No More Learning

read out the stuV to me'' (Letter 8). Hugh Kenner told us that Pound's forte in 1936 was ''looking up characters one by one in Morrison. ''15 As late as 1941 he could do little more than that. On 7 November of that year he wrote: ''I have had to think half a night to come up with an equivalent of the Wre underneath what Morrison calls 'house' '' (Letter 22). By 1951, nevertheless, he was able to read Shu jing in the original, ''at least recogniz[ing] a few terms without having crib on next page'' (Letter 31). Shu jing was one of many Chinese classics Achilles Fang sent him that spring. From Shu jing and Yi jing (Book of Changes) he moved on to Tang Song qian jia shi (Poems by a Thousand Tang and Song Poets) and Chu ci ('Southern Anthology'). A year later, he began borrowing Chinese anthologies also from Angela Jung. ''[N]ot a lot all @ once as I still read very slowly,'' he stressed in a letter to her of 29 February 1952 (Letter 65). There are letters showing that by February 1957 he still had trouble comprehending writings such as Yongzheng's expansion of Kangxi's ''Sacred Edict. '' He tried to get David Wang to translate into English Yongzheng's text, which he found ''very damnbiguous'' (Letter 149).
The letters selected for this volume also record Pound's engagement with Confucius during the early 1940s and throughout the 1950s. They not only disclose what editions Pound used and how much he understood at any one moment but also highlight the circumstances of his Confucian translations. Around 1940 Pound undertook to retranslate the Confucian Four Books into Italian. After Wnishing Da xue or Ta S'eu (1942) he originally planned to move to the fourth book, Mencius. It was Fenchi Yang's friend Sig. Tchu (Zhu Ying), who persuaded Pound to take up Zhong yong or Chiung Iung (1945) instead. As previous scholarship has shown, Pound was working on an Italian version of Mencius in May 1945 and his interest shifted to the third Confucian book, Lun yu
15
Hugh Kenner, ''More on the Seven Lakes Canto,'' Paideuma, 2/1 (Spring 1973), 43-4.
xviii introduction
or The Analects, when he was taken into detention outside Pisa. 16 In 1951-2, Achilles Fang succeeded in bringing his attention back to Mencius. Although Pound never resumed his translation of the fourth Confucian book, he incorp- orated some key Mencian notions into his Rock-Drill cantos. This volume includes letters illuminating Pound's otherwise baZing uses of the Mencian doctrine of ''four TUAN'' or the four virtuous beginnings of human nature. In the early 1950s Achilles Fang also prevailed on Pound to expand his reading of Confucius beyond the Four Books. It is true that after going over some of the ''Thirteen Classics'' with Achilles Fang, all Pound got to say was ''All answers are in the FOUR BOOKS. '' But as it turned out, the opening Rock-Drill cantos center on Shu jing, which Achilles Fang hailed as ''the liber librorum. ''
The correspondence calls into question several stereotypical assumptions about Pound's Confucianism. Some Pound scholars have pointed to Pound's Confucian studies during World War II as being responsible for his fascism. 17 Their opinion is based solely on Pound's misleading labeling of Confucian teachings as ''totalitarian'' and ''fascist. ''18 Drawing on Confucian works includ- ing those translated by Pound, Feng Lan has refuted this oversimpliWcation. 19 The Pound-Yang correspondence will reinforce Lan's contention. In 1940-1 Pound's fascism grew so oVensive that Yang began backing out from their correspondence. It was their mutual interest in the Confucian Four Books that saved it. As a Confucian, Yang saw Pound's enthusiasm for Italian fascism and his zeal for Confucianism as two separate preoccupations. Having learned of Pound's reading of the Four Books, Yang encouraged him to ''occupy [himself] with this subject'' (Letter 21), apparently with the intention of attract- ing him away from fascism.
Another problem in Pound scholarship is the tendency to overemphasize his exclusion of and hostility to Taoism and Buddhism. Pound was radically biased against Taoism and Buddhism during the 1930s and 1940s. Starting from the early 1950s, however, he opened himself up to non-Confucian Chinese tradi- tions. In November 1951, after reading Arthur Waley's version of Taoist founder Laozi, he asked Achilles Fang: ''Does Lao contain ANYTHING useful that is NOT in the Four Books (and their preludes, the Shih [Odes] and the Shu)? '' (Letter 82). Seizing this opportunity, Fang brought up Laozi's most vocal proponent, Zhuang Zhou, as being ''of great importance to sensible Confu- cians'' (Letter 83). Between 1953 and 1956, moreover, Pound intermittently
16
470. Ronald Bush, ''Confucius Erased: The Missing Ideograms in The Pisan Cantos,'' in Ezra Pound
and China, ed. Zhaoming Qian (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003), 163-92, esp. 167-8.
