Donald Pearce and Herbert
Schneidau
(Redding Ridge, Conn.
Ezra-Pounds-Chinese-Friends-Stories-in-Letters
Ezra Pound's Chinese Friends
This page intentionally left blank
Ezra Pound's Chinese Friends
Stories in Letters
edited and annotated by
ZHAOMING QIAN
1
3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp
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Typeset by SPI Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India Printed in Great Britain
on acid-free paper by
Biddles Ltd. , King's Lynn, Norfolk
ISBN 978-0-19-923860-6 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
ss 2008 Previously unpublished letters and writings of Ezra Pound by courtesy of Mary de Rachewiltz and Omar S. Pound, used by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation, agents.
Photos used by courtesy of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, and New Directions Publishing Corporation, agents.
ss 2008 Postscripts of Dorothy Pound by courtesy of Omar S. Pound.
ss 2008 Scenes from Ezra Pound's screen book by courtesy of Mary de Rachewiltz.
ss 2008 Letters and photographs of Carsun Chang by courtesy of Diana Chang and June
T. F. Chang Tung.
ss 2008 Letters and photographs of Tze-chiang Chao and C. H. Kwock by courtesy of C. H. Kwock.
ss 2008 Letters and photographs of Achilles Fang by courtesy of Ilse Fang.
ss 2008 Letters and photographs of P. H. Fang by courtesy of P. H. Fang.
ss 2008 Photograph of Angela Jung Palandri by courtesy of Angela Jung Palandri.
ss 2008 Letters and photograph of F. T. Sung by courtesy of Hongru Song.
ss 2008 Letters and photograph of Fengchi Yang by courtesy of Lionello Lanciotti.
ss 2008 Writing of William McNaughton by William McNaughton.
ss 2008 Compilation, introductions, annotations, translations, and additional editorial matter by Zhaoming Qian.
Grateful acknowledgment is given to New Directions Publishing Corporation for permission to use the following copyrighted works of Ezra Pound: Excerpts from Ezra Pound's Poetry and Prose: Contributions to Periodicals, copyright ss 1991 by the Trustees of the Ezra Pound Literary Property Trust; excerpts from The Cantos of Ezra Pound, copyright ss 1934, 1937, 1940, 1948, 1956, 1959, 1962, 1963, 1966, and 1968 by Ezra Pound, reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation; The Great Digest, The Unwobbling Pivot, The Analects, from Confucius, edited by Ezra Pound, translated by Ezra Pound, from Confucius, copyright ss 1947, 1950 by Ezra Pound, reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation.
Book cover from Ezra Pound's Shih-Ching: The Classic Anthology Defined by Confucius appears courtesy of Harvard University Press, Copyright ss 1954, 1982 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.
To Barry Ahearn, George Bornstein, and
Marjorie Perloff
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CONTENTS
List of Abbreviations ix List of Figures xi Introduction xiii Notes on the Text xxiii
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
7. 8. 9.
10.
F. T. Sung's China Plan for Pound 1 ''China is interesting, VERY''
Miss Tseng and the Seven Lakes Canto 9 ''Descendant of Kung and Thseng-Tsu''
Yang as Pound's Opponent and Collaborator 18 ''To sacrifice to a spirit not one's own is flattery''
Achilles Fang and Pound's Bilingual Confucius 40 ''All answers are in the FOUR BOOKS''
Pound as Miss Jung's Dissertation Adviser 88 ''One's opinions change''
Pound and Carsun Chang 96 ''Confucianism as Confucius had it''
William McNaughton's Memoir: ''What Pound and
Carsun Chang Talked About at St Elizabeths'' 105
Achilles Fang and Pound's Classic Anthology 107 ''The barbarians need the ODES''
Pound's Discovery of an Ancient Economist 161 ''Chao ought not to be wasted''
From Poetry to Politics 172 ''Wang's middle name not in Mathews''
P. H. Fang and the Naxi Rites in The Cantos 196 ''I have found your Muen Bpo & KA MA gyu''
viii contents
Appendix
Ezra Pound's Typescript for ''Preliminary Survey'' (1951)
207
Glossary 229 Index 235
General
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
ACS autograph postcard signed
ALS autograph letter signed, followed by numeral indicating number of leaves
of the original, e. g. ALS-3 1/4 autograph letter signed consisting of three
leaves
ANS autograph note signed
TL typed letter unsigned, followed by numeral indicating number of leaves of the original, e. g. TL-2 1/4 typed letter unsigned consisting of two leaves
Libraries and Collections
AJP Private collection of Angela Jung Palandri, Eugene, Oregon
Beinecke Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University Brunnenburg Ezra Pound Library, Brunnenburg, Italy
HRHRC Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin Lilly Lilly Library, Indiana University
LL Private collection of Lionello Lanciotti, Rome, Italy PHF Private collection of P. H. Fang, Belmont, Massachusetts
Published Writings of Ezra Pound
Canto
LE Personae
Poetry and Prose SP
The Cantos (14th printing; New York: New Directions, 1998) (references are to canto and page number. )
Literary Essays, ed. T. S. Eliot (1954; New York: New Directions, 1968) Personae: The Shorter Poems, ed. Lea Baechler and A. Walton Litz (1926; rev. ed. New York: New Directions, 1990)
Ezra Pound's Poetry and Prose: Contributions to Periodicals, 10 vols. , ed. Lea Baechler et al. (New York: Garland, 1991)
Selected Prose, 1909-1965, ed. William Cookson (New York: New Directions, 1973)
Published Translations of Ezra Pound
Classic Anthology Shih-Ching: The Classic Anthology Defined by Confucius (1954; Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1982)
Confucius Confucius: The Great Digest, The Unwobbling Pivot, The Analects (1951; New York: New Directions, 1969)
x list of abbreviations Published Letters of Ezra Pound
Letters in Captivity Pound/Japan Pound/Theobald
Ezra and Dorothy Pound: Letters in Captivity, 1945-1946, ed. Omar Pound and Robert Spoo (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999)
Ezra Pound and Japan: Letters and Essays, ed. Sanehide Kodama (Redding Ridge, Conn. : Black Swan, 1987)
Letters of Ezra Pound and John Theobald, ed. Donald Pearce and Herbert Schneidau (Redding Ridge, Conn. : Black Swan, 1984)
Works by Others
Gallup Donald Gallup, Ezra Pound: A Bibliography (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1983)
Legge James Legge, The Chinese Classics, 7 vols. (1865; Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1960)
Mathews R. H. Mathews, Mathews' Chinese-English Dictionary (1931; Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1944)
Terrell Carroll F. Terrell, A Companion to The Cantos of Ezra Pound (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1980)
1. 1 1. 2 2. 1 2. 2
2. 3 2. 4 3. 1 3. 2 3. 3 4. 1 4. 2 5. 1 5. 2 6. 1 6. 2 6. 3 6. 4 7. 1 7. 2 7. 3 7. 4 7. 5 8. 1 8. 2 9. 1 9. 2
10. 1 10. 2 10. 3 10. 4
LIST OF FIGURES
F. T. Sung, 1914 4 EP in London, 1916 5 ''Night Rain'' from EP's screen book 12 ''Autumn Moon,'' ''Evening Bell,'' ''Sailboats Returning''
from EP's screen book 12 Pao Swen Tseng, 1928 13 Pao Swen Tseng and Yueh-nung Tseng, 1955 14 EP in Rome, c. 1941 20 Fengchi Yang, c. 1960 21 Letter 10 22 Sample of the Tang Stone-Classics 43 Achilles Fang, 1951 44 Angela Jung, 1952 91 EP at Sant'Ambrogio, 1967 92 Carsun Chang, 1953 98 Carsun Chang, 1957 99 Autographs of EP and Chang, 1953 100 C. H. Kwock and Louis Armstrong, 1958 101 Achilles Fang, 1953 110 EP's sound key to Ode 167 111 EP's seal text of Ode 167 112 Cover of Classic Anthology 113 Achilles and Ilse Fang, 1957 114 EP on the St. Elizabeths lawn, 1957 163 Tze-chiang Chao, 1935 164 David Wang, c. 1955 174 David Wang, c. 1955 174 ''By the temple pool'' 200 P. H. and Josephine Fang with Zhaoming Qian, 2003 200 EP's note to P. H. Fang 201 The Fangs to EP and DP, 1959 202
Figures 1. 2, 3. 1, 3. 3, 4. 1, 5. 2, 6. 3, 7. 2, 7. 3, 8. 1, and 10. 3 ss 2008 Mary de Rachewiltz
and Omar Pound, permission by New Directions Publishing Corporation, agents.
