tsai chien (WHY did that bitch
pronounce
it: chen?
Ezra-Pounds-Chinese-Friends-Stories-in-Letters
Since January, according to Fang, everything essential had been held in the oYce of the Harvard Press editorial department.
The only thing that he had not turned in was an introduction.
To him it was unnecessary.
Should Harvard Press insist on having it, he said, he would write it in a short while.
Harvard's demand for an introduction was legitimate.
For Pound, however, this was an excuse, betraying the US system of education's ''hatred of the Chinese Classics'' (Letter 126).
His bitterness was not assuaged by Fang, who tried to take all the blame: ''Let me take all the blame from each side if need be.
Let's have the book at all costs.
Barring accidents, we may see the book out next year'' (Letter 127).
This did not at all help close the rift between them.
''Fang after years of patient Wdelity,'' Pound warned, ''in danger of losing the respect and friendship of illustrious translator because a cheap, super- market dirtShirt, fumbles and fusses, and IMPEDES'' (Beinecke).
Pound's last letter to Achilles Fang is dated 18 May 1958, about ten days after his release from St Elizabeths Hospital: ''The sabotage, the blocking of my work remains . . . The inWnite vileness of the state of education under the rump of the present organisms for the suppression of mental life is not your fault'' (Letter 128). In a reply Fang again assured Pound that Harvard University Press would start working on the project after summer vacation. By then Pound had lost conWdence in Harvard. On 10 November 1958 he wrote to Wilson from Italy, requesting return of the manuscript and photographs of the complete edition of the Odes (Beinecke). With the termination of the contract regarding the scholar's edition of his Confucian Odes a decade-long correspondence with Achilles Fang also came to a close.
? Fig. 7. 1. Achilles Fang on his way to Washington, DC, 1953. (Ilse Fang)
? Fig. 7. 2. EP's sound key to Ode 167. (Beinecke)
? Fig. 7. 3. EP's seal text of Ode 167. (Beinecke)
? Fig. 7. 4. Cover of Classic Anthology. (Harvard University Press)
? Fig. 7. 5. Achilles and Ilse Fang, 1957. (Ilse Fang)
Dear FANG
I believe the ideogram [
a. fang and pound's classic anthology 115
75 Fang to EP (TLS-1; Beinecke)
[Cambridge, Mass. ]
July 25, 1952
Dear Mr Pound,
Thank you VERY much for A Visiting Card; and I like your Chinese script. Just now John Hawkes (The Beetle Leg, N. D. ), Harvard Press, Production
Deptment, with your Odes, asking to know the best way of printing the phonetic part. He is trying to estimate production cost. Advised him to tell Wilson of the Press to communicate to you directly. More anon from La Drie`re, who comes tonight for a Bierkneipe [get-together at the pub]; J. H. will be there to tell him the details. (I've already dined with L. D. ; a nice man. )
By the way do you want to have the sound-script printed as a separate volume?
Hope the price of the book will not be prohibitive--I am afraid it cannot be less than 10 at the least. Can every interested reader aVord it? ? ?
All this is between us. Until you are oYcially ''advised'' by the Press. Yours respectfully
[signed] Achilles Fang
A Visiting Card: EP's Carta da Visita (1942) translated into English by John Drummond (1952). Wilson: see Glossary on Wilson, Thomas James.
La Drie`re: Craig La Drie`re (1910-78), professor of English at the Catholic University of America,
hosted EP in his Washington home before EP left for Italy. He was a visiting professor at Harvard in 1952.
76 EP to Fang (TL-2; Beinecke)
Kung Tzu shi [Confucian Odes]
] is an ARROW/whether you follow it by Wve
[St Elizabeths Hospital] [Washington, DC] [31 July 1952]
? dashes or repeat 5 times, or whether its simple and primitive vigour expresses the plenum, I cannot say with authority.
UNLESS the phonetic symbols are visible (NOT as in that Princeton horror), VISIBLE simultaneously with the ideograms AND the translation/the phonetic transcript will NOT help the ignorant reader (like yr/friend here below un- signed) to SEE what sound belongs to what ideogram (seal or other)
therefore ten deaths, the execution with 34 cuts or some other ADEQUATE punishment shd/be held over the NECK of anyone who attempts to separate those
116 a. fang and pound's classic anthology
phonetic (approximate etc. ) expositions FROM the chinese text (which shd be on left hand page facing TRANSLATION into barbarian tongue, and highly imperfect but useful (it dont much matter if uniform) representation of the SOUND. )
AS was measured to a millimeter by the Kimball/<imperfect> sample page IF it with the ms/from Kimball's debacle or schivolation <enclosed>.
and god DAMN it the form of the chinese strophes is to be CLEAR to the eye/as it was in the case of Guido's Canzone Donna mi Prega.
The columns of the romanj shd/be spread as far from each other as the page permits. WHEN the space is crowded a black dash can indicate strophe ends. as inked in enclosed.
BUT this proof lacks 8 lines of Wnal strophe, so smaller font must be used.
It was perfectly possible to get two twelve line strophes on a page/NO broken strophes.
AS to price/Eliot's speciWcation IF Faber were to take sheets was that it must ''LOOK LIKE'' a two guinea book.
Obviously a cheap edition, even without chinese text can be issued in 30 years time. <After it is once done RIGHT. >
That FILTHY Princeton production was priced ten bucks.
I never heard of Tschumi, but certainly Geneva is NOT the place whence light has been accustomed to emerge/for at least six centuries, but with augmented vileness during the past 3 or 4 decades. However Calvin etc/etc/
AN INTERESTED reader can always aVord ten bucks/depends on for WHAT. An uninterested reader sent me the Princeton horror out of his heart's kindness, and so on.
I hear the <or an> imperial nephew is in the vicinage, and hope to return his grandfathers, that is his gt/gt/gt or whateverth ancestor's beneWt.
As to Li Ki/what is the etiquette governing intercourse between a confucian and the Dalai Lama?
after all one isn't a proselyting Xtian, but on the other hand one shd NOT put a pouch over the HSIEN3 [light]
and salute John chu ? 1 [Hawkes]
or does his plural rate conjugal happiness (acc Mat) ChuChiu.
