But this term,
convenient
as it is, [is] apt to be misunderstood as to the essential signifi- cance thereof, on account of its already enjoying a peculiar technical usage of its own; besides, it is rather too superficial to be applied to my spirit- saving art.
Ezra-Pound-Japan-Letters-essays
There is a gap between Kagekiyo and the new dredger-plus plywood veneers.
What I really know of Japan I have got from Fenollosa's notes on the Noh and from a handful of "very much over-civilized" young men to whom the Noh was familiar. I cannot suppose this to be a "working knowledge" but I believe it to be a much more "real" knowledge than I should have got by starting at the "practical end" and omitting the fragments vouch-safed to me.
In struggling against enormous odds (meaning financial odds) for a mutual understanding between Japan and the Occident, there is still the danger that a Japanese educated in the U. S. A. might occasionally believe a statement printed in English or American newspapers without first looking carefully at the date line, and name of the agency supplying said news. It cannot be too firmly understood that "some" agencies and newspapers exist mainly, or even wholly, for the purpose of causing the stock markets to wobble, their "political" purposes being a mere cover for this means to putrid profit. I personally feel that some of you might get your European news via the U. S. A. even if as many of your students have gone to Germany
(have they? ) as to the U. S. A. Re which possibility I register the simple statement made to me two years ago by an American publisher. (Parenth- esis: my friends often urge me to be "reasonable. ") The publisher said: "Facts unfavorable to Germany and Italy are news; facts favorable to Italy and Germany are propaganda. "
Against which I set a revealing statement made by Otto Dietrich (Ter- ramare pamphlets no. 13): "The Fiihrer will never create an office unless
? 186 SECTION IV: ESSAYS
thoroughly convinced of the suitability of the person selected for it. " Perhaps the spiritual descendents and unconscious followers of Con- fucius do him more honor than physical descendents who spend their time
borrowing money.
11 From Rapallo: An Ezra Pound Letter
It is impossible to explain contemporary Europe to Japan without a long economic preface, possibly a longer preface than the average reader has patience for. One can roughly indicate the cycle of Occidental infamies since the founding of the Bank of England about 1696 A. D. , via the suppres- sion of paper money in England's American colonies, Cobbett's struggles against the ruin of agriculture in England, industrialization, the ruin of land owners by financial chicane, etc. Suffice it to say that by 1935 we were all fed up with the fall of empires, kingdoms, etc. It was all "old stuff. " Governments had flopped, Austria was, later, a minor collapse, but for over a century and a quarter no man had laid hands on a Rothschild. That item was NEWS with a big "N," but not one European journalist in a hundred had sense to know it, and not one in a thousand could print his perception if he had one. Three hundred million or whatever golden schillings or whatever had gone into Skoda gun works, to make trouble, via Vienna. The reply was the Anschluss, the incorporation of Austria in the German Reich.
In one sense history, not merely ideological history, is built out of phrases. It is built out of crystallizations of words into very brief groups, say five, six, or a dozen words. These words become fact. And it is impossible to exaggerate their force, because they cannot come into existence save as proof of a state of understanding. I mean clear understanding, not mere confused apprehension or suspicion.
Hjaimar Schacht made history in 1938: "GeJd, dem keine Ver- brauchsgiiter gegeniiberstehen, ist ja nichts als bedriicktes Papier. " Money that isn't issued against commerciable goods is mere printed paper.
Of course you have to know quite a bit of economics to understand why this sentence is history. Aristotle left certain terms undefined, or at any rate failed to "educate" the Occident and give it a clear (when I say clear, I mean clear) understanding of certain properties of money. Some people contin- ued to think of money as "a universally accepted commodity delivered in measured amounts. " By 640 A. D. the Tang dynasty had got round to using paper money, that is, "an admonition or memorandum of how much the
? SECTION IV: ESSAYS
187
holder of a certain kind of piece of paper ought to receive in the common market. " The inscription of the Tang notes is essentially the same as that on the ten lire notes in Italy today.
Then came the word "credit. " By 1623 the Sienese Bank, the Monte dei Paschi, had discovered the basis of sound credit, namely the abundance of nature and the responsibility of the whole people. Jefferson knev^^ that it was unnecessary for the U. S. Government to pay two dollars (out of the people's pocket) for every dollar's worth of goods or services delivered to the government. In other words he knew that the state need not rent its own credit from a clique of individuals either American or foreign. Nevertheless even today men go on confusing mandates or orders to deliver what exists and promises to hand over something which may exist next year or the year after. I hope the Japanese student will find two words, one for each of these paper implements, and then refrain from using the two words indifferently and confusedly. If you do this, the Occident will come to sit at your feet.
In the meantime, very informative work is being printed in Italy. I need hardly say that the Axis Powers are the most interesting phenomena in the Occident at this moment, A. D. 1940, year of the Fascist Era xviii. Gerarchia, a monthly magazine founded by Mussolini, contains on p. 345, the month current, the words "probJemi economici, cioe sociali" ("Economic prob- lems, that is to say social").
This also is history. It shows the final penetration of a whole realm of ideas that scattered economists and reformers have been hammering at, and trying to hammer into the public mind for the past 20 years.
There is, indeed, need for a drastic and burning revision of the rubbish taught in all Western universities in the departments of history and eco- nomics. Beginning with Brooks Adams the live thought of half a century runs through authors who are practically excluded--I mean 100% (one hundred per cent) excluded--from the frousty beaneries of the U. S. A. , England, etc. C. H. Douglas, Gesell, Chris. Mollis, McNair Wilson, Over- holser, Larraiiaga, Butchart's compendium, do not figure among the au- thors revealed to our students. An Italian minority, chiefly non- universitaire, I should say, is served by a flock of periodicals which do treat these subjects, often in an "unreadable" manner. However, as you are enjoying a new Italo-Japanese amity society, you might do worse than to fill its reading room with copies of Gerarchia, Rivista deJ Lavoro and publica- tions of this sort. G. Pellizzi is now editing Civilta Fascista, but for brevity's sake it is now possible to make a short cut via Odon Por's Finanza Nuova,
an 80-page summary of new financial ideas (published by Le Monnier, Firenze, 10 lire). Apart from brief restatement of ideas and experiments
? 188 SECTION IV: ESSAYS
elsewhere, the opening pages of this book give the clearest, and for the first time so far as I know, an adequate statement of the basic differences of theory, and, be it said, the superiorities of Corporate State finance over other proposals and experiments. You cannot understand the new Europe without knowledge of the Italian Fascist revolution and you cannot under- stand that revolution without distinguishing two components in it: the men who, led by Mussolini, regenerated Italy, and the men who, seeing that they could not prevent the regeneration, went along with it for what they could make out of it. Por is distinctly in the first group.
"There had been retouches, but not root changes, because the state intervention did not get down to bed rock, but left the hegemony to preda- tory groups. "
"Autarchy set going as constructive reply to the disintegrating power of money-ocracy, was quickly seen by the latter to be a deadly attack, to be
resisted by all means whatsoever, including war.
". . . . it is at any rate clear that it is not the national aggregates that are
fighting . . . but financial cliques prodding the peoples to fight. "
"Why does Plutocracy fight autarchy? " asks Por.
"In the first place autarchy aims at producing enough goods for national
needs. Money no longer dictates production, but an autarchic-cooperative order does the dictating and money depends on this order for its volume and value. "
I wonder if I can translate that sentence any more clearly? Por goes on:
"In short, the cooperative autarchy abolishes money as merchandise as it has abolished labor as merchandise. "
The Italian word is merce. We might say: Under autarchia neither money nor labor [is] something a clique can sweat profits out of.