Figure 1. 1 ss 2008 Hongru Song, permission by Hongru Song.
Figures 2. 1 and 2. 2 ss 2008 Mary de Rachewiltz, permission by Mary de
Rachewiltz.
Figure 3. 2 ss 2008 Lionello Lanciotti, permission by Lionello Lanciotti. Figures 4. 2, 7. 1, and 7. 5 ss 2008 Ilse Fang, permission by Ilse Fang.
Figure 5. 1 ss 2008 Angela Jung Palandri, permission by Angela Jung Palandri.
xii list of figures
Figures 6. 1 and 6. 2 ss 2008 Diana Chang and June Chang Tung, permission by Diana Chang and June Chang Tung.
Figures 6. 4 and 8. 2 ss 2008 C. H. Kwock, permission by C. H. Kwock. Figures 10. 1, and 10. 4 ss 2008 P. H. Fang, permission by P. H. Fang.
For figures 2. 3, 2. 4, 9. 1, and 9. 2, see disclaimer in ''Notes on the Text,'' p. xxiv.
INTRODUCTION Pound is the inventor of Chinese poetry for our time.
I predict that the next century will see, even be dominated by, a dialogue between the U. S. and China in which Pound's poetry will take on an importance and weight not obvious at the moment: that not only has he woven a new wholeness, at any rate potential wholeness, out of European and American, but also of Chinese, elements.
Tom Scott2
No literary Wgure of the past century--in America or perhaps in any other Western country--is comparable to Ezra Pound (1885-1972) in the scope and depth of his exchange with China. To this day, scholars and students still Wnd it puzzling that this inXuential poet spent a lifetime incorporating Chinese lan- guage, literature, history, and philosophy into Anglo-American modernism.
A package of notes and manuscripts Pound received from the widow of the American orientalist Ernest Fenollosa (1853-1908) in late 1913 Wrst opened his eyes to the Imagist strength of Japanese Noh drama, Chinese classic poetry, and the Chinese written character. His 1915 volume Cathay from Fenollosa's Chinese poetry notes paved the way for his transition to high modernism. It also earned him recognition as ''the inventor of Chinese poetry for our time. '' This Wrst success led to his inquiry into Confucianism. In Guillaume Pauthier's French version of the Confucian Four Books (Les quatre livres) he discovered a philoso- phy that would correct Western civilization. 3 Consequently, Confucius recurs again and again in Pound's long poem The Cantos. His Canto 13 is a eulogy of Confucius' respect for the individual. Cantos 52-71 juxtapose early Republican America with China from Confucius' ideal kings Yao and Shun to Qing emperors Kangxi and Yongzheng as a way to suggest the right forms of government. Cantos 85 and 86 pay tribute to the Confucian tenets found in Shu jing or the Book of History, and Cantos 98 and 99 to Kangxi's ''Sacred Edict. '' In the 1940s and early 1950s, Pound translated into English three of the Confucian Four Books and all 305 odes of the Confucian Book of Odes. 4
How well did Pound know Chinese? How did he go about rendering Chinese texts into English? He is known to have owned a set of Robert Morrison's
1 2 3
Chine (1846; rpt. Paris: Librairie Garnier Fre`res, 1910).
4
Ezra Pound, trans. , ''Confucius: The Unwobbling Pivot & The Great Digest,'' Pharos, 4 (Winter [1946] 1947); ''The Analects,'' Hudson Review, 3/1 (Spring 1950); The Classic Anthology DeWned by Confucius (Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1954).
T. S. Eliot, introduction, Selected Poems of Ezra Pound (London: Faber and Faber, 1928), xvi. Tom Scott, ''The Poet as Scapegoat,'' Agenda, 7/2 (1969), 57.
Guillaume Pauthier, Confucius et Mencius: Les quatre livres de philosophie morale et politique de la
T. S. Eliot1
xiv introduction
multivolume Dictionary of the Chinese Language since 1914, carried a small Shanghai Commercial Press Chinese-English dictionary to the Disciplinary Training Center outside Pisa in 1945, and purchased a copy of Mathews' Chi- nese-English Dictionary around 1947. 5 Did he learn the Chinese language from dictionaries? Was he guided exclusively by eighteenth-to nineteenth-century orientalists' versions in his various Chinese projects?
