It certainly sounds good enough to be a forever,--with the
aigrette
of the usual "day.
Ezra-Pound-Japan-Letters-essays
For Kitasono embodied contemporary Japan.
What Kitasono, in turn, presented to Pound was not the past but the new. He introduced Pound to what the young avant-garde was doing as reflected in poems written by members of the VOU Club and published in its magazine. Pound seized upon the potential offered by this poetry washed clean as if by acid--written in halting English translations by these young Japanese, for he saw that they approached the language with fresh eyes, without preconceptions, and used English freely, idiosyncratically and inventively. "All the moss and fuzz that for twenty years we have been trying to scrape off our language--these young men start without it. " He praised this "vortex of poetic alertness" for its immense clarity and rapid-
ity: "The Japanese eye is like those new camera shutters that catch the bullet leaving the gun. . . . They see the crystal set, the chemical laboratory and the pine tree with untrammeled clearness. . . . The Japanese poet has gone from one peak of [thought] to another faster than our slow wits permit us to follow before we have got used to his pace. "
Rather than condescendingly dismissing these poems for their techni- cal flaws, Pound positively saw in them a new beginning and enthusiasti- cally recommended them to Ronald Duncan of Townsman and lames Laughlin of New Directions for publication. While one need not necessarily agree with Pound's generous evaluation of them as "better work than any save those of E. E. Cummings," by seeing them in the manner that Pound
? PREFACE xiii
saw them and for the qualities that he cited, lessons could be learned. Here Japan was making its contemporary contribution to the West.
This collection of letters and essays documents Pound's lifelong in- volvement with the art, literature and culture of japan. Extending from 1911 to 1968, Pound's correspondence with Japanese artists and poets forms a record of a vital cultural interchange from which both East and West gained through the interaction. Included in this volume are letters from the Japanese painter Tami Koume and the dancer Michio Ito dating from Pound's early years in London--when he was at work with W. B. Yeats on translating Japanese No dramas--and his years in Paris during the early 1920's; the correspondence between Pound and the Japanese mod- ernist poet Katue Kitasono (editor of VOU) while Pound was residing in Rapallo (and later from St. Elizabeths); and articles written by Pound which appeared in the Japan Times just prior to the outbreak of World War II, promoting cross-cultural communication and insisting that "diplomacy alone could not do it. " Letters from Mary Fenollosa and various other
Japanese correspondents, along with the pertinent material included in the appendix, further round out the portrait.
Similar to the influence exerted by a previous generation of Americans who had travelled to Japan (Fenollosa, Bigelow, Morse, La Farge and Hearn), EzraPoundfromafaralsomadehiscontributiontothepreservation of the classic Japanese tradition, drawing attention to its masterworks as an essential component of world culture and a crucial means to increase East-West understanding.
--John WaJsh
'For further on Fenollosa, see note to letter 4 on Mary Fenollosa; see also Van Wyck Brooks, Fenollosa and His Circle (NY: E. P. Dutton, 1962).
? XIV
INTRODUCTION
In this book are collected letters exchanged between Ezra Pound and his Japanese friends, ranging between the years 1911 to 1968. These letters are, in most cases, chronologically arranged so that the reader may have an historical overview of Pound's involvement with the art and culture of Japan. The book also includes Pound's contributions to Japanese per- iodicals written shortly before World War II, at a time when he had little outlet elsewhere. Supplementary letters, such as those between Ezra Pound and Mary Fenollosa, Katue Kitasono to Dorothy Pound and Mary de Rache-
wiltz, etc. , which touch on material regarding Japan have also been in- cluded.
In the summer of 1911 Ezra Pound received a completely unexpected letter postmarked from Japan. "Dear Mr. Pound," the letter opened, "As I believe you may not know my work at all, I send you, under a separate cover, my new book of poems called The Pilgrimage. . . . " It was from Yonejiro Noguchi, a Japanese poet who was ten years older than Pound and had been favorably received in England and America. He had published a few books of verse and prose in English in both countries: Seen and Unseen (1897), The American Diary o/a Japanese GirJ (1902] and From the Eastern Sea (1902), and had returned to Japan after spending thirteen years abroad.
In his polite response to Noguchi Pound wrote, "of your country I know almost nothing. " But he also wrote, "1 had, of course, known of you. " One may wonder how much knowledge Pound actually had of Japan when he said, "I know almost nothing. " It can be assumed that by 1911 Pound already had some knowledge of Japanese haiku, as he had regularly been attending T. E. Hulme's meetings at the Cafe Tour d'Eiffel since 1909, where haiku had by then become common knowledge. Basil Hall Chamber- lain's CJassicaJ Poetry of the Japanese (London, 1880) had long been out. One of the members of the group, Joseph Campbell, had written three-line poems such as "The Dawn Whiteness," and Edward Storer had written "Image. " F. S. Flint had translated some haiku into English from Paul-Louis Couchoud's French translations, including a piece by Arakida Takeari, which Pound was later to quote. Actually Pound might already have read Couchoud's and Chamberlain's translations himself.
But haiku was not the only aspect of Japan that Pound was acquainted with by that time. He surely would have known something of Japan's political and social aspects as well: news of the unexpected victory of Japan
? INTRODUCTION XV
over Imperial Russia in 1905 and reports concerning the Baltic Fleet, the battles at Liishun, and the following negotiations at Portsmouth, New
Hampshire, most certainly.
Moreover, Pound's juvenescence had coincided with the period of
/aponisme. Certainly, Japan had been "opened" to the American market for some time. Even Sears, Roebuck and Co. had listed Japanese fans with illustrations in their catalogue of 1902. Lacquer ware, paper napkins, kimo- no, netsuke, wood-block prints, and other objets d'art had been imported through Yamanaka & Co. for domestic usage. French and American pain- ters had been influenced for some time by Japanese art, and in his early essays Pound had already made frequent mention of the connection be- tween Whistler and Hokusai.
But Pound in 1911 was still looking at Japan through the back end of a pair of opera glasses. Pound viewed Japan as a far-away, beautiful country, inhabited by people with a delicate and subtle sensibility, by women pretty, gentle, obedient, and loveable, and by men courageous enough to defeat Imperial Russia. When he received a businesslike letter from Yone Noguchi, therefore. Pound must have been surprised, but he does not seem to have changed his basic view of Japan. The image of a dream-like Japan had been so strongly imprinted on his young mind that it could not easily
be changed or removed.
When he wrote "The Encounter," Pound compared the graceful fingers
of a London woman to the "tissue" of a soft and lissome "Japanese paper napkin. " And when he wrote the "Metro" poem suggested by haiku, Pound presented the image of the glimmering petals scattered upon "the wet, black bough" as if painted on soft Japanese paper, to be "superimposed" upon the image of the beautiful faces of women and children in Paris.
By the time Pound met Mary Fenollosa, in 1913--and soon afterwards received the bundle of her late husband's notebooks on the No plays and Japanese interpretations of Chinese classics--his knowledge of Japan had been substantially enhanced. Yet he does not seem even then to have changed his basic image of Japan. Rather, he became more enthusiastic about "beautifying" Japan. While promoting the production of Yeats' At the Hawk's Well, Pound met Michio Ito, Tamijuro Kume and Jisoichi Kayano, and through them became acquainted with the Japanese language, Japanese customs, the No plays, Zen and various other aspects of Japan. He ex- perienced, as it were, some new phases of the realities of Japan, including the awkward English of many Japanese. But still he rarefied and mytholo- gized Japan by translating the No plays and the Chinese classics into beautiful English poetry. Certainly Pound tried to finish the translations as
? xvi INTRODUCTION
"Ernest Fenollosa would have wanted them done. " But in any event the more Pound learned about Japanese realities, the more he emphasized their beauty and positive value.