"The state having established its rule over the economic system ex- tends this rule over the financial. "
"If you consider that the Bank of England is owned by international financiers who are very hard to identify, and that the British Government has not the power to direct the bank's actions always and everywhere; and that the Banque de France is owned by private capitalists and that many seats on its board of directors are, as it were, hereditary in the plutocratic families: Rothschild, Neuflize, Hottinguer, Wendel, Duchemin, etc. who control the key industries, including the arms business, you can measure the meaning of the reorganization of the Banca d'ltalia. "
"It has become really national because no international interest can get
to work inside it.
. " . .
. " . .
? SECTION IV: ESSAYS 189
"The credit of a corporatively organized country is limited to its real riches. "
"These consist in its physical resources in their natural state bettered by modern processes of labor, plus the vital activities of the population and the state of the sciences; of the culture and the intellectual and moral education of the people and the efficient ordering of its institutions. The true wealth is not money. Money is the means accepted to actuate produc-
. "
means to develop the nation's wealth will be provided without having resource to foreign financings. "
All this may seem to be nothing but very plain common sense. Japan may have arrived at this state of sanity and progressed beyond it, for all I know. But you may take it from me that Europe, in general, had not done so by September last year. Even among the bright reformers in various "pro- gressive sectors" such as the U. S. A. (New Deal); Alberta (Social Credit, sabotaged by Monty Norman and the London bleeders); New Zealand (amply reviewed by Por in a later chapter of his Finanza Nuova), some of the essential parts of the mechanism had been omitted.
It is for the above very simple ideas that the Axis Powers are fighting against mouldy superstition. That much you can take as news item, whether you agree with me or not, as to the value of the ideas in themselves.
12 From Rapallo: An Ezra Pound Letter
Japan is to be congratulated on bringing Mr. Matsuoka to her Foreign Office. Having sat at Geneva he knows just how rotten the League was. He knows to anatomthekindofswindlerwhomadeit. Heknowsthementalitythatwas in it, and is in the Carnegie peace swindle. He knows to what degree the latter sniveling gang of pacifists has refrained from using its endowments honestly and how well it has blocked any research into the real causes of war. And this knowledge of his might be of world use.
Funk's plan is a complete answer to the infamies proposed by Streit and Co. But that doesn't mean that Funk's plan will get any adequate publicity in America. You might think it would . . . you might think my compatriots would be able to see the sense of collaborating in a new world order instead
tion and stimulate the exchange of riches
"No sector of the economy can get stranded; all the necessary monetary
. .
? 190
SECTION IV: ESSAYS
of keeping their collective heads in a bag, but if so, you have neglected to note the thoroughness of the obfuscation, various strata of which date from 1863, or 1873, or 1920.
The w^ork of the Vanguard Press in flooding America with cheap editions of Marx, Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin might have been harmless, might even have been useful, had the Americans known their own history. But they have not known their own history; do not know it, and are not in the process of learning it.
As to their learning anything from their papers . . . they have been and are being served by men who sell news that is wanted. Unwanted news just doesn't "sell. "
Rip van Wendell Willkie reads, and has read, the same news sheet as Roosevelt and Morgenthau . . . that is to say, he is pre-conditioned by news-baths carefully prepared by Reuters, Havas, etc. . . . namely, by the propaganda of Rothschild, Lazard and the rest of the most poisonous dregs of humanity. This has been going on for some time.
If Japan gets a "bum" deal, it will be due quite as much to the American people's real ignorance as to any ill-will or even to the blind greed of a minority.
Boak Carter has tried to tell 'em (the Americans) some of the story. The more cats he lets out, the more difficulty he has of getting any time on the air, or of even holding a column.
A quite dear old friend writes me that she is not exactly praying, but concentrating her will every evening to stop Hitler (about whom she knows nothing). She is not a venomous woman and she likes German opera.
A quite bright New York journalist thinks 1 am in danger of being imprisoned here in Italy for the sentiments expressed in a quotation which I have had stamped on my writing paper. He does not recognize the quota- tion as being a motto of Mussolini, despite the fact that it is followed by the "m" now used all over this country to indicate citations from the writings or speeches of II Duce. The quotation is: "liberty is not a right but a duty. "
You Japanese are said to be very ingenious. Go on. Invent something. Find me a mental gimlet that will let a squirt of light into the indubitably active "minds" of America. "Listen-in to Tokyo! " Yes, brother. And the sooner Tokyo starts telling the American people its own history, i. e. the history of
? SECTION IV: ESSAYS 191
the U. S. A. , the sooner the American people will find out. For, of their own motion and initiative, they are not finding it out.
God alone knows what we Americans know of Japan. None of us reads Japanese. Some tens of and hundreds of thousands of us can read German, French and Italian.
Note to your own honor that Italy billed their taking of Somaliland as the FIRST time the British Empire had lost a colony. Spain said, "the first time in 300 years. " A day later came Japanese opinion to the effect that it was the first time since the American Revolution, when we Yanks took out 13 colonies all at once! (Nevertheless, it took us five years, not two months. )
? 192
APPENDIX
APPENDIX I
'ME . ART! !
7AMI KDtfMM^
? APPENDIX 193
Tami Koume, The Art of S Etherism, or Spiritico-Etheric Art
I AM AN artist; I must live in my art; my life is in my art. This being the case, I can ill throw my pencil for a pen, in order to set forth in so many words the principles as well as the inner meanings of my life-problem, the Spiritico- etheric Art.
However, for the enlightened public, who are not yet well acquainted with my art, but kind enough to be curious to know what that is in reality, I would fain forgo the advantages, and try to describe the nature and content oftheartinwhichI havebeenspirituallyawakened,throughtruthful speculation, and by means of entire devotion to the cause of the all-great and mystical Universe.
We are now standing at the critical moment of humanity. We must be saved by something. Hence who would venture to say that the Universe should d[eny? ] the cries vehemently uttered by the chosen few, who par- ticipate in the saving councils of Nature? There are [a] few born now, whose spiritual and intellectual capacities represent the ages of [a] thousand years hence; for nature does not bring forth children useful only for the present age.
In last May, 1920, I have exhibited my artistic creations on my own account, to show the content of my art-life; in other words, I have attempted to reveal the processes that have led my art from artificial creations "to super-artificial-growing-creations. "
Now these "Super-artificial-growing-creations" stand as a sort of medium between self and the universe, while self is a kind of medium in like manner between the universe and the growing creations; and so I have provisionally styled this art then a mediumistic school.
But this term, convenient as it is, [is] apt to be misunderstood as to the essential signifi- cance thereof, on account of its already enjoying a peculiar technical usage of its own; besides, it is rather too superficial to be applied to my spirit- saving art.
Upon this I was forced temporarily to coin a new term, which is but a symbol of my art, by which symbol, I, ,- (which I make bold to pronounce Reitherism or ft Etherism] the essential features of my art-life, it is to be hoped, might be made somewhat plainer. Let me here remark par ex- ceJJence that this sign being the symbol of my art, has no conventional pronuciation, but only serves to signify the inner meaning of my art, and may thus be pronounced as above indicated, because it is an artistic repre- sentation of my art-life.
? 194
APPENDIX
Historically speaking, the art that applies colouring matters on the surface, has been called painting, whose development, it is quite needless to repeat here.
The more advanced painting of the present age has so far progressed as to be able to delineate mental phenomena. But those schools of painting are unable to exhibit anything decisively and analytically as to the origin of all things, and the substance of the mind.
They only deceive themselves and others through unsatisfactory self- affirmations. I, who found it impossible to conform to this state of unrea- son, have at last arrived at this my art, Reitherism, or Spiritico-etheric Art, through purest and truest intuition, and by means of sincerest speculation and pious devotion, even willingly risking physical safety. I was thus saved.
Reitherism is an artification of human life.
Reitherism is a beautification of all things material and immaterial. It is again a beautiful manifestation of Spirit.
