Great Western Confucianist,Pound of America——On the Necessities of the Collision Between Ezra and Chinese Literature

Beijing Foreign Studies University,Beijing,China Email：seaunder@foxmail.com

[Abstract]Ezra Pound,one of the most influential American poets,has made possible the popularity of classical Chinese poetry in English-speaking countries,and classical Chinese poetry,in turn,has not only molded the character of the poet but also pushed forward the evolving of the study of image in America.The internal association between the poet and classical Chinese culture and poetry is fundamental to the inter-connectivity between Pound and classical Chinese poetry.This paper elucidates on the reason that makes Pound become interconnected with classical Chinese poetry by analyzing the similarity between the poet’s characters and the cultural essence of classical Chinese poetry.

[Keywords]Pound;English translation;classical Chinese poetry;Necessity

Introduction

as a talented poet,Ezra Pound(1885-1972)had been immersed in various environments.Of all these environments,the most influential one with its transmitting medium being Japan at that time is classical Chinese culture and poetry,which is deeply affected by Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu,known respectively as the founder and the successor of Taoism.Their thoughts have been shining through classical Chinese culture and poetry,with the focal point in natural aesthetics that enshrines the harmony between subjectivity and objectivity.Influenced by Taoism,Chinese classics have thus given a full expression about stunning imagery of numerous kinds,in-depth connotations and vividness.Pound once said,“the last century rediscovered the middle ages.It is possible that this century may find a new Greece in China.”(Pound,1968,p.204)

Classical Chinese poetry has not only afforded the poet inspiration,but has broadened his vision and enriched his theories of writing.As a typical talented poet,Pound has the characters resembles in spirit to that of Chinese culture.As such,his poetry is tinged with a touch of oriental color after his immersion into classical Chinese culture.It is of great significance to delve into the reasons of Pound’s translated works by the Chinese and into the spread of his works respectively from the poet himself and classical Chinese poetry with wide connotations.Existing studies and papers upon what is mentioned above,however,are still far from comprehensive and exhaustive.Therefore,the paper will go all the way from the surface to the essence to study the translation and spreading of Pound’s great works in China.

Factors of Intersection

Self-evidently,seen from the very bottom,the reason that makes A connect with B rather than with C cannot be circumvented if the connection between A and B is to be found out.Hence the traits of A and B merits our analysis.Japan,an important medium,has to be mentioned before we delve deep into the translation and spreading of Pound’s great works in China.According to the foreword in Wu Qiyao’s book,Pound and Chinese Culture(2006),the author points out that Pound’s immersion into Chinese classics is fundamental and Japan secondary in influencing his writing.Still,this remains a mystery as to the degree of influence even to the poet himself.The author of the paper thinks that influence of any kind shall not be too general;rather,it has to be seen in detail from different perspectives.Japan serves fundamentally as the medium and means for Pound’s style,while China the spirit and the flesh.For want of haiku,a Japanese form of light poetry consisting of 17 words,as well as Florence’s notes written in Japanese,Pound could never have any chance to encounter Chinese culture.

This paper will not touch upon how much Japan had influenced Pound given that existing studies are widely explored abroad; rather,this paper focuses on elucidating on the reason that brings about the overlapping between Pound’s temperament and Chinese traditions.Much echoes have been felt between the poet and Chinese classics.But what idiosyncrasies do they possess that has spawned the special translation of his works? Personally speaking,the internal reason of Pound’s accidental immersion into Chinese classics lies in the poet’s disposition of a Confucianist;the external reason is that Pound’s principle on imagery is much echoed with that of the classical Chinese poetry.

Internal Reasons

“Others are fully at ease in being public-spirited in their intentions.In their conduct they are fully at ease in being cultivated.In their understanding they thoroughly grasp the unifying categories of things.One who is like this may be called a great ru.A great ru is fit to be the Son of Heaven or one of the three dukes.”(Hutton,2014,p.67)Such is Xunzi’s interpretation on Confucianist and Pound,for his endowment therein,is regarded as a real Confucianist among British and American literati.

Public-spirited Pound as a talent scout

The greatness of the poet lies not only in his good command of writing,but in the fact that he has an eye for talents.Pound’s efforts to look for and encourage poets of the younger generation had,to a certain extent,expanded the camp of anti-Victoria poets.