Princeton horror: Princeton's Bollingen edition of Richard Wilhelm's I Ching retranslated by Cary Baynes (1950).
Kimball: see Glossary on Kimball, Dudley.
Guido's Canzone Donna mi Prega: see Letter 56 n.
it must ''LOOK LIKE'' a two guinea book: see Letter 89 n.
Tschumi: Raymond Tschumi of University of Geneva authored Thought in Twentieth-Century English
Poetry (1951).
Calvin: John (Jean) Calvin (1509-64), French theologian and reformer, founded University of
Geneva in 1559.
Li Ki . . . the Dalai Lama: in a reply of 5 August 1952 Fang wrote: ''There are any number of details
governing intercourse between a Confucian and the Dalai Lama in Li Ki and esp. in I-li. I don't
a. fang and pound's classic anthology 117
think that imperial nephew of yours will demand them'' (Lilly). Dalai Lama is the title of the
Tibetan Buddhist leader.
chu ? 1. . . ChuChiu:Mathews,1580? ? :AkindofWsh-hawk,''awaterfowl,emblematicalofconjugal
harmony. '' Ju jiu ? ? occurs in Ode 1, line 1. See Letter 91 n.
77 EP to Fang (TL-1)
accuse reception one essay by
Hnble FANG
re short-comings of Hu [Shi], Amy [Lowell] etc/
sd Hu? ? A Xrister? once in charge an university for importing the WRONG
occidental works into Celestial ex Empire? ? or wot?
whoZZZ eee mean by grammar?
Charm of classic chinese largely attributable to there being very little such? ? exact degree, or even approx diYcult fer barbarian to grasp. but wot ov it? In present rage to destroy considerable chink Kulch Hu or anyUVum likely to
be available to funnel in a little of occidental-NOT-rot?
Mild diversion of Hnbl/FANG might be found in Wyndham's Rotting Hill,
and in bits of Writer and Absolute, tho latter not partic[ularly] necess/if have not wasted time on lower frog and brit/babblers.
Gawd bless Wyndham, chief delouser of dying Britain AND so on.
Hu [Shi], Amy [Lowell] etc: Fang, ''Imagism & Chinese Renaissance. '' See Letter 86. EP and fellow American poet Amy Lowell (1874-1925) had not been on friendly terms ever since 1914, when, in his view, she reduced the Imagist movement he had started to ''Amygism. ''
Hu: see Glossary on Hu Shi.
Rotting Hill . . . Writer and Absolute: Wyndham Lewis (see Glossary), Rotting Hill (London: Methuen,
1951); The Writer and the Absolute (London: Methuen, 1952).
78 Fang to EP (TLS-1; Lilly)
Dear Mr Pound,
HU SHIH is now at Princeton. He appears in Boylston Hall now & then;
I have somehow managed to miss him.
Your [Guide to] Kulchur will be read in China--in thirty years. The crowd in
Formosa will never cast a glance at the book. (I have a pretty low opinion of
[St Elizabeths Hospital] [Washington, DC] [22 August 1952]
[Cambridge, Mass. ] September 1, 1952
118 a. fang and pound's classic anthology
them, not that I have any higher esteem of those on the mainland--at this moment. )
Someone gave me a book containing La Prima Decade dei Cantos di E. P. But who is Ennio Contini?
I am asked to write a review of PIVOT for New Mexico Quarterly. As it is not for me to mete out ? [pros] or ? [cons] I intend to write a compact essay on PIVOT's position in E. P. 's universe. I shall be grateful if you care to give me some hints--what points you would like to see emphasized, etc.
Hope to write that essay after my Colorado trip. The Sub-Committee on Chinese thought (subsidized by Ford Foundation) is holding a meeting at Aspen, Sept. 7-14. All expenses paid to the participants (about a dozen). Have sent them a paper on the diYculty of translating from the Chinese--some sixty pages, mainly about how one should become a good sinologist. I believe it is sheer waste. (Shall leave Cambridge on 4 and return on 17 Sept. )
Yours respectfully [signed] Achilles Fang
HU SHIH: see Glossary on Hu Shi.
La Prima Decade dei Cantos di E. P. . . . Ennio Contini: L'Alleluja (1952) with ten poems by Ennio
Contini and Mary de Rachewiltz's Italian versions of Cantos 1-9 and lines 1-55 of Canto 10
(Gallup D56).
on the diYculty of translating: Fang, ''Some ReXections on the DiYculty of Translation,'' in Studies in
Chinese Thought, ed. Arthur Wright (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953).
79 EP to Fang (TL-2; Beinecke)
[St Elizabeths Hospital] [Washington, DC] [5 September 1952]
THIRTY years, O Fang, my phoenix! ! !
what celerity, what almost indecent celerity/
it took Seymour 37 years to get Patria Mia into press.
it has taken 40 for Harriet's snot-rag to print a french poets, bilingual issue/ and now nacherly, as they tell me, it represents about the wust possbl
SElection to illustrate whatever mental life is left in froggery.
WHY shd/the heathen chinese git thaaar sooner than the goddam BARbarian? ? pien3 [? ]/given by mathews/
wot I spose means praise dont SEEM to be in Mr Mathews
PAO1 [? ]/I spose/rad[ical] 145 (yes, Mat has it)
KEEP on, you'll drive me into eggspandin my VOcabulary.
PIVOT position: CHUNG [? ], I spose, plumb in deh MIDDLE whaar it
ought to be.
a. fang and pound's classic anthology 119
Contini, young wop [Italian] with nerve enough to annoy the woptalian Bloomsbury by printing what his connazionali do NOT want printed.
Pivot? emphasis? perhaps that it is better to be a Confucian than a sinologist/ not that the two categories are necessarily in opposition. Many of yr/race must have (at any rate are said to have) come to understand that the ANSWERS are ALL in the four books/at 25 one sees this re/some of them/and Wnds the rest of them later. Just read McNair Wilson's ''Gipsy Queen. '' McN W/is a nice Xtian. Kung wd/have saved him several non sequiturs/
book worth Fang's attention. (1934 . . . I dont know why I hadn't seen it, as I cite McNW in Intro Tx Bk.
I take it F/g has already followed up lines Agassiz/Del Mar, Brooks Ad/ Blackstone/
Cant rember names of chineeee given in small wop/vol/generation after the ''ten remnants'' but most brilliant already dead in 1937.