Those who are possessed of a beauty-consciousness, will all
acknowledge that, in general. Art means an all-round consciousness- operation that goes for creating beauty artificially. It is a philosophical representation of this truth.
The birth of art is either an Anschauung or an intuitive operation. Art is or should be an Artificial creation, that represents its objects through its own cells. Hence Art is again purest philosophy that deals with the Uni- verse or human life, by imparting its own life to the objects or subjects it has to do with.
The conclusion of art is beauty itself. Beauty consciousness, aesthetic consciousness, is a bodily experience of the life-forms of the good.
Good is the primary intuition or direct-perception that is to be harmo- nized and incorporated with the truth.
In the sense of truth. Art is the mental form of humanity. It is universal- ly a self-contemplation and self-reflection.
In fine, the true, the good, and the beautiful, or truth, goodness and beauty, must form a trinity in unity.
The essence or essential quality of beauty is inexpressible.
True Art is a radiation of high toned or high flooded sense of beauty, that is impressed on practical life of humanity. The ecstasy of faith seems to be the same with an eternal purification of the rapture felt in the moment of love.
The essence of beauty is not to be touched outside the region of self-
? APPENDIX 1 95
knowledge. If it is so, old aesthetics is but a puppet logic, for it cannot go beyond shadowing forth superficial differences of nature.
In the puppet logic, art is defined to be an enjoyment of life. Such views are boastfully entertained by the ignorant, who consider themselves (i. e. men) most high-stationed in the universe, as lords of creation, thus deceiv- ing themselves and others, under the shadow of old antiquated aesthetics, or so-called science of beauty. In fine, man has no right to define art an enjoyment of human life.
If there are any enjoyable elements in art, they are, must be, the es- sential nature of art herself, not her definable meaning, much like the aesthetic impressions accompanying the ecstasy or rapture of faith.
***
The littleness of self or ego, cannot but be felt by those who have become conscious of their own intrinsic nature.
Many and various problems that men cannot solve by means of the progress of science and development of reason, must not be struck away or blotted out as merely unthinkable or incomprehensible.
At least, I myself cannot blunder away the essential power, great and mystic, of the Universe, which we bodily experience irresistibly--and this by lukewarm reasons of science or psychology. No; God forbid!
In such mood, we cannot but exclaim admiringly, when we gaze upon the millions of bright, shining heavenly bodies, "O God, how splendid! " We thus cry to that irresistible might of Nature, and this superartificial power, "O God! " However we have become conscious of these grand
phenomena, so as to extort from us such rapturous exclamations, we cannot deny the Absolute Power called God, pervading the whole Universe.
However, the "God" I admire is not the God of monotheism or polytheism; neither is he the impersonal God of pantheism, though in his essential nature he somewhat approaches the latter. Positively it is not the God of Atheism, said to be one with the Universe.
I deemGodtobeonewiththeUniverse,butthatissointheisticpointof view. Yes; I intuit the existence of God, great and mystical. To recognize the Universal Consciousness or Gosmic soul, is to acknowledge God. The narrow and poor intellect of man can only touch some portion of Universal Consciousness, great and mystic, merely by negating himself.
Men are not aware of the preciousness of negating themselves. But yet those who are awaking to the salvation of their own souls, are approaching the precious state of self-negation daily more and more, nearer and nearer, by self-discipline and deep sincerity--this is not denied by God himself.
? 196 APPENDIX
Now simple or pure ego I call the state in which human personality, with its minimum conscious condition, is harmonized and interfused with the consciousness of the Universe. But, what is the state of simple ego, or pure ego, here introduced rather mystically? That is the state of realization or bodily experience of spiritual enlightenment, rational and exalted, attained by inspiratory judgement and reasonable speculation--a state, free from all doubts, and impure ideas, transcending little human personalities, wherein reigns naivety and simplicity.
In this state, minimum human consciousness being present, conscious- ness manifestations in the cerebral cells subsiding, superhuman powers of extraordinary spirituality are dominant.
Such artists who are conscientious enough to live in truth and purity, should bravely renounce all those petty ingenuities, learned from conven- tions, and listen to the voice of conscience, for these petty ingenuities only tend to deceive others as well as the artists themselves.
Although we are determined to part with the shallow self-affirmatory modes of representation taught to us from historical education, so pertina- cious are we men, that we feel much grudge to do away with those skills which have been our companions years long. But those earnest artists who have once listened to the precious voice of conscience, cannot but re- nounce all grudge to live the pure and true life of enlightened artists.
If not so, chefs d'oeuvre themselves are not much better, nay far worse, than those rough lines drawn by children expressive of their love toward nature. They are simply productions of time devoted to ingenuity.
True Art must be love towards humanity, born necessarily for saving the disquietude men entertain in respect to the present existence.
For us who endeavor to live in the soul-saving art, there is no need of a temple or church occupying and enclosing a portion of space. All phe- nomena pervading the infinite universe; nay, one single constellation glittering in the firmament, one single flower emitting sweet fragrance in the field--these are a thousand times better than myriad volumes of printed books, being a direct teaching of God bestowed on us mortals.
The works of Cezanne and van Gogh are manifestations of love apprehended necessarily from Nature. The still lifes of Gezanne are smiling lives, while van Gogh's plants are portions of breathing Nature. They cannot but feel, as though inanimate nature were his or her brothers and sisters.
Yes! all things are our brothers and sisters. All things, men, animals, plants, nay mountains, rivers, desks, papers, all are so. At least I perceive
? APPENDIX 197
them to be so. One's own work--what does it consist of? It is a synthesis of himself, the canvas, and colouring matters. In other words, the work here produced, is an animated object, as it were, which has absorbed my spirit, and got combined with paints on the canvas to be manifested thus.
In one's own productions one's life dwells, and animate some of the elements (spiritual elements) that go to constitute one's self. One's own works produced on such faith are one's brothers, kith and kin, to be sure!
One's work of art is, so to speak, a fragment or detachment of one's own life. Therefore works of art that are not in earnest, and falsely represented, are so many useless cuttings-away of the artist's life! An artist, if he fears death, cannot execute (growing) works. But, to think of death without any (growing) work, this is far more unbearable indeed!
Such artists who fear death, and at the same time fear the appearance of their growing works--these have no right to exist in the noble world of art. I have said, all things in Nature are our brothers.
Yes! so they truly are. All things in Nature are the workings and manifestations of Ether. Men too, in the beginning of their existence, are but simple cells. The germinal cells have, each of them, specific cell-mind, which I christen provisionally Spiritual element.
The spiritual element, which pervades the universe, according to its different operations, sometimes makes organic manifestations, and some- times inorganic manifestations. Strictly speaking, the distinction between organic and inorganic, is, simply, based on the point of view from human standard. They are simply the two faces of that infinite, absolute thing called the Universe.
I shall now speak of my realization of the truth. I repeat, the so-called Spiritual element is the cell-mind of Ether, which not only pervades all spaces, but even fills up the spaces between atoms. All objects emit subtle emanation called aura or auric atmosphere, which is nothing but the proceeding of this spiritual element.
Just as in our visual nerves, vibrating etheric rays strike the retinas to produce colour-impressions; so this spiritual element, by acting upon the cerebral convolutions, can make the nerve centre in the brain produce the auric atmosphere, as above referred to.
The minutest elements in the sensory organ or sensorium are the sensitive cells. Again the minutest elements in the inner sensory centre of the cerebral convolutions are a mass of nerve-cells. In a highly sensitive condition of these nerve-cells, the sensory centre is enabled to have com- munion with the external (so-called) spiritual-elements.
