sierra Nevada. He spent six years, exploring and measuring the vast area from Wyoming to the area bordering California. Around this time, he published his famous Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada (1872). After completing this field work of many years, he published Systematic Geology。 While King worked in 1879 as the director for the government』s measuring project for the West, he became close with the President』s assistant, Henry Adams, who lived just behind the White House. They immediately became close friends, and their friendship lasted throughout their life, because they shared interest in history and journalism. Henry Adams in his famous autobiography, The Education of Henry Adams (1907) , mentions Clarence King. After King died,he was buried in Newport, Rhode Island. The Kings lived in Newport for many generations. Newport was another New England port cities which were actively engaged with the China Trade. The Kings were also the first settlement families, and were involved in the China Trade, either ship builders, captains, or traders. Clarence』s grandfather was among the earliest China Trade merchants. Clarence』s father, James King, and his uncle, Charles, were both in China while the Opium War broke out. They were both forced to return to the U.S. James was in China, while Clarence was born, and the family was prosperous when he was born because of the legacy of the China Trade. However, James died in China when Clarence was about seven years old, and the shipping company went bankrupt when a streamer of spices sank in the sea. John La Farge, born in New York, an American painter with French descendent. He went to Paris to be enrolled in the studio of Thomas Couture. Returning to the United States, he resided in New Port, Rhode Island, painting landscape. He showed deep interest in Japanese art, and he and Whistler were among the pioneering Japonisme painters. Many people know that both La Farge and Whistler were fascinated with Japanese art, but few know that both were in love with Chinese art as well; both collected Chinese porcelains, and loved to paint Chinese antiques as the background. They called our attention, because they belonged to a clique of artists, men of letters, historians, and civil servants. They belonged to the inside circle of arts and politics. The extended family of this circle even include Henry James, Fenollosa, Bigelow and others. While John La Farge went with Henry Adams to Japan, they both met Bigelow and Fenollosa and other Bostonians in Japan. Edward Sylvester Morse Edward Sylvester Morse(1838-1925) was a famous American zoologist and an Orientalist. He was born into Portland. Portland was the largest city in Maine, the cultura, social and economical capital. The old historical Portland Harbor is along historic Old Port, where Fore River converges with Casco Bay. The earliest British immigrants settled here in 1658, and mainly relied on fishing and trading. Morse was interested in zoology. He went to Japan in 1877, and stayed for three years. He was later invited to establish the zoology department for the Tokyo Imperial University. This was the time during the Meiji Reformation and Modernization period. He later recommended several American 「oyatoi gaikokugin」(お雇い外國人)(hired foreigners, foreign employers). The foreigners hired to work for Japan during this period were specialists from every field, ranging from law, philosophy, literature, medicine, merchants, and others. Morse at that time recommended several Americans to go to Japan, including Fenollosa. Because he discovered Omori clams mount , and also because of his interest in material culture, he started the training
This three-year project, 「Boston and China: Art and Literature,」originates from, and extends, from my earlier, also three-year, NSC research project on 「New York Avant-Garde and Chinese Art.,」and can be traced further back to my interest in Pound and his source of influence in Chinese art and culture in general. This 「Boston and China」project will continue my concern with American perceptions of Chinese art, literature and culture, and this project will focus on the connection between New England, Boston, particularly, and China. It will be divided into three years—the first year, August 2007 to July 2008, will cover the historical context of the China Trade, and its impact on American art, culture, literature and architecture, and also the formation of Chinese art collections in the Boston area. Starting from the mid-nineteenth century, after compelling opening door of Japan by Commodore Matthew Perry in 1854, many New Englanders, especially Bostonians, traveled to the Far East, Japan and China, and started the fashion of collecting Japanese and Chinese art and objects. The second year of the research, August 2008-July 2009, will explore the inspiration of Chinese art collections and translation of Chinese poetry upon American writers, based in Boston and its surrounding area, such as Salem, Portland, Newport, Lowell, and other port-cities, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These writers include Amy Lowell, John Gould Fletcher, Witter Bynner, John Ficke, Henry Adams, Wallace Stevens, e. e. Cummings, Gertrude