No More Learning

scroll in your room: a scroll of calligraphy by the etymologist Shen Jianshi, a gift from Achilles Fang.
37 EP to Fang (TL-4; Beinecke)
[St Elizabeths Hospital] [Washington, DC] [March 1951]
what has the hnbl/FANG to say to thick-headed occidental re/ the chinkese langwidG OR ideogram which is fer somethings the most precise and, in fact, only satisfactory medium for making certain statements, and IS in others the most damblasted and DAMbiguous modus loquendi, wot yu cant bust open with a meat AX? ?
[? ] man
[? ] mist
[? ] cold < not example of ambiguity/>
[? ] orange
[? ] pumelo/
mean the blighter's face is all scrunched up like a[n] orange? ? or wot the HELL? ? Further fantasies fer child's guide to quick-chink:
numbers from yr/ beelUvvid' Mathews'.
[? ] she, 5699/shed
[? ] kan as in CANdy and sugar CANE
[? ] 2095/ hen, as in french haine.
[? ] lo, 4122/low, and LOC as in location.
[? ] su 5509/SUper
Lan 3807, as in LANiard [? ]
[? ] fou, 1906, as in frog/fou
[? ] li, 3864, LIning (here only to the eye, not to ear)
I suppose that indistinguishable left-component, plus 3 mouths signiWes Gavin
Douglas' ''blaisterand bubb''/ but still cant Wnd which rad[ical]/ it is used for. [? ] lin perfectly easy once one had the [? ] ch'en rad/
thought I HAD tried it, anyhow, but eye very untrained and no nack for
running up and down columns.
VERY stupid of me not to see the sun under the grass/ but had Wnally done
so. [? ] **
the melopoeia, or part that matters TO ME, seems to resist all vagaries of dialect. **
now this pumelo? can the id/ refer to familiar tree (i. e. fam/ in Rapallo) the
uncultivated orange, looks like an orange, but no taste and inedible (or at least until famine times. )
a. fang and pound's bilingual confucius 59
could that line mean: hearths cold, oranges reverted
i. e. to wild and useless state, from lack of care? probably the yu [? ] cannot mean mock-orange/ and this probably useless barbarian conjectured. a one-eyed wind with three mouths, three whoofs, blowing 3 ways makes more (//more mare's nests). Will remember that blooming ''lin'' [? ] from now on.
Cdn't be expected to know Sieh [? ] was proper name (as hadn't looked at commentary)
2630 [? ], a, b, c, d, wot a twister
any more data re Belden himself ?
Belden might be improved? ? ? question.
He is O. K. in loathing the Dewey, Luce, Fortune swine, BUT only objects to
smear when aimed at pinks and commies. He is illiterate re/K'ung. Obviously Chiang K-S did NOT (p 425) practice the Confucian doctrine of ANYthing.
doubt if B[elden]/ ever read the text of K'ung even in Legge. also a bit of know-it-all when he generalizes, but good re/ what he has seen. Also still dodges fact that Roose was Roose. less competent than Chiang? and wd/hv/ made worse mess in C[hiang]'s circumstances. A swine of the smeariest.
Erigena is sd/ to hv sd/ ''authority comes from right reason'' have never spotted the chapter and verse where he says it, but had v. limited time for the search.
the Ta S'eu (or HIO, or whatever trans/lit/approx you use) knocks the tar out of almost every assumption B/ makes re K'ung, tho doubtless he is accurate enough re/ what Chiang or the mutts pretended was Confucian.
Bunting is howling for a bilingual oriental series (all oriental langs/) like the Loeb greek, latin. Might be tea time subject of talk with Harvard weaklings? ? ? ? A. F. ever glance at Erigena or Avicenna? just to see that there have been nice
minds outside the Middle Kingdom. But only one K/
Did I say Santayana half admitted: ''no philosophy, only philo-epistemology
since,'' I forget when, possibly Leibnitz, possibly Ocellus. I think I drew him by saying: since Ocellus: Sin, jih, jih sin [Day by day make it new].
Kindergarten mnemonics for sound. Do I know the sound of 60 id[eogram]s/? ? Further mnemonic triXes/
shu1 [? ] 5851/kill, very
as we say ''dead right, dead certain''
***
re FOUR grasses, trees, etc/ I repeat: the reorganization from 500 down to 214 radicals was one of [the] greatest intellectual acts of all time. Lacking in english (so far as I know) a clear and adequate report on what actually happened/ did it need 1000 scholars or 40 or six?
Cannot rule out a priori the possibility that they did not simply DERIVE, but that they made new combinations of abbreviated root-pictograms with new connotations.