17 18
(1938; New York: New Directions, 1970), 279; and Romano Bilenchi, ''Rapallo 1941,'' Paideuma, 8/3
(Winter 1979), 431-42, esp. 435.
19
Hugh Kenner, The Pound Era (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1971),
See, e. g. Cheadle, Ezra Pound's Confucian Translations, 81.
For Pound's labeling of Confucius as ''totalitarian'' and ''fascist,'' see SP, 85; Guide to Kulchur
Lan, Ezra Pound and Confucianism, 216-17.
introduction xix
chatted with P. H. Fang about the mysterious Naxi rites that fuse Confucian ancestral worship with Taoism and Buddhism. Their conversations, along with Joseph Rock's descriptions of the Naxi rites, inspired Pound's haunting poetry about the ''wind sway'' ceremony that focuses on possibilities of life after death, a departure from Canto 13, where Confucius is quoted as saying ''nothing of the 'life after death. ' ''20 Going over all of this material makes it easy to understand why in the mid-1950s Pound would admit his oversight to William McNaughton: ''There's no doubt I missed something in Taoism and Buddhism. Clearly, there's something valid, meaningful, in those religions. ''21
No stereotypical portrayal of Pound's China is more widespread than his association with an approach that dismisses phonetic elements in the Chinese language. This association has to do with Pound's promotion of Fenollosa's essay ''The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry'' (1919, 1936). 22 For George Kennedy this essay is ''a small mass of confusion'' based on a ''complete misunderstanding'' of the Chinese language. 23 For James Liu it is responsible for the fallacy ''common among Western readers outside sinological circles, namely, that all Chinese characters are pictograms or ideograms. ''24 The aim of Fenollosa's essay is to push for concrete, natural thinking and writing as suggested by the primitive Chinese character. Nowhere in his essay does Fenollosa claim that ''all Chinese characters are pictograms or ideograms. '' What he states is that ''a large number of the primitive Chinese characters, even the so-called radicals, are shorthand pictures of actions or processes'' (emphasis added). 25 Fenollosa does not altogether deny the existence of sounds in the Chinese character. Instead he stresses that the Chinese character ''speaks at once with the vividness of painting, and with the mobility of sounds. ''26 But yet in the second half of the past century the critical opinion of Kennedy and Liu
20
dying, but on ways of responding to the death of a loved one and to the possibilities of life after
death. '' See Wallace, '' 'Why Not Spirits? '--'The Universe Is Alive': Ezra Pound, Joseph Rock, the
Na Khi, and Plotinus,'' in Ezra Pound and China, ed. Qian, 213-77, esp. 252.
21
See William McNaughton, ''A Report on the 16th Biennial International Conference on Ezra Pound, Branto^me, France, 18-22 July, 1995,'' Paideuma, 27/1 (Spring 1998), 130.
22
Little Review, 6/5-8 (1919). Ernest Fenollosa, The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry, ed.
Ezra Pound (London: Stanley Nott, 1936).
23
George Kennedy, ''Fenollosa, Pound, and the Chinese Character,'' Yale Literary Magazine, 126/5 (1958), 26-36.
24 25
Ernest Fenollosa, The Chinese Character as a Medium for Poetry, ed. Ezra Pound (1936; rpt. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1968), 9.
26
Ibid. Thanks are due to Haun Saussy, who called my attention to passages in Fenollosa's manuscript (at Yale) about the sounds and rhythmical patterns of Chinese verse, which EP elected to drop when he published it in 1919. See Fenollosa/Pound, The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry: A Critical Edition, ed. Haun Saussy, Jonathan Stalling, and Lucas Klein (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008).
For Emily Mitchell Wallace, Canto 110/797-8 ''focuses not on the manner of death or ways of
Ernest Fenollosa, ''The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry,'' ed. Ezra Pound,
James J. Y. Liu, The Art of Chinese Poetry (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961), 3.
xx introduction
was echoed and reechoed until Fenollosa's name, along with Pound's, became synonymous with the so-called pictographic approach, an approach that refuses to recognize phonetic elements in Chinese.
