scarcely
attempt it unless there were some urgent reason.
Ezra-Pounds-Chinese-Friends-Stories-in-Letters
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.
I would like to ask you to finish that speech for my sister as early as you can
and send it to her. Her address is Miss Mildred Y. Sung, 50 Nevins Street, Brooklyn, NY. Put in as much funny stories as you can for illustrations. I certainly appreciate your kindness and troubles in helping me so much and
31 Hsin Kai Lu Peking July 3rd, 1914.
8 f. t. sung's china plan for pound
if I can reciprocate in any way, kindly let me know at any time. Perhaps your Mrs. want[s] some thing from China and if so, please let me know.
I hope you have received my book which I sent you quite a long time ago. Hoping to hear from you occasionally and with best wishes, I am,
Faithfully Yours, [signed] Far T. Sung
your happy union: EP married DP (1886-1973) in London on 20 April 1914. See Ezra Pound and Dorothy Shakespear: Their Letters 1909-1914, ed. Omar Pound and A. Walton Litz (New York: New Directions, 1984).
that paper which is owned by you: The Egoist published in London from 1914 to 1919. It was founded by Dora Marsden (1882-1960) and edited by Harriet Shaw Weaver (1876-1961) with Richard Aldington (1892-1962), Hilda Doolittle (1886-1961), and T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) successively as subeditor.
4 Sung to EP (TLS-1; Beinecke)
1 Shih Chia Hutung Peking Mar 16, 19
Dear Mr Pound:
Your most welcome letter of 23/1/1919 was duly received with many thanks.
I am glad to learn that you are keeping well and happy in your work.
Did you ever meet Dr W C Chen in the Chinese Legation in London? He is my brother-in-law and I think is teaching in the University of London. I am sure
he will be very glad to meet you.
I may go abroad again some time next year. If so, I will write you in advance.
My wife talks of going to the States this summer and probably goes to London to see her brother. Nothing has been definite yet.
When you write to your father at Philadelphia, please remember me to him. I am still remembering what a nice time I had with him while in his city.
I have moved to 1 Shih Chia Hutung two years <ago> and now settled here definitely. I would like to have these articles of mine published in your magazine some years ago. I have never received them <before>.
Do you still think of coming to China? If so, I would like to make arrange- ments for your coming.
? ? With best wishes, I am,
Most sincerely yours, [signed] Fartsan T. Sung
2
Miss Tseng and the Seven Lakes Canto
''Descendant of Kung and Thseng-Tsu''
One day in early 1928, in the middle of reading the galleys of Ta Hio: The Great Learning of Confucius (1928), his retranslation of the Wrst of the Confucian Four Books, Pound remembered a picture book with Chinese and Japanese ideo- grams that he had seen at his Aunt Frank's Manhattan boarding-house. Had his parents retrieved the book? Yes, they had. By late February the old book traveled across the Atlantic to Rapallo, Italy, where Pound had moved in 1924. Decades later, in a discarded fragment for The Cantos, Pound would identify this volume as the source of the Seven Lakes Canto: ''and my gr aunt's third husband j received in ms j from a friend j the 49th canto'' (Beinecke).
Now in Pound's daughter Mary de Rachewiltz's collection, the relic is a fourteen-fold screen book made by a nineteenth-century Japanese artist. It con- sists of eight ink paintings, eight poems in Chinese, and eight poems in Japanese, mutually representing eight classic scenes about the shores of the Xiao and Xiang Rivers in Hunan, central China (see Figs. 2. 1 and 2. 2). While Pound was com- pletely comfortable with translating the visual details into verse, he was not able to decipher the eight Chinese poems drawn in three calligraphic styles, not even with the aid of Robert Morrison's multivolume Dictionary of the Chinese Language.
By curious coincidence, a friend of Dorothy's was hosting a visitor from China, ''a returned missionary'' on her way to an international missionary conference in Jerusalem. Dorothy promptly went up the hill to see her. Al- though the visitor was leaving the next day for Jerusalem, she said if Pound could wait until she stopped by Rapallo again on her way back to China, she would be happy to look at the eight untranslated Chinese poems. Ezra was struck by the visitor's ancestral background. She was a descendant of Confucius' disciple Zeng Xi (Thseng-sie or Tseng Hsi). In April, when Ta Hio was out, he would be able to show Miss Tseng his version of ''The Explanation of Thseng- Tseu [Zeng Xi]'' (in ten chapters) following the Testimony of Confucius. A few years earlier, he must have told her, he had re-created a dialogue between her ancestor and his master in Canto 13, the Confucian Canto:
10
miss tseng and the seven lakes canto
And Thseng-sie desired to know: ''Which had answered correctly? ''
And Kung said, ''They have all answered correctly, ''That is to say, each in his nature. ''
(Canto 13/58)
The visitor, Pao Swen Tseng (Zeng Baosun ? ? ? , 1893-1978), turned out to be the right person to interpret the eight Chinese poems for Pound (see Fig. 2. 3). She was from Xiangxiang, Hunan, the Seven Lakes region. From her Pound could have learned practically everything about China's tradition of ''mak[ing] pictures & poems on that set of scenes'' (Letter 6), a tradition carried on even as far as Korea and Japan. More interestingly, Miss Tseng was also a poet. Among her published poems in Chinese are ''Xiangxiang'' and ''Changsha,'' depicting the very scenes of the screen book. Educated at Mary Vaughan, a missionary school in Shanghai, and the University of London's WestWeld College, Miss Tseng spoke perfect English. Moreover, she was the founding president of a girls' college in Hunan called Yifang. She would remain in that capacity for twenty-three years from 1918 to 1938 and from 1946 to 1949.