Donald Pearce and Herbert Schneidau (Redding Ridge, Conn. : Black Swan, 1984)
Works by Others
Gallup Donald Gallup, Ezra Pound: A Bibliography (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1983)
Legge James Legge, The Chinese Classics, 7 vols. (1865; Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1960)
Mathews R. H. Mathews, Mathews' Chinese-English Dictionary (1931; Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1944)
Terrell Carroll F. Terrell, A Companion to The Cantos of Ezra Pound (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1980)
1. 1 1. 2 2. 1 2. 2
2. 3 2. 4 3. 1 3. 2 3. 3 4. 1 4. 2 5. 1 5. 2 6. 1 6. 2 6. 3 6. 4 7. 1 7. 2 7. 3 7. 4 7. 5 8. 1 8. 2 9. 1 9. 2
10. 1 10. 2 10. 3 10. 4
LIST OF FIGURES
F. T. Sung, 1914 4 EP in London, 1916 5 ''Night Rain'' from EP's screen book 12 ''Autumn Moon,'' ''Evening Bell,'' ''Sailboats Returning''
from EP's screen book 12 Pao Swen Tseng, 1928 13 Pao Swen Tseng and Yueh-nung Tseng, 1955 14 EP in Rome, c. 1941 20 Fengchi Yang, c. 1960 21 Letter 10 22 Sample of the Tang Stone-Classics 43 Achilles Fang, 1951 44 Angela Jung, 1952 91 EP at Sant'Ambrogio, 1967 92 Carsun Chang, 1953 98 Carsun Chang, 1957 99 Autographs of EP and Chang, 1953 100 C. H. Kwock and Louis Armstrong, 1958 101 Achilles Fang, 1953 110 EP's sound key to Ode 167 111 EP's seal text of Ode 167 112 Cover of Classic Anthology 113 Achilles and Ilse Fang, 1957 114 EP on the St. Elizabeths lawn, 1957 163 Tze-chiang Chao, 1935 164 David Wang, c. 1955 174 David Wang, c. 1955 174 ''By the temple pool'' 200 P. H. and Josephine Fang with Zhaoming Qian, 2003 200 EP's note to P. H. Fang 201 The Fangs to EP and DP, 1959 202
Figures 1. 2, 3. 1, 3. 3, 4. 1, 5. 2, 6. 3, 7. 2, 7. 3, 8. 1, and 10. 3 ss 2008 Mary de Rachewiltz
and Omar Pound, permission by New Directions Publishing Corporation, agents.
Figure 1. 1 ss 2008 Hongru Song, permission by Hongru Song.
Figures 2. 1 and 2. 2 ss 2008 Mary de Rachewiltz, permission by Mary de
Rachewiltz.
Figure 3. 2 ss 2008 Lionello Lanciotti, permission by Lionello Lanciotti. Figures 4. 2, 7. 1, and 7. 5 ss 2008 Ilse Fang, permission by Ilse Fang.
Figure 5. 1 ss 2008 Angela Jung Palandri, permission by Angela Jung Palandri.
xii list of figures
Figures 6. 1 and 6. 2 ss 2008 Diana Chang and June Chang Tung, permission by Diana Chang and June Chang Tung.
Figures 6. 4 and 8. 2 ss 2008 C. H. Kwock, permission by C. H. Kwock. Figures 10. 1, and 10. 4 ss 2008 P. H. Fang, permission by P. H. Fang.
For figures 2. 3, 2. 4, 9. 1, and 9. 2, see disclaimer in ''Notes on the Text,'' p. xxiv.
INTRODUCTION Pound is the inventor of Chinese poetry for our time.
I predict that the next century will see, even be dominated by, a dialogue between the U. S. and China in which Pound's poetry will take on an importance and weight not obvious at the moment: that not only has he woven a new wholeness, at any rate potential wholeness, out of European and American, but also of Chinese, elements.
Tom Scott2
No literary Wgure of the past century--in America or perhaps in any other Western country--is comparable to Ezra Pound (1885-1972) in the scope and depth of his exchange with China. To this day, scholars and students still Wnd it puzzling that this inXuential poet spent a lifetime incorporating Chinese lan- guage, literature, history, and philosophy into Anglo-American modernism.
A package of notes and manuscripts Pound received from the widow of the American orientalist Ernest Fenollosa (1853-1908) in late 1913 Wrst opened his eyes to the Imagist strength of Japanese Noh drama, Chinese classic poetry, and the Chinese written character. His 1915 volume Cathay from Fenollosa's Chinese poetry notes paved the way for his transition to high modernism. It also earned him recognition as ''the inventor of Chinese poetry for our time. '' This Wrst success led to his inquiry into Confucianism. In Guillaume Pauthier's French version of the Confucian Four Books (Les quatre livres) he discovered a philoso- phy that would correct Western civilization. 3 Consequently, Confucius recurs again and again in Pound's long poem The Cantos. His Canto 13 is a eulogy of Confucius' respect for the individual. Cantos 52-71 juxtapose early Republican America with China from Confucius' ideal kings Yao and Shun to Qing emperors Kangxi and Yongzheng as a way to suggest the right forms of government. Cantos 85 and 86 pay tribute to the Confucian tenets found in Shu jing or the Book of History, and Cantos 98 and 99 to Kangxi's ''Sacred Edict. '' In the 1940s and early 1950s, Pound translated into English three of the Confucian Four Books and all 305 odes of the Confucian Book of Odes. 4
How well did Pound know Chinese? How did he go about rendering Chinese texts into English? He is known to have owned a set of Robert Morrison's
1 2 3
Chine (1846; rpt. Paris: Librairie Garnier Fre`res, 1910).
4
Ezra Pound, trans. , ''Confucius: The Unwobbling Pivot & The Great Digest,'' Pharos, 4 (Winter [1946] 1947); ''The Analects,'' Hudson Review, 3/1 (Spring 1950); The Classic Anthology DeWned by Confucius (Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1954).
T. S. Eliot, introduction, Selected Poems of Ezra Pound (London: Faber and Faber, 1928), xvi. Tom Scott, ''The Poet as Scapegoat,'' Agenda, 7/2 (1969), 57.
Guillaume Pauthier, Confucius et Mencius: Les quatre livres de philosophie morale et politique de la
T. S. Eliot1
xiv introduction
multivolume Dictionary of the Chinese Language since 1914, carried a small Shanghai Commercial Press Chinese-English dictionary to the Disciplinary Training Center outside Pisa in 1945, and purchased a copy of Mathews' Chi- nese-English Dictionary around 1947. 5 Did he learn the Chinese language from dictionaries? Was he guided exclusively by eighteenth-to nineteenth-century orientalists' versions in his various Chinese projects?
Among the archival materials kept at the Beinecke Library of Yale University and the Lilly Library of Indiana University are over two hundred letters and postcards Pound received from his Chinese friends--F. T. Sung (1883-1940), Fengchi Yang (1908-70), Achilles Fang (1910-95), Veronica Huilan Sun (b. 1927), Carsun Chang (1886-1969), C. H. Kwock (b. 1920), Tze-chiang Chao (1913- c. 1985), David Wang (1931-77), and P. H. Fang (b. 1923). Did Pound seek guidance from any of them? Those who have written about Pound and China have failed to address this fundamental question. 6 No one was able to do so until a few years ago since the letters Pound wrote to the above and other Chinese were sealed or had not been found. 7
This book brings together 162 revealing letters between Pound and his Chinese friends, eighty-Wve of them newly opened up and none previously printed. Accompanied by my introductions and notes, these selected letters make available for the Wrst time the forgotten stories of Pound and his Chinese
5
See Robert Morrison, A Dictionary of the Chinese Language, in Three Parts (Macao: The Honorable East India Company Press, 1815); Zhang Tiemin, Chinese-English Dictionary (Shanghai: Commercial Press, 1933); R. H. Mathews, Mathews' Chinese-English Dictionary (Shanghai: China Inland Mission and Presbyterian Mission Press, 1931; rpt. Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1944).
