W. B. Yeats's "Lapis Lazuli" and Chinese Poetics

W. B. Yeats's understanding of Chinese arts and poetics is best presented in his poem "Lapis Lazuli," in which he parallels European arts and Chinese arts, displaying a West-East contrast in terms of creative perception, poetic form, and aesthetic essence. Firstly, the poem shows a shift of perception from the personal to aesthetic and finally to Chinese Xujing() through adjusting the distance between arts and reality and changing literary concerns. Secondly, there is a formal contrast between European symbolism and Chinese Yixiang(), revealing the difference between well-designed symbol arrangement, the natural unification of life perception, and the image of things. Thirdly, the differences between the West/East aesthetic essences are revealed through a contrast between the Western intellectual-physical division and Chinese human nature unification. A reading of Yeats's "Lapis Lazuli" from a Chinese poetic perspective will help deepen apprehension of Yeats's universal perception of arts, civilizations, and life.