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Abstract:

The article explores neoclassical tendencies in Anglo-American Modernist aesthe- tics and poetry in relation to the utopia of China, its history being traced from the 18^th up to the 20^th century. Debates with advocates of the romantic idea of poetry are considered to be the cru- cial factor for the “new classical spirit” in Modernist poetry to assert itself. T.E. Hulme’s ideas of Classicism are analysed as formulated in dialogue with Ch. Maurras, A. Bergson, W. Pater, J.M. Kennedy, M. Denis and R. Fry. The main Classicist principle of Modernist aesthetics is defined as imitation of models, and E. Pound saw Chinese poetry as such model. He proclaimed “The Chinese Written Character” by E. Fenollosa a new “Art of Poetry.” The idea of China replacing classical Antiquity dates back to the British 18^th century. The article reconstructs the history of the perception of Chinese culture by the “Augustinians”, who borrowed the aesthetic principle of “beauty without order” in Chinese landscape architecture; it shows the origins, essence, and fate of the fantasy about China that emerged in the British cultural imagination. Historically, a new type of Classicism at the beginning of the 20^th century appeals to the poetry of the “Augustinian Age” with its characteristic conjugation of aesthetic norm and subjectivity.

Keywords: T.E. Hulme, E. Pound, E. Fenollosa, W. Temple, J. Addison, A. Pope, Neoclassicism.