The same can be said of Canto 49. That is, Pound read the manuscript poems in Japanese and Chinese on the lakes and hills around the River Hisaio-Hsiang in China, and he used the images to create an unworldly lyrical world of "stillness" suggestive of the paradiso terrestre. And again we find that aspect when he began correspondence with Kitasono in 1936. Pound read the "crystal" poems by the members of the VOU Club, and introduced them as the "vortex of poetic alertness" in the Townsman (see Appendix). He urged the publisher James Laughlin to introduce them also in his yearly New Directions AnthoJogy. In his essay "Orientamenti" in Broletto (1938), Pound also introduced Japan favorably as being in a new "cycle," though he was aware of the Japanese invasion of Manchuria.
In 1939 Pound had begun to subscribe to the Japan Times & Mail, and was thus exposed to much more concerning the political, economic and social realities of contemporary Japan. But in 1940 he mythologized the whole history of Japan by writing that all the emperors "were of heaven descended" in Canto 58. (His source was most probably Heinrich Julius Klaproth's translation of Nippon Odai Ichiran. See Pound's letter to Kitaso- no. 3 March 1939. )
When we trace Pound's view of Japan, we come to realize that even though he continued to further his knowledge of Japan throughout his life, his earlier image of Japan as a far-off, dreamlike country persisted; a treas- ure land for the aesthete, a country entangled with pleasant memories of youth. We cannot neglect the basic fact that Pound grew up in the era of Japonisme, and the image of Japan registered in his mind in his early youth as a land of lotus and butterfly was not to be erased from his mind through- out his life. And we must also remember that FenoUosa's impact was so very strong on him that FenoUosa's admiration for Japanese values could only reinforce Pound's idealized image.
However, the important thing is that Pound had the intuitive critical sensibility to sift "to kalon" from the chaff, and he did discover authentic treasures in his study of Far Eastern cultures. Although one might wish that Pound could have written more objectively of the realities of Japan, whether approvingly or not, the fact was that Japan remained for him the distant, mythic country of Hagoromo, Aoi. and Komachi.
--Sanehide Kodama
? I POUND'S EARLY CONTACTS WITH JAPAN: 1911-23
In this section are collected three letters of Yonejiro Noguchi to Pound, one letter of Pound to Noguchi, four letters of Mary Fenollosa to Pound, one letter by her to Dorothy Pound, three letters of Michio Ito to Pound, seven- teen letters of Tamijuro Kume to Pound, and an invitation card to Tamijuro Kume's exhibition in Paris. Pound must have written back to his Japanese friends at that time, but unfortunately most of Pound's letters to them were lost in the earthquake of 1923 and during the bombing of the Second World War.
Yonejiro Noguchi (1875-1947), a Japanese poet, went to California in 1893, studied poetry under Joaquin Miller for some time, and published there his books of poems. Seen and Unseen (San Francisco Press, 1897), and The Voice of the Valley (The Doxey Press, 1897). He then went to London to publish Eastern Sea (1903), first at his own expense, and then by Macmillan. Because of the Japonisme then fashionable, the Macmillan edition went into three printings. After his return to Japan, he was invited by Oxford University to give a series of lectures, and he sailed again to England. While there (1913-14), he met, as he writes in his essay "Irish Atmosphere," W. B. Yeats and Ezra Pound. The first two letters printed in the following pages were obviously written before these meetings had occurred.
After Noguchi returned to Japan in 1914, he maintained a correspond- ence with Pound. The strange article, "To Criticize Aoi no Ue by Ezra Pound" which appeared in Japanese in Yokyokukai (October, 1916) may most probably be the anonymous translation, or rather adaptation, of Pound's "Introduction" to ''Awoi no Uye: A Play by Ujinobu" which had appeared in Quarterly Notebook (Kansas City, June 1916). If so, Pound must have sent to Noguchi a copy of the American journal. In the editorial note to the article Pound is thus portrayed:
Mr. Ezra Pound is a young poet, born in the U. S. A. , now living in England. He has published three or four books of poems, and has translated Li Po into English. He is a vigorous poet and is said to have been claiming himself a revolutionist of the literary world. He is a friend of Mr. Yonejiro Noguchi.
In certain ways, Noguchi and Pound did evidence a kinship. Both were interested in "certain forgotten odours": Pound in "the spirit of romance"
? 2 SECTIONI: 1911-23
and Noguchi in "the spirit of Japan. " And botli were fascinated by tfie No play. Though their sensibilities and their styles of writing were different, closer examination might reveal certain reciprocal echoes.
Michio Ito (1893-1961) was a Japanese modern dancer, who played the part of the hawk in a performance of Yeats' At the Hawk's Well in 1916. He had gone to Germany to study music when he was 18, but the course of his life was changed after he saw Isadora Duncan. When the war broke out, he escaped from Germany, but he was stranded when his father stopped sending him money. One day in 1914 when he did not have a penny to feed the gasometer at his flat in London, he was invited to dance at a party. At the dinner table he sat next to an elderly gentleman who admired him highly. But Ito could not understand English, and he asked him if he could speak in German. After hesitation the gentleman consented, and they talked for two hours. A few days later Ito received from that gentleman, who turned out to be Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith, a letter enclosing a check for ? 20. Pound writes of the episode in Canto 77:
So Mischio sat in the dark lacking the gasometer penny but then said: "Do you speak German? "
to Asquith, 1914.
Pound had met Ito at the Cafe Royal where the refugee artists met. He asked him to help him with the editing of the No plays in the Fenollosa notebooks, and then to help Yeats with At the Hawk's Well. Ito had himself little knowledge of the No play then, but his Japanese classmates who happened to be in London were versed in it. Tamijuro Kume and Jisoichi Kayano (Torahiko Kori)--especially the former--taught them about the No play and assisted Pound in interpreting FenoUosa's notebooks, continuing even after Ito had left for New York.
Tamijuro Kume (1893-1923), a Japanese painter, had begun taking lessons in No and Kyogen from Minoru Umewaka when he was still in primary school. His father, Taminosuke Kume, a successful businessman, had a No theatre in his large house in Yoyogi, Tokyo, where his family and guests often sang and played. Not much is recorded about his first son, Tamijuro. But according to the family legend, he began painting while he was a student at Gakushuin Middle School. He went to Europe after gradua- tion to study oil painting. During World War I, he met Pound in London, through his classmate, Michio Ito. Obviously he played a crucial part in Pound's rendering of the No plays and Dulac's production of Yeats' At the Hawk's Well. He performed utai, the vocal part of the No, at Pound's flat in
? SECTIONI: 1911-23 3
London. How much affection Pound had for him, especially after Pound lost Gaudier-Brzeska, may be gleaned from the following letters. But noth- ing much is known about the actual role he played in assisting Yeats and Pound in their research.
He returned to Japan in July 1918, vigorously worked at his "hideout" studio near Lake Yamanaka, and went to New York in January 1921 to exhibit his paintings (February 1-12). Hethen went to Paris in January 1922 and there again met Pound who arranged an exhibition for "Tami Koume" in July. Though Tamijuro Kume had a love affair in Paris, he left there in February 1923, returning to Tokyo by boat. On September 1, 1923, he was in Yokohama, again on the verge of sailing abroad, this time to America to launch a second exhibition in New York. His wife, Kiyo, and his 5-year-old son, Masayoshi, were at their villa in Koshigoe, Kamakura, planning to join him briefly at Yokohama and then see him off at the pier. However, the great earthquake occurred, just when Tamijuro Kume was in the dining room in the basement of the Oriental Hotel with a friend of his. His body was pulled out from under the bricks and ashes with his watch and rings on.
? 4 SECTIONI: 1911-23
1: Yone Noguchi to Ezra Pound ALS-1 Kamakura, Japan. 16 July 1911
Dear Mr. Pound:
As I think you may not know my work at all, I send you, under a separatecover,mynewbookofpoemscalledThePilgrimage. AsI [am]not yet acquainted with your work, I wish you will send your book or books which you like to have me to read. This little note may sound quite businesslike, but I can promise you that I can do better in my next letter to you.