and Leo Steins. Also included will be the writers who were born in these port cities: for example, Nathaniel Hawthorne, from Salem, whose father was a captain and died in the South Asian Sea; Herman Melville, born in New York City in 1819, who was forced to work as a sailor to support family when his father passed away. Although he only traveled to Japan, and never reached China, but he mentioned several times in his novels about China and the China Seas. Once his ship departed from Boston. The third year of this project, August 2009-July 2010, will cover the American artists in the larger Bostonian area, who were interested in Japanese and Chinese art and philosophy, including James Albott Whistler and Alvin Langdon Coburn. Included also in this section is the impact of Chinese decorative art upon American interior designs and architecture façade. Chinese porcelains have decorated many houses in the New England area and Chinese architectural symbols have also impacted the interior and outside designs of the houses in New England area. Boston and its neighboring port-cities, such as Salem, Ipswich, Portland, had been the major trading ports between the American colony and China since the seventeenth century, and these cities are also the earliest settlement cities for the European immigrant. With no surprise, therefore, New England produced the Transcendentalists, such as Emerson and Thoreau, who admired Chinese Confucianism, civil system, and thought. Because the subject of American Transcendentalism and Chinese thought has been quite thoroughly studied, and well-established, this project henceforth will not cover this part, but those writers beyond American Transcendentalists. Emily Dickinson visited Boston in 1846 and stayed for about four weeks, during which time she viewed a Chinese art exhibition, presumably in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (see Uno Hiroko, Emily Dickinson Visits Boston; An Emily Dickinson Encyclopedia 28.) Boston』s Japanese and Chinese collection and Oriental connection brought inspiration for many writers and artists covered in this project. In the 1880s and 1890s, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston became the first American museum to collect and exhibit Chinese and Japanese art, and more and more Oriental art dealers and galleries opened their shops in Boston, and nearby New York and Philadelphia. After compelling Japan to open its door by Commodore Matthew Perry in 1854, many New Englanders, especially Bostonians, many Harvard-graduates, sailed to Japan, such as Morse, Earnest Fenollosa, Percival Lowell, Leo Stein with his cousin, Fred Stein, Henry Adams went together with John La Farge, Weld. Bigelow. Morse started zoology, archaeology and anthropology in Tokyo University, and Fenollosa taught Hegelian philosophy in Tokyo University as well. Many were invited by the Japanese emperor during Meiji Reformation and Modernization period, and they stayed many years in Japan. Some even went on China. For example, Leo Stein after Japan continued to travel to Shanghai, Canton, and Hong Kong. In Japan, they explored and collected Japanese and Chinese art and objects. After they returned to Boston, they brought back many Japanese and Chinese art and objects amassed in Japan, many of which went into public collections in Boston and Salem museums. Returning back to Boston, Fenollosa became the director of the Department of Far Eastern Art in the Boston Fine Arts Museum and published many books about Japanese and Chinese art. His collection and publications exerted a far-reaching influence upon American collectors, artists and writers. Charles Freer was inspired and advised by Fenollosa to collect Chinese art, now bequeathed to the National Freer Galleries in Washington, D.C. Many American writers such as Wallace Stevens, Harriet Monroe, and Marianne Moore, and Bernard Berenson would describe that their first window to Chinese art was through the Chinese art collections at the Boston Fine Arts Museum. The First Year: August 2007-2008: (1) Boston and China Trade (2) Ernest Fenollosa and Arthur Wesley Dow (1) Boston and China Trade: In this part of the first-year research, I will focus on the historical context of the China Trade which gave rise to the Bostonians』fascination with Chinese art. Historical background will also help contextualize the American discourse and views of Chinese art. (2) Ernest Fenollosa and Arthur Wesley Dow Fenollosa was born in 1853, in Salem, Massachusettes, died in 1908 in London. He served as Curator of Oriental art at the Boston Museum of Fine Art, 1890-96. He was the son of Manuel Francisco Ciriaco Fenollosa and Mary Silsbee. He attended Hacker Grammar School in Salem, Massachusetts, and the Salem High School before graduating from Harvard in the class of 1874. He continued study at Cambridge University in philosophy and divinity. After a year at the art school at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, during which time he married Lizzie Goodhue Millett, he traveled to Japan in 1878 (at the invitation of American zoologist and Orientalist Edward Sylvester Morse) to teach political economy and philosophy at the Imperial University