? 198 APPENDIX
So even the colour-forms, that are not reflected on the retina of the eyes, can be seized at the Fornix of the brain. Some persons, in whom their spiritual sensation is highly developed, can insensibly represent or per- ceive them; just as forms that are not made visible by means of prismatic spectrum, can be seized by ultra-violet rays of the spectrum. Our -, p school artists are too highly ultra-sensitive to be merely ingenious to draw visible things.
The recent tendency to give theoretical explanations to the movements of colours or lines, is a dreadful one, apt to specimenize (specify] art, or restrict the significance of it.
i^sthetic symbolisation, or artistic representation, is not mnemonic (of the memory) symbolization constituted by means of speculation or medita- tion, nor is it a conventional specimen either. This is a symbolization reached by the inbringing of feeling, "Ein/iihiung," through which the artist's spiritual character as well as his or her philosophy is manifested, or aesthetically symbolized.
***
The life of art is eternal and everlasting. As long as the Universe stands, as far as all things exist, art is a changeful representation of Nature, running along the orbit of the whole Universe.
Art, though deemed by Moderns to have been brought to a stand-still, or deadlock, has in truth, only finished her first stage, now just on the point of entering on the second stage, which would only commence her true career.
We who have not yet been saved by conventional art based on sense perceptions, must henceforward be saved by the images reflected on the Fornix of the brain.
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? 200 APPENDIX
APPENDIX II VOU CLUB
In his essay "VOU Club," Ezra Pound introduced to Western readers some contemporary Japanese poets. In his generous opinion, their poems were "better work than any save those of E. E. Cummings," admiring in them the Japanese eye which was "like those new camera shutters that catch the bullet leaving the gun. " In his estimation their thought went from one peak to another "faster than our slow wits permit us to follow. "
Pound's essay appeared in the Townsman, vol. I, no. 1 (January, 1938), as an introduction, with the "Notes" by Katue Kitasono, to thirteen poems by eight of the VOU Club members: "Upon the Tragedy of a Flower on the Calm-latitudes or of a Passenger Aeroplane" and "Secrecy of a Duet" by Takeshi Fuji; "The End of Evil Fortune" by Chio Nakamura; "The Road of Flowers" and "Glassy Hour" by Takeshi Koike; "Young Swan" and "Love's Magnetism" by Toshio Sasajima; "Finger Top of Waltz" and "Outflow of Waltz" by Koichi Kihara; "A Battle of Roses" by Minoru Yasoshima; and "Poems" by Katue Kitasono. Reprinted here are Pound's "VOU Club" and Kitasono's "Notes" from the Townsman, in addition to six poems by VOU poets, as well as James Laughlin's "Modern Poets of Japan" from New Directions 1938.
As Pound had suspected, there certainly were other clubs of poets in Japan at that time. Among the "active" poets in the Tokyo area were Junzaburo Nishiwaki, Shiro Murano, Ichiro Ando, Ikuo Haruyama, and Fuyuhiko Kitagawa, to name a few. But also as Pound had guessed, the VOU Club was a center of intellectual attention at that time, rapidly in- creasing its merpbership during the years 1935-37.
Almost twenty years later, Kitasono recollected the old days and wrote an essay, "The VOU Club," upon the request of Michael Reck, who visited him in Tokyo. Reck later included this essay in his book, Ezra Pound; A Close-Up (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967).
? APPENDIX 201
Ezra Pound, VOL/ Club
It is not a case of asking what would any set of eight European and/or American poets look like if asked to translate their poems into Japanese. It is a case of saying that for half a century after Papa P'laubert started writing, any man who wanted to write English prose had to start by reading French prose. And it may be that from now on any man who wants to write English poetrywillhavetostartreadingJapanese. I meanmodernJapanese,not merely studying Chinese ideogram, as I have been advocating for the past twenty years.
Not as translations but as actual writing, these poems are better work than any save those of E. E. Cummings at his happiest. They may even serve to introduce Cummings and Peret to readers who have thought my more obscure younger contemporaries merely eccentric. Yes. You will have to read Mr. Kitasono's introduction twice, and the poems three or four times. The Japanese eye is like those new camera shutters that catch the bullet leaving the gun. You will not understand some sentences as you read them, but only after having got to their ends, see that they reach round and tuck in their beginnings, so that sense is there nicely boxed. I myself feel rather like a grizzly bear faced by a bunch of weasels. It is the Mongoose spring, the chameleon's tongue quickness. All the moss and fuzz that for twenty years we have been trying to scrape off our language--these young men start without it. They see the crystal set, the chemical laboratory and the pine tree with untrammelled clearness. As to their being a or the most active new club of poets in Tokio, I doubt if any one city contains two such clubs. I know that nowhere in Europe is there any such vortex of poetic alertness. Tokio takes over, where Paris stopped.
Make no mistake, the thought is not absent from these poems. The Japanese poet has gone from one peak of it to another faster than our slow wits permit us to follow before we have got used to his pace.
Ezra Pound
? 202
APPENDIX
Katue Kitasono, Notes
These poems collected here were all written by the members of the VOU Club. This club was planned in a stroll of fifteen minutes or so under the platan-trees at Ginza Street, August 1935. After a week the VOU Club consisting of fifteen members was born as a most active, new club of poets in Japan. Almost the half of these poets belonged before to the "Club d'Arcueil," which was made in the spring of 1931 by four young poets and two poetesses. The magazine Madame Blanche was published under my editorship.
At that time we were profoundly influenced by the personality and the attitude for art of Erik Satie. In the memory of this harmless great artist we used the name of the place where he had lived for our Club. The movement of this club rapidly exerted an influence over young poets, and the mem- bers increased next year to more than forty, making an epoch in the poetical world.
It was by an inevitable result of the tendency of the age that the "Club d'Arcueil" should dissolve at last without a serious reason and the Madame Blanche ceased to be published at No. 19.
Now the most interesting subject to us is about the relation between imagery and ideoplasty. Contemporary young poets are all vaguely con- scious of, and worry about this part. Some of them went over again to its extremity and returned. Others gave up exploration and found out a queer new country, remaining only as amateur thinkers. But anyone whose stand- ing ground is in literature can do nothing for it, if he ignores the system of literature.
The formation of poetry takes such a course like below: (a) Language (b) Imagery (c) Ideoplasty
That which we vaguely call poetical effect means, generally, ideoplasty which grows out of the result of imagery. Man has thought out to make a heart-shaped space with two right angles. This great discovery on plastic, and also that of the conies in mathematics, are two mysteries brought by man's intellect.
The relation between imagery and ideoplasty makes us suppose the heart-shaped space which is born by the connection of the same mysterious two curves. We standardized these two curves and got a necessity.
What we must do first for imagery are collection, arrangement, and combination. Thus we get the first line, "a shell, a typewriter, and grapes," in which we have an aesthetic feeling. But there is not any further develop-
? APPENDIX 203
ment. We add the next line and then another aesthetic feeling is born. Thus all the lines are combined and a stanza is finished. This means the comple- tion of imagery of that stanza and then ideoplasty begins.
This principle can be applied to poems consisting of several stanzas. In that case ideoplasty is formed when the last stanza is finished.
Though it cannot be allowed as orthodox of poetry that imagery is performed by ideoplasty, this violence is dared often by religionists, politi- cians, and satirists. Morality poems, political poems and satirical poems are written, almost without exception, with such an illogical principle.
The phenomena in our life proceed, through our senses to our experi- ences, perceptions, and intuitions. It is intuition rationally that provides the essentials for imagery, and it is the method of poetry that materializes intuitions perceptively and combines. Consequently, exact imagery and ideoplasty are due to an exact method. Pure and orthodox poetry cannot exist without this theory.