Small trans/of Tuan Szetsun (very simple) Wu Yung/a couple of vols/in english seen in hell-hole/Catharine Karl//information re <contemporary> Celestial ex-Empire NOT very abundant.
IN FACT, (as printed), doubt if more than 80 people in Perikles' Athens.
tsai chien (WHY did that bitch pronounce it: chen? )
Patria Mia: in 1950 Ralph Fletcher Seymour issued EP's Patria Mia (SP, 99-141), which Seymour, Daughaday, and Co. (Chicago) failed to publish in 1913.
Harriet's snot-rag. . . bilingual issue: the Poetry magazine (Chicago) founded by Harriet Monroe (1860-1936) in 1912 presents ten contemporary French poets in its September 1952 issue.
pien3 . . . PAO1: ? . . . ? . See Letter 78.
McNair Wilson's ''Gipsy Queen'': EP owned a copy of The Gipsy-Queen of Paris by Robert McNair
Wilson (1934).
Agassiz . . . Blackstone: see Glossary on Agassiz, Louis; Del Mar, Alexander; Adams, Brooks; and
Blackstone, William.
Tuan Szetsun . . . Wu Yung: EP owned copies of Exposition of Confucian Cosmopolitanism by Tuan
Szetsun (1936) and The Flight of an Empress by Wu Yung (1937). Catharine Karl: unidentiWed.
tsai chien: see Letter 84.
80 EP to Fang (TL-2; Beinecke)
[St Elizabeths Hospital] [Washington, DC] [13 October 1952]
Achilles
[Fang's notation: ''EP's reaction to my Aspen paper. '']
I HOPE that'll set 'em down on their WUMPZ and keep 'em down.
as to heresy/there wd/seem to be basic agreement at least to eVect that some
emphasis is placed on the idea POLitica of ''gittin it over''/
? ? 120 a. fang and pound's classic anthology
as to what Kung WD/have said had he had 2500 MORE years of human imbecility in consideration/gorNOZE
I suspect about FOUR of them ejaculatory arrow signs.
human imbecility (qui donne une idee de/l inWni'' etc. 2500 of LaoZe aestheticism/and horrible translations from ** into waleeze [Waley] ***
As doctrinaire propagandist/might hold that WHEN K/said it it wasn't a cliche ? /
and therefore shd NOT be represented by the drool that passes fer langqitch in the Slimes whether of Limeyburg or Jork/
**
now when yu git to grammar/there I retain curiosity/but having suggested something like agglutinative element in Aeschylus/re/whose lingo I know even less than that of the dark-haired children of the fatherland///
wotterELL do I kare/
and if/poisoned by low grade western inWltrations the WRTTEN symbols of Chink thought have become no better that [than] those of Sulzberger and Matthiessen **
what has that to do with WAN/with kulch/ellegunce or whatsodam/whatso JEN [humanity] or other occupations of the ChunTz' [Zhuangzi]
I wish I did know a bit more about how much a bunch of IDS/CAN interact/ backword forward/as do radicals when conjuncted in one ID/
as from mere hieroglyph in hwa [? ] the representation and ? hwa/with whole poesia of metamorphoses conjuncted/an IDEA-gram tho/or whole poem on paper phonetikly incomplete
nice guy in this P. M. who really likes his Li Po (as beWts his tender years) and does NOT swallow bloomsbury bugwash/
do yu do any teaching at haaaVud? or merely talk to half-masted profs/in hours of idleness/I mean where were yu to ram a li'l sense into Locke?
I can't tell these kids much till yr/abysmal employer prints out them INcor- rect, but possibly useful graphs of the SHIH [Odes] sound/not that they LOOK much like any grunts and wheezes any celestial, darkhaired etc/has ever made in my presence/
what did I hear the other day, when I said: Mei jin pu hao [Beautiful people not good]. something sounding like: Mei kuo rin pu hao [Americans not good]. Very hard for senile ignoramus to attain vocal Xuidity. what does Ni hao ma? [How are you? ] sound like in the North Kepertl [Beijing]? A rose of Shanghai
pronounces: ''manchu,'' in way almost impos/disting/fr/''damn yankee. '' ANYhow/without centuries of damXristers/no freud possible/doubt if even Lao
Tse is as obscene as the english alledged version by wa-lee ? or ? ? [Waley].
Sulzberger: Arthur Hays Sulzberger (1891-1968), publisher of New York Times (1935-61). Matthiessen: Francis Otto Matthiessen (1902-50), Harvard professor of literature and history. Li Po: see Glossary on Li Bo.
a. fang and pound's classic anthology 121
Locke: Fred Locke. See Letter 81.
A rose of Shanghai: Veronica Huilan Sun (see Glossary).
version by wa-lee: Arthur Waley (1889-1966), The Way and Its Power: A Study of the Tao Te Ching and
Its Place in Chinese Thought (1949; rpt. New York: Grove, 1958).
81 Fang to EP (TLS-1; Beinecke)
[Cambridge, Mass. ]
Oct. 27, 1952
Dear Mr Pound,
Completely knocked out for three full weeks--Xu. The heavy shoulders
wouldn't allow the Wngers touch the typewriter keys. Hence this delay in writing.
I am not teaching, nor do I care to play the slave who leads on idiot boys-- pedagogue. Sorry Fred Locke was such a disappointment to you. He was not known for his brilliance while he was here. Essentially a philologist or gram- marian, and Catholic at that.
Met J. Hawkes a few days ago; the printing project going Wne. Mei jin pu hao is too literary, mei jin usually standing for a beauty. Hence Mei-kuo-jin pu hao [Americans not good]. More idiomatically, Mei kuo [? ] ? [America] pu hao [not good]. (Traditionally Chinese did not distinguish the native of a land from the land itself. ) Jin ? is pronounced ren around the northern capital, but elsewhere yin. Ni hao ma sounds really melodious in the mould of a northern girl. The intonation is more or less similar to the phrase Muss es sein? in Beethoven's last string quartet, in F. But the voice is not raised in the last syllable. You know, there is not stress in Chinese. When a word is to be emphasized, it is pronounced in full TONE. The enclitic ma being practically atonal, the whole phrase sounds rather like es and sein transposed: Muss seine es? (One reason why the jap. language sounds so horrible is that the important word--verb--ends a sentence and stress is put on the SUFFIX to the verb and not on the root of the verb itself. Me no savee: wakarimaSENG [I don't know].