at Tokyo. He studied the indigenous ancient temples, shrines and art treasures, many of which were in a neglected state. He helped revive the Nihonga (Japanese) style of painting together with Japanese artists Kan H (1828-1888) and Hashimoto Gah (1835-1908). After eight years at the University, he helped found the Tokyo Fine Arts Academy and the Imperial Museum acting as its director in 1888. He converted to Buddhism, and changed his name to Tei- Shin. He also adopted the name Kan Yeitan Masanobu, suggesting that he had been admitted into the ancient Japanese art academy of the Kan. Among Fenollosa's accomplishments were the first inventory of Japan's national treasures, and in so doing he discovered ancient Chinese scrolls brought to Japan by traveling Zen monks centuries earlier. The Emperor of Japan decorated him with the orders of the Rising Sun and the Sacred Mirror. In 1886 he sold the art collection he had amassed to Boston physician Charles Goddard Weld (1857-1911) on the condition that it go to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. In 1890 he returned to Boston to be curator of the department of Oriental art at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. There Fenollosa organized the first exhibition of Chinese painting at the MFA in 1894 and developed the Department into a training center for generations of scholars. His public divorce and immediate remarriage to the writer Mary McNeill Scott (1865-1954) in 1895 outraged the Boston community, leading to his dis al from the Museum in 1896. He was replaced by his student and fellow buying companion, Okakura Kakuzo (1862-1913). Fenollosa published Masters of Ukioye (浮世繪大師), a historical account of Japanese paintings and color prints which were exhibited at the New York Fine Arts Building, in 1896. In 1897 he journeyed back to Japan to be professor of English literature at the Imperial Normal School at Tokyo. After three years he returned to the United States to write and lecture on Asia. After his death, his wife compiled the two-volume Epochs of Chinese and Japanese Art from his notes. His literary executor, Ezra Pound, compiled from notes and manuscripts, Cathay (1915); Certain Noble Plays of Japan (1916); and 'Noh', or, Accomplishment, a Study of the Classical Stage of Japan (1916). His last years were spent creating a collection for the Detroit railroad baron Charles Lang Freer, the basis of what is now the Freer Collection, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. Fenollosa brought a curator's enthusiasm to the study of Asian art in the United States. He inspired Boston collectors to venture into the relatively new field of Far Eastern art, endowing the Boston Museum of Fine Art with one of the earliest and best Asian art collections in the United States. His books were widely read, but unfortunately are full of errors. Epochs, for example, was completed from notes after his death by his earnest, but less-knowledgeable, wife. The study of Japanese art in the United States was at such a dawning point that much information taken as correct by scholars has since been corrected. Assessments of Fenollosa's lasting contribution to the study of Asian art have varied greatly. Estimations that he both discovered the subject and that he made no important contribution to it exist. Fenollosa, together with Weld and another society physician-turned collector, William Sturgis Bigelow (1850-1926) formed what were known as the 「Boston Orientalists.」 This three-year project will place Ezra Pound within the matrix of Bostonian Orientalist tradition. Pound』s connection with Boston seems tangential, through Ernest Fenollosa. Fenollosa』s untimely death in London seems in hindsight, portentous of ushering a new, important phase of Chinese influence for Pound more immediately in his 1913 Imagist movement, and more permanently throughout his life. Throughout his life, Pound was fascinated with Confucius thought. He later even translated Confucian Classics into Italian. His indebtness to Fenollosa, which has long been well documented by Poundian scholars, was enormous. However, this paper will place Pound-Fenollosa』s connection within a slightly different light. I will place Pound within the tradition of the influence of Fenollosa, as well as within the entire generations of American artists and writers who came directly or indirectly under Fenollosa』s influence. The Far Eastern art collection that Fenollosa helped amass and establish inspired Harvard-educated Leo Stein, Gertrude Stein』s brother, and John Gould Fletcher. Fenollosa』s influence on American modernists includes other prominent artists as well, including Arthur Alvin Langdon Coburn, Max Weber (not that famous German Sociologist, but the namesake American abstractionist and cubist), Georgia O』Keeffe, the artists who were active and involved in the Alfred Stieglitz 「291 Gallery」and Photo-Cessession Movement. Fenollosa』s influence on American modernism seems wholly underestimated. Attempting to place Pound within the larger Bostonian Orientalist and New York Avant Garde traditions will help re-estimate Fenollosa』s influence on American Modernism, hence the Chinese and Japanese influence on American Modernism, and