We know of no correspondence between Pound and Miss Tseng. However, certain details of their encounter and the fruit it bore can be gleaned from other sources. On 17 May 1928 Pound told Glenn Hughes of the University of Washington that he had ''Conferred with descendant of Kung and Thseng- Tsu [Zeng Xi] just before leaving Rapallo'' (Beinecke). From this we can infer that the meeting between the two took place in mid-May 1928. A transcript of Miss Tseng's oral translation of the eight Chinese poems has been found in an unmailed letter Pound wrote to his father on 30 July 1928 (Letter 7).
The greater part of the Seven Lakes Canto, as I have argued in The Modernist Response to Chinese Art, is based on Pound's exchanges at once with the screen book's eight pictures and with Miss Tseng's oral translation of the eight poems. Nonetheless, the poet of The Cantos could never forget his Wrst collaboration with a Chinese poet and scholar:
For the seven lakes, and by no man these verses: Rain; empty rain; a voyage,
Fire from frozen cloud, heavy rain in the twilight Under the cabin roof was one lantern.
The reeds are heavy; bent;
and the bamboos speak as if weeping.
Autumn moon; hills rise about lakes against sunset
Evening is like a curtain of cloud,
a blurr above ripples; and through it sharp long spikes of the cinnamon, a cold tune amid reeds.
miss tseng and the seven lakes canto 11
Behind hill the monk's bell
borne on the wind.
Sail passed here in April; may return in October Boat fades in silver; slowly;
Sun blaze alone on the river.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . (Canto 49/244)
After moving to Taiwan in 1949, Miss Tseng assisted her brother Yueh-nung Tseng (Zeng Yuenong, 1893-1986) and others in founding the now prestigious Tunghai University (see Fig. 2. 4). In April 1957 Pound learned that Miss Tseng had traveled to the United States. He at once wrote to David Wang in New York City: ''Do get Miss Tseng's news while she is in N. Y. '' (Beinecke). Wang contacted Miss Tseng's delegation but she had already left (Letter 156 n. ).
The excerpts from EP's letters to his parents included here have been published before, 5, 6, and 8 in Angela Jung Palandri, ''The 'Seven Lakes Canto' Revisited'' (Paideuma, 3/1 (1974)), and 7 in Hugh Kenner, ''More on the Seven Lakes Canto'' (Paideuma, 2/1 (1973)) and Richard Taylor, ''Canto XLIX, Futurism, and the Fourth Dimension'' (Neohelicon (Budapest), 20/1 (1993)).
? Fig. 2. 1. ''Night Rain'' from EP's screen book. (Mary de Rachewiltz)
? Fig. 2. 2. ''Autumn Moon'' (right), ''Evening Bell'' (center), ''Sailboats Returning'' (left) from EP's screen book. (Mary de Rachewiltz)
? Fig. 2. 3. Pao Swen Tseng, 1928. (Tunghai University Library)
? Fig. 2. 4. Pao Swen Tseng and Yueh-nung Tseng, 1955. (Tunghai University Library)
5
Dear Mother: [. . . ]
EP to Isabel Pound (TLS-1; Beinecke)
Via Marsala, 12 Int. 5 Rapallo 1 March [1928]
[. . . ]
Dear Dad: [. . . ]
[signed] E
miss tseng and the seven lakes canto 15
D[orothy] is up a mountain with a returned missionary. Yes Chinese book arrived, berry interestin', returned missionary promises us a descendant of Confucius on a month or so, who will prob. be able to decipher it.
6 EP to Homer Pound (ALS-2; Beinecke)
30 May [1928]
Wien
They are poems on a set of scenes in Miss Thseng's part of the country. Sort of habit of people to make pictures & poems on that set of scenes.
Translation of chinese poems in picture book is at Rapallo.
