Han Mac Tu - Poetry

Poetry

Hàn Mặc Tử's early poems - praised by Phan Bội Châu - are famous for their purity of diction and form, and show him to be a fluent Classicist with a strong interest in realistic subjects. Subsequently, his poetry showed the influence of French Symbolism, and after he fell sick, became increasingly violent and despondent. Personal despair combined with the search for poetic novelty led him to found the short-lived "Disordered" (Loạn) or "Mad" (Ðiên) school of poetry. More than a love poet, Hàn Mặc Tử was a Modernist, who sought to fuse, in a new poetic language, disparate traditions and experiences. Beginning with poems that refreshed the Classical tradition, he went on to absorb the French influence, which he directed toward the turbulence of his own painful history. His language, increasingly tortured, remained both Classical and innovative throughout; and though a Catholic, he made frequent use of Buddhist ideas and imagery.

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Famous quotes containing the word poetry:

    Prose—it might be speculated—is discourse; poetry ellipsis. Prose is spoken aloud; poetry overheard. The one is presumably articulate and social, a shared language, the voice of “communication”; the other is private, allusive, teasing, sly, idiosyncratic as the spider’s delicate web, a kind of witchcraft unfathomable to ordinary minds.
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    Herein is the explanation of the analogies, which exist in all the arts. They are the re-appearance of one mind, working in many materials to many temporary ends. Raphael paints wisdom, Handel sings it, Phidias carves it, Shakspeare writes it, Wren builds it, Columbus sails it, Luther preaches it, Washington arms it, Watt mechanizes it. Painting was called “silent poetry,” and poetry “speaking painting.” The laws of each art are convertible into the laws of every other.
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    The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?
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