Defenders of Fenollosa and Pound assert that the essay is intended not for philologists and students of the Chinese language but for poets and students of creative writing. In Pound's words, Fenollosa ''did not claim that the average Chinese journalist uses this instrument as a 'medium for poetry' but that it can and has been so used. ''27 This argument is valid, but it cannot clear away the condemnation of Pound's disregard of Chinese sound in favor of its pictorial quality. The correspondence in this volume will bring our attention to the changes in Pound's understanding of the Chinese language. After all, he did not ignore the value of Chinese sound throughout his career. 28
Elsewhere I have shown that in the late Cantos Pound's use of Chinese is both pictographic and phonetic. 29 Cantos 85-9 and 96-8 are replete with Chinese characters accompanied by their phonetic symbols. Canto 99 experiments with English-Chinese mixed alliteration. Canto 110 even oVers a single-line poem in Chinese syllables: ''yu ? eh4. 5 j ming2 j mo4. 5 j hsien1 j p'eng2. '' The correspondence will conWrm that in the early 1950s Pound made strenuous eVorts to learn the pronunciation of Chinese characters. In a letter of February 1951 to Achilles Fang, Pound inquired, ''What could save inWnite time and labour fer pore mutts trying to learn a little chinese, esp/ SOUND'' (Letter 32). In another letter to Fang (February 1952) he expressed his regret for not having done so earlier: ''For years I never made ANY attempt to hitch ANY sound to the ideograms, content with the meaning and the visual form'' (Letter 56). Later that year, when Angela Jung reminded him that he had belittled the usefulness of Chinese sound, he protested: ''one's opinions change . . . He should not be held responsible for what he said or wrote decades earlier. ''30 During that period Pound was also trying to learn some conversational Chinese from visiting Chinese student Veronica Huilan Sun. In a letter to Fang (12 October 1951) he made an attempt to distinguish between the Shanghai dialect and the so-called Mandarin Chinese: ''Very hard for senile ignoramus to attain vocal Xuidity. What does Ni hao ma? [How are you? ] sound like in the North Kepertl [Beijing]?
27
Beinecke. For a French version, see EP's note to Mary de Rachewiltz, trans. , Catai (Milan: Strenna
del Pesce d'Oro, 1960), 45.
28
recognize its importance until about 1950. On 11 March 1937 he told Katue Kitasono: ''When
I did Cathay, I had no inkling of the technique of sound, which I am now convinced must exist or
have existed in Chinese poetry. '' See EP, Selected Letters 1907-1941, ed. D. D. Paige (1950; New York:
New Directions, 1971), 293.
29 30
Quoted in Angela Jung Palandri, ''Homage to a Confucian Poet,'' Paideuma, 3/3 (Winter 1974), 307.
EP's 1958 typescript entitled ''Mori's Lectures on the History of Chinese Poetry'' kept at
Pound discovered the existence of Chinese sound in the mid-1930s, though he did not
Qian, Modernist Response to Chinese Art, 217-20.
introduction xxi
A rose of Shanghai pronounces: 'manchu,' in way almost impos / disting / fr / 'damn yankee' '' (Letter 80).
One further evidence of how hard Pound worked at the detail of Chinese sound and sense is a typescript of forty-Wve pages entitled ''Preliminary Survey,'' which he sent to Achilles Fang in January 1951 (Beinecke; see Appendix below). ''It is even permitted us to suppose that the original Chinese speech was not only inXected but also agglutinative,'' he contended. As a poet he was looking for sound symbolism. Even with practically no access to archaic Chinese pronunciation, he speculated: ''Despite exceptions a good many ch sounds can be read as indicative of place or of motion . . . YUAN in a number of cases has clearly to do with circling, enclosing . . . MEI and MENG are in certain cases dark, from deWnite black ink to young ignorance. '' Fang did not think much of O. Z. Tsang's Complete Chinese-English Dictionary (1920), upon which Pound based his abandoned survey. However, he admired Pound's interpretation of the Confucian word chih (zhi) ? as ''the point of rest'' and ''the hitching post sign'': ''[Y]our interpretation of ? seems to solve a number of knotty problems in Kung's book'' (Letter 30).