will help reinstate Pound within this American tradition of Oriental influence. After Fenollosa』s untimely death, Pound published his Chinese Written Characters as the Medium of Chinese Art, a work which deeply influenced Pound』s ideas of ideographs and the later development of Imagism. Through Pound, he also influenced Henri Gaudier-Brzeska and others. Fenollosa』s Epoches of Chinese and Japanese Art also influenced Laurence Binyon in England and Georgia O』Keeffe and Arthur Dove, among others, in America.) Later, Dow established an art school at Ipswich, Massachusetts, and taught for many years at the Teachers』 College, Columbia University, which has prided itself on the time-honored tradition of producing many outstanding artists and art teachers, the most famous of whom is O』Keeffe. The influence of Chinese and Japanese art, via Dow』s promotion and teaching, on the New York avant-garde, and on American art at large, cannot and should not be overlooked. Dow』s significance has for a long time been overshadowed by the success of his students, and therefore it is important that Dow』s status be restored in the history of the New York avant-garde (and not just in American art education, where he is generally recognized). He was a pivotal link between Oriental art and the New York avant-garde. Meanwhile, Pound was born in 1885 in Hailey, Idaho, but he moved with the family when his father Homer Pound found a job at the National Mint, Philadelphia, an extremely important China Trade city in the nineteenth century, as the studies by Jonathan Goldstein』s seminal 1978 Philadelphia and the China Trade, 1682-1846: Commercial, Cultural, and Attitudinal Effects. In his college days, as Qian Zhao-ming reveals, Pound had exposed to the Japonisme fad in the family, and to Japanese and Chinese art collection in the University of Pennsylvania from 1901 to 1906. Pound left the United States for Europe in 1907, and in 1908 he arrived London not long before Fenollosa died untimely in London. Pound was more involved with London avant5 gardist movements, Imagist and then the Vorticist movements. His influence on American free-verse was enormous although he was absent from United States. He exerted his influence in absence on Chicago』s Poetry magazine, and Margaret Anderson』s the Egoist as a foreign correspondent. The Imagist anthologies were published in the States, although the main testing ground and arena took place in London. He helped publish the works of the upcoming influential American poets and writers. Although he was absent from the scene, he was an enormous influence on American modern poetry. Between then and 1945 when he was arrested in 1945 for the treason charge, and was repatriated to the United States to stand trial, he was absent from the American scene for a major part of his long-duration careen. In 1908, Fenollosa』s widow, Mary, bequeathed his unpublished notes to Pound. Pound, inspired by these notes, decided to publish them with the aid from Arthur Waley, the noted British translator and Oriental art curator in the British Museum. This mysterious and predestined meeting between Fenollosa』s widow and Pound took place in London. Behind Fenollosa, however, is the long Bostonian Orientalist tradition that went far back to the early days of China Trade. This is not a far-fetched argument, because the long China Trade tradition behind Boston, New York, and Philadelphia when the young American artists, photographers, poets, writers, aestheticians grew up and they were very familiar with this Orientalist background. This paper intends to relocate Pound』s connection with the Bostonian Orientalist tradition, and with New York avant-garde movements, and Boston』s Orientalist tradition also has a profound bearing upon New York avant-garde movement, and to reassess Pound』s influence on theindigenous American movements. Fenollosa comes from a city near Boston, Salem. Salem had long been the harbor city of China Trade since the eighteenth century. Arthur Wesley Dow comes from Ipswich, northern to Salem. Amy Lowell and her brother Percival Lowell comes from Brookline, in today』s larger Boston metropolitan area. Tracing the modernists』 encountering of Chinese art back to the early colonial China Trade is not too far-fetched. In the late 1870s and early 1880』s, New Englanders such as Ernest Fenollosa and William Sturgis Bigelow (1850-1926) went to Japan. Fenollosa went to Japan as a professor of philosophy, and Bigelow was a physician. Shortly they became fervent collectors of Japanese Buddhist art. In 1895, Leo Stein, his cousin, Fred Stein, and Hutchins Hapgood went on the tour of the world and stopped in Japan. Fenollosa established the Oriental Wing in 1890-95, but that time the Oriental art collection consisted mainly of Japanese art. Okakura Kakuzo (1862-1913) was Fenollosa』s successor at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA). During Kakuzo』s term, he rapidly expands its Chinese art collection with the aid of Hayasaki Kokichi (1874-1956), a dealer who bought for MFA in China. The Oriental Art collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, has inspired the entire generation of the modernists. John Gould Fletcher, Percival