I fear that the contemporary Japanese literature has not been appreci- ated rightly in the western world, because of the books written not with ability but with amateur energies. The true understanding is not to be led by those to wear gloves and take the pen. It must be carried out by those who, standing on the literary fact of Japan, bravely suffer for laying the eternal literary foundation on the new land.
For a long time we have desired our poems to be read by superior poets of Europe and America.
What I really know of Japan I have got from Fenollosa's notes on the Noh and from a handful of "very much over-civilized" young men to whom the Noh was familiar. I cannot suppose this to be a "working knowledge" but I believe it to be a much more "real" knowledge than I should have got by starting at the "practical end" and omitting the fragments vouch-safed to me.
In struggling against enormous odds (meaning financial odds) for a mutual understanding between Japan and the Occident, there is still the danger that a Japanese educated in the U. S. A. might occasionally believe a statement printed in English or American newspapers without first looking carefully at the date line, and name of the agency supplying said news. It cannot be too firmly understood that "some" agencies and newspapers exist mainly, or even wholly, for the purpose of causing the stock markets to wobble, their "political" purposes being a mere cover for this means to putrid profit. I personally feel that some of you might get your European news via the U. S. A. even if as many of your students have gone to Germany
(have they? ) as to the U. S. A. Re which possibility I register the simple statement made to me two years ago by an American publisher. (Parenth- esis: my friends often urge me to be "reasonable. ") The publisher said: "Facts unfavorable to Germany and Italy are news; facts favorable to Italy and Germany are propaganda. "
Against which I set a revealing statement made by Otto Dietrich (Ter- ramare pamphlets no. 13): "The Fiihrer will never create an office unless
? 186 SECTION IV: ESSAYS
thoroughly convinced of the suitability of the person selected for it. " Perhaps the spiritual descendents and unconscious followers of Con- fucius do him more honor than physical descendents who spend their time
borrowing money.
11 From Rapallo: An Ezra Pound Letter
It is impossible to explain contemporary Europe to Japan without a long economic preface, possibly a longer preface than the average reader has patience for. One can roughly indicate the cycle of Occidental infamies since the founding of the Bank of England about 1696 A. D. , via the suppres- sion of paper money in England's American colonies, Cobbett's struggles against the ruin of agriculture in England, industrialization, the ruin of land owners by financial chicane, etc. Suffice it to say that by 1935 we were all fed up with the fall of empires, kingdoms, etc. It was all "old stuff. " Governments had flopped, Austria was, later, a minor collapse, but for over a century and a quarter no man had laid hands on a Rothschild. That item was NEWS with a big "N," but not one European journalist in a hundred had sense to know it, and not one in a thousand could print his perception if he had one. Three hundred million or whatever golden schillings or whatever had gone into Skoda gun works, to make trouble, via Vienna. The reply was the Anschluss, the incorporation of Austria in the German Reich.
In one sense history, not merely ideological history, is built out of phrases. It is built out of crystallizations of words into very brief groups, say five, six, or a dozen words. These words become fact. And it is impossible to exaggerate their force, because they cannot come into existence save as proof of a state of understanding. I mean clear understanding, not mere confused apprehension or suspicion.
Hjaimar Schacht made history in 1938: "GeJd, dem keine Ver- brauchsgiiter gegeniiberstehen, ist ja nichts als bedriicktes Papier. " Money that isn't issued against commerciable goods is mere printed paper.
Of course you have to know quite a bit of economics to understand why this sentence is history. Aristotle left certain terms undefined, or at any rate failed to "educate" the Occident and give it a clear (when I say clear, I mean clear) understanding of certain properties of money. Some people contin- ued to think of money as "a universally accepted commodity delivered in measured amounts. " By 640 A. D. the Tang dynasty had got round to using paper money, that is, "an admonition or memorandum of how much the
? SECTION IV: ESSAYS
187
holder of a certain kind of piece of paper ought to receive in the common market. " The inscription of the Tang notes is essentially the same as that on the ten lire notes in Italy today.
Then came the word "credit. " By 1623 the Sienese Bank, the Monte dei Paschi, had discovered the basis of sound credit, namely the abundance of nature and the responsibility of the whole people. Jefferson knev^^ that it was unnecessary for the U. S. Government to pay two dollars (out of the people's pocket) for every dollar's worth of goods or services delivered to the government. In other words he knew that the state need not rent its own credit from a clique of individuals either American or foreign. Nevertheless even today men go on confusing mandates or orders to deliver what exists and promises to hand over something which may exist next year or the year after. I hope the Japanese student will find two words, one for each of these paper implements, and then refrain from using the two words indifferently and confusedly. If you do this, the Occident will come to sit at your feet.
In the meantime, very informative work is being printed in Italy. I need hardly say that the Axis Powers are the most interesting phenomena in the Occident at this moment, A. D. 1940, year of the Fascist Era xviii. Gerarchia, a monthly magazine founded by Mussolini, contains on p. 345, the month current, the words "probJemi economici, cioe sociali" ("Economic prob- lems, that is to say social").
This also is history. It shows the final penetration of a whole realm of ideas that scattered economists and reformers have been hammering at, and trying to hammer into the public mind for the past 20 years.
There is, indeed, need for a drastic and burning revision of the rubbish taught in all Western universities in the departments of history and eco- nomics. Beginning with Brooks Adams the live thought of half a century runs through authors who are practically excluded--I mean 100% (one hundred per cent) excluded--from the frousty beaneries of the U. S. A. , England, etc. C. H. Douglas, Gesell, Chris. Mollis, McNair Wilson, Over- holser, Larraiiaga, Butchart's compendium, do not figure among the au- thors revealed to our students. An Italian minority, chiefly non- universitaire, I should say, is served by a flock of periodicals which do treat these subjects, often in an "unreadable" manner. However, as you are enjoying a new Italo-Japanese amity society, you might do worse than to fill its reading room with copies of Gerarchia, Rivista deJ Lavoro and publica- tions of this sort. G. Pellizzi is now editing Civilta Fascista, but for brevity's sake it is now possible to make a short cut via Odon Por's Finanza Nuova,
an 80-page summary of new financial ideas (published by Le Monnier, Firenze, 10 lire). Apart from brief restatement of ideas and experiments
? 188 SECTION IV: ESSAYS
elsewhere, the opening pages of this book give the clearest, and for the first time so far as I know, an adequate statement of the basic differences of theory, and, be it said, the superiorities of Corporate State finance over other proposals and experiments. You cannot understand the new Europe without knowledge of the Italian Fascist revolution and you cannot under- stand that revolution without distinguishing two components in it: the men who, led by Mussolini, regenerated Italy, and the men who, seeing that they could not prevent the regeneration, went along with it for what they could make out of it. Por is distinctly in the first group.
"There had been retouches, but not root changes, because the state intervention did not get down to bed rock, but left the hegemony to preda- tory groups. "
"Autarchy set going as constructive reply to the disintegrating power of money-ocracy, was quickly seen by the latter to be a deadly attack, to be
resisted by all means whatsoever, including war.
". . . . it is at any rate clear that it is not the national aggregates that are
fighting . . . but financial cliques prodding the peoples to fight. "
"Why does Plutocracy fight autarchy? " asks Por.
"In the first place autarchy aims at producing enough goods for national
needs. Money no longer dictates production, but an autarchic-cooperative order does the dictating and money depends on this order for its volume and value. "
I wonder if I can translate that sentence any more clearly? Por goes on:
"In short, the cooperative autarchy abolishes money as merchandise as it has abolished labor as merchandise. "
The Italian word is merce. We might say: Under autarchia neither money nor labor [is] something a clique can sweat profits out of.