6
Blossoms from the East: The China Cantos of Ezra Pound (Orono, Me. : National Poetry Foundation,
1983); Zhaoming Qian, Orientalism and Modernism: The Legacy of China in Pound and Williams
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995); Mary Paterson Cheadle, Ezra Pound's Confucian
Translations (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997); Ming Xie, Ezra Pound and the
Appropriation of Chinese Poetry (New York: Garland Publishing, 1999); and Feng Lan, Ezra Pound
and Confucianism (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005). Cheadle is the only critic to have
devoted some attention to Achilles Fang's impact on Pound. Nevertheless, relying on one side of
their correspondence Cheadle's discussion of Pound and Fang is unavoidably less than satisfactory.
7
In 1999 Mrs Ilse Fang lifted the seal her late husband Achilles Fang (1910-95) had Wxed to 108 letters Pound wrote to him between 1950 and 1958. This breakthrough was followed by my discovery of six letters and a postcard of 1939-41 from Pound to Fengchi Yang in the private collection of Lionello Lanciotti (Rome). Pound's 1955-8 correspondence to David Wang was considered lost after Wang's mysterious death in 1977. Fortunately, in the mid-1970s Wang left a photocopy of the correspondence with Hugh Witemeyer. In 2003 Witemeyer graciously donated this photocopy (perhaps the only copy of the correspondence) to the Beinecke Library of Yale University. Meanwhile, Pound's surviving Chinese friend Angela Jung (Palandri) kindly permitted me access to six letters Pound wrote to her in 1952 and two letters Pound's companion Olga Rudge wrote to her on behalf of Pound in 1967. Furthermore, three postcards inappropriately Wled in the Beinecke and Lilly Pound Archives escorted me to an ''unknown'' friend of Pound (P. H. Fang), a ''lost'' sourcebook, and two additional Pound letters. Once the newly-found Pound correspondence joined the Chinese friends' correspondence in the Pound Archives, the fascinating stories of Pound and his Chinese friends came to light.
See Wai-lim Yip, Ezra Pound's Cathay (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969); John Nolde,
introduction xv
friends. They illuminate a dimension in Pound's career that has been neglected: his dynamic interaction with people from China over a span of forty-Wve years from 1914 until 1959. This selection will also be a documentary record of a leading modernist's unparalleled eVorts to pursue what he saw as the best of China, including both his stumbles and his triumphs.
This project has been conceived as a companion volume to Orientalism and Modernism: The Legacy of China in Pound and Williams (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995) and The Modernist Response to Chinese Art: Pound, Moore, Stevens (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2003). Whereas my previ- ous studies forgo personal dramas in favor of intertextual and inter-arts criti- cisms, this volume brings the inXuence of China into a lively and powerful social context. Rather than making their way through another critical work, readers will be able to hear Pound and his Chinese friends speak for themselves through their correspondence. And instead of weaving fragments of their exchanges into a study, I keep my critical opinions within my introductions to ten coherent dialogues. Pound's own words and his Chinese friends' words, rather than those of any critics, will make the most convincing arguments about Pound and China.
This book will matter to those who are interested in Ezra Pound as well as to those among the wider public who are interested in literary modernism and East Asian humanities. Catching exceptional glimpses of Pound's private dia- logues with the Chinese, his shifting visions of China, and the evolution of his China-related works, Ezra Pound's Chinese Friends will stand to change the way we think of Pound and China, and modernism and China.
Scholars such as Carroll Terrell have identiWed Se ? raphin Couvreur's trilingual and James Legge's bilingual Book of History (Shu jing) as sources of Pound's Cantos 85-7; and Joseph Rock's monographs on the Naxi (Na-khi) ethnic group in China have been identiWed as guides for the Naxi passages in Cantos 101, 104, 110, 112, and 113. 8 But the correspondence included here will testify to the active involvement of his Chinese friends in these projects. Just as educator Pao Swen Tseng (1893-1978) oVered Pound an oral translation of eight Chinese poems that led to his Seven Lakes Canto (Canto 49),9 so Harvard scholar Achilles Fang prepared his use of Shu jing in Cantos 85-7 and Lijiang native P. H. Fang Wrst introduced him to the Naxi rites of Thrones (1959) and Drafts and Fragments (1969). Relevant letters will also reveal that poet-translator Tze-chiang Chao, rather than Professor Lewis Maverick, dup up for Pound's Canto 106 the
8 See Terrell, 466-7, 652-3, 713. See also Se ? raphin Couvreur, Chou King (Paris: Cathasia, 1950);
Legge, iii; Joseph Rock, ''The Romance of 2K'a-2ma ? -1gyu-3mi-2gkyi, A Na-khi Tribal Love Story,''
Bulletin de l'E ? cole Franc ? aise d'Extre^me-Orient, 39 (1939), 1-155, plus 157-213; and ''The 2Muan 1Bpo ? 12
Ceremony or the SacriWce to Heaven as Practiced by the Na- khi,'' Monumenta Serica: Journal of Oriental Studies of the Catholic University of Peking, 13 (1948), 1-160.
9
Angela Jung Palandri, ''The 'Seven Lakes Canto' Revisited,'' Paideuma, 3/1 (Spring 1974), 51-4. See also Zhaoming Qian, The Modernist Response to Chinese Art: Pound, Moore, Stevens (Charlottes- ville: University of Virginia Press, 2003), 123-4.
xvi introduction
seventh-century bc economist Guan Zhong (Kuan Chung). Before Pound acquired a copy of Maverick's Economic Dialogues in Ancient China (1954), Chao had already provided him with translations of Guan's sayings, biography, and a chronology of the Chinese legalist tradition initiated by him. 10
Among Pound's Confucian translations only Ta Hio: The Great Learning of Confucius (1928) and Confucius: Digest of the Analects (1937) were made without the aid of a Chinese. 11 In retranslating two of the Confucian Four Books into Italian he obtained assistance from Fengchi Yang. 12 As to his late Confucian transla- tions, Achilles Fang contributed more than a ''Note on the Stone-Classics'' to The Great Digest & The Unwobbling Pivot (1951) and an introduction to The Classic Anthology DeWned by Confucius (1954). 13 He oversaw the production of the two books from cover designs through corrections of romanized spellings and lining up Chinese characters with English translations.
The letters will convince the reader that the exchange between Pound and China was richer and more complex than often portrayed in modernist studies. It is not always true that Anglo-American modernists and their Chinese coun- terparts echo more than they diVer. The anti-Confucian stance of F. T. Sung, for instance, alienated Pound. During their meeting in London, Sung handed over to Pound an article in English that criticized Confucian teachings. Despite his disapproval Pound arranged to have it published in the London Egoist. This article, along with a British orientalist's anti-Confucian piece, sparked Pound into writing his Wrst pro-Confucian essay, ''The Words of Ming Mao 'Least among the Disciples of Kung Fu-Tze' '' (1914).