Yours truly, Yone Noguchi
P. S. Iamanxioustoreadnotonlyyourpoeticalworkbutalsoyourcriticism.
2: Ezra Pound to Yone Noguchi
TLS-2 c/o Elkin Mathews, Vigo St. , London. Pmk: 2 September 1911
Dear Yone Noguchi:
I want to thank you very much for your lovely books & for your kindness in sending them to me.
I had, of course, known of you, but I am much occupied with my mediaeval studies & had neglected to read your books altho' they lie with my own in Mathews shop & I am very familiar with the appearance of their covers.
I am reading those you sent me but I do not yet know what to say of them except that they have delighted me. Besides it is very hard to write to you until I know more about you; you are older than I am--1 gather from the dates of the poems--you have been to New York. You are giving us the spirit of Japan, is it not? very much as 1 am trying to deliver from obscurity certain forgotten odours of Provence & Tuscany (my works on Guido Cavalcanti, & Arnaut Daniel, are, the one in press, the other ready to be printed).
I have sent you two volumes of poems. I do not know whether to send you The Spirit of Romance or not: It treats of mediaeval poetry in southern Europe but has many flaws of workmanship.
? SECTIONI: 1911-23 5
I can not help wondering how much you know of our contemporary poets & in what things of ours you would be likely to be interested.
I mean I do not want to write you things that you already know as well
or better than I do.
OfyourcountryI knowalmostnothing--surelyiftheeast&thewestare
ever to understand each other that understanding must come slowly & come first through the arts.
You ask about my "criticism. " There is some criticism in the Spirit of Romance & there will be some in the prefaces to the "Guido" & the "Arnaut. " But I might be more to the point if we who are artists should discuss the matters of technique & motive between ourselves. Also if you should write about these matters I would discuss your letters with Mr. Yeats & likewise my answers.
I havenotansweredbeforebecauseyourletter&yourbookshave followed me through America, France, Italy, Germany and have reached me but lately.
Let me thank you again for sending them, and believe me
3: Yone Noguchi to Ezra Pound
ACS-1 Kamakura, Japan. 22 October 1911
Dear Mr. Pound:
Many thanks for your kind letter [together] with Exultations and Can- zoni. I was glad to be acquainted with Exultations, and what a difference of your work from mine! I like to follow closely after your poetry.
Sincerely yours, Yone Noguchi
4: Mary FenoJJosa to Ezra Pound
ALS-3 159 Church Street, Mobile, Alabama. 24 November [1913]
Dear Ezra:
Your violet ray from Stone Cottage has just penetrated. Since you
Yours Very Sincerely Ezra Pound
I
? 6 SECTIONI: 1911-23
announced that you are to be there "forever," I suppose I might as well begin addressing you there.
It certainly sounds good enough to be a forever,--with the aigrette of the usual "day. "
I am beginning with right now, to send you material. I am going to number the rolls, envelopes, packets, or whatever form they go in. So if you merelyletmeknowthatNo. 1hassafelyarrived--thenNo. 2--, andsoon,it will be enough to bring me "anshin," which is to say "peace of the spirit. " I fear it will go to you in a pretty mixed up condition, but the great fact is that it will all go.
I know you are pining for hieroglyphs and ideographs: but I must keep to our plan and send the No stuff first. That is a complete book in itself-- almost think that you had better spell it Noh, as some French writers do. It looks just a little more impressive. Don't you think so? Later I will have something to say about the illustrations, but the time hasn't come, yet, for that.
If you ever see Sarojini, or write to her, wont you please say to her that if she could have sprouted a new petal every time I've thought of her, or wanted to write to her, she would be the shape and size of a chrysanthe- mum by this.
I used to think I was somewhat rushed in London, but it was a long hour of silent prayer by this! I've a million relatives, more or less, and they all feel hurt when I shut myself up even to write letters. By the way, don't forget to give me your mother's address. After Christmas I shall be wandering be- tween the cauldron of Pittsburgh and "My City, my beloved, my white! " I want to meet your mother.
Mary FenoUosa
5: Mary FenoJJosa to Ezra Pound
TLS-3 159 Church Street, Mobile, Alabama. 25 November [1913]
Dear Ezra:
Please don't get discouraged at the ragged way this manuscript is coming to you. As I said yesterday, it will all get there in time,--which is the most important thing.
For instance, chronologically, the lectures taken down by my husband, from old Umewaka Minoru are so rough, and so many abbreviations are used, that I can't send them until I have time to make quite copious notes to
-- SECTIONI: 1911-23 7
help you understand. It is going to be something of a puzzle, at best.
In these notes the initials "U. M. " are constantly used. Sometimes they are put "M. U. . " for to this day, the Japanese are a little undecided whether to place the family name first, according to their own custom, or last. In any case, whenever you see these initials together they mean the old lecturer. He was brought up in the last Shogun's court, and comes from a long line of famous Noh players. He had all the costumes, masks, literature and tradi- tions. I had thought, if ever I attempted editing the book, to begin it with this personal note of old U. M. and the Professor. (Whenever I say "Professor" I
mean E. F. F. ). He had two beautiful young sons, still living and acting whether real or adopted I am not sure, but that doesn't matter in Japan. The son who is adopted for reasons of fitness, talent, and capability of carrying on an artistic tradition is considered more real than a son who is merely of the flesh. All the great artists of old times adopted successors this way. These sons, also very often referred to in the notes, and in the studies of the Noh plays, were Manzaburo Umewaka and Takeyo Umewaka. Both were beautiful,--the former, a tall and rather stout youth, did not look unlike a picture of a cavalier by Franz Hals, and the younger, our teacher in the singing of Noh, was more like a soulful and very handsome East Indian poet than a Japanese. I hope I come across a photograph of him, but I haven't yet. However I have an excellent one of the old Umewaka to send.
I shall go over these notes of his lectures, and wherever you see new ink writing you will know that I put it.
I must explain at more length the recurring term "cats. " This would surely be a puzzler. At the back of the stage in many,--in fact most, of the pieces, there are always two queer old, old musicians that come in with funny little folding stools, sit facing each other for a moment, and then turn themselves and the stools so that they face the audience. They have weird little drums, and at intervals, during the performance, they utter the most astonishing sounds, suppressed wails, throaty gurgles, and muted banshee howls. These sounds are more like the noises of back-yard fence cats than anything else on earth, and the Professor and I got into the way of calling them "cats. " I didn't realize that he had accepted the term seriously enough to put it all through the notes. In rare cases there are sometimes four cats, or even more; but, as I remember it, always there were two. I don't believe they were ever used in the comic interludes, or "kyogen. " You will see also frequent reference to "Mr. H. " This always means little Mr. Hirata, a pupil of my husband's, who always went to the Noh performances with us, and
did the translations. I don't think much of his literary style. Neither will you. I should suggest that the examples you wish to present in full should
? ? 8 SECTIONI: 1911-23
be taken only from those pieces where the Professor has written out the Japanese words too, and given the literal translation.
Please remember, from the first, that whenever I say "suggest," I mean just that thing, and nothing more stringent. What I am hoping is that you will become really interested in the material, absorb it in your own way, and then make practically new translations from the Japanese text as rendered into Romaji. It seems going ahead of myself a little, but I might as well tell you the Noh pieces that have seemed to us most beautiful. I think that first I would place "Kinuta. " Old U. M. considered it so, and also said that it took nearly a life-time, and much prayer and fasting, to learn to sing properly. Another that the Professor specially loved was "Nishi ki gi. " "Yoroboshi" was the first I heard, really to understand, and I care a lot for it. "Hagoromo" is perhaps the favorite of all, with the average Japanese Noh lover, and is a legend strangely like the old Celtic one of the mermaid who had her magic sea-garments stolen by a mortal. "Sumidagawa" is another wonder. Most, if not all of these, are carefully translated.
This is a big enough dose for one day. When you get into it, please don't hesitate to ask me questions. I only wish I were there with you and Yeats, working on it. I am homesick for London already.