I have already made it clear that Waley is too obsessed with sex (v. Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, p. 558, note to ? 122). I am inclined to think that Ta[o]- te-ching can be used as a metaphysical foundation for JeVersonian democracy. It is the later Taozers who misinterpreted him. Lao-tzu was no more Taoistic than you are.
Thank you very much for your comment on NMQ Lu Ki. I still think you should do MONG.
If Guggenheim is willing to be useful, I shall try to translate Wen-hsin tiao- lung next year.
? ? 122 a. fang and pound's classic anthology
? ? ? ? is from the Stone-Classic (we have also T'ang stone-classics here): Analects VI xvi. (Lash should not have put ? ? at the beginning. I gave him choice, but he took both. ) The second ideogram is 5257 Mathews.
Respectfully [signed] Achilles Fang
Wen-hsin tiao-lung: Liu Xie (c. 465-c. 532), Wenxin diaolong (Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons). See Fang, review of V. Y. Shih's translation of the book in Times Literary Supplement, 4 December 1959.
? ? ? : EP renders the phrase as ''accomplishment and solidity as two trees growing side by side and together with leafage'' (Confucius, 216).
Lash: Kenneth Lush, editor of New Mexico Quarterly.
82 EP to Fang (TL-1; Beinecke)
[St Elizabeths Hospital] [Washington, DC] [4 November 1952]
and az to strange doctrines
ACHILLES
Mr W[aley]'s alledged translation of Lao/being OF the most obscene bks/
printed even in the PerWdious Isle the question of the alledged source might be reduced to enquiry
Does Lao contain ANYTHING useful that is NOT in the Four Books (and their preludes, the Shih [Book of Odes] and the Shu [Book of History]) [? ]
an nif not why bother wiV deh superXuous.
The bamboo grove and so on/cant eggspect the young to eschew all dalliance or rise presto presto to senile calm. we grant THAT.
83 Fang to EP (TLS-1; Lilly)
[Cambridge, Mass. ] Nov 14, 1952
Dear Mr Pound,
Your latest, on Lao and the bamboo grove boys, was forwarded to me in
Mass. General Hospital. Lao certainly is ambiguous to have much value for sensible beings--at any rate he cannot be rendered sexually. BUT Chuang Chou, generally misunderstood to be a Taoist (but he is more Confucian than Taoist), should be of great importance to sensible Confucians.
? a. fang and pound's classic anthology 123
On Nov. 3 I lost balance and fell down 7 steps. Left foot sprained and the heelbone shattered. Went to the above mentioned hospital on the 6th, had the bone set aright, and the foot and ankle in cast. Came home on the 12th.
Yesterday was invited to Faculty Club: lunch with MacLeish, Hawkes, and Wilson (host).
The boss of the press showed me a sample sheet of your Odes. Both the Syndics (or is it Syndicate) and Wilson have come to decision: they will publish.
Only that they are Wguring out how to reduce the production cost.
Gathered that the press is toying with the idea of publishing a de-luxe ed. of text-cum-ideogram-cum-sound and another ed. of text solus simultaneously.
Wilson wants to communicate to you directly--I encouraged him. By the way, Wilson used to teach frog lit.
W is a nice chap: wants to have the Odes out as soon as possible. Old Mac joined in, of course.
(The preceding paragraph is strictly between us. You will hear from W soon, I think. )
This compulsory vacation is exasperating.
Oh yes, e. e. cummings asked me to come and see him. Wrote him that when I get a bit agile with the crutches I shall come. Thanks.
With respect [signed] Achilles Fang
Chuang Chou: see Glossary on Zhuang Zhou.
MacLeish: see Glossary on MacLeish, Archibald.
Wilson: see Glossary on Wilson, Thomas James.
e. e. cummings: see Glossary on Cummings, Edward Estlin.
84 EP to Fang (TL-1 + ALS-2; Beinecke)
[St Elizabeths Hospital] [Washington, DC] 19 Nv [1952]
yes, my Achilles
(doing it thoroughly) I got hit on the heel over 50 years ago by a base ball/and
there being v. litl circulation in that part of the corpus, I know it takes d/n/long time to git over soreness.
***
oVset is a printing METHOD, at low cost, once the kumperzishn is did. ***
O. K. re Chuang Chou/but I still want [to] know WHAT he ADDED.
124 a. fang and pound's classic anthology
It is my hypothesis, based on NO data (that is no extraneous data) whatso- dam, that every intelligent chinYman fer 1000 years has meditated the Four bks/ trying to see wot he cd/leave out, or add/result being dam little.
Before that they spent 1400 years deciding Mencius cd/be added to the THREE bks/
**puzzled by the one about wot he (K) ate and his night gown/of course quite simple. IF one consider that it had to get aYrmed that Kung was not a solar myth or the incarnation of hindoo djinn procreated by a Wsh swallowing the etc/(wot them hindoos wont think of ? /? ) ! ! !
as per Voltaire: the Wrst man who did NOT.
Regnery has reprinted Wyndham L[ewis]'s ''Revenge fer Luvv'' mebbe that wd/beguile yr enforced ex-deskness/
the kumrad kumminkz [Cummings] is abl/bodied/tell him to come to YU with my kumplimentZ.
---------
Condolences ye compleat Achilles.
a heel fer
a heel
Ez P
incidentally
young Chien recognized yr friends calligraphy on the wall. Thank
Kuanon arrows are out of date
or unobtainable in Boston
as per Voltaire: in Ancient and Modern History Voltaire (1694-1778) refers to Confucius as a philoso- pher who ''does not pretend to inspiration, or the gift of prophecy,'' one who ''places all his merit in a constant endeavor to gain the mastery over his passions, and . . . writes only as a philosopher'' (The Works of Voltaire, trans. William Fleming (New York: St Hubert Guild, 1901), xv/2. 173). Cf. Confucius, 191.
''Revenge fer Luvv'': Wyndham Lewis (see Glossary), The Revenge for Love (1937).