Eliot was the most talented poet“discovered”by Pound.Back in 1914,during their very first meeting,they were like old friends.It was at that time that Eliot made up his mind to embark on his poetry creation in England.Back then,Eliot had a passion for philosophy and he used to stack what he wrote in drawers.American poetry would have lacked much vividness if it was not for Pound’s encouragement and instruction to Eliot after 1914.As one of the milestone works in the 20th century,The Wasteland had earned Eliot the Nobel laurel for literature with Pound’s hugely skillful instruction.William Butler Yeats,a much-celebrated Nobel laureate for literature,was in many facets instructed by Pound.It was for Pound’s incisive and direct correction that had led Yeats’s writing style down the road of modernism in his twilight stage of creation.The same case went to another Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore.Ulysses that was arduously created by James Joyce would have been laid aside and even torn apart if it were not for Pound’s efforts to help with the book’s publication.As for Pound’s tapping into Joyce’s writing potentials,biography by Jeannette Lander,Ezra Pound is available for detailed reference(Lander,1971,pp.53-54).

Robert Frost,Jacob Lawrence,Israel Epstein,Edward Estlin Cummings,Ernest Miller Hemingway and others were also among Pound’s instruction list.Of all these people,Hemingway was highly favored by Pound.Without Pound’s modification in his works,Hemingway’s novels could not have been so concise.Hemingway estimated“Pound spent only one-fifth of his time on his own work,devoting the rest of his energy to promoting the careers of others”.(Tryphonopoulo,2005,p.144)Pound helped these writers and artists with their publication and promotion of works,and he offered them financial support by lending out his money and helped them with the selling of their paintings and books.Besides,Pound had also arranged shows and written critiques for them.With the exception of all these,Pound had helped these writers and artists to rub shoulders with women who had money to burn.He also spent all night looking after artists who were on the verge of death and acting as a witness for their will.He even paid for their hospitalization and urged them not to take their own lives.Countless were young writers under the wing of Pound.Pound had been so generous and selfless in lending his helping hand so long as he thought the works of a certain writer were worth his instruction.His generosity and selflessness in the cultivation of writers of the younger generation had never been seen in other celebrated scholars.Pound once claimed in a scholarly penny manner that Frost should owe his literature achievements to him.This claim,however,doesn’t amount to a big flaw in his grand image in the cultivation of young writers.

Conduct-cultivated Pound as a virtuous saint

Poets are deeply sentimental.Birth,senility,illnessand death,humane emotions,knowledge of astronomy and geography,scientific discoveries as well as fictions are all bracketed into their scope of writing.Their sentiments are so deep that make what they create heavy with meanings; their inner grief aroused by parting is heart-breaking; the joy of meeting brings tears to their eyes; their perceptions are finely discerning and their feelings incisively perceptive.Their sentiments are so sophisticated and inter-wined in writing that have in turn made them so passionate in reality.As a pivotal torch bearer for British and American poetry in the 20th century,Pound is very passionate yet chivalry.

The best evidence would be one anecdote of Pound that every Pound-researcher would talk about.After his graduation in the University of Pennsylvania,Pound had been teaching in Wabash College at Crawfordsville in Illinois.He met a woman dancer following an opera troupe on a touring performance the other day on the street,and he then knew that the dancer could not afford accommodation at night.Upon knowing that,Pound entertained the dancer with food and invited her to stay the night at his room.The woman dancer slept on his bed,while he himself on the floor.After the night,Pound went to the school the second day without masking this whole thing.His gesture of good will to that woman dancer,however,was misinterpreted by some meddlers,by which he was suspended to teach unwillingly.From Pound’s comments to this issue,it is sure that he was not any libertine person.It deeply saddened my heart that the gesture of good will to the wretched dancer was distorted.I am innocent of that misinterpretation,said Pound.Asked by a historian studying the movement of imagism in 1930 naming Glenn Hughes.

Personally speaking,staying the night with the woman dancer without any ulterior thoughts,Pound was in spirit and in deeds upright.In the Spring and Autumn Period in Chinese history,Liu Xiahui was not disturbed at all with a woman in his lap.At that time,received Confucius decorum hadn’t had it that body contact between man and woman is improper.Back then,the American people were going through mental dissociation.The lost generation including Hemingway found themselves lost in their personal conduct.Hemingway himself was surrounded by love affairs and scandals.Pound,on the contrary,did not jump on that bandwagon willingly.Admittedly,if Pound is judged by the yardstick of a saint in Confucianism and compared with Liu Xiahui,he would be looked down by Chinese Confucianists for he had a love affair with Olga.Back then,in the light of the social climate in Europe and America,Pound was qualified enough to be a saint like Liu Xiahui in the western world,not to mention Hemingway’s judgements on Pound to whom the poet was a saint.