Lowell, and Leo Stein all noted the importance of the Oriental art collection in the MFA, opening their eyes to the East. Pound, Williams, Stevens, Amy Lowell, John Gould Fletcher, even Leo Stein, the whole modernist generation had read Ernest Fenollosa』s works on Oriental art, or were frequent visitors of the Far Eastern art section where Fenollosa worked in the Boston Fine Arts Museum. In his Life, John Gould Fletcher wrote that in 1914 he visited Boston Fine Art Museum, and 「The time I sent in the Far-Eastern department, with the new eyes to see the masterpieces of Sung and Kamakura (鐮倉) period, reeducated me to know that the aim of their visual arts were akin to my own poetry in spirit, and it also educated me that the purpose of the poetical artists is to reform the world. They [Sung painting and painting of Kamakura (鐮倉時代) remade me to immerse myself in the lively instinct and natural soul」(Life 185). Bernard Berenson (1865-1959) chronicled one of his exhibitions' startling effects. After viewing forty-four Chinese Buddhist paintings loaned from Kyoto's temple Daitoku-ji to the MFA, December 1894 through March 1895, the renowned art historian commented: 「To begin with they had composition of figures and groups as perfect and simple as the best we Europeans have ever done. . . . I was prostrate. Fenollosa shivered as he looked, I thought I should die, and even Denman Ross who looked dumpy Anglo- Saxon was jumping up and down. We had to poke and pinch each other's necks and wept. No, decidedly I never had such an art experience.」As Bernard Berenson has testified, the forty-four Luohan paintings 「spoke」to him. Berenson had studied countless European masterpieces; yet he said that he 「never had such an art experience.」In front of the Buddhist images, he 「thought [he] should die.」 Georgia O』Keeffe, the most famous American female painter in the twentieth century, had many books on the subject, including a special, fully illustrated edition of Fenollosa』s books on Japanese and Chinese art, which she enjoyed showing to friends. (Rose, Barbara, John Marin: The 291 Years 36) Arthur Wesley Dow Fenolloa』s influence through Pound on Anglo-American writers were enormous, but his influence through Dow is underestimated. Fenolloa』s influence through Dow was passed down on Max Weber, Georgia O』Keeffe. Both Fenollosa and Dow taught at the Pratt Institute. Dow also taught at the Columbia University. Arthur Dow, an influential artist, designer, and art teacher, was deeply influenced by Chinese and Japanese art. In 1899 he published Composition, an in-depth study that has had far-reaching influence on several generations of American photography, painting, prints, designs, pottery, and art education, by artists such as O』Keeffe, Max Weber, John Marin, Stieglitz, and innumerable others. Seeing the insufficiencies in western art education, Dow turned to eastern art. Composition adopts many Chinese and Japanese ideas: brushwork, notan (濃淡), lines, 「rhythmic vitality」and 「chi」(氣韻生動); it was a radical departure from western-style representation and perspectives. Dow』s idea of 「composition」was rooted in Oriental art. In this aspect, he was influenced by Ernest Fenollosa, the curator of Japanese art in the Boston Museum of Fine Art. (Fenollosa』s influence upon modernism was very far-reaching: in London, his widow, Mary, bequeathed his manuscripts to Pound, who published Fenollosa』s Chinese Written Characters as the Medium of Chinese Art, a work which deeply influenced Pound』s ideographs and the later development of Imagism. Through Pound, he also influenced Henri Gaudier-Brzeska and others. Fenollosa』s Epoches of Chinese and Japanese Art also influenced Laurence Binyon in England and Georgia O』Keeffe and Arthur Dove, among others, in America.) Later, Dow established an art school at Ipswich, Massachusetts, and taught for many years at Teachers College, Columbia University, which has produced many outstanding artists and art teachers, the most famous of whom is Georgia O』Keeffe. The influence of Chinese and Japanese art, via Dow』s promotion and teaching, on the New York avant-garde and on American art at large cannot and should not be overlooked. Dow has for a long time been overshadowed by the success of his students, and therefore it is important that his status in the history of the New York avant-garde (and not just in American art education, where he is generally recognized) be restored. He was a pivotal link between Oriental art and the New York avant-garde. (Arthur Dow』s archives are scattered in Columbia University and UCLA.) Dow acknowledged Fenollosa』s influence on him in Composition: 「In experience of five years in the French schools left me thoroughly dissatisfied with academic theory. In a search for something more vital I began a comparative study of the art of all nations and epochs. While pursuing an investigation of Oriental painting and design at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts I met the late Professor Ernest F. Fenollosa. He was then in charge of the Japanese collections, a considerable portion of which had been gathered by him in Japan. He was a philosopher and logician gifted with a brilliant mind of great analytical