"The state having established its rule over the economic system ex- tends this rule over the financial. "
"If you consider that the Bank of England is owned by international financiers who are very hard to identify, and that the British Government has not the power to direct the bank's actions always and everywhere; and that the Banque de France is owned by private capitalists and that many seats on its board of directors are, as it were, hereditary in the plutocratic families: Rothschild, Neuflize, Hottinguer, Wendel, Duchemin, etc. who control the key industries, including the arms business, you can measure the meaning of the reorganization of the Banca d'ltalia. "
"It has become really national because no international interest can get
to work inside it.
. " . .
. " . .
? SECTION IV: ESSAYS 189
"The credit of a corporatively organized country is limited to its real riches. "
"These consist in its physical resources in their natural state bettered by modern processes of labor, plus the vital activities of the population and the state of the sciences; of the culture and the intellectual and moral education of the people and the efficient ordering of its institutions. The true wealth is not money. Money is the means accepted to actuate produc-
. "
means to develop the nation's wealth will be provided without having resource to foreign financings. "
All this may seem to be nothing but very plain common sense. Japan may have arrived at this state of sanity and progressed beyond it, for all I know. But you may take it from me that Europe, in general, had not done so by September last year. Even among the bright reformers in various "pro- gressive sectors" such as the U. S. A. (New Deal); Alberta (Social Credit, sabotaged by Monty Norman and the London bleeders); New Zealand (amply reviewed by Por in a later chapter of his Finanza Nuova), some of the essential parts of the mechanism had been omitted.
It is for the above very simple ideas that the Axis Powers are fighting against mouldy superstition. That much you can take as news item, whether you agree with me or not, as to the value of the ideas in themselves.
12 From Rapallo: An Ezra Pound Letter
Japan is to be congratulated on bringing Mr. Matsuoka to her Foreign Office. Having sat at Geneva he knows just how rotten the League was. He knows to anatomthekindofswindlerwhomadeit. Heknowsthementalitythatwas in it, and is in the Carnegie peace swindle. He knows to what degree the latter sniveling gang of pacifists has refrained from using its endowments honestly and how well it has blocked any research into the real causes of war. And this knowledge of his might be of world use.
Funk's plan is a complete answer to the infamies proposed by Streit and Co. But that doesn't mean that Funk's plan will get any adequate publicity in America. You might think it would . . . you might think my compatriots would be able to see the sense of collaborating in a new world order instead
tion and stimulate the exchange of riches
"No sector of the economy can get stranded; all the necessary monetary
. .
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SECTION IV: ESSAYS
of keeping their collective heads in a bag, but if so, you have neglected to note the thoroughness of the obfuscation, various strata of which date from 1863, or 1873, or 1920.
The w^ork of the Vanguard Press in flooding America with cheap editions of Marx, Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin might have been harmless, might even have been useful, had the Americans known their own history. But they have not known their own history; do not know it, and are not in the process of learning it.
As to their learning anything from their papers . . . they have been and are being served by men who sell news that is wanted. Unwanted news just doesn't "sell. "
Rip van Wendell Willkie reads, and has read, the same news sheet as Roosevelt and Morgenthau . . . that is to say, he is pre-conditioned by news-baths carefully prepared by Reuters, Havas, etc. . . . namely, by the propaganda of Rothschild, Lazard and the rest of the most poisonous dregs of humanity. This has been going on for some time.
If Japan gets a "bum" deal, it will be due quite as much to the American people's real ignorance as to any ill-will or even to the blind greed of a minority.
Boak Carter has tried to tell 'em (the Americans) some of the story. The more cats he lets out, the more difficulty he has of getting any time on the air, or of even holding a column.
A quite dear old friend writes me that she is not exactly praying, but concentrating her will every evening to stop Hitler (about whom she knows nothing). She is not a venomous woman and she likes German opera.
A quite bright New York journalist thinks 1 am in danger of being imprisoned here in Italy for the sentiments expressed in a quotation which I have had stamped on my writing paper. He does not recognize the quota- tion as being a motto of Mussolini, despite the fact that it is followed by the "m" now used all over this country to indicate citations from the writings or speeches of II Duce. The quotation is: "liberty is not a right but a duty. "
You Japanese are said to be very ingenious. Go on. Invent something. Find me a mental gimlet that will let a squirt of light into the indubitably active "minds" of America. "Listen-in to Tokyo! " Yes, brother. And the sooner Tokyo starts telling the American people its own history, i. e. the history of
? SECTION IV: ESSAYS 191
the U. S. A. , the sooner the American people will find out. For, of their own motion and initiative, they are not finding it out.
God alone knows what we Americans know of Japan. None of us reads Japanese. Some tens of and hundreds of thousands of us can read German, French and Italian.
Note to your own honor that Italy billed their taking of Somaliland as the FIRST time the British Empire had lost a colony. Spain said, "the first time in 300 years. " A day later came Japanese opinion to the effect that it was the first time since the American Revolution, when we Yanks took out 13 colonies all at once! (Nevertheless, it took us five years, not two months. )
? 192
APPENDIX
APPENDIX I
'ME . ART! !
7AMI KDtfMM^
? APPENDIX 193
Tami Koume, The Art of S Etherism, or Spiritico-Etheric Art
I AM AN artist; I must live in my art; my life is in my art. This being the case, I can ill throw my pencil for a pen, in order to set forth in so many words the principles as well as the inner meanings of my life-problem, the Spiritico- etheric Art.
However, for the enlightened public, who are not yet well acquainted with my art, but kind enough to be curious to know what that is in reality, I would fain forgo the advantages, and try to describe the nature and content oftheartinwhichI havebeenspirituallyawakened,throughtruthful speculation, and by means of entire devotion to the cause of the all-great and mystical Universe.
We are now standing at the critical moment of humanity. We must be saved by something. Hence who would venture to say that the Universe should d[eny? ] the cries vehemently uttered by the chosen few, who par- ticipate in the saving councils of Nature? There are [a] few born now, whose spiritual and intellectual capacities represent the ages of [a] thousand years hence; for nature does not bring forth children useful only for the present age.
In last May, 1920, I have exhibited my artistic creations on my own account, to show the content of my art-life; in other words, I have attempted to reveal the processes that have led my art from artificial creations "to super-artificial-growing-creations. "
Now these "Super-artificial-growing-creations" stand as a sort of medium between self and the universe, while self is a kind of medium in like manner between the universe and the growing creations; and so I have provisionally styled this art then a mediumistic school.
But this term, convenient as it is, [is] apt to be misunderstood as to the essential signifi- cance thereof, on account of its already enjoying a peculiar technical usage of its own; besides, it is rather too superficial to be applied to my spirit- saving art.
Upon this I was forced temporarily to coin a new term, which is but a symbol of my art, by which symbol, I, ,- (which I make bold to pronounce Reitherism or ft Etherism] the essential features of my art-life, it is to be hoped, might be made somewhat plainer. Let me here remark par ex- ceJJence that this sign being the symbol of my art, has no conventional pronuciation, but only serves to signify the inner meaning of my art, and may thus be pronounced as above indicated, because it is an artistic repre- sentation of my art-life.
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APPENDIX
Historically speaking, the art that applies colouring matters on the surface, has been called painting, whose development, it is quite needless to repeat here.
The more advanced painting of the present age has so far progressed as to be able to delineate mental phenomena. But those schools of painting are unable to exhibit anything decisively and analytically as to the origin of all things, and the substance of the mind.
They only deceive themselves and others through unsatisfactory self- affirmations. I, who found it impossible to conform to this state of unrea- son, have at last arrived at this my art, Reitherism, or Spiritico-etheric Art, through purest and truest intuition, and by means of sincerest speculation and pious devotion, even willingly risking physical safety. I was thus saved.
Reitherism is an artification of human life.
Reitherism is a beautification of all things material and immaterial. It is again a beautiful manifestation of Spirit.
Those who are possessed of a beauty-consciousness, will all
acknowledge that, in general. Art means an all-round consciousness- operation that goes for creating beauty artificially. It is a philosophical representation of this truth.