Mary FenoJlosa
6: Michio Ito to Ezra Pound
ACS-1 82 St. John's Wood Terrace, London, N. W. Pmk: 8 May 1915
Dear Ezra Pound,
Thank you very much for your letter. I understand quite well this time. I should be very pleased [tol meet you on this Sunday night, but I have been very busy now as I have an engagement at Coliseum Theater from 10th of May. Then, if I could not call you at 7 o'clock, I should come [a] little later.
Yours truly Michio Ito
-- SECTIONI: 1911-23 9
7: Mary Fenollosa to Ezra Pound
ALS-3 Kobinata, Spring Hill, Alabama. 27 February 1916
My dear Ezra:
I haven't any envelopes to go with this lovely hand laid Japanese paper--am too poor to buy any more--but I'm writing on it because the address is my permanent one in America-- From now on, into a vague future, I shall be living here, or else my widowed mother. Letters will surely be forwarded. We've had all sorts of bereavements and unpleasant things in our family. Finances in the South are poignantly rotten. Only the vile munition makers of your part of America are thriving.
Your letter was one of the very few bright spots that has come my way lately. It certainly has cheered me up. My getting to England is now so indefinite that I am going to try and get you that roll of Noh illustrations by post. Heaven knows whether it ever will reach you! As I write these Germans are battering the forts near Verdun. One has already fallen--What is going to happen to the world any way? I believe I'll go back to Japan scoop out a rock, and be a hermitess.
? 8: Tami Koume to Ezra Pound
ALS-1 3c Warwick Ave. W. 22 March 1916
My dear Mr. Pound,
I am awfully sorry to hear that you are sick in bed. 1 received your telegraph and was pain. How are you now? To-day I tried to go and ask after your health, but I was temptated by Itow, and staing long time at Mr. Dulac's, where we study some play. I am so anxious how are you now. I hope that you are well soon.
I am your's great friend T. M. Koume
Devotedly yours Mary Fenollosa
---- -- 10 SECTIONI: 1911-23
9: Mary FenoUosa to Ezra Pound
ALS-3 c/o Grant-Thompson, Co. , 280 Madison Avenue, New York. N. Y. 24 July 1916
You dear Ezra:
This certainly is good news--that you have succeeded in getting McMillan to publish E. F. F. And what splendid, steadfast work you have been doing--in spite of my seeming half-beastness.
My own involved domestic troubles still continue--there are all sorts of entanglements--sickness, finances and all other ills--but I'm not going to fill space with them now. The one thing I want to get "over the foot- lights," in this letter, concerns those illustrations to Nob. The whole roll of them is here in the North with me-- I hope to be allowed to remain somewhere within reasonable distance of N. Y. for the rest of the year Haven't any definite address yet, as you will gather from the heading of this--but, for the present c/o Grant-Thompson Co. will get me with less delay than any other address
If McMillan is to bring out Nob in dignified form, I should think they might desire illustrations. --I have them all--not only pictures of high moments in the various plays--but some good ones of the conventional Noh settings--the shape of stage--the "cloud-bridge" etc. --These pictures make quite a bulky roll--short and thick--nearly as big around as 5 lb. lard bucket--if that conveys an idea
Shall I--risking English censors and German sub-marines--try to get these over to you? Or would it be a better idea for you to put me in direct communication with the N. Y. McMillan's--and let me take the pictures down to their office? I think you are now in possession of just about all of E. F. F. 's Noh material--but if there is hope--in the future, of further volumes--I have still, stored away down at Kobinata. a priceless treasury of mss. --Chinese poetry--translations of it giving each ideograph embedded in various nuances of meaning--E. F. F. 's essays and studies of Chinese poetry--also of philosophy, civilization, etc. etc. --I cannot believe that any coming student of these things is to have E. F. F. 's peculiar advantages And China is the coming nation/ This new agreement between Japan and Russia makes it the more certain-- Let me know at once about the Noh
? illustrations-- You are an angel!
Affectionately Mary FenoJiosa
--
SECTIONI: 1911-23 11
10: Michio Ito to Ezra Pound
ACS-1 Pmk: Times Sq. Sta. . New York. N. Y. 18 August 1916
Safely arrived in New York on 13th August. New York is not so bad what I expected, but the weather is too hot for me. I couldn't tell you about New York yet as I don't know.
I will try to write you so much as I can. Will you give me answers? Kindest regard to your Mrs and mother-in-law.
Ever
from Michio
11: Mary FenoUosa to Dorothy Pound
ALS-6 c/o Grant-Thompson, Co. , 280 Madison Avenue, New York, N. Y. 18 October 1916
My dear Dorothy Pound:
This delightful letter of yours not only puts me in possession of several opportune facts concerning the work that Ezra is doing so splendidly;--but it has accomplished--in its few pages--something even more desirable--it has given me--you! Until this letter I felt you only as the shadow of a personality--shall I confess, too, that it was an Ezra Pound shadow? !
I think the core of the real you-ness comes from the fact that twice you misspelled the word "desperate"--writing it "desparate"--which is, in- dubitably a better word.
Tell Ezra that I received the Lustra and joyed in it--Also the two copies of Certain Nohle Plays-- The excellence of Ezra's work on the Fenollosa mss. doesn't surprise me-- The only regrets connected with it are from my sideofeffort--I havefailedingettinganymorefriendlycontributionsto the endeavor-- Then, too, the royalties from my own books are falling off badly
But all this is merely by the way. 1 am in New York still. Miss Bisland arrived last week on the Lafayette-- For a few days she was a physical wreck--not only because the voyage was rough and she a bad sailor--but all the night before reaching N. Y. the ship was chased by a hellish German sub-marine-- The passengers went about in straight jackets of cork--and no one slept.
Miss Bisland and I must stay up here for a few weeks longer--but
? ---------- 12 SECTIONI: 1911-23
already we are negotiating for quarters in Southern Florida, where we plan to spend about 4 months--rushing work on a certain literary venture that promises to bring in immediate returns-- Of course no one ever knows but this, at least, is sure-- In going to Florida, 1 shall go by way of my own house in Southern Alabama--and this means that 1 can go through all the Chinese stuff, and send Ezra any or all of it--so you will see--that 1 can follow your advice and not feel "desparate"
I suppose you and Ezra never think of coming to America--I wish you would--and join us in this quiet out-of-the-world nook in Florida
For the present, the address given at the head of this letter is the only one that had better be used
ThankEzrafortheletterfromTagore--FromwhatI amhearingabout that exotic near-divinity, 1 am not going to be able to use it. The gossip about him really sounds too picturesque and absurd to be true. They say that a band of his countrymen are hounding him--and purpose to remove him violently from this incarnation--that he is hiding, incognito, somewhere in Southern California
I truely hope that I have misspelled something in this letter, but I don't dare look back for it. With bushels of love to you both.
? 12: Tami Koume to Ezra Pound
APCS-1 Pmk: Maida Hill W. 8 February 1917
My dear Ezra
So sorry have not written long time as I am still ill in bed it was awful, but getting better now. I think I can call upon you soon. & I would like to have your charming lunch. Kindest Regard to Mrs.
Tami
Mary Fenollosa
? SECTION1: 1911-23 13
13: Yone Noguchi to Ezra Pound
ALS-1 Nakano, near Tokyo, Japan. 8 December 1917
Dear Ezra Pound,
Perhaps you can ask your publisher to send me a review copy of your bookonpoorGaudierBrzeska;I liketowritehimupintheJapanTimes,a daily in English--which I keep a regular literary column. Some months ago I recommended your Noh book to our readers; also I had written a Japanese article on the book. Your Noh book is now quite well-known in Japan.
Perhaps you had seen some specimens of my Noh translation; how did you like one I published in the Egoist? The Quest and the Poetry Review alsopublishedmyNohplays. I liketotalkaboutthissubjectfurtherwith you.
Yours truly Yone Noguchi
14: Tami Koume to Ezra Pound
ALS-1 Royal Bath & East Cliff Hotel, Bournemouth. Tuesday 13 [December? ] 1917
My dear Ezra,
I came here yesterday. It is a little warmer than London but not much different. Sorrow coming down with thin rain from heaven, & sparkling to my ears "So live bravely. " But I am not strong enough to do work. Sorrow! Agony!