Sin jih jih sin
? 60 a. fang and pound's bilingual confucius
A. F. rad[ical]/ card gives rad/ 136 [? ], as confuse.
is there any speciWc known evidence that rules out idea of ''opposites'' i. e. waxing and waning moon
Some review OUGHT to print an A. F. account of the reorganization DOWN to 214 unless it wd/ interrupt A. F. 's more pressing commitments.
E. hasn't SEEN any hist/chin/lit/ since he read Giles in some internat/lit/ series, over 40 years ago. Do not recall that he (G/) had given a thought ''entertained a thought'' (Mat. yu ? 7622, 3 [? ? ]) to the amount of thought needed to reorganize the rad/ system.
***Also lot of fuss re,/ exact rhyme/ whereas inexact syzogy, SHADINGS of sound, one of most useful devices for melody, not only shifts of do, re, mi etc/ but also of fengs, fangs, Wns, fons, etc. no reason to suppose we waited fer Bill Yeats to start use of it.
**
already noted (? ) lo [? ] as in low, lower//
spanish ll, Xuids, etc. one of [the] most common associations in numerous
languages.
[? ] man. . . [? ] pumelo: a line from ''On the Northern Tower'' (? ? ? ? ) by Xie Tiao ? ? (464-99). In a letter to EP of 2 March 1951 (Lilly) Fang copied out the poem with a sound key illustrating its rhyme scheme and tonal arrangement.
Gavin Douglas: Gavin Douglas (1474-1522), Scottish translator of Virgil's Aeneid.
Dewey: Jack Belden holds that Republican presidential candidate Thomas Dewey (1902-71) and Time-Life-Fortune publisher Henry Luce (1898-1967) endorsed Chiang because of shared anti-
Communist sentiment.
Belden . . . (p 425): Belden refers to Chiang as a dictator.
Bunting: the British poet and translator Basil Bunting (1900-85) Wrst met EP in Paris c. 1923.
the Loeb greek, latin: a series of Greek and Roman classics with translations published in England by
Heinemann and in America Wrst by Macmillan and then by Harvard University Press.
Erigena: the Irish-born theologian John Scotus Erigena (c. 815-c. 877) is listed in Cantos 74, 83, and 87. Avicenna: Ibn S ? ? na ? (c. 980-1037), Persian author of nearly 240 books. EP owned a copy of his
Metaphysics Compendium (1926).
Santayana: see Glossary on Santayana, George.
Leibnitz: EP writes about the German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz (1646-1716) in Guide
to Kulchur (1938; New York: New Directions, 1970), 74 as follows: ''After Leibniz, the precedent
kind of thought ceased to lead men. ''
Ocellus: the Pythagorean philosopher Ocellus (5th century bc) is listed in Cantos 87 and 107.
38 Fang to EP (TLS-3; Lilly)
[Cambridge, Mass. ] 3/14 [1951]
Dear Mr Pound,
The rad/card was not made by A. F. ; it was done some years ago, when A. F. was
still in Peking, by the ignoramuses here for the confusion of poor students. Of course,
? a. fang and pound's bilingual confucius 61
rad/ 136 [? ] does not mean ''confuse. '' The cardinal meaning of that ideogram might be found in the last entry under that ideogram in Mathews: DISCREP- ANCY, from which ideas like ''opposing, perverse, disobedient, error, disorder, confusion, contradictory'' can be derived. Anciently the id/ was written ?
Now, Hsu ? [Xu] Shen thinks the pictogram stands for two persons lying back against back ? ? , but later etymologists disagree with him and assert that the pict/ represents two things placed back against back. At any rate, the funda- mental meaning is ''discrepancy'' or ''overlapping. '' I have failed to Wnd any evidence supporting the idea of ''opposites,'' etc.
Since I am at it, allow me to disillusion you about Mathews. This dictionary is full of errors, even after revision. Almost every third sentence (I mean, entry) is either erroneous or misleading. Take the phrase ? ? ; it never means ''to entertain a thought. '' <''to entertain a thought'' or ''to give a thought to . . . '' would be ? ? . > NEVER. Lit. it means to house a thought in a thing, in which ''in a thing'' is either expressed or implied. Or shall I say, ''to charge a thing with one's thought''? It is often used in the sense of ''allegory''; in some contexts it means something <quite like> POSSUM's [Eliot's] objective correlative. E. g. in speaking of the Eulogy of Oranges supposedly written by Ch'u ? Yu ? an (jap. Kutsugen or Kutsu Gen) critics say he was making use of yu ? -i [? ? ]; the orange was a mere allegory. When T'ao Yu ? an-ming (Toenmei) wrote
? ? ? ? ?