Well-read Pound as a learned scholar

according to the description in the part of Education in The Ezra Pound Encyclopedia(2005),“Pound appears to have been an excellent,even precocious student.At age six,his nickname was‘Professor’.”(Tryphonopoulos,2005,p.91)In the light of this,Pound was mature and well-read during his youth.Ira Nadel,a scholar studying Pound,has it in his treatises,“as a poet,translator,editor,critic,playwright and song writer,Pound has created a batch of intricately intriguing masterpieces in light of literary traditions in the medieval and the contemporary age,and of Italy,America,Britain,China,France.”(Nadel,2007,p.1)Generally speaking,the wide range Cantos has covered spans across a wide spectrum,including politics,economics,culture as well as history.To be more detailed,it is so all-inclusive as to embrace Chinese history and culture,Confucianism,Taoism,Japanese culture,historical culture in the medieval age,Greek and Italian cultures,the Medici family,the Italian history during Colony’s reign,American culture,social credit loan,sex,Fascism,economics,religions and others.

Honestly speaking,throughout Pound’s poetry creation,he once wrote to Joyce,“I have begun an endless poem,of no known category.Phanopoeia or something or other,all about everything.”(Pound,1970,p.102)Back then,Pound had had a rough outline for his Cantos,a great poem excluding none.This poem,as he expected,had cost him 40 years to compose,showing his great command of poetry creation.

“There were 18 kinds of foreign languages including Chinese in the Cantos”(Wu,2006,p.244).Pound,however,during his early stage of poetical study,had learned 9 of them.Whichever language it was in the Cantos,Pound had the ability to put a certain language into his poetry skillfully to bring out his thoughts,from which it can be seen that Pound had a good command of languages and is well-read.What's more,no language is hard for Pound to learn except Chinese which served only as graphic symbols in his poetry.

Back then,Frank Raymond Leavis,a renowned American critic,had compared Eilot’s erudition with that of Pound’s.He had it that Pound’s indulging in pure pedantry(Leavis,2008,p.109);even if it was so,Pound wasn’t anybody still.

as a briefer conclusion of this part,the author thinks Pound is possessed with the nature of a Confucianist and has been nurtured as one as well in the western world.His characters,knowledge as well as temperaments have brought his poetry theory into one that is highly intimate with the anesthetics of classical Chinese poetry.

External Reasons

The invisible factor for Pound to immerse himself soon into the tradition of classical Chinese poetry is that the poet’s temperament is quite like that of a Confucianist.However,his principle on images found much echoes with the one that the classical Chinese poetry and traditions enshrine,without which his interest on Chinese classics may have never had lasted that long.This section touches upon the external reasons that bring about Pound’s inevitable encounter with Chinese classics from the perspectives of Chinese poetry traditions and imagism of Pound.

Traditions of Chinese Poetry

Traditions of classical Chinese poetry took their original form from the Book of Songs,namely the Anthology of Three Hundred Poems,in which Fu,Bi,Xing- the three techniques are employed in expression and the thought of integrity of heaven and men is embodied.Ancient wisdom has it that nature and men were not to be told apart.This thought has shined through thoroughly in Chinese Confucian classics,historical records,philosophical writings and miscellaneous works.Traditional Chinese thinking“place emphasis on subjective experience,featuring wholeness,wild imagination,tangibility,intuitive sense,practicality and others.”(Sun,2010,p.24)All these features combined have directly molded the tradition of classical Chinese poetry into one that is heavily loaded with images.On the other hand,carried with itself traditional thoughts of the Chinese people,Chinese characters at their very original form emphasized over pattern and images and it is only then that the five main calligraphy forms were evolved.All these principles together have reflected the Chinese mentality of imagism and that of the Chinese characters.And all these have,to a certain extent,explained why Pound’s translation strategy—the disintegration of the pattern-based characters—could always yield unexpected outcomes.

Liu Xie,a literature theorist in Southern Liang dynasty,laid out his interpretation for images in his book named The Book of Literary Design,saying“You should of course have already acquired your learning like treasure,reasoned with reason to enrich your potentials,examined human experience to discover exhaustively all that it reflects,and tamed the shapes of things for the better management of language.Then with the perfect assurance of the master butcher can you apply to the literary execution the carpenter’s inking-line,and with unrivalled craftsmanship sink the knife in the images of meaning.These are the first requirements to attend to in the mastery of writing,the main considerations in planning an individual work.”(Wong,1999,p.101)“Image”back in Liu’s time is image or reflection in the heart,already image with connotation.Following Liu Xie,scholars in the subsequent dynasties had gone to great lengths to expound upon the meaning of images,which,in turn,has gone through numerous changes throughout the millennia.During Ming dynasty and Qing dynasty,image was referred to as the following:it means to borrow a certain object to give vent to poets’feelings by employing Bi and Xing,two techniques of writing known respectively as today’s analogy and symbolic means.For your information,Categories of Image:Evolution(2009)by Hu Xuegang is available for your reference for the detailed evolving of imagism.

