No More Learning

(this is not to transcurar' vr/recd/response re ''decadence of the empire'' ? <or ? too limited> MANG/ iv, 2, xxviii/3 AI4
? ? ? sheep that going to be DUTY
me UGH/ ? li2
? chih1?
? has this enough weight?
guess it's O. K.
Mencius II, i. vi 4/5 has got tuans/ but they cant POSSSSibly be translated
love, DUTY, propriety, wisdom. propriety, wisdom/ O. K. BUT the other 2/ cd/ even Mat/ think so? besides they are TUANs OF these things, at that point, not postulating the four as the tuan/s ipse.
the TUANs are the commiseration/ shame/ modesty/ ap/and disap-proving. as bases OF jen/i/li/chih
we cant fall back into the vanW/ Brooks era/ or the sewers of Babylon. ***
incidentally we hv/ a new prospective student on the west coast Miss Glory
produces-wheat-ear [Angela Chih-ying Jung]. (not to be confused with the local Gloria [French])
***
What about prospect of PRINTING some more stimulae to oriental studies?
?
Legge fusses round with TA (Mat 5956) and interpolates duties/ duties etc. 5. but nothing in Mat/ to indicate that TA means duty.
If only someone wd/ display a little sense of the meaning of words. Obviously there IS a chinese word for duty? ?
east west HawaiLosophy: see Letter 54 n.
Jarge Santayana: see Glossary on Santayana, George.
? ? a. fang and pound's bilingual confucius 81
? . . . AI4: ? (love) is taken from Mencius, 4. 2. 28. 2: ''? ? ? ? The benevolent man loves others'' and 4. 2. 28. 3: ''? ? ? ? ? ? ? He who loves others is constantly loved by them'' (Legge, ii. 333).
? ? ? : ? taken from Mencius, 4. 2. 28. 4 (Legge, ii. 333) is a homophone (not a synonym) of ? , the second tuan.
jen/i/li/chih: on ? ? ? ? , the four tuan, see Letter 42 n.
vanW/Brooks era: in America's Coming-of-Age (1915) Van Wyck Brooks (1886-1963) portrays an era
that values not cosmopolitanism but a native self-consciousness.
59 Fang to EP (TLS-2; Lilly)
Dear Mr Pound,
Not much information about REV. Robt Henry Mathews of China Inland
Mission. He certainly has nothing to do with Harvard.
The people here pirated his horrible dixionary during the last war--princi-
pally in order to make Yankee boys gabble in broken mandarin with the pretty lasses of Cathay. Serge ElisseeV told me that sometime after he played the pirate in the service of the Federal government, he was approached by a representative of CIM [China Inland Mission], who had to acknowledge his impotence when he was reminded that no books published in China had copyright outside China. (You know, China has never joined the Bern[e] convention. )
By the way, Mathews published Kuoyu ? Primer, a text book for missionaries, who would be foolish enough to convert the heathen Chinese in their national language ? ? , i. e. Mandarin. Revised from Baller's book again.
As you must have noticed from the preface, Mathews produced his scandal- ous dix. on the basis of Baller's (also a missionary). He should not be responsible for all those stupidities. As far as learning Chinese goes, none of the Aryan missionaries (like to believe that there isn't any semitic or crypto-aryan mis- sionary in China) can ever do the feat. Halleluja
Of course, M is downright stupid to equate the four tuan with the four concepts. But he did. Old Legge is also very idiotic when he states: tuan is explained by tuan- hsu ? , ''the end of a clue,'' that point outside, which may be laid hold of, and will guide us to all within (p. 79 note). When Chu Hsi wrote ? , ? ? ? he only meant that the ideogram tuan here is to be understood in the sense of term tuan-hsu ? , ''end of the thread,'' and not in the sense of other tuan-compounds. This end is U? aea? ? [beginning] and not o^Y? oi? o` [close]. In other words, the feeling of commiseration is the fountainhead of HUMANITAS (I can see old Babbitt turning in his grave at this equation of humanism with humanitarianism). L's rendition of tuan as Principle is not satisfactory, of course; I am sure old Baller or stupid Mathews was misled by ''principle,'' thinking that principle is the thing itself. So does the mind (if we may credit it to Xtians) of missionaries work.
[Cambridge, Mass. ] March 7, 1952
? ? 82 a. fang and pound's bilingual confucius
Tuan-hsu ? [? ? ], as I understand it, means one end of the thread, by tracing its provenience we may come to the whole skein or even the whole cloth; it is also possible to interpret it as the component (and essential one at that) of a fabric.
As for the meaning of the four concepts, I am really at a loss to suggest any sensible translation. Perhaps it would be best to not to try to translate them; after all, how is the attempted translation of ? oc? aei? a? ? i? A? [character or conduct of someone of sound, discreet, moderate, chaste, sober mind]?