The birth of art is either an Anschauung or an intuitive operation. Art is or should be an Artificial creation, that represents its objects through its own cells. Hence Art is again purest philosophy that deals with the Uni- verse or human life, by imparting its own life to the objects or subjects it has to do with.
The conclusion of art is beauty itself. Beauty consciousness, aesthetic consciousness, is a bodily experience of the life-forms of the good.
Good is the primary intuition or direct-perception that is to be harmo- nized and incorporated with the truth.
In the sense of truth. Art is the mental form of humanity. It is universal- ly a self-contemplation and self-reflection.
In fine, the true, the good, and the beautiful, or truth, goodness and beauty, must form a trinity in unity.
The essence or essential quality of beauty is inexpressible.
True Art is a radiation of high toned or high flooded sense of beauty, that is impressed on practical life of humanity. The ecstasy of faith seems to be the same with an eternal purification of the rapture felt in the moment of love.
The essence of beauty is not to be touched outside the region of self-
? APPENDIX 1 95
knowledge. If it is so, old aesthetics is but a puppet logic, for it cannot go beyond shadowing forth superficial differences of nature.
In the puppet logic, art is defined to be an enjoyment of life. Such views are boastfully entertained by the ignorant, who consider themselves (i. e. men) most high-stationed in the universe, as lords of creation, thus deceiv- ing themselves and others, under the shadow of old antiquated aesthetics, or so-called science of beauty. In fine, man has no right to define art an enjoyment of human life.
If there are any enjoyable elements in art, they are, must be, the es- sential nature of art herself, not her definable meaning, much like the aesthetic impressions accompanying the ecstasy or rapture of faith.
***
The littleness of self or ego, cannot but be felt by those who have become conscious of their own intrinsic nature.
Many and various problems that men cannot solve by means of the progress of science and development of reason, must not be struck away or blotted out as merely unthinkable or incomprehensible.
At least, I myself cannot blunder away the essential power, great and mystic, of the Universe, which we bodily experience irresistibly--and this by lukewarm reasons of science or psychology. No; God forbid!
In such mood, we cannot but exclaim admiringly, when we gaze upon the millions of bright, shining heavenly bodies, "O God, how splendid! " We thus cry to that irresistible might of Nature, and this superartificial power, "O God! " However we have become conscious of these grand
phenomena, so as to extort from us such rapturous exclamations, we cannot deny the Absolute Power called God, pervading the whole Universe.
However, the "God" I admire is not the God of monotheism or polytheism; neither is he the impersonal God of pantheism, though in his essential nature he somewhat approaches the latter. Positively it is not the God of Atheism, said to be one with the Universe.
I deemGodtobeonewiththeUniverse,butthatissointheisticpointof view. Yes; I intuit the existence of God, great and mystical. To recognize the Universal Consciousness or Gosmic soul, is to acknowledge God. The narrow and poor intellect of man can only touch some portion of Universal Consciousness, great and mystic, merely by negating himself.
Men are not aware of the preciousness of negating themselves. But yet those who are awaking to the salvation of their own souls, are approaching the precious state of self-negation daily more and more, nearer and nearer, by self-discipline and deep sincerity--this is not denied by God himself.
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Now simple or pure ego I call the state in which human personality, with its minimum conscious condition, is harmonized and interfused with the consciousness of the Universe. But, what is the state of simple ego, or pure ego, here introduced rather mystically? That is the state of realization or bodily experience of spiritual enlightenment, rational and exalted, attained by inspiratory judgement and reasonable speculation--a state, free from all doubts, and impure ideas, transcending little human personalities, wherein reigns naivety and simplicity.
In this state, minimum human consciousness being present, conscious- ness manifestations in the cerebral cells subsiding, superhuman powers of extraordinary spirituality are dominant.
Such artists who are conscientious enough to live in truth and purity, should bravely renounce all those petty ingenuities, learned from conven- tions, and listen to the voice of conscience, for these petty ingenuities only tend to deceive others as well as the artists themselves.
Although we are determined to part with the shallow self-affirmatory modes of representation taught to us from historical education, so pertina- cious are we men, that we feel much grudge to do away with those skills which have been our companions years long. But those earnest artists who have once listened to the precious voice of conscience, cannot but re- nounce all grudge to live the pure and true life of enlightened artists.
If not so, chefs d'oeuvre themselves are not much better, nay far worse, than those rough lines drawn by children expressive of their love toward nature. They are simply productions of time devoted to ingenuity.
True Art must be love towards humanity, born necessarily for saving the disquietude men entertain in respect to the present existence.
For us who endeavor to live in the soul-saving art, there is no need of a temple or church occupying and enclosing a portion of space. All phe- nomena pervading the infinite universe; nay, one single constellation glittering in the firmament, one single flower emitting sweet fragrance in the field--these are a thousand times better than myriad volumes of printed books, being a direct teaching of God bestowed on us mortals.
The works of Cezanne and van Gogh are manifestations of love apprehended necessarily from Nature. The still lifes of Gezanne are smiling lives, while van Gogh's plants are portions of breathing Nature. They cannot but feel, as though inanimate nature were his or her brothers and sisters.
Yes! all things are our brothers and sisters. All things, men, animals, plants, nay mountains, rivers, desks, papers, all are so. At least I perceive
? APPENDIX 197
them to be so. One's own work--what does it consist of? It is a synthesis of himself, the canvas, and colouring matters. In other words, the work here produced, is an animated object, as it were, which has absorbed my spirit, and got combined with paints on the canvas to be manifested thus.
In one's own productions one's life dwells, and animate some of the elements (spiritual elements) that go to constitute one's self. One's own works produced on such faith are one's brothers, kith and kin, to be sure!
One's work of art is, so to speak, a fragment or detachment of one's own life. Therefore works of art that are not in earnest, and falsely represented, are so many useless cuttings-away of the artist's life! An artist, if he fears death, cannot execute (growing) works. But, to think of death without any (growing) work, this is far more unbearable indeed!
Such artists who fear death, and at the same time fear the appearance of their growing works--these have no right to exist in the noble world of art. I have said, all things in Nature are our brothers.
Yes! so they truly are. All things in Nature are the workings and manifestations of Ether. Men too, in the beginning of their existence, are but simple cells. The germinal cells have, each of them, specific cell-mind, which I christen provisionally Spiritual element.
The spiritual element, which pervades the universe, according to its different operations, sometimes makes organic manifestations, and some- times inorganic manifestations. Strictly speaking, the distinction between organic and inorganic, is, simply, based on the point of view from human standard. They are simply the two faces of that infinite, absolute thing called the Universe.
I shall now speak of my realization of the truth. I repeat, the so-called Spiritual element is the cell-mind of Ether, which not only pervades all spaces, but even fills up the spaces between atoms. All objects emit subtle emanation called aura or auric atmosphere, which is nothing but the proceeding of this spiritual element.
Just as in our visual nerves, vibrating etheric rays strike the retinas to produce colour-impressions; so this spiritual element, by acting upon the cerebral convolutions, can make the nerve centre in the brain produce the auric atmosphere, as above referred to.
The minutest elements in the sensory organ or sensorium are the sensitive cells. Again the minutest elements in the inner sensory centre of the cerebral convolutions are a mass of nerve-cells. In a highly sensitive condition of these nerve-cells, the sensory centre is enabled to have com- munion with the external (so-called) spiritual-elements.
? 198 APPENDIX
So even the colour-forms, that are not reflected on the retina of the eyes, can be seized at the Fornix of the brain. Some persons, in whom their spiritual sensation is highly developed, can insensibly represent or per- ceive them; just as forms that are not made visible by means of prismatic spectrum, can be seized by ultra-violet rays of the spectrum. Our -, p school artists are too highly ultra-sensitive to be merely ingenious to draw visible things.