What Kitasono, in turn, presented to Pound was not the past but the new. He introduced Pound to what the young avant-garde was doing as reflected in poems written by members of the VOU Club and published in its magazine. Pound seized upon the potential offered by this poetry washed clean as if by acid--written in halting English translations by these young Japanese, for he saw that they approached the language with fresh eyes, without preconceptions, and used English freely, idiosyncratically and inventively. "All the moss and fuzz that for twenty years we have been trying to scrape off our language--these young men start without it. " He praised this "vortex of poetic alertness" for its immense clarity and rapid-
ity: "The Japanese eye is like those new camera shutters that catch the bullet leaving the gun. . . . They see the crystal set, the chemical laboratory and the pine tree with untrammeled clearness. . . . The Japanese poet has gone from one peak of [thought] to another faster than our slow wits permit us to follow before we have got used to his pace. "
Rather than condescendingly dismissing these poems for their techni- cal flaws, Pound positively saw in them a new beginning and enthusiasti- cally recommended them to Ronald Duncan of Townsman and lames Laughlin of New Directions for publication. While one need not necessarily agree with Pound's generous evaluation of them as "better work than any save those of E. E. Cummings," by seeing them in the manner that Pound
? PREFACE xiii
saw them and for the qualities that he cited, lessons could be learned. Here Japan was making its contemporary contribution to the West.
This collection of letters and essays documents Pound's lifelong in- volvement with the art, literature and culture of japan. Extending from 1911 to 1968, Pound's correspondence with Japanese artists and poets forms a record of a vital cultural interchange from which both East and West gained through the interaction. Included in this volume are letters from the Japanese painter Tami Koume and the dancer Michio Ito dating from Pound's early years in London--when he was at work with W. B. Yeats on translating Japanese No dramas--and his years in Paris during the early 1920's; the correspondence between Pound and the Japanese mod- ernist poet Katue Kitasono (editor of VOU) while Pound was residing in Rapallo (and later from St. Elizabeths); and articles written by Pound which appeared in the Japan Times just prior to the outbreak of World War II, promoting cross-cultural communication and insisting that "diplomacy alone could not do it. " Letters from Mary Fenollosa and various other
Japanese correspondents, along with the pertinent material included in the appendix, further round out the portrait.
Similar to the influence exerted by a previous generation of Americans who had travelled to Japan (Fenollosa, Bigelow, Morse, La Farge and Hearn), EzraPoundfromafaralsomadehiscontributiontothepreservation of the classic Japanese tradition, drawing attention to its masterworks as an essential component of world culture and a crucial means to increase East-West understanding.
--John WaJsh
'For further on Fenollosa, see note to letter 4 on Mary Fenollosa; see also Van Wyck Brooks, Fenollosa and His Circle (NY: E. P. Dutton, 1962).
? XIV
INTRODUCTION
In this book are collected letters exchanged between Ezra Pound and his Japanese friends, ranging between the years 1911 to 1968. These letters are, in most cases, chronologically arranged so that the reader may have an historical overview of Pound's involvement with the art and culture of Japan. The book also includes Pound's contributions to Japanese per- iodicals written shortly before World War II, at a time when he had little outlet elsewhere. Supplementary letters, such as those between Ezra Pound and Mary Fenollosa, Katue Kitasono to Dorothy Pound and Mary de Rache-
wiltz, etc. , which touch on material regarding Japan have also been in- cluded.
In the summer of 1911 Ezra Pound received a completely unexpected letter postmarked from Japan. "Dear Mr. Pound," the letter opened, "As I believe you may not know my work at all, I send you, under a separate cover, my new book of poems called The Pilgrimage. . . . " It was from Yonejiro Noguchi, a Japanese poet who was ten years older than Pound and had been favorably received in England and America. He had published a few books of verse and prose in English in both countries: Seen and Unseen (1897), The American Diary o/a Japanese GirJ (1902] and From the Eastern Sea (1902), and had returned to Japan after spending thirteen years abroad.
In his polite response to Noguchi Pound wrote, "of your country I know almost nothing. " But he also wrote, "1 had, of course, known of you. " One may wonder how much knowledge Pound actually had of Japan when he said, "I know almost nothing. " It can be assumed that by 1911 Pound already had some knowledge of Japanese haiku, as he had regularly been attending T. E. Hulme's meetings at the Cafe Tour d'Eiffel since 1909, where haiku had by then become common knowledge. Basil Hall Chamber- lain's CJassicaJ Poetry of the Japanese (London, 1880) had long been out. One of the members of the group, Joseph Campbell, had written three-line poems such as "The Dawn Whiteness," and Edward Storer had written "Image. " F. S. Flint had translated some haiku into English from Paul-Louis Couchoud's French translations, including a piece by Arakida Takeari, which Pound was later to quote. Actually Pound might already have read Couchoud's and Chamberlain's translations himself.
But haiku was not the only aspect of Japan that Pound was acquainted with by that time. He surely would have known something of Japan's political and social aspects as well: news of the unexpected victory of Japan
? INTRODUCTION XV
over Imperial Russia in 1905 and reports concerning the Baltic Fleet, the battles at Liishun, and the following negotiations at Portsmouth, New
Hampshire, most certainly.
Moreover, Pound's juvenescence had coincided with the period of
/aponisme. Certainly, Japan had been "opened" to the American market for some time. Even Sears, Roebuck and Co. had listed Japanese fans with illustrations in their catalogue of 1902. Lacquer ware, paper napkins, kimo- no, netsuke, wood-block prints, and other objets d'art had been imported through Yamanaka & Co. for domestic usage. French and American pain- ters had been influenced for some time by Japanese art, and in his early essays Pound had already made frequent mention of the connection be- tween Whistler and Hokusai.
But Pound in 1911 was still looking at Japan through the back end of a pair of opera glasses. Pound viewed Japan as a far-away, beautiful country, inhabited by people with a delicate and subtle sensibility, by women pretty, gentle, obedient, and loveable, and by men courageous enough to defeat Imperial Russia. When he received a businesslike letter from Yone Noguchi, therefore. Pound must have been surprised, but he does not seem to have changed his basic view of Japan. The image of a dream-like Japan had been so strongly imprinted on his young mind that it could not easily
be changed or removed.
When he wrote "The Encounter," Pound compared the graceful fingers
of a London woman to the "tissue" of a soft and lissome "Japanese paper napkin. " And when he wrote the "Metro" poem suggested by haiku, Pound presented the image of the glimmering petals scattered upon "the wet, black bough" as if painted on soft Japanese paper, to be "superimposed" upon the image of the beautiful faces of women and children in Paris.
By the time Pound met Mary Fenollosa, in 1913--and soon afterwards received the bundle of her late husband's notebooks on the No plays and Japanese interpretations of Chinese classics--his knowledge of Japan had been substantially enhanced. Yet he does not seem even then to have changed his basic image of Japan. Rather, he became more enthusiastic about "beautifying" Japan. While promoting the production of Yeats' At the Hawk's Well, Pound met Michio Ito, Tamijuro Kume and Jisoichi Kayano, and through them became acquainted with the Japanese language, Japanese customs, the No plays, Zen and various other aspects of Japan. He ex- perienced, as it were, some new phases of the realities of Japan, including the awkward English of many Japanese. But still he rarefied and mytholo- gized Japan by translating the No plays and the Chinese classics into beautiful English poetry. Certainly Pound tried to finish the translations as
? xvi INTRODUCTION
"Ernest Fenollosa would have wanted them done. " But in any event the more Pound learned about Japanese realities, the more he emphasized their beauty and positive value.