[. . . ]
[signed] Ez
7 EP to Homer Pound (TL-3; Beinecke)
Dear Dad: [. . . ]
Chinese book reads as follows, rough trans. Rain, empty river,
Place for soul to travel
(or room to travel)
Frozen cloud, Wre, rain damp twilight.
One lantern inside boat cover (i. e. sort of shelter, not awning on small boat)
Via Marsala, 12 Int. 5 Rapallo 30 July. [1928]
16 miss tseng and the seven lakes canto
Throws reXection on bamboo branch, causes tears. ///////
AUTUMN MOON ON TON-Ting Lake
West side hills
screen oV evening clouds
Ten thousand ripples send mist over cinnamon Xowers. Fisherman's Xute disregards nostalgia
Blows cold music over cottony bullrush.
Monastery evening bell
/////
Cloud shuts oV the hill, hiding the temple
Bell audible only when wind moves toward one,
One can not tell whether the
summit, is near or far,
Sure only that one is in hollow of mountains.
//////////////
Autumn tide,
AUTUMN TIDE, RETURNING SAILS
Touching <green> sky at horizon, mists in suggestion of autumn Sheet of silver reXecting the all that one sees
Boats gradually fade, or are lost in turn of the hills,
Only evening sun, and its glory on the water remain.
//////////// Spring in hill valley
Small wine Xag waves in the evening sun
Few clustered houses sending up smoke
A few country people enjoying their evening drink In time of peace, every day is like spring.
SNOW ON RIVER
Cloud light, world covered with <milky> jade Small boat Xoats like a leaf
Tranquil water congeals it to stillness
In Sai Yin there dwell people of leisure.
The people of Sai Yin are unhurried.
//////
Wild geese stopping on sand
Just outside window, light against clouds
Light clouds show in sky just beyond window ledge A few lines of autumn geese on the marsh
at their Bullrishes have burst into snow-tops
? ? ? ? miss tseng and the seven lakes canto 17
The birds stop to preen their feathers. &&&&&&
EVENING IN SMALL FISHING VILLAGE. Fisherman's light blinks
Dawn begins, with light to the south and north Noise of children hawking their Wsh and crawWsh Fisherman calls his boy, and takes up his wine bottle, They drink, they lie on the sand
and point to marsh-grass, talking.
Chinese book reads as follows: EP's typescript consists of three leaves. According to Richard Taylor, ''Canto XLIX, Futurism, and the Fourth Dimension,'' at some point before March 1965, the last two leaves ''were accidentally transposed,'' leading Hugh Kenner to transcribe the text (March 1965) in the order of A-B/F-G-H/C-D-E in ''More on the Seven Lakes Canto. ''
8 EP to Homer Pound (TLS-2; Beinecke)
Sept. 1 [1928]
Dear Dad:
Given inWnite time I MIGHT be able to read a Chinese poem, thass to say I know
how the ideograph works, and can Wnd 'em in the dictionary or vocabulary, BUT I shd.
scarcely attempt it unless there were some urgent reason. Also
some of the script in that book was fairly fancy.
For Cathay I had a crib made by Mori and Ariga, not translation or anything
shaped into sentences, but word for sign, and explanation with each character. For your book Miss Thseng, descendant of Kung read out the stuV to me. Am perfectly able to look up an ideograph and see what shade it can be given,
etc.
BUT it za matr of time. wd be no point in it.
No I am not a sinologue. Dont spread the idea that I read it a zeasy as a
yourapean langwidg. [. . . ]
E.
Mori and Ariga: see Glossary on Mori Kainan and Ariga Nagao respectively.
[Rapallo]
? 3
Yang as Pound's Opponent and Collaborator
''To sacriWce to a spirit not one's own is Xattery''
In 1937-8 Pound regularly spent four to Wve hours a day learning Chinese. From James Legge's bilingual Confucian Four Books he moved on to the Confucian Book of Odes, Shi jing, in the original. ''I MAY be able to read in time, at the rate of three lines a day,'' he told the Japanese poet Katue Kitasono, who sent him Shi jing in four volumes (Pound/Japan, 45). To write about China and to begin to translate the Confucian Four Books, Pound could not rely only on his own sets of Chinese-English dictionaries and Legge's bilingual Confucian Four Books. Starting from the late summer of 1939, almost every time he traveled to Rome, he would stop by the Italian Institute for the Middle and Far East (IsMEO) (see Fig. 3. 1) to look up some Chinese materials, and it was there that he met the Chinese instructor Fengchi Yang.