Take the term i ? , usually rendered as justice. As far as I know, no Ch. writer has thought of the idea of an eye for an eye. As a Chinese I shall never feel smug when I have repaid your kindness or service to a T. No, I will hold myself to be an unwashed barbarian if I did not repay you to a T PLUS. Tit for tat is not Chinese conception of justice; it is rather two (or n) tits for one tat (in goodness, of course; vin[di]ctiveness is not even thought of ). To be concrete, if I borrowed an egg from the people upstairs, I am ready to return them more than one egg. (Corollary: I hate to borrow anything from anybody. )
Mathews p. 148 we have ? ? ? ? , which is a term used to denote a barbarian. ''Carefully compare it''? Lit. ''to compare or check the measure your pound against my pound,'' to see it that nobody is the loser by a fraction of an ounce. (The entry before that and the one still before that have just the opposite meaning: to be perspicacious or to hold to one's principle very carefully, i. e. in dealing with one's own self, without any relation with other people involved. )
It would be easy to say that i sounds like generosity. As I understand, generosity is a virtue, perhaps because it is exceptional. But i is not, in spite of what people say, a virtue; it is part and parcel of Chinese ethical outlook. (I confess, I shall not be able to end this paragraph happily and hence abruptly leave the question here. )
Of course, i means thousand other things. In the last analysis, it seems to be Quixotic for me to try to write about these Protean senses of a concept.
At any rate, I am convinced that it is almost impossible to ''sell'' the sane ethico-political Anschauung of the Chinese <A Chinese is nothing if not a homo politicus. > to the semites or aryans. Wonder if you will succeed <doing so>.
Expecting to get challenged, I stop here for this time.
Respectfully [signed] Achilles Fang
Serge ElisseeV: Serge ElisseeV, director of Harvard-Yenching Institute from 1934 to 56.
Baller: F. W. Baller, An Analytical Chinese-English Dictionary (1900); Sacred Edict (1907); A Mandarin
Primer (1933).
a. fang and pound's bilingual confucius 83
Babbitt: Irving Babbitt (1865-1933), Harvard professor and author of Democracy and Leadership (Boston: Houghton MiZin, 1924).
Chu Hsi: see Glossary on Zhu Xi.
60 Fang to EP (TLS-1; Lilly)
Dear Mr Pound,
Your DUTY does not exist in Chinese. Modern dix. renders it as pen-fen ?
? , which usually means ''one's lot'' (as in to be content with one's lot) and i-wu ? ? , which must have been coined by japs (gimu they say) and couldn't be intelligible to KUNG or MENG.
(As function, d[uty]. may be rendered with ? or its combinations ? ? ,/ ? ,/? ,/? , etc).
The nearest I can think of for DUTY is ? , but then it means a quite diVerent thing, as I wrote in my last.
-----------
As far as I can see, the Ch. have never thought of DUTY in abstracto. They have been plenty dutiful, without ever bothering about Categorical Imperative. Don't you think DUTY is a modern catchword in Indo-European thinking?
Thinking always in concreto and never bothering themselves with divine sanction, they must have acted as dutifully as any duty-conscious human beings.
The jewish-Xtian moralist teaches: honor thy parents if you will prosper (or something like that). The Ch. Wnd this very cheap and revoltingly utilitar- ian.
I wonder if there isn't some organic relationship between JUSTICE and DUTY. The TIT-for-TAT obsession is primitive, and must have been shared by early Chinese. But already in Chou times justice is relegated to decorum, etiquette, good manners: Chou-li ? ? [Rites of Zhou] supposedly formulated by Duke of Chou, is a treatise on the institutional life of the homo politicus sinensis. The section on justice or jurisprudence is in the fourth book, while the 5th & last is on handicrafts and art.
Why then does the Ch. act loyally, Wlially, etc. ?
Tentative answer: only because it is sensible to act in those manners, as KUNG and MENG proved convincingly. I believe, Ch. have lived without the abstract concepts of JUSTICE and
DUTY. (God was thrown away by KUNG once for all. )
[Cambridge, Mass. ] March 13, 1952
84 a. fang and pound's bilingual confucius
Yours respectfully [signed] Achilles Fang
61 EP to Fang (TL-2; Beinecke)
[St Elizabeths Hospital] [Washington, DC] [18 March 1952]
Fang/ad interim/
will look up passages later/
duty/doveri dell'uomo/[man's duties] vs/Tom Paine's rights/
china not corrupted by greek glossing over <seldom acknowledged> slavery
under Aristotelian Anschauung. duty/serve/serve prince/serve parents/seems to me all Kung has implicit sense of duty/
ceremonies being the HOW the duty arising from human aVections, the insides of the ceremony/
this not what am writing about in hurry. will go seriously into A. F. 's last, at grtr/leisure. this started to say my son-in-row's kid bro. Igor
de Rachewiltz
Kleingemeinergasse 21, Salzburg, Austria
thanks me for A. F. 's pamphlets/and if I hv/any more will I please send them. ergo a Wt recipient for your new ones.
also the young Ig/in worrying how he can pay his rent and study chinese simultaneously/
he OUGHT to do an italian trans/of Mencius or the Analects/knows a great deal more of the language than I do/
Fang got any idea where Igor cd/hook onto any of these wasteful foundations that are blowing millions on useless etc?