It is Pound's China-related cantos and Confucian translations that draw me to these letters. And these letters will in turn lead the reader back to these same cantos and translations. Two cases in point are Rock-Drill and Thrones. These two works contain some of everyone's favorite modernist lyrics, but not everyone has understood them very well. The most reliable commentaries on them are in these letters. In 1952-8, when Rock-Drill and Thrones were being shaped, Pound communicated with his Chinese friends almost daily. A wealth of Chinese materials they discussed made their way into these cantos. Ezra Pound's Chinese Friends should be read in conjunction with them. The characters, concepts, and other Chinese references covered in speciWc contexts frequently anticipate those of the Rock-Drill and Thrones cantos; consequently the ex- changes clarify most if not all of the late cantos' Chinese obscurities.
Pound befriended not some ordinary Chinese individuals but a group of outstanding Chinese scholars and poets. Among them were some of China's most eminent educators of the past century. F. T. Sung was one of the Wrst Chinese to teach mineralogy at Beijing University. 31 Pao Swen Tseng, who founded a girls' college in Hunan, central China, in 1918, may well have been China's Wrst female college president. Carsun Chang, a renowned political science professor and Confucian thinker, was China's delegate to the 1945 United Nations Conference, signing the ''Charter of the United Nations. '' Before joining Harvard in 1947 to work on a Chinese-English dictionary project,
31
Cui Yunhao, ''Woguo jinxiandai kuangwuxue jiaoyu de chansheng yu fazhan'' (The Origin and Development of China's Mineralogical Education), Zhongguo dizhi jiaoyu (Geological Education in China) (1995), ii. 69-72. Thanks are due to Chunchang Li for calling my attention to this article.
xxii introduction
Achilles Fang had already enjoyed a reputation as a formidable scholar of Chinese among Western students in Beijing. The rest of the group either had been or would shortly afterward become university professors. Their respective relationships with Pound and contributions to his visions of China are summar- ized in my introductions to the chapters into which the letters are divided.
NOTES ON THE TEXT
Approximately four hundred letters, postcards, and telegrams between Ezra Pound and his Chinese friends have been found in three Ezra Pound archives and three private collections. Printed here are 162 of them. In making a selection, I have tried to focus on those with significant information about the way Pound sought guidance from his Chinese friends; the literary, cultural, and political exchanges between Pound and these friends; and the shaping and publication history of Pound's works.
Excerpts from four letters Pound wrote to his parents Homer and Isabel Pound (Beinecke) have been included to document his 1928 encounter with Pao Swen Tseng, who offered Pound translation of eight Chinese poems that contributed to Canto 49.
Pound's letters to F. T. Sung and Carsun Chang are unfortunately lost. To fill up the gaps, I have included in chapter 1 on Pound-Sung Pound's introductory note to Sung's Egoist article and in chapter 6 on Pound-Chang two letters C. H. Kwock wrote to Pound on behalf of Chang and a memoir of Pound and Carsun Chang by William McNaughton.
All but four letters from Pound to his parents (Letters 4-8) and two letters from Achilles Fang to Pound (Letters 28, 38) are reproduced in full. What have been deleted from Letters 4-8 are irrelevant passages, and what have been omitted from Letters 28 and 38 are lengthy Latin/French quotations whose sources are given in notes. Deletions and omissions are designated by the mark [ . . . ]. Fifteen letters in Italian (Letters 9-23) are followed by English translations within square brackets.
The selected items are numbered in chronological sequence. The headings, closings, and signatures of all the letters and postcards have been regularized. The dates and return places within square brackets are from internal evidence or from postmarks.
In transcribing the selections, my aim has been to make them accurate and readable. Non-standard spelling, punctuation, and capitalization, whether in- tentional or accidental, have been reproduced. To tidy up such deviations would destroy the original flavor. Editorial clarifications and translations of foreign words are inserted between square brackets. Pound's and his friends' own inserts are placed within angle brackets.
Annotations of figures, places, and works are at the end of most items. In addition, a biographical glossary has been compiled in order to reduce the number of notes in the body of the text.
Pound used several different systems of romanized spellings of Chinese characters. These include the French system adopted by Guillaume Pauthier
xxiv notes on the text
and the English (Wade) system adopted by James Legge and R. H. Mathews. In my introductions and notes, except for established usage, I give the pinyin spellings along with Pound's and others' versions. Frequently used Chinese names and titles are indexed in the variant forms with cross-references.
I am deeply grateful to Mary de Rachewiltz and Omar Pound, without whose active involvement and support this book would not have been possible. I am thankful to Diana Chang, C. H. Kwock, Ilse Fang, P. H. Fang, Lionello Lanciotti, Angela Jung Palandri, and Hongru Song, without whose warm hospitality this volume would not have been so rich.