''Calmly I see the Southern Hills,''
he is supposed to have taken recourse to yu ? -i: it was immaterial whether he actually saw the hills, for the important thing is that his mind was at peace. Objective correlative?
When students can make use of vernacular dictionaries I always advise them to throw Mathews out of the window. The best v. dictionary is ? ? .
I like your analysis of ? ; Hsu ? [Xu] Shen's is very weak, nor is there any satisfactory explanation. I think yours can be maintained.
Yesterday I forwarded the galley proofs of Stone-Classics, with the necessary ideograms.
Yours respectfully [signed] Achilles Fang
For the moment I cannot squeeze out a minute and write on the development of radicals. However, I shall keep this subject in mind.
I am sincerely grateful to you for introducing me to Erigena and Avicenna. For the moment I am studying the Oirishman. ''Authority comes from right reason,'' occurring in many of your writings, has intrigued me quite. In fact the entire chapter (De divisione naturae, liber primus, cap. 69; Joannis Scoti opera
? ? 62 a. fang and pound's bilingual confucius
quae supersunt omnia,/1853, ex typis Migne, au Petit-Montrouge,--publ. as a vol. in Patrologiae cursus completus,/column 513) is quite interesting. [ . . . ]
''No philosophy, only philo-epistemology since . . . '' What Santayana said to you is unfortunately true. In college A. F. ''majored'' in ''Western'' philosophy (my thesis was on Leibnitz and his Monalology); but all the philosophy I had was centred around epistemology. (It is so also here at Harvard. ) Only that nowadays they do not even touch on the theory of knowledge,--now it is all symbolic logic. So much so that anybody who does not draw upon the Wrst half of the Wrst volume of Russell and Whitehead's Principia Mathematica is not even considered as a professional philosopher. (Neo-Realism) A. F. has given up ''philosophy'' for good, and is glad of it.
After Erigena I hope to take out Avicenna.
Hsu ? Shen: see Glossary on Xu Shen.
Ch'u ? Yuan: see Glossary on Qu Yuan.
T'ao Yu ? an-ming: see Glossary on Tao Qian.
? ? : Cihai dictionary, ed. Shu Xincheng et al. (1936).
your analysis of ? : in a letter to Fang of 28 February 1951, EP describes the ''SLEEP ideogram'' ? as
''bureaucrat [? ] faced by member of the general public [? ]'' (Beinecke). See also SP, 81. Leibnitz: see Letter 37 n.
Principia Mathematica: Bertrand Russell and Alfred Whitehead, Principia Mathematica (1910-13).
39 EP to Fang (TL-1; Beinecke)
[St Elizabeths Hospital] [Washington, DC] [April 1951]
Fang
moderately frivolous enquiry re/ being called er JU [? ? ] Mencius Seven
lower [2. ] 31. 3.
? ? expression like ''Hi there!
Hey you. ''
idiomatic?
did I ask if any clear work on chinese pronouns in any occidental lang? probably better go on observing cases.
Everything needed is in the 4 Books.
One keeps noticing ideograms that one had failed to concentrate on.
Gt/ bore not having odes text in seal, meaning DONE, not Xoating in promise. Kimb/ cursing Hawley fer incomprehensible reasons and cunctating.
benedictions anon
a. fang and pound's bilingual confucius 63
er JU: in a letter to EP of 5 April 1951 Fang conWrms: ''? ? in the Meng passage should mean 'Hi there! ', 'Hey you! ' (or even 'Hey Mao', or Hey johnny')'' (Beinecke).
Kimb/ cursing Hawley: see Glossary on Kimball, Dudley.
40 Fang to EP (TL-1; Beinecke)
[Cambridge, Mass. ]
June 11, 1951
Dear Mr Pound,
The whole will look very impressive in press-proof. You and Hawley must
have given sample pains to the work.
In order to facilitate my work of correlating Ch. and Engl. pages I cut the long
galley sheets into pages and numbered them red; hope the printer will not be confused.
Here and there I modiWed your romanizations, not to make them conform to the standard system but to make them consistent.
Other suggestions (done in ink) you will Wnd on appropriate pages; I beg you not to get oVended at the liberty I've taken.
I notice that the sequence of the two books is altered; I like the change, for the Ch. always speak of Hsio-Yung [Digest-Pivot] and not Yung-Hsio [Pivot- Digest].
Pp. 111-113-115 are missing; I'm waiting for them. As soon I get them I shall forward them to you. With regard to these pages, I suggest that
--Shi King, III, 1, 5, 3.
be inserted after the Ode in Chung Yung XII, 3, and
--Shi King, I, 15, 5, 2. after XIII, 2.
Yours respectfully Thank you very much for the Italian papers.
Shi King, III, 1, 5, 3 . . . Shi King, I, 15, 5, 2: these suggestions were not taken.