Chien: T'sai Chien. See Letter 79.
yr friends calligraphy: see Letter 36 n.
Kuanon: Kuanon (Guanyin), Goddess of Compassion, is honored in Cantos 74, 77, 81, 90, 97, 101,
and 110.
a. fang and pound's classic anthology 125
85 EP to Fang (TL-1; Beinecke)
[St Elizabeths Hospital] [Washington, DC] [November 1952]
No, my Fang
D. P. has just recd/a thoroughly DIRTY letter from yr/friend Wilson.
Pound's last letter to Achilles Fang is dated 18 May 1958, about ten days after his release from St Elizabeths Hospital: ''The sabotage, the blocking of my work remains . . . The inWnite vileness of the state of education under the rump of the present organisms for the suppression of mental life is not your fault'' (Letter 128). In a reply Fang again assured Pound that Harvard University Press would start working on the project after summer vacation. By then Pound had lost conWdence in Harvard. On 10 November 1958 he wrote to Wilson from Italy, requesting return of the manuscript and photographs of the complete edition of the Odes (Beinecke). With the termination of the contract regarding the scholar's edition of his Confucian Odes a decade-long correspondence with Achilles Fang also came to a close.
? Fig. 7. 1. Achilles Fang on his way to Washington, DC, 1953. (Ilse Fang)
? Fig. 7. 2. EP's sound key to Ode 167. (Beinecke)
? Fig. 7. 3. EP's seal text of Ode 167. (Beinecke)
? Fig. 7. 4. Cover of Classic Anthology. (Harvard University Press)
? Fig. 7. 5. Achilles and Ilse Fang, 1957. (Ilse Fang)
Dear FANG
I believe the ideogram [
a. fang and pound's classic anthology 115
75 Fang to EP (TLS-1; Beinecke)
[Cambridge, Mass. ]
July 25, 1952
Dear Mr Pound,
Thank you VERY much for A Visiting Card; and I like your Chinese script. Just now John Hawkes (The Beetle Leg, N. D. ), Harvard Press, Production
Deptment, with your Odes, asking to know the best way of printing the phonetic part. He is trying to estimate production cost. Advised him to tell Wilson of the Press to communicate to you directly. More anon from La Drie`re, who comes tonight for a Bierkneipe [get-together at the pub]; J. H. will be there to tell him the details. (I've already dined with L. D. ; a nice man. )
By the way do you want to have the sound-script printed as a separate volume?
Hope the price of the book will not be prohibitive--I am afraid it cannot be less than 10 at the least. Can every interested reader aVord it? ? ?
All this is between us. Until you are oYcially ''advised'' by the Press. Yours respectfully
[signed] Achilles Fang
A Visiting Card: EP's Carta da Visita (1942) translated into English by John Drummond (1952). Wilson: see Glossary on Wilson, Thomas James.
La Drie`re: Craig La Drie`re (1910-78), professor of English at the Catholic University of America,
hosted EP in his Washington home before EP left for Italy. He was a visiting professor at Harvard in 1952.
76 EP to Fang (TL-2; Beinecke)
Kung Tzu shi [Confucian Odes]
] is an ARROW/whether you follow it by Wve
[St Elizabeths Hospital] [Washington, DC] [31 July 1952]
? dashes or repeat 5 times, or whether its simple and primitive vigour expresses the plenum, I cannot say with authority.
UNLESS the phonetic symbols are visible (NOT as in that Princeton horror), VISIBLE simultaneously with the ideograms AND the translation/the phonetic transcript will NOT help the ignorant reader (like yr/friend here below un- signed) to SEE what sound belongs to what ideogram (seal or other)
therefore ten deaths, the execution with 34 cuts or some other ADEQUATE punishment shd/be held over the NECK of anyone who attempts to separate those
116 a. fang and pound's classic anthology
phonetic (approximate etc. ) expositions FROM the chinese text (which shd be on left hand page facing TRANSLATION into barbarian tongue, and highly imperfect but useful (it dont much matter if uniform) representation of the SOUND. )
AS was measured to a millimeter by the Kimball/<imperfect> sample page IF it with the ms/from Kimball's debacle or schivolation <enclosed>.
and god DAMN it the form of the chinese strophes is to be CLEAR to the eye/as it was in the case of Guido's Canzone Donna mi Prega.
The columns of the romanj shd/be spread as far from each other as the page permits. WHEN the space is crowded a black dash can indicate strophe ends. as inked in enclosed.
BUT this proof lacks 8 lines of Wnal strophe, so smaller font must be used.
It was perfectly possible to get two twelve line strophes on a page/NO broken strophes.
AS to price/Eliot's speciWcation IF Faber were to take sheets was that it must ''LOOK LIKE'' a two guinea book.
Obviously a cheap edition, even without chinese text can be issued in 30 years time. <After it is once done RIGHT. >
That FILTHY Princeton production was priced ten bucks.
I never heard of Tschumi, but certainly Geneva is NOT the place whence light has been accustomed to emerge/for at least six centuries, but with augmented vileness during the past 3 or 4 decades. However Calvin etc/etc/
AN INTERESTED reader can always aVord ten bucks/depends on for WHAT. An uninterested reader sent me the Princeton horror out of his heart's kindness, and so on.
I hear the <or an> imperial nephew is in the vicinage, and hope to return his grandfathers, that is his gt/gt/gt or whateverth ancestor's beneWt.
As to Li Ki/what is the etiquette governing intercourse between a confucian and the Dalai Lama?
after all one isn't a proselyting Xtian, but on the other hand one shd NOT put a pouch over the HSIEN3 [light]
and salute John chu ? 1 [Hawkes]
or does his plural rate conjugal happiness (acc Mat) ChuChiu.
Princeton horror: Princeton's Bollingen edition of Richard Wilhelm's I Ching retranslated by Cary Baynes (1950).
Kimball: see Glossary on Kimball, Dudley.
Guido's Canzone Donna mi Prega: see Letter 56 n.
it must ''LOOK LIKE'' a two guinea book: see Letter 89 n.
Tschumi: Raymond Tschumi of University of Geneva authored Thought in Twentieth-Century English
Poetry (1951).
Calvin: John (Jean) Calvin (1509-64), French theologian and reformer, founded University of
Geneva in 1559.