I wish to thank Mary de Rachewiltz for guiding me to Fengchi Yang's literary executor Lionello Lanciotti; Angela Jung Palandri for introducing me to Carsun Chang's daughter Diana Chang; and Gary Gach for putting me in touch with Carsun Chang's and Tze-chiang Chao's friend C. H. Kwock. Emily Mitchell Wallace certainly did know that by sharing with me a newly unearthed letter from Joseph Rock to Pound she would lead me to three neglected cards in two Pound Archives, which in turn led me to the forgotten Pound's friend P. H. Fang. Through strenuous efforts Chunchang Li traced the grandnephew of Pound's first Chinese correspondent F. T. Sung. Despite my resolution, I have failed to locate every single one of the book's copyright holders. Upon notifica- tion my publisher and I would be pleased to correct the omissions in the next edition or reprint of this work.
I greatly appreciate the assistance of many research libraries and individuals. Special thanks are due to Linda Briscoe Myers, Assistant Curator of Photog- raphy at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center (University of Texas at Austin); Yingxing Xie, Librarian at the Tunghai University Library (Taiwan); Saundra Taylor, Curator of Manuscripts at the Lilly Library (Indiana University); and Patricia Willis, Curator of the Yale Collection of American Literature at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library (Yale University). My profound thanks go to Hugh Witemyer, who provided the only surviving copies of Ezra Pound's letters to David Wang.
William McNaughton was unusually generous with his time and knowledge of Pound and his St Elizabeths circle, helping me with the details of my annotations. I am thankful to him also for contributing to this volume a memoir of ''What Pound and Carsun Chang Talked about at St Elizabeths. ''
I am indebted to all Pound scholars. Donald Gallup's Ezra Pound: A Bibliography (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1983); Carroll Terrell's A Companion to The Cantos of Ezra Pound (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1980); and Omar Pound's and Robert Spoo's Ezra and Dorothy Pound: Letters in Captivity, 1945-1946 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999) were indispensable guides. Other invaluable aids were Ilse Fang's ''Bibliography of Achilles Fang,'' Monumenta Serica, 45 (1997); Roger Jeans' Democracy and Socialism in Republican China: The Politics of Zhang Junmai[Carsun Chang] 1906-1941
notes on the text xxv
(Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997); Lionello Lanciotti's ''Un carteggio inedito di Ezra Pound,'' Catai, 1/2 (1981); Angela Jung Palandri's ''Homage to a Confu- cian Poet,'' Paideuma, 3/3 (1974); Pao Swen Tseng's Huiyilu (Taipei: Longwen Publishing House, 1989); Emily Mitchell Wallace's '' 'Why Not Spirits? '--'The Universe Is Alive': Ezra Pound, Joseph Rock, the Na Khi, and Plotinus,'' in Ezra Pound and China, ed. Zhaoming Qian (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003); and Hugh Witemeyer's ''The Strange Progress of David Hsin-fu Wand,'' Paideuma, 15/2 & 3 (1986).
Articles based on my research for Chapters 3 and 10 have appeared in Letterature d'America (Rome) and Modernism Revisited: Transgressing Boundaries and Strategies of Renewal in American Poetry (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007). I thank Cristina Giorcelli (editor of Letterature d'America) and Viorica Patea (co-editor of Modernism Revisited) for their feedback.
Without the aid of four remarkable colleagues I would not have been able to deal with three foreign languages in the Pound-China exchanges. Tanya Stampfl and Patricia Cockram spent numerous hours helping me translate into English fifteen letters and cards in Italian. Massimo Bacigalupo gave generously his time and expertise in Pound and Italian culture. Rayford Shaw assisted me with Greek and Latin quotations.
For their assistance I am grateful to Aleli Astok (California Institute of Integral Studies), Marcella Spann Booth, April Caprak (Burke Library, Hamilton College), Ida Chen (Tunghai University), Sheila Connor (Arnold Arboretum Library), John-Emmett Cooley (Catholic University of America), Nancy Cricco (New York University), Igor de Rachewiltz, Erika Dowell (Lilly Library, Indiana University), Daniel Gonzalez, David Gordon, Sarah Hartwell (Rauner Special Collections, Dartmouth College), Panchita Hawley, Anjiang Hu (Sun Yat-sen University, China), Jill Hughes, Steve Jones (Beinecke Library, Yale University), Everett Lee Lady (University of Hawaii), Zidan Li (Sun Yat-sen University, China), Federico Masini (University of Rome), Dennis Palmore (New Directions Publishing Corporation), Judith Pardo, Andrew Qian, Tim Qian, Jane Stoeffler (Catholic University of America), Shenru Tu, Don Walker (University of the Pacific), Jeffery Yang (New Directions Publishing Corporation), and Tao Yang (East Asian Library, Yale University).