This page intentionally left blank
Ezra Pound's Chinese Friends
Stories in Letters
edited and annotated by
ZHAOMING QIAN
1
3
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Typeset by SPI Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India Printed in Great Britain
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ISBN 978-0-19-923860-6 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
ss 2008 Previously unpublished letters and writings of Ezra Pound by courtesy of Mary de Rachewiltz and Omar S. Pound, used by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation, agents.
Photos used by courtesy of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, and New Directions Publishing Corporation, agents.
ss 2008 Postscripts of Dorothy Pound by courtesy of Omar S. Pound.
ss 2008 Scenes from Ezra Pound's screen book by courtesy of Mary de Rachewiltz.
ss 2008 Letters and photographs of Carsun Chang by courtesy of Diana Chang and June
T. F. Chang Tung.
ss 2008 Letters and photographs of Tze-chiang Chao and C. H. Kwock by courtesy of C. H. Kwock.
ss 2008 Letters and photographs of Achilles Fang by courtesy of Ilse Fang.
ss 2008 Letters and photographs of P. H. Fang by courtesy of P. H. Fang.
ss 2008 Photograph of Angela Jung Palandri by courtesy of Angela Jung Palandri.
ss 2008 Letters and photograph of F. T. Sung by courtesy of Hongru Song.
ss 2008 Letters and photograph of Fengchi Yang by courtesy of Lionello Lanciotti.
ss 2008 Writing of William McNaughton by William McNaughton.
ss 2008 Compilation, introductions, annotations, translations, and additional editorial matter by Zhaoming Qian.
Grateful acknowledgment is given to New Directions Publishing Corporation for permission to use the following copyrighted works of Ezra Pound: Excerpts from Ezra Pound's Poetry and Prose: Contributions to Periodicals, copyright ss 1991 by the Trustees of the Ezra Pound Literary Property Trust; excerpts from The Cantos of Ezra Pound, copyright ss 1934, 1937, 1940, 1948, 1956, 1959, 1962, 1963, 1966, and 1968 by Ezra Pound, reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation; The Great Digest, The Unwobbling Pivot, The Analects, from Confucius, edited by Ezra Pound, translated by Ezra Pound, from Confucius, copyright ss 1947, 1950 by Ezra Pound, reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation.
Book cover from Ezra Pound's Shih-Ching: The Classic Anthology Defined by Confucius appears courtesy of Harvard University Press, Copyright ss 1954, 1982 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.
To Barry Ahearn, George Bornstein, and
Marjorie Perloff
This page intentionally left blank
CONTENTS
List of Abbreviations ix List of Figures xi Introduction xiii Notes on the Text xxiii
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
7. 8. 9.
10.
F. T. Sung's China Plan for Pound 1 ''China is interesting, VERY''
Miss Tseng and the Seven Lakes Canto 9 ''Descendant of Kung and Thseng-Tsu''
Yang as Pound's Opponent and Collaborator 18 ''To sacrifice to a spirit not one's own is flattery''
Achilles Fang and Pound's Bilingual Confucius 40 ''All answers are in the FOUR BOOKS''
Pound as Miss Jung's Dissertation Adviser 88 ''One's opinions change''
Pound and Carsun Chang 96 ''Confucianism as Confucius had it''
William McNaughton's Memoir: ''What Pound and
Carsun Chang Talked About at St Elizabeths'' 105
Achilles Fang and Pound's Classic Anthology 107 ''The barbarians need the ODES''
Pound's Discovery of an Ancient Economist 161 ''Chao ought not to be wasted''
From Poetry to Politics 172 ''Wang's middle name not in Mathews''
P. H. Fang and the Naxi Rites in The Cantos 196 ''I have found your Muen Bpo & KA MA gyu''
viii contents
Appendix
Ezra Pound's Typescript for ''Preliminary Survey'' (1951)
207
Glossary 229 Index 235
General
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
ACS autograph postcard signed
ALS autograph letter signed, followed by numeral indicating number of leaves
of the original, e. g. ALS-3 1/4 autograph letter signed consisting of three
leaves
ANS autograph note signed
TL typed letter unsigned, followed by numeral indicating number of leaves of the original, e. g. TL-2 1/4 typed letter unsigned consisting of two leaves
Libraries and Collections
AJP Private collection of Angela Jung Palandri, Eugene, Oregon
Beinecke Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University Brunnenburg Ezra Pound Library, Brunnenburg, Italy
HRHRC Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin Lilly Lilly Library, Indiana University
LL Private collection of Lionello Lanciotti, Rome, Italy PHF Private collection of P. H. Fang, Belmont, Massachusetts
Published Writings of Ezra Pound
Canto
LE Personae
Poetry and Prose SP
The Cantos (14th printing; New York: New Directions, 1998) (references are to canto and page number. )
Literary Essays, ed. T. S. Eliot (1954; New York: New Directions, 1968) Personae: The Shorter Poems, ed. Lea Baechler and A. Walton Litz (1926; rev. ed. New York: New Directions, 1990)
Ezra Pound's Poetry and Prose: Contributions to Periodicals, 10 vols. , ed. Lea Baechler et al. (New York: Garland, 1991)
Selected Prose, 1909-1965, ed. William Cookson (New York: New Directions, 1973)
Published Translations of Ezra Pound
Classic Anthology Shih-Ching: The Classic Anthology Defined by Confucius (1954; Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1982)
Confucius Confucius: The Great Digest, The Unwobbling Pivot, The Analects (1951; New York: New Directions, 1969)
x list of abbreviations Published Letters of Ezra Pound
Letters in Captivity Pound/Japan Pound/Theobald
Ezra and Dorothy Pound: Letters in Captivity, 1945-1946, ed. Omar Pound and Robert Spoo (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999)
Ezra Pound and Japan: Letters and Essays, ed. Sanehide Kodama (Redding Ridge, Conn. : Black Swan, 1987)
Letters of Ezra Pound and John Theobald, ed. Donald Pearce and Herbert Schneidau (Redding Ridge, Conn. : Black Swan, 1984)
Works by Others
Gallup Donald Gallup, Ezra Pound: A Bibliography (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1983)
Legge James Legge, The Chinese Classics, 7 vols. (1865; Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1960)
Mathews R. H. Mathews, Mathews' Chinese-English Dictionary (1931; Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1944)
Terrell Carroll F. Terrell, A Companion to The Cantos of Ezra Pound (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1980)
1. 1 1. 2 2. 1 2. 2
2. 3 2. 4 3. 1 3. 2 3. 3 4. 1 4. 2 5. 1 5. 2 6. 1 6. 2 6. 3 6. 4 7. 1 7. 2 7. 3 7. 4 7. 5 8. 1 8. 2 9. 1 9. 2
10. 1 10. 2 10. 3 10. 4
LIST OF FIGURES
F. T. Sung, 1914 4 EP in London, 1916 5 ''Night Rain'' from EP's screen book 12 ''Autumn Moon,'' ''Evening Bell,'' ''Sailboats Returning''
from EP's screen book 12 Pao Swen Tseng, 1928 13 Pao Swen Tseng and Yueh-nung Tseng, 1955 14 EP in Rome, c. 1941 20 Fengchi Yang, c. 1960 21 Letter 10 22 Sample of the Tang Stone-Classics 43 Achilles Fang, 1951 44 Angela Jung, 1952 91 EP at Sant'Ambrogio, 1967 92 Carsun Chang, 1953 98 Carsun Chang, 1957 99 Autographs of EP and Chang, 1953 100 C. H. Kwock and Louis Armstrong, 1958 101 Achilles Fang, 1953 110 EP's sound key to Ode 167 111 EP's seal text of Ode 167 112 Cover of Classic Anthology 113 Achilles and Ilse Fang, 1957 114 EP on the St. Elizabeths lawn, 1957 163 Tze-chiang Chao, 1935 164 David Wang, c. 1955 174 David Wang, c. 1955 174 ''By the temple pool'' 200 P. H. and Josephine Fang with Zhaoming Qian, 2003 200 EP's note to P. H. Fang 201 The Fangs to EP and DP, 1959 202
Figures 1. 2, 3. 1, 3. 3, 4. 1, 5. 2, 6. 3, 7. 2, 7. 3, 8. 1, and 10. 3 ss 2008 Mary de Rachewiltz
and Omar Pound, permission by New Directions Publishing Corporation, agents.