Fengchi Yang(Yang Fengqi ? ? ? , 1908-70) had been an assistant professor of modern history at Beijing's Qinghua University (see Fig. 3. 2). He came to Italy around 1935 to pursue a higher degree. When he and Pound Wrst met in September 1939, Yang had just earned a doctorate in letters from the University of Rome and was beginning to teach Chinese at the IsMEO. As an ''enemy alien,'' he would soon lose his job. It was not until the Italian fascist regime collapsed in 1944 that he was able to return to the IsMEO.
To continue a conversation at the IsMEO Library, Pound wrote to Yang on 2 October 1939. He was then seriously deluded about Japanese culpability for the war in China. His letters, like his 1941-3 radio broadcasts from Rome, are characterized by Italian fascism and anti-Semitism. In his Wrst letter he tried to convince Yang that China's worst enemy was not Japan but ''international usury'' (Letter 9). Not hearing from Yang for ten months, Pound wrote again on 22 August 1940, this time questioning the moral foundation of the Nationalist Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek: ''I hear that Chiang Kai-shek was converted to Christianity, which seems WRONG for a Chinese'' (Letter 10). While Pound's intention was to challenge Yang to a debate, he did not want to alienate him. So he quoted the Confucian epigram, ''? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? '' (see Fig. 3. 3).
yang as pound's opponent and collaborator 19
The phrase from Legge's bilingual Four Books would come back to his mind in mid-1945, and consequently it surfaces in Canto 77 with an English translation: ''To sacriWce to a spirit not one's own is Xattery. ''
In his reply Yang called Chiang ''the greatest and bravest statesman''; because he was trying to save China, Chiang ''always had the esteem of the Chinese people, and naturally also of our troops'' (Letter 11). As to Chiang's moral principles, Yang explained, they were modern and democratic as set forth by Sun Yat-sen, the founding father of the Republic of China.
In his next letter Pound was careful to acknowledge his ignorance about Chinese reality. However, he irritated Yang by stating that ''foreigners who have learned something from China have almost always had to INVADE it, later absorbing the culture'' (Letter 12). Yang's rebuttal of this simplistic assertion was blunt: ''It is not always true, as you said, that foreigners had to invade China to learn or take something from the country. For example, Korea and Indochina have absorbed Chinese culture without invading it'' (Letter 13).
Subsequently, Pound wrote in a more reserved manner, as if apologizing for his earlier impertinence. In one letter he conceded that China had a just claim to its sovereignty. Yang inXuenced Pound toward a slightly better understanding of the conXict between China and Japan. This does not suggest, however, that Pound changed his political view. He still believed ''? ? ? ? ? . '' The Mencian epigram is inscribed in Letter 16, just as its English translation is appended to Canto 78: ''In 'The Spring and Autumn' j there j are j no j righteous j wars. '' More than several times what Pound said to Yang can be related to the Pisan Cantos (Cantos 74-84), whose Chinese quotations his Confucian studies during World War II anticipated.
While the politics of Pound and Yang diverged, their literary interests shared much common ground. Throughout the years 1939-42 Yang served as an informant. He helped Pound locate various Chinese books and identify numer- ous Chinese characters. His assistance became vital in 1941-2 when Pound took up translating into Italian two of the Confucian Four Books. Pound sent Yang part of his draft of the Ta S'eu (1942) for evaluation. As Letter 21 testiWes, Yang approved not only Pound's Italian translation but also his inserted commentary. In his reply Pound could not resist repeating his usual observation about translation and about the ''ideogram'': ''And in a classical and ancient text, I think one has to preserve the original meanings of the ideograms, and not to follow the formless and colorless value given words in a newspaper of today'' (Letter 22). In that letter Pound also disclosed his intention to translate into Italian all four of the Confucian Four Books: Wrst ''Ta S'eu'' and then ''Mencius, one book at a time. ''
Pound's plan was cut short upon his arrest for making pro-fascist radio broad- casts from Rome. On 3 May 1945 he was ''working on the Mencius when the Partigiani came to the front door with a tommy-gun'' (Letters in Captivity, 113).
? Fig. 3. 1. EP in Rome, c. 1941. (HRHRC)
? Fig. 3. 2. Fengchi Yang, c. 1960. (Lionello Lanciotti)
? Fig. 3. 3. Letter 10. (Beinecke)
yang as pound's opponent and collaborator 23
9 EP to Yang (TL-2; LL/Beinecke)
2 Ott [October 1939]
Illmo Dott Yang Fengchi
Caro Dottore Yang (se questo e` il nome di famiglia, e Caro Dottore Fengchi
se questo e` il patronimico)
Non dubito dell'eroismo di Ch[i]ang Kai Chek, e sono stato tanto contento
[di] incontrarVi perche volevo sapere precisamente il punto di vista della Cina interiore. MA
? ?