Li Ki . . . the Dalai Lama: in a reply of 5 August 1952 Fang wrote: ''There are any number of details
governing intercourse between a Confucian and the Dalai Lama in Li Ki and esp. in I-li. I don't
a. fang and pound's classic anthology 117
think that imperial nephew of yours will demand them'' (Lilly). Dalai Lama is the title of the
Tibetan Buddhist leader.
chu ? 1. . . ChuChiu:Mathews,1580? ? :AkindofWsh-hawk,''awaterfowl,emblematicalofconjugal
harmony. '' Ju jiu ? ? occurs in Ode 1, line 1. See Letter 91 n.
77 EP to Fang (TL-1)
accuse reception one essay by
Hnble FANG
re short-comings of Hu [Shi], Amy [Lowell] etc/
sd Hu? ? A Xrister? once in charge an university for importing the WRONG
occidental works into Celestial ex Empire? ? or wot?
whoZZZ eee mean by grammar?
Charm of classic chinese largely attributable to there being very little such? ? exact degree, or even approx diYcult fer barbarian to grasp. but wot ov it? In present rage to destroy considerable chink Kulch Hu or anyUVum likely to
be available to funnel in a little of occidental-NOT-rot?
Mild diversion of Hnbl/FANG might be found in Wyndham's Rotting Hill,
and in bits of Writer and Absolute, tho latter not partic[ularly] necess/if have not wasted time on lower frog and brit/babblers.
Gawd bless Wyndham, chief delouser of dying Britain AND so on.
Hu [Shi], Amy [Lowell] etc: Fang, ''Imagism & Chinese Renaissance. '' See Letter 86. EP and fellow American poet Amy Lowell (1874-1925) had not been on friendly terms ever since 1914, when, in his view, she reduced the Imagist movement he had started to ''Amygism. ''
Hu: see Glossary on Hu Shi.
Rotting Hill . . . Writer and Absolute: Wyndham Lewis (see Glossary), Rotting Hill (London: Methuen,
1951); The Writer and the Absolute (London: Methuen, 1952).
78 Fang to EP (TLS-1; Lilly)
Dear Mr Pound,
HU SHIH is now at Princeton. He appears in Boylston Hall now & then;
I have somehow managed to miss him.
Your [Guide to] Kulchur will be read in China--in thirty years. The crowd in
Formosa will never cast a glance at the book. (I have a pretty low opinion of
[St Elizabeths Hospital] [Washington, DC] [22 August 1952]
[Cambridge, Mass. ] September 1, 1952
118 a. fang and pound's classic anthology
them, not that I have any higher esteem of those on the mainland--at this moment. )
Someone gave me a book containing La Prima Decade dei Cantos di E. P. But who is Ennio Contini?
I am asked to write a review of PIVOT for New Mexico Quarterly. As it is not for me to mete out ? [pros] or ? [cons] I intend to write a compact essay on PIVOT's position in E. P. 's universe. I shall be grateful if you care to give me some hints--what points you would like to see emphasized, etc.
Hope to write that essay after my Colorado trip. The Sub-Committee on Chinese thought (subsidized by Ford Foundation) is holding a meeting at Aspen, Sept. 7-14. All expenses paid to the participants (about a dozen). Have sent them a paper on the diYculty of translating from the Chinese--some sixty pages, mainly about how one should become a good sinologist. I believe it is sheer waste. (Shall leave Cambridge on 4 and return on 17 Sept. )
Yours respectfully [signed] Achilles Fang
HU SHIH: see Glossary on Hu Shi.
La Prima Decade dei Cantos di E. P. . . . Ennio Contini: L'Alleluja (1952) with ten poems by Ennio
Contini and Mary de Rachewiltz's Italian versions of Cantos 1-9 and lines 1-55 of Canto 10
(Gallup D56).
on the diYculty of translating: Fang, ''Some ReXections on the DiYculty of Translation,'' in Studies in
Chinese Thought, ed. Arthur Wright (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953).
79 EP to Fang (TL-2; Beinecke)
[St Elizabeths Hospital] [Washington, DC] [5 September 1952]
THIRTY years, O Fang, my phoenix! ! !
what celerity, what almost indecent celerity/
it took Seymour 37 years to get Patria Mia into press.
it has taken 40 for Harriet's snot-rag to print a french poets, bilingual issue/ and now nacherly, as they tell me, it represents about the wust possbl
SElection to illustrate whatever mental life is left in froggery.
WHY shd/the heathen chinese git thaaar sooner than the goddam BARbarian? ? pien3 [? ]/given by mathews/
wot I spose means praise dont SEEM to be in Mr Mathews
PAO1 [? ]/I spose/rad[ical] 145 (yes, Mat has it)
KEEP on, you'll drive me into eggspandin my VOcabulary.
PIVOT position: CHUNG [? ], I spose, plumb in deh MIDDLE whaar it
ought to be.
a. fang and pound's classic anthology 119
Contini, young wop [Italian] with nerve enough to annoy the woptalian Bloomsbury by printing what his connazionali do NOT want printed.
Pivot? emphasis? perhaps that it is better to be a Confucian than a sinologist/ not that the two categories are necessarily in opposition. Many of yr/race must have (at any rate are said to have) come to understand that the ANSWERS are ALL in the four books/at 25 one sees this re/some of them/and Wnds the rest of them later. Just read McNair Wilson's ''Gipsy Queen. '' McN W/is a nice Xtian. Kung wd/have saved him several non sequiturs/
book worth Fang's attention. (1934 . . . I dont know why I hadn't seen it, as I cite McNW in Intro Tx Bk.
I take it F/g has already followed up lines Agassiz/Del Mar, Brooks Ad/ Blackstone/
Cant rember names of chineeee given in small wop/vol/generation after the ''ten remnants'' but most brilliant already dead in 1937.
Small trans/of Tuan Szetsun (very simple) Wu Yung/a couple of vols/in english seen in hell-hole/Catharine Karl//information re <contemporary> Celestial ex-Empire NOT very abundant.
IN FACT, (as printed), doubt if more than 80 people in Perikles' Athens.
tsai chien (WHY did that bitch pronounce it: chen? )
Patria Mia: in 1950 Ralph Fletcher Seymour issued EP's Patria Mia (SP, 99-141), which Seymour, Daughaday, and Co. (Chicago) failed to publish in 1913.