As always, my wife May was a source of inspiration and comfort. She encouraged me to resurrect the forgotten stories of Pound's Chinese friends and supported the trying quest faithfully till its completion.
This six-year project was completed in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Thanks should go to Wendy Stallard Flory, Christine Froula, David Quint, Yulin and Haun Saussy, Ronald Schuchard, and Patricia Willis, who supported me in various ways when I was displaced by the Storm. With library privileges at Emory and a Visiting Fellowship at Yale I was able to continue my research and writing in the fall of 2005.
xxvi notes on the text
I owe a debt of gratitude to Ronald Bush, David Moody, and Haun Saussy, who read the entire manuscript in draft form and offered valuable scholarly suggestions. Marjorie Perloff read an early version of the general introduction. Massimo Bacigalupo read a chapter. Special thanks are due to them as well as to George Bornstein and Claude Rawson for their wise counsel.
The preparation of this book was also aided by a University of New Orleans Research Professorship and a Franklin Research Grant from the American Philosophical Society. I am thankful to Daniel Albright, Linda Blanton, George Bornstein, Robert Cashner, John Cooke, Wendy Stallard Flory, Susan Krantz, Cristanne Miller, Ira Nadel, Marjorie Perloff, Peter Schmidt, Peter Schock, and Patricia Willis for their incredible friendship and support.
Finally, I wish to thank my editor Andrew McNeillie for his enthusiasm. Thanks are also due to my research assistant Daniel McBride, who helped with indexing, and to Jacqueline Baker, Fiona Smith, and Rowena Anketell, who saw this volume through the press.
1
F. T. Sung's China Plan for Pound ''China is interesting, VERY''
In 1968, during an interview for an Italian documentary, Ezra Pound expressed his regret at not having been to China. When asked, ''Is this a disappointment for you, not to have seen China, which inspired you so much? '' he replied, ''Yes, I have always wanted to see China'' (Poetry and Prose, x. 317). In this exchange, Pound was no doubt sadly reminded of his unfulfilled 1914 plan to travel from London to Beijing to be reunited with his parents.
The man who invited Ezra Pound and his father to visit China was Far-san T. Sung (Song Faxiang ? ? ? , 1883-1940). With BS and MS degrees from Ohio Wesleyan University (1903, 1906) and the University of Chicago (1907), Sung had taught chemistry and mineralogy at Beijing University (1908-12). After the Sun Yat-sen Revolution that overthrew China's last emperor in 1911, Sung joined the government of the Republic of China (see Fig. 1. 1). In late December 1913, as Inspector General of Mints under the Chinese Ministry of Finance, he visited the Philadelphia branch of the US Mint, where he met deputy assayer Homer Pound and offered to find him a job in China. To this Ezra Pound responded on 4 January 1914: ''China is interesting, VERY'' (Beinecke). Two weeks later Sung traveled to London and made the same offer to Ezra, enabling him to write cheerfully to his father: ''We may yet be a united family'' (ibid). Ezra Pound's enthusiasm for China is no surprise. That winter he had gotten wise to Confucianism from Guillaume Pauthier's French translation of the Confucian Four Books (Les quatre livres, 1846; rpt. 1910) and he had been exposed to Chinese poetry through Herbert A. Giles' A History of Chinese Literature (1901). Moreover, he had received from Mary Fenollosa her late husband's notes on Chinese classic poetry and Japanese Noh drama in order to edit two anthologies--Cathay (1915) and ''Noh'' or Accomplishment (1917).
Upon his return to Beijing, Sung began corresponding with Pound: ''I have already sent two inquiries for a position for you in China and have seen a few men and [will] see if I can make them give you a good position'' (Letter 1). In his next letter, however, he admitted that finding a suitable job for Pound was not as easy as he had thought. Pound certainly would not want to be a translator.
2 f. t. sung's china plan for pound
Besides, he and Dorothy Shakespear were getting married. The China plan would have to be called off.