Non so se voi ed il Generale [si] rendono contro [conto] del grado in cui
TUTTI i NOMI, tutte le parole sono stato falsiWcato nell'occidente. Le demo- crazie non lo sono, sono USUROCRAZIE.
Io credo che il peggior nemico della Cina non e` <Giappone> ma ? ? ?
specialmente quell'usura internazionale.
La rivoluzione Russa intendeva attaccare al capitale, ma invece fu pervertito e deviene [divenne] un attacco alla proprieta`. Forse adesso Stalin incomincia a renders[i] conto.
Spero vederVi presto a Roma la settimana prossima, ed intanto vi prego di credere che quando dico pace con onore non intendo un onore vuoto. Ho una fede nell'immortalita` della Cina e credo che nessun studente della storia puo` mancare d'averla ma ho visto mio paese trad[i]to; cioe` ho appreso del tradi- mento settant'anni DOPO IL FATTO. Mi pare che quando possibile si deve evitare tali ritardi. Non so quando la penetrazione dell'usura internazionale nella Cina ha cominciato ad essere un pericolo per Voi; o in che grado voi [vi] siete resi conto della forza e natura della penetrazione.
[In]somma posso anche benissimo avere impressioni falsissimi della s[it]uazione, perche ? quasi nessuno nell'occidente ha mezzi [di] informazione; anche rudimentarii.
cordialissimi saluti ed a presto
[Dear Dr Yang (if that's your family name, and Dear Dr Fengchi if that's your patronymic):
I do not doubt the heroism of Chiang Kai-shek. I am glad to have met you because I wanted to know the point of view of the Chinese interior, BUT ? ? [precisely named].
I don't know if you and the [Secretary] General are aware of the extent to which THE NAMES OF ALL THINGS, all words, have been falsiWed in the West. The democracies aren't democracies; they are USUROCRACIES.
Via Marsala 12. 5 Rapallo
? 24 yang as pound's opponent and collaborator
China's worst enemy is not Japan but ? ? ? [usury], speciWcally inter- national usury.
The Russian Revolution intended to attack capital, but instead it was perverted and became an attack on property. Perhaps now Stalin is beginning to see it.
I hope to see you in Rome next week, and meanwhile I ask you to believe that when I say peace with honor I don't mean an empty honor. I have faith in the immortality of China and I believe that no history student can fail to have this faith, but I have seen the betrayal of my country; that is, I have become aware of the betrayal seventy years AFTER IT STARTED. It seems to me if possible we have to avoid such delays. I don't know how far the penetration of international usury into China has begun to be a threat to you or to what extent you are aware of the strength and nature of the penetration.
In any case, it's possible that my impressions are completely wrong because almost nobody in the West has access to information, even of the most rudimentary kind.
Best regards, I'll see you soon. ]
(TL-2; LL/Beinecke): the second leaf of the original letter is lost. The passage from ''[In]somma posso'' (In any case) on is transcribed from its carbon copy (Beinecke).
Ch[i]ang Kai Chek: see Glossary on Chiang Kai-shek.
? ? :Earliest introduced characters in The Cantos (Canto 51/252), ? ? (pronounced zheng ming
and meaning precise naming), are taken from Analects, 13. 3 (Confucius, 249).
Generale: Secretary General Zhu (Segretario Generale Tchu). According to Achilles Fang to EP, 4 January 1951, Zhu Ying ? ? ''now attached to the Chinese Legation at Vatican . . . a resident of
Rome for the past 30 years or so'' (Lilly).
10 EP to Yang (TLS-2; LL)
Caro Dottor Yang
Dopo nostro incontro, ed avendo saputo da Valeri che siete nazionalista, del
partito di Ch[i]ang Kai Chek, ho meditato ancora una volta il testo
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
Poi incontrando alcuni Giapponesi a Roma, e poi meditando ancora; mi pare che essiste [esiste] un modo di fare una pace con onore per la Cina. Naturalmente non conosco le condizioni di oggi giorno in Cina. Vorrei consultarvi, se vi interessa.
Ho sentito che Ch[i]ang Kai Chek fu convertito al Cristianesimo; che a ma [me] pare un ERRORE per un Cinese. In somma un cristiano potrebbe mettere un po' in ordine le sue idee, meditando il ? ? [? ? ], forse un Confuciano
Via Marsala 12. 5 Rapallo 22 Ag/ [August 1940]
yang as pound's opponent and collaborator 25
potrebbe derivare un stimolo dallo studio della teologia medioevale/ o qualche spint[a] per ?
?
ma NON per convertirs[i].
Una altra cosa ho sentito ma non so se sia vero. Mi e` stato detto che Ch[i]ang NON potendo arrivare al <ottenere il> morale <che voleva> dalle sue truppe, coi testi della bibbia, ha ritornato al uso dei testi confuciani.