I believe Tucci, head (or was) Inst. Orient. Stud/Roma interested only in geography or something. ANYhow any practical suggestion might be useful (no need to tie it to grampaw. . .
more re/serve/and duty and yr/pamphlets as soon AZ I ketch my breath.
duty, or whatever I am driving at/the measure UP TO WHICH, the propor- tion of what if Wtting, acc/the diVerent degrees of respect or aVection/and the beyond which NOT.
A. F. 's last: Fang's insight would be Wtted into Canto 99/731:
But the four TUAN
are from nature
jen, i, li, chih
a. fang and pound's bilingual confucius 85
Not from descriptions in the school house; They are the scholar's job,
The gentleman's and the oYcer's.
Igor: see Glossary on De Rachewiltz, Igor. Tucci: see Glossary on Tucci, Giuseppe.
62
EP to Fang (TL-2; Beinecke)
[St Elizabeths Hospital] [Washington, DC] [9 May 1952]
Achilles/
Long time no noise.
? KAI1 (3188) seems to be idea boundary limit/3191/ought
Not sure what Achilles the hell thinks DUTY means/
admit/that limit and propriety might seem to make second and third TUAN
pretty much the same/but <NOT> absobloodylootly the same. //
O. K. very the spontaneity (hilaritas of the aarif) got to be there/but IS there in the Wrst TUAN anyhow and Purpose of law: to prevent coercion either by force or by fraud/
hence dislike of Blackstone among them as only interested in ''bunk, seeing what you can put over. ''
***
cultivation of ''person''/? ? self-discipline?
certainly NOT something deWned by someone else.
1. decent impulse
2. limits to which
3. modus in which
4. horse sense acquired by action.
As to how far diVerent ideograms WRITTEN (gorNoze what is now com-
prehensible by chinese noises when spoken)
how far ideogram can be ALL parts of speech simultaneously when taken in
groups?
how inclusive the sense can be
mid-heart? ? as verb?
**
''Wheatear'' [Jung] deplores degeneration in education in present China . . . and so on/
?
86 a. fang and pound's bilingual confucius KAI1 (3188) . . . 3191/ought: see Letter 63.
Blackstone: see Glossary on Blackstone, William.
Dear Mr Pound, YOUR
1. decent impulse
2. limits to which
3. modus in which
4. horse sense acquired by action
63 Fang to EP (TLS-1; Beinecke)
[Cambridge, Mass. ]
May 30, 1952
? ? is OK with me. Only that it is doubtful if Mong [Mencius] took 2 & 3 (& possibly 4 also) as aspects of 1. True, humanitas is a very important thing in Kung and possibly in Mong (a jap. has written a thick <book> on the study of jen), but Mong probably did not want to subordinate the three virtues to DECENT IMPULSE. I mean, he leaves the question ambiguous and there has been much polemic over the relationship of the four. I don't see anything objectionable to your schematisation, nor would Mong himself demur.
The trouble with Mong is that he is often carried away by his eloquence and mental juggling so that attentive readers often cannot help sighing. Take jen ? in ? ? ? ? ? IIA. 6 for instance: in earlier and subsequent usages it means TO PUT UP WITH or TO BEAR. In certain cases this jen is a virtue (patience, tolerance), in certain others its opposite (as with MONG) is a virtue. It all depends on whether the motivation is altruism or not.
Mong illustrates this jen-hood with the case of a baby falling into the well. I am sure he could have illustrated the sense of shame; but I wish he had given us some concrete instance of modesty and moral sanction (3 & 4). Are human being instinctively modest and discriminatory?
Your schematisation, then, seems to be a step forward; at least, the four points seem to be inter-related.
kai 3183 [3188? ], as far as I can Wnd out, is never used in any metaphorical sense. kai 3191 [? ] in the sense of ''ought to'' is only colloquial; in written language it means rather ''comprehensive, extensive. ''
This week's New Yorker has a short notice of your PIVOT; quite decent for N. Y. , I think.
Yours respectfully [signed] Achilles Fang
? ? ? ? ? ? ? a. fang and pound's bilingual confucius 87 ? ? ? ? ? :Mencius,2. 1. 6. 3:''? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? allmenhaveamindwhichcannot
bear to see the suVerings of others'' (Legge, ii. 202).