power. This, with rare appreciation, gave him an insight into the nature of fine art such as few ever attain. (Dow, Composition 4) An experience of five years in the French schools left me thoroughly dissatisfied with academic theory. In a search for something more vital I began a comparative study of the art of all nations and epochs. While pursuing an investigation of Oriental painting and design at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts I met the late Professor Ernest F. Fenollosa. He was then in charge of the Japanese collections, a considerable portion of which had been gathered by him in Japan. He was a philosopher and logician gifted with a brilliant mind of great analytical power. This, with rare appreciation, gave him an insight into the nature of fine art such as few ever attain. (Dow, Composition 4) As imperial art commissioner for the Japanese government he had exceptional opportunities for a critical knowledge of both Eastern and Western art. He at once gave me his cordial support in my quest, for he also felt the inadequacy of modern art teaching. He vigorously advocated a radically different idea, based as in music, upon synthetic principles. He believed music to be, in a sense, the key to the other fine arts, since its essence is pure beauty; that space art may be called 「visual music」, and may be studied and criticised [sic] from this point of view. Convinced that this new conception was a more reasonable approach to art, I gave much time to preparing with Professor Fenollosa a progressive series of synthetic exercises. My first experiment in applying these in teaching was made in 1889 in my Boston classes, with Professor Fenollosa as lecturer on the philosophy and history of art. The results of the work thus begun attracted the attention of some educators, notably Mr. Frederic B. Pratt, of that great institution where a father』s vision has been given form by the sons. Through his personal interest and confidence in these structural principles, a larger opportunity was offered in the art department of Pratt Institute, Brooklyn. Here during various periods, I had charge of classes in life drawing, painting, design and normal art; also of a course for Kindergarten teachers. Professor Fenollosa continued his lectures during the first year. (Dow, Composition 5) In the above preface to his Composition, Dow paid homage to Fenollosa. In Boston, Dow also started to apply what he learned from Fenollosa』s Far Eastern art teaching to his art lessons. He summarized Oriental art teachings into his Composition. Composition contains thee main lessons: 1. Line. The chief element of beauty in architecture, sculpture, metal work, etching, line design and line drawings. 2. Notan. The chief element in illustration, charcoal drawing, messotint, Oriental ink painting and architectural light and shade. 3. Color. The chief element in painting, Japanese prints, textile design, stained glass, embroidery, enamelling and pottery decoration. Dow』s influence upon later generations of artists and art teachers was wide-spread. William S. Rice, Bertha Lum, and many others were influenced by him. For instance, in the catalogue of the 1999 exhibition Arthur Wesley Dow and American Arts and Crafts, featuring Dow』s role as an art teacher, Nancy E. Green and Jessie Poesch note: Although William S. Rice did not study with Dow, he was profoundly influenced by Dow』s work at this time, as he frequently acknowledged. Rice』s first encounter with Japanese color woodcuts came at the 1915 Pan Pacific Exposition in San Francisco; he later wrote a manual for use in art schools that incorporated many of the principles in Dow』s Composition. (Green and Poesch 68) Bertha Lum, a California who spent much of her time living abroad— first in Japan, then in China—and who made prints with great skill and intelligence, probably first encountered Dow』s ideas while a student at the Art Institute of Chicago. (Green and Poesch 68) Later on, Dow went to teach at the Pratt Institute in New York. As Nancy E. Green and Jessie Poesch note in an exhibition catalogue, Arthur Wesley Dow and American Arts and Crafts, featuring Dow』s influence upon later artists, such as O』Keeffe, Max Weber, and many other artists and art teachers across the United States: Dow』s Composition was compiled from articles originally published in the Pratt Institute Monthly. There, Dow discussed in depth the thoughts on aesthetics he had developed with the Asian art scholar Ernest Fenollosa. The book was heavily illustrated with examples of objects from Asian, Aztec, African, Egyptian, Oceanic, pre-Columbian, and Western cultures, thereby encouraging the student to learn—and learn well—from the decorative principles of design of every culture. (58) II: Men of Letters』Response to Chinese Art Henry Adams, John Hay, Clarence King, and John La Farge Henry Adams, John Hay, Clarence King and John La Farge were close friends. And this group of friends to some extents were all involved with China Trade. The powerful Adams family, from which Henry descended, was involved with China Trade, so was Clarence King』s family. Clarence King established the 「Open Door」policy of China for American government, while John La Farge