Harriet's snot-rag. . . bilingual issue: the Poetry magazine (Chicago) founded by Harriet Monroe (1860-1936) in 1912 presents ten contemporary French poets in its September 1952 issue.
pien3 . . . PAO1: ? . . . ? . See Letter 78.
McNair Wilson's ''Gipsy Queen'': EP owned a copy of The Gipsy-Queen of Paris by Robert McNair
Wilson (1934).
Agassiz . . . Blackstone: see Glossary on Agassiz, Louis; Del Mar, Alexander; Adams, Brooks; and
Blackstone, William.
Tuan Szetsun . . . Wu Yung: EP owned copies of Exposition of Confucian Cosmopolitanism by Tuan
Szetsun (1936) and The Flight of an Empress by Wu Yung (1937). Catharine Karl: unidentiWed.
tsai chien: see Letter 84.
80 EP to Fang (TL-2; Beinecke)
[St Elizabeths Hospital] [Washington, DC] [13 October 1952]
Achilles
[Fang's notation: ''EP's reaction to my Aspen paper. '']
I HOPE that'll set 'em down on their WUMPZ and keep 'em down.
as to heresy/there wd/seem to be basic agreement at least to eVect that some
emphasis is placed on the idea POLitica of ''gittin it over''/
? ? 120 a. fang and pound's classic anthology
as to what Kung WD/have said had he had 2500 MORE years of human imbecility in consideration/gorNOZE
I suspect about FOUR of them ejaculatory arrow signs.
human imbecility (qui donne une idee de/l inWni'' etc. 2500 of LaoZe aestheticism/and horrible translations from ** into waleeze [Waley] ***
As doctrinaire propagandist/might hold that WHEN K/said it it wasn't a cliche ? /
and therefore shd NOT be represented by the drool that passes fer langqitch in the Slimes whether of Limeyburg or Jork/
**
now when yu git to grammar/there I retain curiosity/but having suggested something like agglutinative element in Aeschylus/re/whose lingo I know even less than that of the dark-haired children of the fatherland///
wotterELL do I kare/
and if/poisoned by low grade western inWltrations the WRTTEN symbols of Chink thought have become no better that [than] those of Sulzberger and Matthiessen **
what has that to do with WAN/with kulch/ellegunce or whatsodam/whatso JEN [humanity] or other occupations of the ChunTz' [Zhuangzi]
I wish I did know a bit more about how much a bunch of IDS/CAN interact/ backword forward/as do radicals when conjuncted in one ID/
as from mere hieroglyph in hwa [? ] the representation and ? hwa/with whole poesia of metamorphoses conjuncted/an IDEA-gram tho/or whole poem on paper phonetikly incomplete
nice guy in this P. M. who really likes his Li Po (as beWts his tender years) and does NOT swallow bloomsbury bugwash/
do yu do any teaching at haaaVud? or merely talk to half-masted profs/in hours of idleness/I mean where were yu to ram a li'l sense into Locke?
I can't tell these kids much till yr/abysmal employer prints out them INcor- rect, but possibly useful graphs of the SHIH [Odes] sound/not that they LOOK much like any grunts and wheezes any celestial, darkhaired etc/has ever made in my presence/
what did I hear the other day, when I said: Mei jin pu hao [Beautiful people not good]. something sounding like: Mei kuo rin pu hao [Americans not good]. Very hard for senile ignoramus to attain vocal Xuidity. what does Ni hao ma? [How are you? ] sound like in the North Kepertl [Beijing]? A rose of Shanghai
pronounces: ''manchu,'' in way almost impos/disting/fr/''damn yankee. '' ANYhow/without centuries of damXristers/no freud possible/doubt if even Lao
Tse is as obscene as the english alledged version by wa-lee ? or ? ? [Waley].
Sulzberger: Arthur Hays Sulzberger (1891-1968), publisher of New York Times (1935-61). Matthiessen: Francis Otto Matthiessen (1902-50), Harvard professor of literature and history. Li Po: see Glossary on Li Bo.
a. fang and pound's classic anthology 121
Locke: Fred Locke. See Letter 81.
A rose of Shanghai: Veronica Huilan Sun (see Glossary).
version by wa-lee: Arthur Waley (1889-1966), The Way and Its Power: A Study of the Tao Te Ching and
Its Place in Chinese Thought (1949; rpt. New York: Grove, 1958).
81 Fang to EP (TLS-1; Beinecke)
[Cambridge, Mass. ]
Oct. 27, 1952
Dear Mr Pound,
Completely knocked out for three full weeks--Xu. The heavy shoulders
wouldn't allow the Wngers touch the typewriter keys. Hence this delay in writing.
I am not teaching, nor do I care to play the slave who leads on idiot boys-- pedagogue. Sorry Fred Locke was such a disappointment to you. He was not known for his brilliance while he was here. Essentially a philologist or gram- marian, and Catholic at that.
Met J. Hawkes a few days ago; the printing project going Wne. Mei jin pu hao is too literary, mei jin usually standing for a beauty. Hence Mei-kuo-jin pu hao [Americans not good]. More idiomatically, Mei kuo [? ] ? [America] pu hao [not good]. (Traditionally Chinese did not distinguish the native of a land from the land itself. ) Jin ? is pronounced ren around the northern capital, but elsewhere yin. Ni hao ma sounds really melodious in the mould of a northern girl. The intonation is more or less similar to the phrase Muss es sein? in Beethoven's last string quartet, in F. But the voice is not raised in the last syllable. You know, there is not stress in Chinese. When a word is to be emphasized, it is pronounced in full TONE. The enclitic ma being practically atonal, the whole phrase sounds rather like es and sein transposed: Muss seine es? (One reason why the jap. language sounds so horrible is that the important word--verb--ends a sentence and stress is put on the SUFFIX to the verb and not on the root of the verb itself. Me no savee: wakarimaSENG [I don't know].
I have already made it clear that Waley is too obsessed with sex (v. Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, p. 558, note to ? 122). I am inclined to think that Ta[o]- te-ching can be used as a metaphysical foundation for JeVersonian democracy. It is the later Taozers who misinterpreted him. Lao-tzu was no more Taoistic than you are.