64 EP to Fang (TL-1; Beinecke)
[St Elizabeths Hospital] [Washington, DC] [16 June 1952]
Achilles
There is a bloke named W. Yandell Elliott, Haaavud Summer School, said to
be DIrecting Mr Kissinger to edit a Xabby mug'sgaZoon named ''ConXuence. '' Elliot a cheerful an' exuberant/BUT Achilles MIGHT get it into Yelliott'z head
that it is asinine to mention philosophy or ethics without mentioning KUNG. That the League of Nation[s], UN, unesco, etc. were fahrts in various bales of wind/BUT there is no use wasting time in going into that. Full bribes, fullB-
lights [Fulbright] etc /
There ought to be chairs of sinology/not diminution of oriental studies. AND
there ought to be METHOD, Kung, to Agassiz, and a drive against abstract blather, implied in any mention of Kung, Agassiz or Dante . . . kussing out . . .
quel che la cosa per nome
Apprende ben; ma la sua quiditate
Veder non puote,
BASIS/Kung
plus a revival of greek studies, Sophokles at the top.
Those blokes got a mag/but NO writers whatsobloody ever. all slop at
Maritain-Matthiessen grade, or I dare say below if there is a lower.
Elliot COULD be useful/even to himself, if he wd/move ON not wait for more other kawlidges to insert Kung and Fenollosa BEFORE the Bastun
beanery starts.
IF you don't yet know Elliott (W. Y. ), you can say I asked you to save his soul,
mind, or central correlation <? ? > point, depending on which term you consider most likely to convey a meaning and/or impulse.
W. Yandell Elliott . . . Kissinger: William Yandell Elliott (1896-1979) founded Harvard Summer Insti- tute in 1952. Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (b. 1923), then a Ph. D. candidate, edited its journal ConXuence.
Agassiz: see Glossary on Agassiz, Louis.
quel che . . . Veder non puote: ''one who well understands the thing by its name, but cannot see its true
meaning (if no one points it out)'' (Dante, Paradiso, 20. 91-3).
Maritain-Matthiessen: the Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain (1882-1973) was then at Princeton.
The literary critic Francis Otto Matthiessen (1902-50) was a Harvard professor.
? ? 5
Pound as Miss Jung's Dissertation Adviser ''One's opinions change''
Arriving at the University of Washington with a BA from Beijing's Catholic University, Angela Chih-ying Jung (Rong Zhiying ? ? ? , b. 1926) had to determine what direction her professional future should take (see Fig. 5. 1). It didn't take her long to decide to pursue a Ph. D. in English and comparative literature. It was by coincidence, nevertheless, that she chose Ezra Pound as a subject. In a seminar she attended in spring 1952, she noticed a student drawing Chinese characters in a notebook. Before she was able to correct his mistakes, the young man showed her the book from which he was copying these characters, The Cantos of Ezra Pound. In the following weeks Jung immersed herself in The Cantos, ''attracted to Pound's profuse use of Chinese themes'' (Jung, ''Ezra Pound and China,'' University of Washington dissertation, 1955).
From The Cantos Jung moved on to Pound's Cathay ''For the most part from the Chinese of Rihaku [Li Po], from the notes of the late Ernest Fenollosa'' (1915; rpt. Personae, 130) and his Confucian translations--Ta Hio (1928), The Unwobbling Pivot (1947), and The Analects (1951). As a student from China she could not resist digging into Pound's Chinese borrowings. It was not difficult to identify the Chinese treasures that yielded Pound Cathay via Fenollosa and Mori. Nor was it difficult to account for the figures and events chronicled in his Chinese History Cantos (Cantos 52-61). But what source books in English or French or Chinese did Pound use for the composition of these cantos? How much Chinese did he understand? Already Jung had a topic for her dissertation: ''The Chinese Enigma of Ezra Pound'' (Jung, ''Ezra Pound and China'').
Unless she contacted Pound, these puzzles would remain puzzles. In late February Jung plucked up enough courage to write to the poet, who was still incarcerated in Washington, DC's St Elizabeths Hospital. In that letter she told Pound how much she admired his China-related poems and how curious she was about the origin of his interest in Chinese culture. Just when Jung was giving up hope of hearing from Pound, a reply from him arrived. He would answer her questions when she got to St Elizabeths.
pound as jung's dissertation adviser 89
It must have occurred to Pound that Miss Jung would provide a unique perspective. Between February and March he wrote her four more letters. In one letter he copied out a little Chinese poem he had composed and asked if it made sense to her at all. The attempt anticipated a single-line Chinese poem within Canto 110: ''yu ? eh4. 5 j ming2 j mo4. 5 j hsien1 j p'eng2'' (? ? ? ? ?