摘 要

死亡是一个永恒的话题。为了揭示其本质，诗人们创造了一系列的死亡意象。本文通过列举几位诗人的典型作品，结合其社会背景，生活经历，宗教信仰等，比较分析中外诗歌中死亡意象的异同，从而深入剖析人们对死亡的认知过程。本文分五部分：第一部分对死亡主题，意象，以及相关研究做简要介绍；第二部分写消极死亡意象与诗人个人经历的关系；第三部分写积极死亡意象与诗人对待死亡的观念；第四部分写死亡意象对于诗人的救赎作用，以及对于个体生命责任的启发；第五部分对死亡意象的存在和意义进行归纳总结，从而找到个体生命的存在使命。相比于前人研究，本文更加注重死亡这一主题对于现实生活的指导意义。死亡固然可怕，但人生的意义在于对真和美的不懈追求。只有这样，当灵魂脱离肉体的禁锢，它才能在另一个世界里实现自己的重生。

关键词：死亡；死亡意象；救赎；使命；重生

Abstract

Death has been an everlasting topic. All kinds of poetic images of death are created to reveal its essence. By means of selecting several typical examples, comparing and analyzing the negative and positive death images according to the social backgrounds, personal experience, and religious belief, this thesis aims to figure out the process that people perceive the essence of death. It is composed of five parts: part one is a brief introduction to the death theme and image, as well as previous researches; part two mainly focuses on the relationship between negative death image and the poets’ life experience; part three mainly focuses on the positive death image and the poets’ perception of death; part four mainly focuses on the redemption function of poetic image of death, as well as its enlightenment for the mission of individual life; part five is a conclusion of the existence and meaning of death image. Compared with previous researches, this paper attaches more importance to the guidance function that death has on the reality. Death is not terrible, and the meaning of life lies in the pursuit for beauty and truth. Only in this way can the soul achieve its revival in another world when it is released from the imprisonment of the body.

Key Words: death; death image; redemption; mission; revival

Contents

1 Introduction 1

2 Puzzle of Death: Negative Death Image and Fickle Life 3

2.1 Struggling 3

2.2 Disillusion 4

3 Faith of Life: Positive Death Image and Abiding Faith 7

3.1 Embrace 7

3.2 Revival 8

4 Sojourner of Life, Witness to Destiny 10

4.1 Redemption 10

4.2 Mission 12

5 Conclusion 14

References 15

Acknowledgements 16

Sojourner of Life: Poetic Image of Death

1 Introduction

For thousands of years, death has always remained an inevitable topic for those who are occupied with literary creation. Exploration of the mystery of life and death has never come to an end. Even though, there still exist various kinds of arguments over this matter. People from different countries, different religions, and different cultures, tend to hold different opinions. Because of different cultural origins, people’s attitudes towards life and death differ from each other between Chinese and Western, which is also reflected in literary works. And among various literary genres, death in poetry is the most mysterious, charming, and attractive. It has been endowed with diversities of images by those poets who are devoted to decoding its unique characteristics. Regarded as one of the most important ways of poetic creation, Chen Zhengrong(2003) pointed out that image is the combination of the poet’s affection and the figure of the object of creation. Ezra Pound demonstrated that an image presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time. This has supported a proper way for the poets who have witnessed death and life to describe and explore this matter.

Regardless of human beings’ will, death happens as usual. Now that the outcome is doomed, what is the point of life? Different answers have also been put forward by different scholars from home and abroad. Actually, just as Jiang Lei(2005) stated that poetry was regarded as the best art to express human’s emotion, it also focused a lot on the theme of death in both Chinese and Western poems. That is to say, it is of great significance to figure out the deep meaning of death images in those poems to decode the mystery of life and death.