The recent tendency to give theoretical explanations to the movements of colours or lines, is a dreadful one, apt to specimenize (specify] art, or restrict the significance of it.
i^sthetic symbolisation, or artistic representation, is not mnemonic (of the memory) symbolization constituted by means of speculation or medita- tion, nor is it a conventional specimen either. This is a symbolization reached by the inbringing of feeling, "Ein/iihiung," through which the artist's spiritual character as well as his or her philosophy is manifested, or aesthetically symbolized.
***
The life of art is eternal and everlasting. As long as the Universe stands, as far as all things exist, art is a changeful representation of Nature, running along the orbit of the whole Universe.
Art, though deemed by Moderns to have been brought to a stand-still, or deadlock, has in truth, only finished her first stage, now just on the point of entering on the second stage, which would only commence her true career.
We who have not yet been saved by conventional art based on sense perceptions, must henceforward be saved by the images reflected on the Fornix of the brain.
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? 200 APPENDIX
APPENDIX II VOU CLUB
In his essay "VOU Club," Ezra Pound introduced to Western readers some contemporary Japanese poets. In his generous opinion, their poems were "better work than any save those of E. E. Cummings," admiring in them the Japanese eye which was "like those new camera shutters that catch the bullet leaving the gun. " In his estimation their thought went from one peak to another "faster than our slow wits permit us to follow. "
Pound's essay appeared in the Townsman, vol. I, no. 1 (January, 1938), as an introduction, with the "Notes" by Katue Kitasono, to thirteen poems by eight of the VOU Club members: "Upon the Tragedy of a Flower on the Calm-latitudes or of a Passenger Aeroplane" and "Secrecy of a Duet" by Takeshi Fuji; "The End of Evil Fortune" by Chio Nakamura; "The Road of Flowers" and "Glassy Hour" by Takeshi Koike; "Young Swan" and "Love's Magnetism" by Toshio Sasajima; "Finger Top of Waltz" and "Outflow of Waltz" by Koichi Kihara; "A Battle of Roses" by Minoru Yasoshima; and "Poems" by Katue Kitasono. Reprinted here are Pound's "VOU Club" and Kitasono's "Notes" from the Townsman, in addition to six poems by VOU poets, as well as James Laughlin's "Modern Poets of Japan" from New Directions 1938.
As Pound had suspected, there certainly were other clubs of poets in Japan at that time. Among the "active" poets in the Tokyo area were Junzaburo Nishiwaki, Shiro Murano, Ichiro Ando, Ikuo Haruyama, and Fuyuhiko Kitagawa, to name a few. But also as Pound had guessed, the VOU Club was a center of intellectual attention at that time, rapidly in- creasing its merpbership during the years 1935-37.
Almost twenty years later, Kitasono recollected the old days and wrote an essay, "The VOU Club," upon the request of Michael Reck, who visited him in Tokyo. Reck later included this essay in his book, Ezra Pound; A Close-Up (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967).
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Ezra Pound, VOL/ Club
It is not a case of asking what would any set of eight European and/or American poets look like if asked to translate their poems into Japanese. It is a case of saying that for half a century after Papa P'laubert started writing, any man who wanted to write English prose had to start by reading French prose. And it may be that from now on any man who wants to write English poetrywillhavetostartreadingJapanese. I meanmodernJapanese,not merely studying Chinese ideogram, as I have been advocating for the past twenty years.
Not as translations but as actual writing, these poems are better work than any save those of E. E. Cummings at his happiest. They may even serve to introduce Cummings and Peret to readers who have thought my more obscure younger contemporaries merely eccentric. Yes. You will have to read Mr. Kitasono's introduction twice, and the poems three or four times. The Japanese eye is like those new camera shutters that catch the bullet leaving the gun. You will not understand some sentences as you read them, but only after having got to their ends, see that they reach round and tuck in their beginnings, so that sense is there nicely boxed. I myself feel rather like a grizzly bear faced by a bunch of weasels. It is the Mongoose spring, the chameleon's tongue quickness. All the moss and fuzz that for twenty years we have been trying to scrape off our language--these young men start without it. They see the crystal set, the chemical laboratory and the pine tree with untrammelled clearness. As to their being a or the most active new club of poets in Tokio, I doubt if any one city contains two such clubs. I know that nowhere in Europe is there any such vortex of poetic alertness. Tokio takes over, where Paris stopped.
Make no mistake, the thought is not absent from these poems. The Japanese poet has gone from one peak of it to another faster than our slow wits permit us to follow before we have got used to his pace.
Ezra Pound
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APPENDIX
Katue Kitasono, Notes
These poems collected here were all written by the members of the VOU Club. This club was planned in a stroll of fifteen minutes or so under the platan-trees at Ginza Street, August 1935. After a week the VOU Club consisting of fifteen members was born as a most active, new club of poets in Japan. Almost the half of these poets belonged before to the "Club d'Arcueil," which was made in the spring of 1931 by four young poets and two poetesses. The magazine Madame Blanche was published under my editorship.
At that time we were profoundly influenced by the personality and the attitude for art of Erik Satie. In the memory of this harmless great artist we used the name of the place where he had lived for our Club. The movement of this club rapidly exerted an influence over young poets, and the mem- bers increased next year to more than forty, making an epoch in the poetical world.
It was by an inevitable result of the tendency of the age that the "Club d'Arcueil" should dissolve at last without a serious reason and the Madame Blanche ceased to be published at No. 19.
Now the most interesting subject to us is about the relation between imagery and ideoplasty. Contemporary young poets are all vaguely con- scious of, and worry about this part. Some of them went over again to its extremity and returned. Others gave up exploration and found out a queer new country, remaining only as amateur thinkers. But anyone whose stand- ing ground is in literature can do nothing for it, if he ignores the system of literature.
The formation of poetry takes such a course like below: (a) Language (b) Imagery (c) Ideoplasty
That which we vaguely call poetical effect means, generally, ideoplasty which grows out of the result of imagery. Man has thought out to make a heart-shaped space with two right angles. This great discovery on plastic, and also that of the conies in mathematics, are two mysteries brought by man's intellect.
The relation between imagery and ideoplasty makes us suppose the heart-shaped space which is born by the connection of the same mysterious two curves. We standardized these two curves and got a necessity.
What we must do first for imagery are collection, arrangement, and combination. Thus we get the first line, "a shell, a typewriter, and grapes," in which we have an aesthetic feeling. But there is not any further develop-
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ment. We add the next line and then another aesthetic feeling is born. Thus all the lines are combined and a stanza is finished. This means the comple- tion of imagery of that stanza and then ideoplasty begins.
This principle can be applied to poems consisting of several stanzas. In that case ideoplasty is formed when the last stanza is finished.
Though it cannot be allowed as orthodox of poetry that imagery is performed by ideoplasty, this violence is dared often by religionists, politi- cians, and satirists. Morality poems, political poems and satirical poems are written, almost without exception, with such an illogical principle.
The phenomena in our life proceed, through our senses to our experi- ences, perceptions, and intuitions. It is intuition rationally that provides the essentials for imagery, and it is the method of poetry that materializes intuitions perceptively and combines. Consequently, exact imagery and ideoplasty are due to an exact method. Pure and orthodox poetry cannot exist without this theory.
I fear that the contemporary Japanese literature has not been appreci- ated rightly in the western world, because of the books written not with ability but with amateur energies. The true understanding is not to be led by those to wear gloves and take the pen. It must be carried out by those who, standing on the literary fact of Japan, bravely suffer for laying the eternal literary foundation on the new land.
For a long time we have desired our poems to be read by superior poets of Europe and America.