41 EP to Fang (TL-1; Beinecke)
? ? ? ? To the Hnbl/ FANG P. S. to ms/
[St Elizabeths Hospital] [Washington, DC] [10 October 1951]
64
a. fang and pound's bilingual confucius
If the Hl/ Fang has any more spare copies of extracts from Hav/ YenChing/ wd/ he in benignity send 'em to
Mary de Rachewiltz
Schloss Brunnenburg, Merano, Italy
marked simply ''For Igor,''
that is for her young ''brother-in-row''
who knows more chinese than her father BUT whom I shd/ like to have
stimulated to KEEP HIS MIND ON the subject. benedictions.
extracts: Igor de Rachewiltz recalls receiving from Fang extracts from Shu jing (Book of History) and Mencius.
42 EP to Fang (TL-1; Beinecke)
[St Elizabeths Hospital] [Washington, DC] 16 Oct 51
Lacking energy, very hard keep eye Wxed on page, ergo may have missed something. Suppose chinese have indexed 4 books/but may not be copy of index at HaaaVUDD? Wd/ notes like following be any used to Hnbl/ FANG?
Convinced it is more important to understand the 4 Books than to under- stand chinese language, OR let us say UNLESS a man understand the ideograms IN the 4 Books, he never will understand chinese language, or ideogram/and cert/ much more important to grasp the grams in the 4 bks/ than to remember many thousand minor and derivative characters /?
?
Curious that so basic a sign, one so essential to grasp Confucian Anschauung shd/ appear only 3 times in Ta S'eu and 4 in Chung Yung.
Ta S/ III, 3, twice/VII, 1.
Chung Y/ XX, 13 <at Wrst sign might seem weaker use than in Ta S'eu/ but it isn't, on further reXection. >/XXXI 1 & 3/XXXIII, 3.
****
note tuan/Chung Y/ VI/XII, 4 ? [tuan]
****
Has Fang noted the important deWning of ?
? ? ? Chung Y/ XII 4, from the top
?
to ? the bottom. ? dont trust me not to have skipped and missed something. haven't yet been
thru Analects/ and WHATTA DAMN nuisance that printer not getting me my
a. fang and pound's bilingual confucius 65
bilingual stone AND the seal char/ odes so I can GIT ON and improve my damtrans/lations. how lousily low the noncoherence and muttishness of ALL murkn endamndowments.
Ta S/ III, 3, twice/VII, 1: ''? ? ? ? ? Coherent, splendid and reverent''; ''? ? ? ? ? ? As a minister, in respect'' (Confucius, 40-1); ''? ? ? ? ? if they are Wlled with reverence and respect'' (Confucius, 54-5).
Chung Y/ XX, 13: ''? ? ? ? ? ? he who respects the great ministers will not be led astray'' (Confucius, 156-7).
XXXI 1 & 3/XXXIII, 3: these sections are omitted in Confucius.
tuan/Chung Y/ VI/XII: ''? ? ? ? ? ? ? followed the middle line between these inharmonic
extremes'' (Confucius, 106-7); ''? ? ? ? ? has its origin in ordinary men and women''
(Confucius, 118-19).
the important deWning of ? : '' ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? in its entirety, a rite addressed to heaven and
? ? ? earth'' (Confucius, 118-19).
43
Fang to EP (TLS-1; Lilly)
Dear Mr Pound,
Once more my gratitude for If This Be Treason, esp. the paragraphs dealing
with Ce ? line, who (please be prepared for a shock) I had never read. Naturally I read through most of his works this week. I'm now having the book photo- stated for my Poundiana collection, which is the pride of my humble library.
Yes, I immediately mailed the three oVprints to Igor.
Thank you for your note on ? . It is, as you say, Rather curious that the ideogram occurs not too frequently in the Pivot and Digest in despite of the fact that these two books are permeated with the concept of reverentia. Nor is it less interesting to note (I assure you I don't intend to be patronizing) that you have independently come to lay emphasis on this sign, independently of the so-called neo-Confucianists of the Sung dynasty. I wish you would write something on it a bit more extensively. (Some of the neo-C. even cooked up a ritual around that idea: when they sat down to read--reread--K'ung's books, they would Wrst wash their hands, put on their headgears--like women in church service, men had to wear their hats if they wanted to show respect, in China--and burn incense sticks. )
As for the four tuan, Mathews got it--indirectly--from Mencius, p. 79 of your (and my) copy. Poor Mathews. S. v. 6541, 1 and 2 are misleading: ''a clue. '' They should mean rather ''inkling,'' ''a loose thread or two,'' ''the barest beginning. '' 3 seems to be correct, but seldom used.