SOAS Research Online

Abstract

The relationship between music and poetry has constituted a continuous subject of speculation, with many composers, poets, and scholars of music and literature firmly acknowledging the tight connection between these two arts or highlighting their insurmountable differences. In this paper I examine the Chinese context to the global use of music in poetry, investigating works by the renowned poet Ouyang Jianghe 欧阳江河 (1956-). Primary research questions include: What musical subtext is selected for a poem, and why? How does the poet perceive and convey musical elements, such as structure, motifs, rhythm, timbre and voice? Generally, music is associated with a location, a culture, and the use of such an aesthetic trope can trigger memories and offer information on modes of reception and critique of the cultures involved. What does Ouyang Jianghe’s response tell us about the cultural capital of music within Chinese contemporary intellectual spheres? Does the fact that the poet uses the associative, and imaginative power of music signal a perceptual and cognitive crisis in literature? The study aims at investigating both the individual meeting of the poet with music, and the ways in which such an inter-art poetic practice reveals the complex dialogues, the numerous connections and incursions that take place in the contemporary globalized world.