Thank you very much for your comment on NMQ Lu Ki. I still think you should do MONG.
If Guggenheim is willing to be useful, I shall try to translate Wen-hsin tiao- lung next year.
? ? 122 a. fang and pound's classic anthology
? ? ? ? is from the Stone-Classic (we have also T'ang stone-classics here): Analects VI xvi. (Lash should not have put ? ? at the beginning. I gave him choice, but he took both. ) The second ideogram is 5257 Mathews.
Respectfully [signed] Achilles Fang
Wen-hsin tiao-lung: Liu Xie (c. 465-c. 532), Wenxin diaolong (Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons). See Fang, review of V. Y. Shih's translation of the book in Times Literary Supplement, 4 December 1959.
? ? ? : EP renders the phrase as ''accomplishment and solidity as two trees growing side by side and together with leafage'' (Confucius, 216).
Lash: Kenneth Lush, editor of New Mexico Quarterly.
82 EP to Fang (TL-1; Beinecke)
[St Elizabeths Hospital] [Washington, DC] [4 November 1952]
and az to strange doctrines
ACHILLES
Mr W[aley]'s alledged translation of Lao/being OF the most obscene bks/
printed even in the PerWdious Isle the question of the alledged source might be reduced to enquiry
Does Lao contain ANYTHING useful that is NOT in the Four Books (and their preludes, the Shih [Book of Odes] and the Shu [Book of History]) [? ]
an nif not why bother wiV deh superXuous.
The bamboo grove and so on/cant eggspect the young to eschew all dalliance or rise presto presto to senile calm. we grant THAT.
83 Fang to EP (TLS-1; Lilly)
[Cambridge, Mass. ] Nov 14, 1952
Dear Mr Pound,
Your latest, on Lao and the bamboo grove boys, was forwarded to me in
Mass. General Hospital. Lao certainly is ambiguous to have much value for sensible beings--at any rate he cannot be rendered sexually. BUT Chuang Chou, generally misunderstood to be a Taoist (but he is more Confucian than Taoist), should be of great importance to sensible Confucians.
? a. fang and pound's classic anthology 123
On Nov. 3 I lost balance and fell down 7 steps. Left foot sprained and the heelbone shattered. Went to the above mentioned hospital on the 6th, had the bone set aright, and the foot and ankle in cast. Came home on the 12th.
Yesterday was invited to Faculty Club: lunch with MacLeish, Hawkes, and Wilson (host).
The boss of the press showed me a sample sheet of your Odes. Both the Syndics (or is it Syndicate) and Wilson have come to decision: they will publish.
Only that they are Wguring out how to reduce the production cost.
Gathered that the press is toying with the idea of publishing a de-luxe ed. of text-cum-ideogram-cum-sound and another ed. of text solus simultaneously.
Wilson wants to communicate to you directly--I encouraged him. By the way, Wilson used to teach frog lit.
W is a nice chap: wants to have the Odes out as soon as possible. Old Mac joined in, of course.
(The preceding paragraph is strictly between us. You will hear from W soon, I think. )
This compulsory vacation is exasperating.
Oh yes, e. e. cummings asked me to come and see him. Wrote him that when I get a bit agile with the crutches I shall come. Thanks.
With respect [signed] Achilles Fang
Chuang Chou: see Glossary on Zhuang Zhou.
MacLeish: see Glossary on MacLeish, Archibald.
Wilson: see Glossary on Wilson, Thomas James.
e. e. cummings: see Glossary on Cummings, Edward Estlin.
84 EP to Fang (TL-1 + ALS-2; Beinecke)
[St Elizabeths Hospital] [Washington, DC] 19 Nv [1952]
yes, my Achilles
(doing it thoroughly) I got hit on the heel over 50 years ago by a base ball/and
there being v. litl circulation in that part of the corpus, I know it takes d/n/long time to git over soreness.
***
oVset is a printing METHOD, at low cost, once the kumperzishn is did. ***
O. K. re Chuang Chou/but I still want [to] know WHAT he ADDED.
124 a. fang and pound's classic anthology
It is my hypothesis, based on NO data (that is no extraneous data) whatso- dam, that every intelligent chinYman fer 1000 years has meditated the Four bks/ trying to see wot he cd/leave out, or add/result being dam little.
Before that they spent 1400 years deciding Mencius cd/be added to the THREE bks/
**puzzled by the one about wot he (K) ate and his night gown/of course quite simple. IF one consider that it had to get aYrmed that Kung was not a solar myth or the incarnation of hindoo djinn procreated by a Wsh swallowing the etc/(wot them hindoos wont think of ? /? ) ! ! !
as per Voltaire: the Wrst man who did NOT.
Regnery has reprinted Wyndham L[ewis]'s ''Revenge fer Luvv'' mebbe that wd/beguile yr enforced ex-deskness/
the kumrad kumminkz [Cummings] is abl/bodied/tell him to come to YU with my kumplimentZ.
---------
Condolences ye compleat Achilles.
a heel fer
a heel
Ez P
incidentally
young Chien recognized yr friends calligraphy on the wall. Thank
Kuanon arrows are out of date
or unobtainable in Boston
as per Voltaire: in Ancient and Modern History Voltaire (1694-1778) refers to Confucius as a philoso- pher who ''does not pretend to inspiration, or the gift of prophecy,'' one who ''places all his merit in a constant endeavor to gain the mastery over his passions, and . . . writes only as a philosopher'' (The Works of Voltaire, trans. William Fleming (New York: St Hubert Guild, 1901), xv/2. 173). Cf. Confucius, 191.
''Revenge fer Luvv'': Wyndham Lewis (see Glossary), The Revenge for Love (1937).
Chien: T'sai Chien. See Letter 79.
yr friends calligraphy: see Letter 36 n.
Kuanon: Kuanon (Guanyin), Goddess of Compassion, is honored in Cantos 74, 77, 81, 90, 97, 101,
and 110.
a. fang and pound's classic anthology 125
85 EP to Fang (TL-1; Beinecke)
[St Elizabeths Hospital] [Washington, DC] [November 1952]
No, my Fang
D. P. has just recd/a thoroughly DIRTY letter from yr/friend Wilson.