Figure 1. 1 ss 2008 Hongru Song, permission by Hongru Song.
Figures 2. 1 and 2. 2 ss 2008 Mary de Rachewiltz, permission by Mary de
Rachewiltz.
Figure 3. 2 ss 2008 Lionello Lanciotti, permission by Lionello Lanciotti. Figures 4. 2, 7. 1, and 7. 5 ss 2008 Ilse Fang, permission by Ilse Fang.
Figure 5. 1 ss 2008 Angela Jung Palandri, permission by Angela Jung Palandri.
xii list of figures
Figures 6. 1 and 6. 2 ss 2008 Diana Chang and June Chang Tung, permission by Diana Chang and June Chang Tung.
Figures 6. 4 and 8. 2 ss 2008 C. H. Kwock, permission by C. H. Kwock. Figures 10. 1, and 10. 4 ss 2008 P. H. Fang, permission by P. H. Fang.
For figures 2. 3, 2. 4, 9. 1, and 9. 2, see disclaimer in ''Notes on the Text,'' p. xxiv.
INTRODUCTION Pound is the inventor of Chinese poetry for our time.
I predict that the next century will see, even be dominated by, a dialogue between the U. S. and China in which Pound's poetry will take on an importance and weight not obvious at the moment: that not only has he woven a new wholeness, at any rate potential wholeness, out of European and American, but also of Chinese, elements.
Tom Scott2
No literary Wgure of the past century--in America or perhaps in any other Western country--is comparable to Ezra Pound (1885-1972) in the scope and depth of his exchange with China. To this day, scholars and students still Wnd it puzzling that this inXuential poet spent a lifetime incorporating Chinese lan- guage, literature, history, and philosophy into Anglo-American modernism.
A package of notes and manuscripts Pound received from the widow of the American orientalist Ernest Fenollosa (1853-1908) in late 1913 Wrst opened his eyes to the Imagist strength of Japanese Noh drama, Chinese classic poetry, and the Chinese written character. His 1915 volume Cathay from Fenollosa's Chinese poetry notes paved the way for his transition to high modernism. It also earned him recognition as ''the inventor of Chinese poetry for our time. '' This Wrst success led to his inquiry into Confucianism. In Guillaume Pauthier's French version of the Confucian Four Books (Les quatre livres) he discovered a philoso- phy that would correct Western civilization. 3 Consequently, Confucius recurs again and again in Pound's long poem The Cantos. His Canto 13 is a eulogy of Confucius' respect for the individual. Cantos 52-71 juxtapose early Republican America with China from Confucius' ideal kings Yao and Shun to Qing emperors Kangxi and Yongzheng as a way to suggest the right forms of government. Cantos 85 and 86 pay tribute to the Confucian tenets found in Shu jing or the Book of History, and Cantos 98 and 99 to Kangxi's ''Sacred Edict. '' In the 1940s and early 1950s, Pound translated into English three of the Confucian Four Books and all 305 odes of the Confucian Book of Odes. 4
How well did Pound know Chinese? How did he go about rendering Chinese texts into English? He is known to have owned a set of Robert Morrison's
1 2 3
Chine (1846; rpt. Paris: Librairie Garnier Fre`res, 1910).
4
Ezra Pound, trans. , ''Confucius: The Unwobbling Pivot & The Great Digest,'' Pharos, 4 (Winter [1946] 1947); ''The Analects,'' Hudson Review, 3/1 (Spring 1950); The Classic Anthology DeWned by Confucius (Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1954).
T. S. Eliot, introduction, Selected Poems of Ezra Pound (London: Faber and Faber, 1928), xvi. Tom Scott, ''The Poet as Scapegoat,'' Agenda, 7/2 (1969), 57.
Guillaume Pauthier, Confucius et Mencius: Les quatre livres de philosophie morale et politique de la
T. S. Eliot1
xiv introduction
multivolume Dictionary of the Chinese Language since 1914, carried a small Shanghai Commercial Press Chinese-English dictionary to the Disciplinary Training Center outside Pisa in 1945, and purchased a copy of Mathews' Chi- nese-English Dictionary around 1947. 5 Did he learn the Chinese language from dictionaries? Was he guided exclusively by eighteenth-to nineteenth-century orientalists' versions in his various Chinese projects?