went to Japan with Henry Adams, but learned to master mandarin Chinese while in Japan, and while he loved Japanese art and Buddhist shrines, he also loved Chinese painting and colors. Henry Adams (1838-1918) was a famed American historian, journalist, and a novelist. He came from one of the very powerful 「Boston Brahmins」—politically influential—his grandfather, John Adams, and great grandfather, (John Quincy Adams, were the American Presidents. Henry Adams graduated from Harvard in 1856. He afterwards traveled in Europe, and later he went with the Impressionist painter, also a devoted Catholic and deeply religious American, John La Farge, to Japan. Henry Adams planned to further travel to China, and all his later life, he desired to visit China. He collected Chinese porcelains and other objects while he was in Paris and in Washington, D.C. In The Education of Henry Adams, he mentioned many times about China, and expressed his concern for his friend, John Hay, and Hay』s 「Open Door」policy. Clarence King (1842-1901) was an American geologist and a mountaineer. He was born in New Port, Rhode Island. His ancestors were engaged with the China Trade. He was the first President of the United States Geological Society,famous for his exploration of Sierra Nevada. He graduated not from Harvard, but from Yale』s Sheffield Scientific School with a degree in Chemistry in 1862. After graduation, he joined the California Geological Society. In 1864, King and Richard Cotter reported their amounting the tallest Mount Tyndall in the Sierra Nevada. He spent six years, exploring and measuring the vast area from Wyoming to the area bordering California. Around this time, he published his famous Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada (1872). After completing this field work of many years, he published Systematic Geology。 While King worked in 1879 as the director for the government』s measuring project for the West, he became close with the President』s assistant, Henry Adams, who lived just behind the White House. They immediately became close friends, and their friendship lasted throughout their life, because they shared interest in history and journalism. Henry Adams in his famous autobiography, The Education of Henry Adams (1907) , mentions Clarence King. After King died,he was buried in Newport, Rhode Island. The Kings lived in Newport for many generations. Newport was another New England port cities which were actively engaged with the China Trade. The Kings were also the first settlement families, and were involved in the China Trade, either ship builders, captains, or traders. Clarence』s grandfather was among the earliest China Trade merchants. Clarence』s father, James King, and his uncle, Charles, were both in China while the Opium War broke out. They were both forced to return to the U.S. James was in China, while Clarence was born, and the family was prosperous when he was born because of the legacy of the China Trade. However, James died in China when Clarence was about seven years old, and the shipping company went bankrupt when a streamer of spices sank in the sea. John La Farge, born in New York, an American painter with French descendent. He went to Paris to be enrolled in the studio of Thomas Couture. Returning to the United States, he resided in New Port, Rhode Island, painting landscape. He showed deep interest in Japanese art, and he and Whistler were among the pioneering Japonisme painters. Many people know that both La Farge and Whistler were fascinated with Japanese art, but few know that both were in love with Chinese art as well; both collected Chinese porcelains, and loved to paint Chinese antiques as the background. They called our attention, because they belonged to a clique of artists, men of letters, historians, and civil servants. They belonged to the inside circle of arts and politics. The extended family of this circle even include Henry James, Fenollosa, Bigelow and others. While John La Farge went with Henry Adams to Japan, they both met Bigelow and Fenollosa and other Bostonians in Japan. Edward Sylvester Morse Edward Sylvester Morse(1838-1925) was a famous American zoologist and an Orientalist. He was born into Portland. Portland was the largest city in Maine, the cultura, social and economical capital. The old historical Portland Harbor is along historic Old Port, where Fore River converges with Casco Bay. The earliest British immigrants settled here in 1658, and mainly relied on fishing and trading. Morse was interested in zoology. He went to Japan in 1877, and stayed for three years. He was later invited to establish the zoology department for the Tokyo Imperial University. This was the time during the Meiji Reformation and Modernization period. He later recommended several American 「oyatoi gaikokugin」(お雇い外國人)(hired foreigners, foreign employers). The foreigners hired to work for Japan during this period were specialists from every field, ranging from law, philosophy, literature, medicine, merchants, and others. Morse at that time recommended several Americans to go to Japan, including Fenollosa. Because he discovered Omori clams mount , and also because of his interest in material culture, he started the training