Imagism enjoys a long history in China.It is a concept not to be circumvented in Chinese literary field considering its ever so important role in Chinese anesthetics and in the tradition of classical Chinese poetry.Other concepts revolving around and spawned from imagism give detailed explanation on how to create a poem and what is counted as a great poem.Yan Yu,a poet and critic in Song dynasty,proposed in his masterpiece named Poem Theory of Canglang“bu she li lu”and“bu luo yan quan”meaning respectively“no copy of old images”and“no over-dressing images”.Wang Guowei even presented us“ideo-realm”,an upper-seat concept,to include“image”.

In a word,images are pivotal and very essential to the tradition of classical Chinese poetry.The shining example for imagism set by Tang poems and Song Jambic verse,known respectively as tangshi and songci among the Chinese folks,has been fundamental to the globally significant role of classical Chinese poetry.

Imagism

Earth-shattering changes were occurring in Pound’s era,during which the old were perishing and the new sprouting.Pretentious,sentimental Victorian poets were spurned and the anemic poetry landscape was awaiting a fresh wind to sweep across.Back in Hamilton College,Pound had developed a passion for Dante and other lyric poets.In Provence,France,Pound had kept delving deep and carefully into the languages and lyric poems in medieval ages,which had endowed him an abundance of knowledge for British and American poetry.John Keats and William Wordsworth were even not looked up by him.It was also during this period that Pound’s views and vision on poetry had taken shape.

Firstly used by English philosopher and poet Thomas Ernest Hulme,“image”the word was just a common term,which was adapted by Pound into“imagist”that appeared for the first time in Poetry magazine in October of 1912.Only months later in March 1913,the principles of imagist poetry were already launched in Poetry.

Judging from the vein of poetry back then,it can be seen why Pound was so interested in Chinese poetry.Victorian poems are direct speaking of the minds,which intends to be much too direct,verging on the extreme where unrestrained and uncultured diction was made,without any association and imagination.While classical Chinese poetry pays special attention to“wordless thought”or“tenor beyond vehicle”,which coincides with the appeal and desire of the English poets.Wai-lim Yip once cited the following sayings of Pound’s.

We appear to have lost the radiant world where one thought cuts through another with clean edge,a world of moving energies…,magnetisms that take form,that are seen,or that border the visible,the matter of Dante’s paradiso,the glass under water,the form that seems a form seen in a mirror…(Yip,1992,p.164)

Wai-lim Yip and other domestic Chinese scholars like Zhu Hui have thus regarded in light of the afore-quoted lines that Pound and Yan Yu share the same“moving energies”(Zhu,2009,p.95).In nature,the above sayings by Pound are not merely about the resemblance of their artistic styles.It is also about Pound’s dissatisfaction with the old world and his longing for a new world.It is about the objectivity projected and the egoism unhooked.

Back in 1915,in the 60th letter he wrote to Harriet Monroe,Pound had outlined his interpretation for Monroe’s imagism by saying that“Poetry must be as w ell written as prose.Its language must be a fine language,departing in no way from speech save by a heightened intensity(i.e.simplicity).There must be no book words,no periphrases,no inversions.It must be as simple as De Maupassant’s best prose,and as hard as Stendhal’s.”(Pound,1950,p.91)Three years later,Pound reinterpreted his tenet of imagist faith as a three-pronged one:I.Direct treatment of the“thing”,whether subjective or objective.¬II.To use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation.¬III.As regarding rhythm:to compose in sequence of the musical phrase,not in sequence of the metronome.”(Pound,1916,p.96)

In accordance with the thread of Pound’s thoughts on poems,we can clearly see that the three tenets are firstly to materialize thoughts and feelings by employing concise wording and simple images.And secondly,he grew to advocate through the tenets that traditional artificial and mechanical rhymes be replaced with“musical phrase”.To be precise,the tempo of a poem should share the same pace with the readers’spoken language rhythm or with their written language rhythm.This rhyme change has replaced the flowery,ornamental or sentimental poetry style with intuitive thoughts and simple visual images,which in nature coincides with traditional Chinese poetics.

Conclusion

After probing into the internal and external reasons that trigger offPound’s“collision”with classical Chinese poetry and cultural essence,the author thinks that the poet’s liberal sentiments,self-disciplined spirit,his tender love and kindness for talents and his erudition are deeply wedded to Chinese Confucianist ethos.On the other hand,the spirit of American imagism echoes with classical Chinese poetry that is heavy with images.Therefore,the collision between the two is just consequential as the two poles,the one pole being Pound’s disposition and Confucianlike spirit,the other being classical Chinese culture,attract each other,so to speak.The two different poetics,western and oriental,find common ground as Pound came into contact with Chinese culture,after which Pound’s interpretation of Chinese and China is just natural and unavoidable.

Acknowledgements

This paper is funded by the BCLA Postgraduate Bursary Awards.