Donald Pearce and Herbert Schneidau (Redding Ridge, Conn. : Black Swan, 1984)
Works by Others
Gallup Donald Gallup, Ezra Pound: A Bibliography (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1983)
Legge James Legge, The Chinese Classics, 7 vols. (1865; Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1960)
Mathews R. H. Mathews, Mathews' Chinese-English Dictionary (1931; Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1944)
Terrell Carroll F. Terrell, A Companion to The Cantos of Ezra Pound (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1980)
1. 1 1. 2 2. 1 2. 2
2. 3 2. 4 3. 1 3. 2 3. 3 4. 1 4. 2 5. 1 5. 2 6. 1 6. 2 6. 3 6. 4 7. 1 7. 2 7. 3 7. 4 7. 5 8. 1 8. 2 9. 1 9. 2
10. 1 10. 2 10. 3 10. 4
LIST OF FIGURES
F. T. Sung, 1914 4 EP in London, 1916 5 ''Night Rain'' from EP's screen book 12 ''Autumn Moon,'' ''Evening Bell,'' ''Sailboats Returning''
from EP's screen book 12 Pao Swen Tseng, 1928 13 Pao Swen Tseng and Yueh-nung Tseng, 1955 14 EP in Rome, c. 1941 20 Fengchi Yang, c. 1960 21 Letter 10 22 Sample of the Tang Stone-Classics 43 Achilles Fang, 1951 44 Angela Jung, 1952 91 EP at Sant'Ambrogio, 1967 92 Carsun Chang, 1953 98 Carsun Chang, 1957 99 Autographs of EP and Chang, 1953 100 C. H. Kwock and Louis Armstrong, 1958 101 Achilles Fang, 1953 110 EP's sound key to Ode 167 111 EP's seal text of Ode 167 112 Cover of Classic Anthology 113 Achilles and Ilse Fang, 1957 114 EP on the St. Elizabeths lawn, 1957 163 Tze-chiang Chao, 1935 164 David Wang, c. 1955 174 David Wang, c. 1955 174 ''By the temple pool'' 200 P. H. and Josephine Fang with Zhaoming Qian, 2003 200 EP's note to P. H. Fang 201 The Fangs to EP and DP, 1959 202
Figures 1. 2, 3. 1, 3. 3, 4. 1, 5. 2, 6. 3, 7. 2, 7. 3, 8. 1, and 10. 3 ss 2008 Mary de Rachewiltz
and Omar Pound, permission by New Directions Publishing Corporation, agents.
Figure 1. 1 ss 2008 Hongru Song, permission by Hongru Song.
Figures 2. 1 and 2. 2 ss 2008 Mary de Rachewiltz, permission by Mary de
Rachewiltz.
Figure 3. 2 ss 2008 Lionello Lanciotti, permission by Lionello Lanciotti. Figures 4. 2, 7. 1, and 7. 5 ss 2008 Ilse Fang, permission by Ilse Fang.
Figure 5. 1 ss 2008 Angela Jung Palandri, permission by Angela Jung Palandri.
xii list of figures
Figures 6. 1 and 6. 2 ss 2008 Diana Chang and June Chang Tung, permission by Diana Chang and June Chang Tung.
Figures 6. 4 and 8. 2 ss 2008 C. H. Kwock, permission by C. H. Kwock. Figures 10. 1, and 10. 4 ss 2008 P. H. Fang, permission by P. H. Fang.
For figures 2. 3, 2. 4, 9. 1, and 9. 2, see disclaimer in ''Notes on the Text,'' p. xxiv.
INTRODUCTION Pound is the inventor of Chinese poetry for our time.
I predict that the next century will see, even be dominated by, a dialogue between the U. S. and China in which Pound's poetry will take on an importance and weight not obvious at the moment: that not only has he woven a new wholeness, at any rate potential wholeness, out of European and American, but also of Chinese, elements.
Tom Scott2
No literary Wgure of the past century--in America or perhaps in any other Western country--is comparable to Ezra Pound (1885-1972) in the scope and depth of his exchange with China. To this day, scholars and students still Wnd it puzzling that this inXuential poet spent a lifetime incorporating Chinese lan- guage, literature, history, and philosophy into Anglo-American modernism.
A package of notes and manuscripts Pound received from the widow of the American orientalist Ernest Fenollosa (1853-1908) in late 1913 Wrst opened his eyes to the Imagist strength of Japanese Noh drama, Chinese classic poetry, and the Chinese written character. His 1915 volume Cathay from Fenollosa's Chinese poetry notes paved the way for his transition to high modernism. It also earned him recognition as ''the inventor of Chinese poetry for our time. '' This Wrst success led to his inquiry into Confucianism. In Guillaume Pauthier's French version of the Confucian Four Books (Les quatre livres) he discovered a philoso- phy that would correct Western civilization. 3 Consequently, Confucius recurs again and again in Pound's long poem The Cantos. His Canto 13 is a eulogy of Confucius' respect for the individual. Cantos 52-71 juxtapose early Republican America with China from Confucius' ideal kings Yao and Shun to Qing emperors Kangxi and Yongzheng as a way to suggest the right forms of government. Cantos 85 and 86 pay tribute to the Confucian tenets found in Shu jing or the Book of History, and Cantos 98 and 99 to Kangxi's ''Sacred Edict. '' In the 1940s and early 1950s, Pound translated into English three of the Confucian Four Books and all 305 odes of the Confucian Book of Odes. 4
How well did Pound know Chinese? How did he go about rendering Chinese texts into English? He is known to have owned a set of Robert Morrison's
1 2 3
Chine (1846; rpt. Paris: Librairie Garnier Fre`res, 1910).
4
Ezra Pound, trans. , ''Confucius: The Unwobbling Pivot & The Great Digest,'' Pharos, 4 (Winter [1946] 1947); ''The Analects,'' Hudson Review, 3/1 (Spring 1950); The Classic Anthology DeWned by Confucius (Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1954).
T. S. Eliot, introduction, Selected Poems of Ezra Pound (London: Faber and Faber, 1928), xvi. Tom Scott, ''The Poet as Scapegoat,'' Agenda, 7/2 (1969), 57.
Guillaume Pauthier, Confucius et Mencius: Les quatre livres de philosophie morale et politique de la
T. S. Eliot1
xiv introduction
multivolume Dictionary of the Chinese Language since 1914, carried a small Shanghai Commercial Press Chinese-English dictionary to the Disciplinary Training Center outside Pisa in 1945, and purchased a copy of Mathews' Chi- nese-English Dictionary around 1947. 5 Did he learn the Chinese language from dictionaries? Was he guided exclusively by eighteenth-to nineteenth-century orientalists' versions in his various Chinese projects?
Among the archival materials kept at the Beinecke Library of Yale University and the Lilly Library of Indiana University are over two hundred letters and postcards Pound received from his Chinese friends--F. T. Sung (1883-1940), Fengchi Yang (1908-70), Achilles Fang (1910-95), Veronica Huilan Sun (b. 1927), Carsun Chang (1886-1969), C. H. Kwock (b. 1920), Tze-chiang Chao (1913- c. 1985), David Wang (1931-77), and P. H. Fang (b. 1923). Did Pound seek guidance from any of them? Those who have written about Pound and China have failed to address this fundamental question. 6 No one was able to do so until a few years ago since the letters Pound wrote to the above and other Chinese were sealed or had not been found. 7
This book brings together 162 revealing letters between Pound and his Chinese friends, eighty-Wve of them newly opened up and none previously printed. Accompanied by my introductions and notes, these selected letters make available for the Wrst time the forgotten stories of Pound and his Chinese
5
See Robert Morrison, A Dictionary of the Chinese Language, in Three Parts (Macao: The Honorable East India Company Press, 1815); Zhang Tiemin, Chinese-English Dictionary (Shanghai: Commercial Press, 1933); R. H. Mathews, Mathews' Chinese-English Dictionary (Shanghai: China Inland Mission and Presbyterian Mission Press, 1931; rpt. Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1944).