E [E`] vero anche, o no? che lo studio dei Quattro classici fu sospeso nelle scuole col arrivo della Repub[b]lica in Cina? Lo ho sentito, di disturbi e calamita` susseguente non m'hanno sorpreso.
Forse Ch[i]ang non ha avuto tempo di riXettare [riXettere] sul ritmo della storia della Cina? Forse vuol fare in dieci anni quello che avvera` solamente in 160 anni?
Tutta questa lettera deve leggersi come interrogativa. A questa distanza non si puo` SAPERE. Ma qualche volta a distanza si vede una cosa che non sia visibile da vicino.
cordialissimi saluti [signed] Ezra Pound
[Dear Dr Yang: After our meeting I learned from Valeri that you are a Nation- alist, a member of Chiang Kai-shek's party, and I reexamined the aphorism ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? [''To sacriWce to a spirit not one's own is Xattery'']
Then, after meeting some Japanese in Rome and after reexamining the aphorism, it appears that there is a chance of making an honorable peace with China. Of course I don't know the present situation in China. I want to consult you on this if you are interested.
I hear that Chiang Kai-shek was converted to Christianity, which seems WRONG for a Chinese. In any case, a Christian might get his thoughts in order, meditating the ? ? [Great Learning]. Maybe a Confucian can get stimulus from studying medieval theology so a lift to ? ? [self-cultivation] but NOT to conversion.
I've heard something else and I don't know if it is true. I was told that since Chiang was NOT able to keep up the morale of his troops by using the Bible, he went back to using the Confucian texts.
Also, is it true or not that the study of the ''Four Books'' was suspended in schools with the coming of the Republic of China? I heard this, and the subsequent disturbances and calamities did not surprise me at all.
Maybe Chiang didn't have the time to think of the rhythm of Chinese history?
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.
I would like to ask you to finish that speech for my sister as early as you can
and send it to her. Her address is Miss Mildred Y. Sung, 50 Nevins Street, Brooklyn, NY. Put in as much funny stories as you can for illustrations. I certainly appreciate your kindness and troubles in helping me so much and
31 Hsin Kai Lu Peking July 3rd, 1914.
8 f. t. sung's china plan for pound
if I can reciprocate in any way, kindly let me know at any time. Perhaps your Mrs. want[s] some thing from China and if so, please let me know.
I hope you have received my book which I sent you quite a long time ago. Hoping to hear from you occasionally and with best wishes, I am,
Faithfully Yours, [signed] Far T. Sung
your happy union: EP married DP (1886-1973) in London on 20 April 1914. See Ezra Pound and Dorothy Shakespear: Their Letters 1909-1914, ed. Omar Pound and A. Walton Litz (New York: New Directions, 1984).
that paper which is owned by you: The Egoist published in London from 1914 to 1919. It was founded by Dora Marsden (1882-1960) and edited by Harriet Shaw Weaver (1876-1961) with Richard Aldington (1892-1962), Hilda Doolittle (1886-1961), and T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) successively as subeditor.
4 Sung to EP (TLS-1; Beinecke)
1 Shih Chia Hutung Peking Mar 16, 19
Dear Mr Pound:
Your most welcome letter of 23/1/1919 was duly received with many thanks.
I am glad to learn that you are keeping well and happy in your work.
Did you ever meet Dr W C Chen in the Chinese Legation in London? He is my brother-in-law and I think is teaching in the University of London. I am sure
he will be very glad to meet you.
I may go abroad again some time next year. If so, I will write you in advance.
My wife talks of going to the States this summer and probably goes to London to see her brother. Nothing has been definite yet.
When you write to your father at Philadelphia, please remember me to him. I am still remembering what a nice time I had with him while in his city.
I have moved to 1 Shih Chia Hutung two years <ago> and now settled here definitely. I would like to have these articles of mine published in your magazine some years ago. I have never received them <before>.
Do you still think of coming to China? If so, I would like to make arrange- ments for your coming.
? ? With best wishes, I am,
Most sincerely yours, [signed] Fartsan T. Sung
2
Miss Tseng and the Seven Lakes Canto
''Descendant of Kung and Thseng-Tsu''
One day in early 1928, in the middle of reading the galleys of Ta Hio: The Great Learning of Confucius (1928), his retranslation of the Wrst of the Confucian Four Books, Pound remembered a picture book with Chinese and Japanese ideo- grams that he had seen at his Aunt Frank's Manhattan boarding-house. Had his parents retrieved the book? Yes, they had. By late February the old book traveled across the Atlantic to Rapallo, Italy, where Pound had moved in 1924. Decades later, in a discarded fragment for The Cantos, Pound would identify this volume as the source of the Seven Lakes Canto: ''and my gr aunt's third husband j received in ms j from a friend j the 49th canto'' (Beinecke).