The same can be said of Canto 49. That is, Pound read the manuscript poems in Japanese and Chinese on the lakes and hills around the River Hisaio-Hsiang in China, and he used the images to create an unworldly lyrical world of "stillness" suggestive of the paradiso terrestre. And again we find that aspect when he began correspondence with Kitasono in 1936. Pound read the "crystal" poems by the members of the VOU Club, and introduced them as the "vortex of poetic alertness" in the Townsman (see Appendix). He urged the publisher James Laughlin to introduce them also in his yearly New Directions AnthoJogy. In his essay "Orientamenti" in Broletto (1938), Pound also introduced Japan favorably as being in a new "cycle," though he was aware of the Japanese invasion of Manchuria.
In 1939 Pound had begun to subscribe to the Japan Times & Mail, and was thus exposed to much more concerning the political, economic and social realities of contemporary Japan. But in 1940 he mythologized the whole history of Japan by writing that all the emperors "were of heaven descended" in Canto 58. (His source was most probably Heinrich Julius Klaproth's translation of Nippon Odai Ichiran. See Pound's letter to Kitaso- no. 3 March 1939. )
When we trace Pound's view of Japan, we come to realize that even though he continued to further his knowledge of Japan throughout his life, his earlier image of Japan as a far-off, dreamlike country persisted; a treas- ure land for the aesthete, a country entangled with pleasant memories of youth. We cannot neglect the basic fact that Pound grew up in the era of Japonisme, and the image of Japan registered in his mind in his early youth as a land of lotus and butterfly was not to be erased from his mind through- out his life. And we must also remember that FenoUosa's impact was so very strong on him that FenoUosa's admiration for Japanese values could only reinforce Pound's idealized image.
However, the important thing is that Pound had the intuitive critical sensibility to sift "to kalon" from the chaff, and he did discover authentic treasures in his study of Far Eastern cultures. Although one might wish that Pound could have written more objectively of the realities of Japan, whether approvingly or not, the fact was that Japan remained for him the distant, mythic country of Hagoromo, Aoi. and Komachi.
--Sanehide Kodama
? I POUND'S EARLY CONTACTS WITH JAPAN: 1911-23
In this section are collected three letters of Yonejiro Noguchi to Pound, one letter of Pound to Noguchi, four letters of Mary Fenollosa to Pound, one letter by her to Dorothy Pound, three letters of Michio Ito to Pound, seven- teen letters of Tamijuro Kume to Pound, and an invitation card to Tamijuro Kume's exhibition in Paris. Pound must have written back to his Japanese friends at that time, but unfortunately most of Pound's letters to them were lost in the earthquake of 1923 and during the bombing of the Second World War.
Yonejiro Noguchi (1875-1947), a Japanese poet, went to California in 1893, studied poetry under Joaquin Miller for some time, and published there his books of poems. Seen and Unseen (San Francisco Press, 1897), and The Voice of the Valley (The Doxey Press, 1897). He then went to London to publish Eastern Sea (1903), first at his own expense, and then by Macmillan. Because of the Japonisme then fashionable, the Macmillan edition went into three printings. After his return to Japan, he was invited by Oxford University to give a series of lectures, and he sailed again to England. While there (1913-14), he met, as he writes in his essay "Irish Atmosphere," W. B. Yeats and Ezra Pound. The first two letters printed in the following pages were obviously written before these meetings had occurred.
After Noguchi returned to Japan in 1914, he maintained a correspond- ence with Pound. The strange article, "To Criticize Aoi no Ue by Ezra Pound" which appeared in Japanese in Yokyokukai (October, 1916) may most probably be the anonymous translation, or rather adaptation, of Pound's "Introduction" to ''Awoi no Uye: A Play by Ujinobu" which had appeared in Quarterly Notebook (Kansas City, June 1916). If so, Pound must have sent to Noguchi a copy of the American journal. In the editorial note to the article Pound is thus portrayed:
Mr. Ezra Pound is a young poet, born in the U. S. A. , now living in England. He has published three or four books of poems, and has translated Li Po into English. He is a vigorous poet and is said to have been claiming himself a revolutionist of the literary world. He is a friend of Mr. Yonejiro Noguchi.
In certain ways, Noguchi and Pound did evidence a kinship. Both were interested in "certain forgotten odours": Pound in "the spirit of romance"
? 2 SECTIONI: 1911-23
and Noguchi in "the spirit of Japan. " And botli were fascinated by tfie No play. Though their sensibilities and their styles of writing were different, closer examination might reveal certain reciprocal echoes.
Michio Ito (1893-1961) was a Japanese modern dancer, who played the part of the hawk in a performance of Yeats' At the Hawk's Well in 1916. He had gone to Germany to study music when he was 18, but the course of his life was changed after he saw Isadora Duncan. When the war broke out, he escaped from Germany, but he was stranded when his father stopped sending him money. One day in 1914 when he did not have a penny to feed the gasometer at his flat in London, he was invited to dance at a party. At the dinner table he sat next to an elderly gentleman who admired him highly. But Ito could not understand English, and he asked him if he could speak in German. After hesitation the gentleman consented, and they talked for two hours. A few days later Ito received from that gentleman, who turned out to be Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith, a letter enclosing a check for ? 20. Pound writes of the episode in Canto 77:
So Mischio sat in the dark lacking the gasometer penny but then said: "Do you speak German? "
to Asquith, 1914.
Pound had met Ito at the Cafe Royal where the refugee artists met. He asked him to help him with the editing of the No plays in the Fenollosa notebooks, and then to help Yeats with At the Hawk's Well. Ito had himself little knowledge of the No play then, but his Japanese classmates who happened to be in London were versed in it. Tamijuro Kume and Jisoichi Kayano (Torahiko Kori)--especially the former--taught them about the No play and assisted Pound in interpreting FenoUosa's notebooks, continuing even after Ito had left for New York.
Tamijuro Kume (1893-1923), a Japanese painter, had begun taking lessons in No and Kyogen from Minoru Umewaka when he was still in primary school. His father, Taminosuke Kume, a successful businessman, had a No theatre in his large house in Yoyogi, Tokyo, where his family and guests often sang and played. Not much is recorded about his first son, Tamijuro. But according to the family legend, he began painting while he was a student at Gakushuin Middle School. He went to Europe after gradua- tion to study oil painting. During World War I, he met Pound in London, through his classmate, Michio Ito. Obviously he played a crucial part in Pound's rendering of the No plays and Dulac's production of Yeats' At the Hawk's Well. He performed utai, the vocal part of the No, at Pound's flat in
? SECTIONI: 1911-23 3
London. How much affection Pound had for him, especially after Pound lost Gaudier-Brzeska, may be gleaned from the following letters. But noth- ing much is known about the actual role he played in assisting Yeats and Pound in their research.
He returned to Japan in July 1918, vigorously worked at his "hideout" studio near Lake Yamanaka, and went to New York in January 1921 to exhibit his paintings (February 1-12). Hethen went to Paris in January 1922 and there again met Pound who arranged an exhibition for "Tami Koume" in July. Though Tamijuro Kume had a love affair in Paris, he left there in February 1923, returning to Tokyo by boat. On September 1, 1923, he was in Yokohama, again on the verge of sailing abroad, this time to America to launch a second exhibition in New York. His wife, Kiyo, and his 5-year-old son, Masayoshi, were at their villa in Koshigoe, Kamakura, planning to join him briefly at Yokohama and then see him off at the pier. However, the great earthquake occurred, just when Tamijuro Kume was in the dining room in the basement of the Oriental Hotel with a friend of his. His body was pulled out from under the bricks and ashes with his watch and rings on.
? 4 SECTIONI: 1911-23
1: Yone Noguchi to Ezra Pound ALS-1 Kamakura, Japan. 16 July 1911
Dear Mr. Pound:
As I think you may not know my work at all, I send you, under a separatecover,mynewbookofpoemscalledThePilgrimage. AsI [am]not yet acquainted with your work, I wish you will send your book or books which you like to have me to read. This little note may sound quite businesslike, but I can promise you that I can do better in my next letter to you.
Yours truly, Yone Noguchi
P. S. Iamanxioustoreadnotonlyyourpoeticalworkbutalsoyourcriticism.
2: Ezra Pound to Yone Noguchi
TLS-2 c/o Elkin Mathews, Vigo St. , London. Pmk: 2 September 1911
Dear Yone Noguchi:
I want to thank you very much for your lovely books & for your kindness in sending them to me.