Sung turned out to be a caustic critic of Confucius. Interestingly, his criticism of Confucianism appears in an article Pound arranged to have published in the London Egoist, 1/6 (16 March 1914), 1/7 (1 April 1914), 1/10 (15 May 1914). In the article (''The Causes and Remedy of the Poverty of China'') Sung compared China negatively with America, admiring American economists' adherence to the principle of production and consumption and denouncing the Confucian admonition against material ''desires'' and ''appetites. '' The Chinese had been taught to be ''satisfied in poverty,'' he contended, ''hence the present poverty. ''
There is little doubt that Pound did not agree with Sung. His disapproval is evident in his introductory note to the article:
The following MSS. was left with me by a Chinese official. I might have treated it in various ways. He suggested that I should rewrite it. I might excerpt the passages whereof I disapprove but I prefer to let it alone. At a time when China has replaced Greece in the intellectual life of so many occidentals, it is interesting to see in what way the occidental ideas are percolating into the orient. We have here the notes of a practical and technical Chinaman. There are also some corrections, I do not know by whom, but I leave them as they are. (Poetry and Prose, i. 229)
By stating that ''I might excerpt the passages whereof I disapprove,'' Pound articulated his skepticism about Sung's analysis of the causes of China's poverty. And by referring to China as a nation that had in the new century ''replaced Greece in the intellectual life of so many occidentals,'' he squarely challenged Sung's negative assessment of China's place in the modern world.
Sung's anti-Confucian article led Pound inevitably back to a scrutiny of Pauthier's Confucian Four Books. Confucius' admonition against material appetites, he would find out, was not for the general public but for future government administrators. After reading William Loftus Hare's ''Chinese Egoism'' in Egoist, 1/23 (1 December 1914), Pound got a chance to respond implicitly to Sung. In his article Hare contrasted Confucius unfavorably with the third-century bc hedonist philosopher Yang Zhu. For Yang Zhu, Hare reported, a person's joy was in the world's materials. Confucius, with an everlasting reputation, never had a day's gaiety, whereas King Jie and King Zhou ''had the joy of gratifying their desires,'' which ''no infamy can take away. '' Sung was astute enough not to associate his anti-Confucianism with Yang Zhu. Never- theless, like Yang he aimed his assault at the sage's indifference to material gratifications. In ''The Words of Ming Mao 'Least among the Disciples of Kung- Fu-Tse' '' (Egoist, 1/24 (15 December 1914); rpt. Poetry and Prose, i: 320), Pound derided the denigrators' dependence on ''all things save [the human mind],'' whose thirst for knowledge and aesthetic pleasures Confucius held to be vital to the fulfillment of life. Overtly a critique of Hare's tribute to Yang Zhu's
f. t. sung's china plan for pound 3
self-indulgent egoism, Pound's first essay on Confucius also served as a rejoinder to Sung's overemphasis on material appetites at the cost of Confucian teachings. Like his fellow American expatriate Henry James, Pound hated despotism and believed the importance of ''recognition of differences, of the right of differences to exist'' (LE, 298). In Pauthier's Confucius he seems to have found a philosopher, a cultural hero, who shared their modernist values. While affirming social responsibility the Chinese sage also stressed the relevance of individual dignity. To Pound such a philosopher could serve as an antidote against evils in the West. In ''Imaginary Letter VII,'' which would appear in the March 1918 issue of the Little Review, he would condemn Christianity as having been reduced to one principle, '' 'Thou shalt attend to thy neighbour's business in preference to thine own,' '' thus hampering individuality and freedom of speech. Backing up this criticism would be an English version of an excerpt from the Confucian Analects. In it Confucius would be shown to value four of his disciples' diametrically different responses to his question, ''What would you do'' if recognized? His translation based on Pauthier would in 1924 be turned
into verse, forming a pivotal part of Canto 13, the Confucian Canto.
Without any knowledge of the degree to which Confucianism had been cor- rupted, Pound unavoidably wondered how China could remedy its problems-- what Sung described as ''the corruption of the internal administration, the weak- ness of our army, the deplorable condition of our finance, and the misery of the people''--by abandoning its Confucian tradition. To Pound nothing seemed wrong with Confucian teachings. Sung and his fellow Chinese modernists just had to
distinguish Confucianism from the political system of old China.