Now in Pound's daughter Mary de Rachewiltz's collection, the relic is a fourteen-fold screen book made by a nineteenth-century Japanese artist. It con- sists of eight ink paintings, eight poems in Chinese, and eight poems in Japanese, mutually representing eight classic scenes about the shores of the Xiao and Xiang Rivers in Hunan, central China (see Figs. 2. 1 and 2. 2). While Pound was com- pletely comfortable with translating the visual details into verse, he was not able to decipher the eight Chinese poems drawn in three calligraphic styles, not even with the aid of Robert Morrison's multivolume Dictionary of the Chinese Language.
By curious coincidence, a friend of Dorothy's was hosting a visitor from China, ''a returned missionary'' on her way to an international missionary conference in Jerusalem. Dorothy promptly went up the hill to see her. Al- though the visitor was leaving the next day for Jerusalem, she said if Pound could wait until she stopped by Rapallo again on her way back to China, she would be happy to look at the eight untranslated Chinese poems. Ezra was struck by the visitor's ancestral background. She was a descendant of Confucius' disciple Zeng Xi (Thseng-sie or Tseng Hsi). In April, when Ta Hio was out, he would be able to show Miss Tseng his version of ''The Explanation of Thseng- Tseu [Zeng Xi]'' (in ten chapters) following the Testimony of Confucius. A few years earlier, he must have told her, he had re-created a dialogue between her ancestor and his master in Canto 13, the Confucian Canto:
10
miss tseng and the seven lakes canto
And Thseng-sie desired to know: ''Which had answered correctly? ''
And Kung said, ''They have all answered correctly, ''That is to say, each in his nature. ''
(Canto 13/58)
The visitor, Pao Swen Tseng (Zeng Baosun ? ? ? , 1893-1978), turned out to be the right person to interpret the eight Chinese poems for Pound (see Fig. 2. 3). She was from Xiangxiang, Hunan, the Seven Lakes region. From her Pound could have learned practically everything about China's tradition of ''mak[ing] pictures & poems on that set of scenes'' (Letter 6), a tradition carried on even as far as Korea and Japan. More interestingly, Miss Tseng was also a poet. Among her published poems in Chinese are ''Xiangxiang'' and ''Changsha,'' depicting the very scenes of the screen book. Educated at Mary Vaughan, a missionary school in Shanghai, and the University of London's WestWeld College, Miss Tseng spoke perfect English. Moreover, she was the founding president of a girls' college in Hunan called Yifang. She would remain in that capacity for twenty-three years from 1918 to 1938 and from 1946 to 1949.
We know of no correspondence between Pound and Miss Tseng. However, certain details of their encounter and the fruit it bore can be gleaned from other sources. On 17 May 1928 Pound told Glenn Hughes of the University of Washington that he had ''Conferred with descendant of Kung and Thseng- Tsu [Zeng Xi] just before leaving Rapallo'' (Beinecke). From this we can infer that the meeting between the two took place in mid-May 1928. A transcript of Miss Tseng's oral translation of the eight Chinese poems has been found in an unmailed letter Pound wrote to his father on 30 July 1928 (Letter 7).
The greater part of the Seven Lakes Canto, as I have argued in The Modernist Response to Chinese Art, is based on Pound's exchanges at once with the screen book's eight pictures and with Miss Tseng's oral translation of the eight poems. Nonetheless, the poet of The Cantos could never forget his Wrst collaboration with a Chinese poet and scholar:
For the seven lakes, and by no man these verses: Rain; empty rain; a voyage,
Fire from frozen cloud, heavy rain in the twilight Under the cabin roof was one lantern.
The reeds are heavy; bent;
and the bamboos speak as if weeping.
Autumn moon; hills rise about lakes against sunset
Evening is like a curtain of cloud,
a blurr above ripples; and through it sharp long spikes of the cinnamon, a cold tune amid reeds.
miss tseng and the seven lakes canto 11
Behind hill the monk's bell
borne on the wind.
Sail passed here in April; may return in October Boat fades in silver; slowly;
Sun blaze alone on the river.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . (Canto 49/244)
After moving to Taiwan in 1949, Miss Tseng assisted her brother Yueh-nung Tseng (Zeng Yuenong, 1893-1986) and others in founding the now prestigious Tunghai University (see Fig. 2. 4). In April 1957 Pound learned that Miss Tseng had traveled to the United States. He at once wrote to David Wang in New York City: ''Do get Miss Tseng's news while she is in N. Y. '' (Beinecke). Wang contacted Miss Tseng's delegation but she had already left (Letter 156 n. ).