6
Blossoms from the East: The China Cantos of Ezra Pound (Orono, Me. : National Poetry Foundation,
1983); Zhaoming Qian, Orientalism and Modernism: The Legacy of China in Pound and Williams
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995); Mary Paterson Cheadle, Ezra Pound's Confucian
Translations (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997); Ming Xie, Ezra Pound and the
Appropriation of Chinese Poetry (New York: Garland Publishing, 1999); and Feng Lan, Ezra Pound
and Confucianism (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005). Cheadle is the only critic to have
devoted some attention to Achilles Fang's impact on Pound. Nevertheless, relying on one side of
their correspondence Cheadle's discussion of Pound and Fang is unavoidably less than satisfactory.
7
In 1999 Mrs Ilse Fang lifted the seal her late husband Achilles Fang (1910-95) had Wxed to 108 letters Pound wrote to him between 1950 and 1958. This breakthrough was followed by my discovery of six letters and a postcard of 1939-41 from Pound to Fengchi Yang in the private collection of Lionello Lanciotti (Rome). Pound's 1955-8 correspondence to David Wang was considered lost after Wang's mysterious death in 1977. Fortunately, in the mid-1970s Wang left a photocopy of the correspondence with Hugh Witemeyer. In 2003 Witemeyer graciously donated this photocopy (perhaps the only copy of the correspondence) to the Beinecke Library of Yale University. Meanwhile, Pound's surviving Chinese friend Angela Jung (Palandri) kindly permitted me access to six letters Pound wrote to her in 1952 and two letters Pound's companion Olga Rudge wrote to her on behalf of Pound in 1967. Furthermore, three postcards inappropriately Wled in the Beinecke and Lilly Pound Archives escorted me to an ''unknown'' friend of Pound (P. H. Fang), a ''lost'' sourcebook, and two additional Pound letters. Once the newly-found Pound correspondence joined the Chinese friends' correspondence in the Pound Archives, the fascinating stories of Pound and his Chinese friends came to light.
See Wai-lim Yip, Ezra Pound's Cathay (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969); John Nolde,
introduction xv
friends. They illuminate a dimension in Pound's career that has been neglected: his dynamic interaction with people from China over a span of forty-Wve years from 1914 until 1959. This selection will also be a documentary record of a leading modernist's unparalleled eVorts to pursue what he saw as the best of China, including both his stumbles and his triumphs.
This project has been conceived as a companion volume to Orientalism and Modernism: The Legacy of China in Pound and Williams (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995) and The Modernist Response to Chinese Art: Pound, Moore, Stevens (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2003). Whereas my previ- ous studies forgo personal dramas in favor of intertextual and inter-arts criti- cisms, this volume brings the inXuence of China into a lively and powerful social context. Rather than making their way through another critical work, readers will be able to hear Pound and his Chinese friends speak for themselves through their correspondence. And instead of weaving fragments of their exchanges into a study, I keep my critical opinions within my introductions to ten coherent dialogues. Pound's own words and his Chinese friends' words, rather than those of any critics, will make the most convincing arguments about Pound and China.
This book will matter to those who are interested in Ezra Pound as well as to those among the wider public who are interested in literary modernism and East Asian humanities. Catching exceptional glimpses of Pound's private dia- logues with the Chinese, his shifting visions of China, and the evolution of his China-related works, Ezra Pound's Chinese Friends will stand to change the way we think of Pound and China, and modernism and China.
Scholars such as Carroll Terrell have identiWed Se ? raphin Couvreur's trilingual and James Legge's bilingual Book of History (Shu jing) as sources of Pound's Cantos 85-7; and Joseph Rock's monographs on the Naxi (Na-khi) ethnic group in China have been identiWed as guides for the Naxi passages in Cantos 101, 104, 110, 112, and 113. 8 But the correspondence included here will testify to the active involvement of his Chinese friends in these projects. Just as educator Pao Swen Tseng (1893-1978) oVered Pound an oral translation of eight Chinese poems that led to his Seven Lakes Canto (Canto 49),9 so Harvard scholar Achilles Fang prepared his use of Shu jing in Cantos 85-7 and Lijiang native P. H. Fang Wrst introduced him to the Naxi rites of Thrones (1959) and Drafts and Fragments (1969). Relevant letters will also reveal that poet-translator Tze-chiang Chao, rather than Professor Lewis Maverick, dup up for Pound's Canto 106 the
8 See Terrell, 466-7, 652-3, 713. See also Se ? raphin Couvreur, Chou King (Paris: Cathasia, 1950);
Legge, iii; Joseph Rock, ''The Romance of 2K'a-2ma ? -1gyu-3mi-2gkyi, A Na-khi Tribal Love Story,''
Bulletin de l'E ? cole Franc ? aise d'Extre^me-Orient, 39 (1939), 1-155, plus 157-213; and ''The 2Muan 1Bpo ? 12
Ceremony or the SacriWce to Heaven as Practiced by the Na- khi,'' Monumenta Serica: Journal of Oriental Studies of the Catholic University of Peking, 13 (1948), 1-160.
9
Angela Jung Palandri, ''The 'Seven Lakes Canto' Revisited,'' Paideuma, 3/1 (Spring 1974), 51-4. See also Zhaoming Qian, The Modernist Response to Chinese Art: Pound, Moore, Stevens (Charlottes- ville: University of Virginia Press, 2003), 123-4.
xvi introduction
seventh-century bc economist Guan Zhong (Kuan Chung). Before Pound acquired a copy of Maverick's Economic Dialogues in Ancient China (1954), Chao had already provided him with translations of Guan's sayings, biography, and a chronology of the Chinese legalist tradition initiated by him. 10
Among Pound's Confucian translations only Ta Hio: The Great Learning of Confucius (1928) and Confucius: Digest of the Analects (1937) were made without the aid of a Chinese. 11 In retranslating two of the Confucian Four Books into Italian he obtained assistance from Fengchi Yang. 12 As to his late Confucian transla- tions, Achilles Fang contributed more than a ''Note on the Stone-Classics'' to The Great Digest & The Unwobbling Pivot (1951) and an introduction to The Classic Anthology DeWned by Confucius (1954). 13 He oversaw the production of the two books from cover designs through corrections of romanized spellings and lining up Chinese characters with English translations.
The letters will convince the reader that the exchange between Pound and China was richer and more complex than often portrayed in modernist studies. It is not always true that Anglo-American modernists and their Chinese coun- terparts echo more than they diVer. The anti-Confucian stance of F. T. Sung, for instance, alienated Pound. During their meeting in London, Sung handed over to Pound an article in English that criticized Confucian teachings. Despite his disapproval Pound arranged to have it published in the London Egoist. This article, along with a British orientalist's anti-Confucian piece, sparked Pound into writing his Wrst pro-Confucian essay, ''The Words of Ming Mao 'Least among the Disciples of Kung Fu-Tze' '' (1914).