I had, of course, known of you, but I am much occupied with my mediaeval studies & had neglected to read your books altho' they lie with my own in Mathews shop & I am very familiar with the appearance of their covers.
I am reading those you sent me but I do not yet know what to say of them except that they have delighted me. Besides it is very hard to write to you until I know more about you; you are older than I am--1 gather from the dates of the poems--you have been to New York. You are giving us the spirit of Japan, is it not? very much as 1 am trying to deliver from obscurity certain forgotten odours of Provence & Tuscany (my works on Guido Cavalcanti, & Arnaut Daniel, are, the one in press, the other ready to be printed).
I have sent you two volumes of poems. I do not know whether to send you The Spirit of Romance or not: It treats of mediaeval poetry in southern Europe but has many flaws of workmanship.
? SECTIONI: 1911-23 5
I can not help wondering how much you know of our contemporary poets & in what things of ours you would be likely to be interested.
I mean I do not want to write you things that you already know as well
or better than I do.
OfyourcountryI knowalmostnothing--surelyiftheeast&thewestare
ever to understand each other that understanding must come slowly & come first through the arts.
You ask about my "criticism. " There is some criticism in the Spirit of Romance & there will be some in the prefaces to the "Guido" & the "Arnaut. " But I might be more to the point if we who are artists should discuss the matters of technique & motive between ourselves. Also if you should write about these matters I would discuss your letters with Mr. Yeats & likewise my answers.
I havenotansweredbeforebecauseyourletter&yourbookshave followed me through America, France, Italy, Germany and have reached me but lately.
Let me thank you again for sending them, and believe me
3: Yone Noguchi to Ezra Pound
ACS-1 Kamakura, Japan. 22 October 1911
Dear Mr. Pound:
Many thanks for your kind letter [together] with Exultations and Can- zoni. I was glad to be acquainted with Exultations, and what a difference of your work from mine! I like to follow closely after your poetry.
Sincerely yours, Yone Noguchi
4: Mary FenoJJosa to Ezra Pound
ALS-3 159 Church Street, Mobile, Alabama. 24 November [1913]
Dear Ezra:
Your violet ray from Stone Cottage has just penetrated. Since you
Yours Very Sincerely Ezra Pound
I
? 6 SECTIONI: 1911-23
announced that you are to be there "forever," I suppose I might as well begin addressing you there.
It certainly sounds good enough to be a forever,--with the aigrette of the usual "day. "
I am beginning with right now, to send you material. I am going to number the rolls, envelopes, packets, or whatever form they go in. So if you merelyletmeknowthatNo. 1hassafelyarrived--thenNo. 2--, andsoon,it will be enough to bring me "anshin," which is to say "peace of the spirit. " I fear it will go to you in a pretty mixed up condition, but the great fact is that it will all go.
I know you are pining for hieroglyphs and ideographs: but I must keep to our plan and send the No stuff first. That is a complete book in itself-- almost think that you had better spell it Noh, as some French writers do. It looks just a little more impressive. Don't you think so? Later I will have something to say about the illustrations, but the time hasn't come, yet, for that.
If you ever see Sarojini, or write to her, wont you please say to her that if she could have sprouted a new petal every time I've thought of her, or wanted to write to her, she would be the shape and size of a chrysanthe- mum by this.
I used to think I was somewhat rushed in London, but it was a long hour of silent prayer by this! I've a million relatives, more or less, and they all feel hurt when I shut myself up even to write letters. By the way, don't forget to give me your mother's address. After Christmas I shall be wandering be- tween the cauldron of Pittsburgh and "My City, my beloved, my white! " I want to meet your mother.
Mary FenoUosa
5: Mary FenoJJosa to Ezra Pound
TLS-3 159 Church Street, Mobile, Alabama. 25 November [1913]
Dear Ezra:
Please don't get discouraged at the ragged way this manuscript is coming to you. As I said yesterday, it will all get there in time,--which is the most important thing.
For instance, chronologically, the lectures taken down by my husband, from old Umewaka Minoru are so rough, and so many abbreviations are used, that I can't send them until I have time to make quite copious notes to
-- SECTIONI: 1911-23 7
help you understand. It is going to be something of a puzzle, at best.
In these notes the initials "U. M. " are constantly used. Sometimes they are put "M. U. . " for to this day, the Japanese are a little undecided whether to place the family name first, according to their own custom, or last. In any case, whenever you see these initials together they mean the old lecturer. He was brought up in the last Shogun's court, and comes from a long line of famous Noh players. He had all the costumes, masks, literature and tradi- tions. I had thought, if ever I attempted editing the book, to begin it with this personal note of old U. M. and the Professor. (Whenever I say "Professor" I
mean E. F. F. ). He had two beautiful young sons, still living and acting whether real or adopted I am not sure, but that doesn't matter in Japan. The son who is adopted for reasons of fitness, talent, and capability of carrying on an artistic tradition is considered more real than a son who is merely of the flesh. All the great artists of old times adopted successors this way. These sons, also very often referred to in the notes, and in the studies of the Noh plays, were Manzaburo Umewaka and Takeyo Umewaka. Both were beautiful,--the former, a tall and rather stout youth, did not look unlike a picture of a cavalier by Franz Hals, and the younger, our teacher in the singing of Noh, was more like a soulful and very handsome East Indian poet than a Japanese. I hope I come across a photograph of him, but I haven't yet. However I have an excellent one of the old Umewaka to send.
I shall go over these notes of his lectures, and wherever you see new ink writing you will know that I put it.
I must explain at more length the recurring term "cats. " This would surely be a puzzler. At the back of the stage in many,--in fact most, of the pieces, there are always two queer old, old musicians that come in with funny little folding stools, sit facing each other for a moment, and then turn themselves and the stools so that they face the audience. They have weird little drums, and at intervals, during the performance, they utter the most astonishing sounds, suppressed wails, throaty gurgles, and muted banshee howls. These sounds are more like the noises of back-yard fence cats than anything else on earth, and the Professor and I got into the way of calling them "cats. " I didn't realize that he had accepted the term seriously enough to put it all through the notes. In rare cases there are sometimes four cats, or even more; but, as I remember it, always there were two. I don't believe they were ever used in the comic interludes, or "kyogen. " You will see also frequent reference to "Mr. H. " This always means little Mr. Hirata, a pupil of my husband's, who always went to the Noh performances with us, and
did the translations. I don't think much of his literary style. Neither will you. I should suggest that the examples you wish to present in full should
? ? 8 SECTIONI: 1911-23
be taken only from those pieces where the Professor has written out the Japanese words too, and given the literal translation.
Please remember, from the first, that whenever I say "suggest," I mean just that thing, and nothing more stringent. What I am hoping is that you will become really interested in the material, absorb it in your own way, and then make practically new translations from the Japanese text as rendered into Romaji. It seems going ahead of myself a little, but I might as well tell you the Noh pieces that have seemed to us most beautiful. I think that first I would place "Kinuta. " Old U. M. considered it so, and also said that it took nearly a life-time, and much prayer and fasting, to learn to sing properly. Another that the Professor specially loved was "Nishi ki gi. " "Yoroboshi" was the first I heard, really to understand, and I care a lot for it. "Hagoromo" is perhaps the favorite of all, with the average Japanese Noh lover, and is a legend strangely like the old Celtic one of the mermaid who had her magic sea-garments stolen by a mortal. "Sumidagawa" is another wonder. Most, if not all of these, are carefully translated.
This is a big enough dose for one day. When you get into it, please don't hesitate to ask me questions. I only wish I were there with you and Yeats, working on it. I am homesick for London already.
Mary FenoJlosa
6: Michio Ito to Ezra Pound
ACS-1 82 St. John's Wood Terrace, London, N. W. Pmk: 8 May 1915
Dear Ezra Pound,
Thank you very much for your letter. I understand quite well this time. I should be very pleased [tol meet you on this Sunday night, but I have been very busy now as I have an engagement at Coliseum Theater from 10th of May. Then, if I could not call you at 7 o'clock, I should come [a] little later.