It is ironic that at a moment when the Chinese modernists were breaking from Confucianism in their search for a modern nation, Pound as their Anglo-American counterpart was moving in a contrary direction, reclaiming the humanist values of the Confucian tradition. From his initial engagement with China, Pound took a stance that was dramatically different from his predecessors and peers. Whereas other Westerners, as Edward Said has asserted, explored the Orient ''for domin- ating, restructuring, and having authority over [it]'' (Orientalism (New York: Random House, 1978), 3), Pound looked to China for an alternative to modern- ity. This attitude would puzzle--even shock--Sung and his contemporaries in
their attempt to replace Confucianism with a Western model.
In the next few years, as Pound journeyed toward an imaginary China (see Fig. 1. 2), inventing Li Bo in Cathay, Confucius in ''Imaginary Letter VII,'' and Song Yu (So ? -Gyoku) in ur-Canto 4 (1919), his interest in F. T. Sung waned. On 23 January 1919, for some unknown reason, he wrote Sung perhaps his last letter, which is acknowledged in the latter's reply of 16 March 1919. In that reply, Sung, then appointed political adviser to the Chinese president's office, once more spoke of his China plan for Ezra Pound: ''Do you still think of coming to China?
If so, I would like to make arrangements for your coming'' (Letter 4).
? Fig. 1. 1. F. T. Sung, 1914. From Who's Who in China (Shanghai: China Weekly Review, 1931). (Yale University Library)
? Fig. 1. 2. EP in London, 1916. (Beinecke)
6
f. t. sung's china plan for pound
1
Sung to EP (TLS-1; Beinecke)
My dear Mr Pound:
I am writing you a line to tell you that I have received the package which you
kindly forwarded to me. Enclosed please find a cheque for one shilling, which I hope will cover yours that you had advanced for me in Registration fee and stamps. I returned to Peking on the 31st Ult. I expected to go to [the] South immediately upon my return, but I found it is not possible for me to do so until later. So I am
settled in Peking for a few months.
My present address is 31 Hsin Kai Lu, Peking.
I will send you a copy of [an] English book dealing with Chinese affairs as soon as
my baggages [baggage] come which have been sent by freight from New York City. I have already sent two inquiries for a position for you in China and have seen a few men and [will] see if I can make them give you a good position. They ask me to get your academic records, etc. So if you will be kind enough to send it [them] to me, it will be a great advantage. I think I can get a fairly good position
for you. We will see what can be done.
Hoping to hear from you and with best wishes,
I am, Faithfully yours, [signed] Far T. Sung
[Longhand postscript:] If there is any mail for me, please forward it to me at the above address. S.
2 Sung to EP (TLS-1; Beinecke)
E 31 Hsin Kai Lu Peking Via Siberia. April 14. 1914.
My dear Mr Pound:
I have sent you a copy of [a] book on ''Passing the Manchu'' by parcel post
some few days ago. I hope you will soon receive it. When you get through with it, please return it to me.
31 Hsin Kai Lu Peking China Via Siberia Feb. the 8th [1914]
f. t. sung's china plan for pound 7
Now in regard to your coming out to Peking, I have been trying very hard to get a suitable position for you but so far I have not been able. I have found a position about 200. 00 1/4 ? 20 per month as a translator. If you feel like it, please let me know. It might be all right for you for the beginning, but I am rather afraid that you do not like it. I am looking for a good position for you.
Have you finished the papers that I handed over to you while in London? If so, please send it to my sister. Her address is Miss Mildred Y. Sung, 50 Nevins Street, The Harriet Judson, Brooklyn, N. Y. , USA. I am sure she will appreciate what you have done for her.
Do you know any Chinese in London? My brother-in-law is now in London. I think he lives in 42 Hillfield Road, West Hampstead, London, N. W. His name is Dr. W. C. Chen who is working also in the newspaper work, I think. I have no letters from him yet. I hope you will call on him mentioning my name. I am sure he will be very much interested in you and your work. He used to be the chief Editor of Peking Daily News which I have shown you while in London or your father has sent it to you, I think.
If I can be of any other service to you, please let me know. I have been hoping to hear from you and do hope to have your letter soon.
With best wishes, I am,
Faithfully Yours, [signed] Far T. Sung
3 Sung to EP (TLS-1; Beinecke)
My dear Mr Pound:
Accept my congratulations for your happy union and newly married life.
I wish you great success.
I am sorry that you have changed your plan that you are coming to Peking to
join me. I hope sometime in the near future you can come to pay me a visit.
I may return to London this fall, if I can arrange it. Please do not plan to go to
Spain. If you want to have a trip, better come to China.
In regard to the article on ''China's poverty,'' I thank you for its having
published in that paper which is owned by you.