Yours truly Michio Ito
-- SECTIONI: 1911-23 9
7: Mary Fenollosa to Ezra Pound
ALS-3 Kobinata, Spring Hill, Alabama. 27 February 1916
My dear Ezra:
I haven't any envelopes to go with this lovely hand laid Japanese paper--am too poor to buy any more--but I'm writing on it because the address is my permanent one in America-- From now on, into a vague future, I shall be living here, or else my widowed mother. Letters will surely be forwarded. We've had all sorts of bereavements and unpleasant things in our family. Finances in the South are poignantly rotten. Only the vile munition makers of your part of America are thriving.
Your letter was one of the very few bright spots that has come my way lately. It certainly has cheered me up. My getting to England is now so indefinite that I am going to try and get you that roll of Noh illustrations by post. Heaven knows whether it ever will reach you! As I write these Germans are battering the forts near Verdun. One has already fallen--What is going to happen to the world any way? I believe I'll go back to Japan scoop out a rock, and be a hermitess.
? 8: Tami Koume to Ezra Pound
ALS-1 3c Warwick Ave. W. 22 March 1916
My dear Mr. Pound,
I am awfully sorry to hear that you are sick in bed. 1 received your telegraph and was pain. How are you now? To-day I tried to go and ask after your health, but I was temptated by Itow, and staing long time at Mr. Dulac's, where we study some play. I am so anxious how are you now. I hope that you are well soon.
I am your's great friend T. M. Koume
Devotedly yours Mary Fenollosa
---- -- 10 SECTIONI: 1911-23
9: Mary FenoUosa to Ezra Pound
ALS-3 c/o Grant-Thompson, Co. , 280 Madison Avenue, New York. N. Y. 24 July 1916
You dear Ezra:
This certainly is good news--that you have succeeded in getting McMillan to publish E. F. F. And what splendid, steadfast work you have been doing--in spite of my seeming half-beastness.
My own involved domestic troubles still continue--there are all sorts of entanglements--sickness, finances and all other ills--but I'm not going to fill space with them now. The one thing I want to get "over the foot- lights," in this letter, concerns those illustrations to Nob. The whole roll of them is here in the North with me-- I hope to be allowed to remain somewhere within reasonable distance of N. Y. for the rest of the year Haven't any definite address yet, as you will gather from the heading of this--but, for the present c/o Grant-Thompson Co. will get me with less delay than any other address
If McMillan is to bring out Nob in dignified form, I should think they might desire illustrations. --I have them all--not only pictures of high moments in the various plays--but some good ones of the conventional Noh settings--the shape of stage--the "cloud-bridge" etc. --These pictures make quite a bulky roll--short and thick--nearly as big around as 5 lb. lard bucket--if that conveys an idea
Shall I--risking English censors and German sub-marines--try to get these over to you? Or would it be a better idea for you to put me in direct communication with the N. Y. McMillan's--and let me take the pictures down to their office? I think you are now in possession of just about all of E. F. F. 's Noh material--but if there is hope--in the future, of further volumes--I have still, stored away down at Kobinata. a priceless treasury of mss. --Chinese poetry--translations of it giving each ideograph embedded in various nuances of meaning--E. F. F. 's essays and studies of Chinese poetry--also of philosophy, civilization, etc. etc. --I cannot believe that any coming student of these things is to have E. F. F. 's peculiar advantages And China is the coming nation/ This new agreement between Japan and Russia makes it the more certain-- Let me know at once about the Noh
? illustrations-- You are an angel!
Affectionately Mary FenoJiosa
--
SECTIONI: 1911-23 11
10: Michio Ito to Ezra Pound
ACS-1 Pmk: Times Sq. Sta. . New York. N. Y. 18 August 1916
Safely arrived in New York on 13th August. New York is not so bad what I expected, but the weather is too hot for me. I couldn't tell you about New York yet as I don't know.
I will try to write you so much as I can. Will you give me answers? Kindest regard to your Mrs and mother-in-law.
Ever
from Michio
11: Mary FenoUosa to Dorothy Pound
ALS-6 c/o Grant-Thompson, Co. , 280 Madison Avenue, New York, N. Y. 18 October 1916
My dear Dorothy Pound:
This delightful letter of yours not only puts me in possession of several opportune facts concerning the work that Ezra is doing so splendidly;--but it has accomplished--in its few pages--something even more desirable--it has given me--you! Until this letter I felt you only as the shadow of a personality--shall I confess, too, that it was an Ezra Pound shadow? !
I think the core of the real you-ness comes from the fact that twice you misspelled the word "desperate"--writing it "desparate"--which is, in- dubitably a better word.
Tell Ezra that I received the Lustra and joyed in it--Also the two copies of Certain Nohle Plays-- The excellence of Ezra's work on the Fenollosa mss. doesn't surprise me-- The only regrets connected with it are from my sideofeffort--I havefailedingettinganymorefriendlycontributionsto the endeavor-- Then, too, the royalties from my own books are falling off badly
But all this is merely by the way. 1 am in New York still. Miss Bisland arrived last week on the Lafayette-- For a few days she was a physical wreck--not only because the voyage was rough and she a bad sailor--but all the night before reaching N. Y. the ship was chased by a hellish German sub-marine-- The passengers went about in straight jackets of cork--and no one slept.
Miss Bisland and I must stay up here for a few weeks longer--but
? ---------- 12 SECTIONI: 1911-23
already we are negotiating for quarters in Southern Florida, where we plan to spend about 4 months--rushing work on a certain literary venture that promises to bring in immediate returns-- Of course no one ever knows but this, at least, is sure-- In going to Florida, 1 shall go by way of my own house in Southern Alabama--and this means that 1 can go through all the Chinese stuff, and send Ezra any or all of it--so you will see--that 1 can follow your advice and not feel "desparate"
I suppose you and Ezra never think of coming to America--I wish you would--and join us in this quiet out-of-the-world nook in Florida
For the present, the address given at the head of this letter is the only one that had better be used
ThankEzrafortheletterfromTagore--FromwhatI amhearingabout that exotic near-divinity, 1 am not going to be able to use it. The gossip about him really sounds too picturesque and absurd to be true. They say that a band of his countrymen are hounding him--and purpose to remove him violently from this incarnation--that he is hiding, incognito, somewhere in Southern California
I truely hope that I have misspelled something in this letter, but I don't dare look back for it. With bushels of love to you both.
? 12: Tami Koume to Ezra Pound
APCS-1 Pmk: Maida Hill W. 8 February 1917
My dear Ezra
So sorry have not written long time as I am still ill in bed it was awful, but getting better now. I think I can call upon you soon. & I would like to have your charming lunch. Kindest Regard to Mrs.
Tami
Mary Fenollosa
? SECTION1: 1911-23 13
13: Yone Noguchi to Ezra Pound
ALS-1 Nakano, near Tokyo, Japan. 8 December 1917
Dear Ezra Pound,
Perhaps you can ask your publisher to send me a review copy of your bookonpoorGaudierBrzeska;I liketowritehimupintheJapanTimes,a daily in English--which I keep a regular literary column. Some months ago I recommended your Noh book to our readers; also I had written a Japanese article on the book. Your Noh book is now quite well-known in Japan.
Perhaps you had seen some specimens of my Noh translation; how did you like one I published in the Egoist? The Quest and the Poetry Review alsopublishedmyNohplays. I liketotalkaboutthissubjectfurtherwith you.
Yours truly Yone Noguchi
14: Tami Koume to Ezra Pound
ALS-1 Royal Bath & East Cliff Hotel, Bournemouth. Tuesday 13 [December? ] 1917
My dear Ezra,
I came here yesterday. It is a little warmer than London but not much different. Sorrow coming down with thin rain from heaven, & sparkling to my ears "So live bravely. " But I am not strong enough to do work. Sorrow! Agony!