The excerpts from EP's letters to his parents included here have been published before, 5, 6, and 8 in Angela Jung Palandri, ''The 'Seven Lakes Canto' Revisited'' (Paideuma, 3/1 (1974)), and 7 in Hugh Kenner, ''More on the Seven Lakes Canto'' (Paideuma, 2/1 (1973)) and Richard Taylor, ''Canto XLIX, Futurism, and the Fourth Dimension'' (Neohelicon (Budapest), 20/1 (1993)).
? Fig. 2. 1. ''Night Rain'' from EP's screen book. (Mary de Rachewiltz)
? Fig. 2. 2. ''Autumn Moon'' (right), ''Evening Bell'' (center), ''Sailboats Returning'' (left) from EP's screen book. (Mary de Rachewiltz)
? Fig. 2. 3. Pao Swen Tseng, 1928. (Tunghai University Library)
? Fig. 2. 4. Pao Swen Tseng and Yueh-nung Tseng, 1955. (Tunghai University Library)
5
Dear Mother: [. . . ]
EP to Isabel Pound (TLS-1; Beinecke)
Via Marsala, 12 Int. 5 Rapallo 1 March [1928]
[. . . ]
Dear Dad: [. . . ]
[signed] E
miss tseng and the seven lakes canto 15
D[orothy] is up a mountain with a returned missionary. Yes Chinese book arrived, berry interestin', returned missionary promises us a descendant of Confucius on a month or so, who will prob. be able to decipher it.
6 EP to Homer Pound (ALS-2; Beinecke)
30 May [1928]
Wien
They are poems on a set of scenes in Miss Thseng's part of the country. Sort of habit of people to make pictures & poems on that set of scenes.
Translation of chinese poems in picture book is at Rapallo.
[. . . ]
[signed] Ez
7 EP to Homer Pound (TL-3; Beinecke)
Dear Dad: [. . . ]
Chinese book reads as follows, rough trans. Rain, empty river,
Place for soul to travel
(or room to travel)
Frozen cloud, Wre, rain damp twilight.
One lantern inside boat cover (i. e. sort of shelter, not awning on small boat)
Via Marsala, 12 Int. 5 Rapallo 30 July. [1928]
16 miss tseng and the seven lakes canto
Throws reXection on bamboo branch, causes tears. ///////
AUTUMN MOON ON TON-Ting Lake
West side hills
screen oV evening clouds
Ten thousand ripples send mist over cinnamon Xowers. Fisherman's Xute disregards nostalgia
Blows cold music over cottony bullrush.
Monastery evening bell
/////
Cloud shuts oV the hill, hiding the temple
Bell audible only when wind moves toward one,
One can not tell whether the
summit, is near or far,
Sure only that one is in hollow of mountains.
//////////////
Autumn tide,
AUTUMN TIDE, RETURNING SAILS
Touching <green> sky at horizon, mists in suggestion of autumn Sheet of silver reXecting the all that one sees
Boats gradually fade, or are lost in turn of the hills,
Only evening sun, and its glory on the water remain.
//////////// Spring in hill valley
Small wine Xag waves in the evening sun
Few clustered houses sending up smoke
A few country people enjoying their evening drink In time of peace, every day is like spring.
SNOW ON RIVER
Cloud light, world covered with <milky> jade Small boat Xoats like a leaf
Tranquil water congeals it to stillness
In Sai Yin there dwell people of leisure.
The people of Sai Yin are unhurried.
//////
Wild geese stopping on sand
Just outside window, light against clouds
Light clouds show in sky just beyond window ledge A few lines of autumn geese on the marsh
at their Bullrishes have burst into snow-tops
? ? ? ? miss tseng and the seven lakes canto 17
The birds stop to preen their feathers. &&&&&&
EVENING IN SMALL FISHING VILLAGE. Fisherman's light blinks
Dawn begins, with light to the south and north Noise of children hawking their Wsh and crawWsh Fisherman calls his boy, and takes up his wine bottle, They drink, they lie on the sand
and point to marsh-grass, talking.
Chinese book reads as follows: EP's typescript consists of three leaves. According to Richard Taylor, ''Canto XLIX, Futurism, and the Fourth Dimension,'' at some point before March 1965, the last two leaves ''were accidentally transposed,'' leading Hugh Kenner to transcribe the text (March 1965) in the order of A-B/F-G-H/C-D-E in ''More on the Seven Lakes Canto. ''
8 EP to Homer Pound (TLS-2; Beinecke)
Sept. 1 [1928]
Dear Dad:
Given inWnite time I MIGHT be able to read a Chinese poem, thass to say I know
how the ideograph works, and can Wnd 'em in the dictionary or vocabulary, BUT I shd.
scarcely attempt it unless there were some urgent reason. Also
some of the script in that book was fairly fancy.
For Cathay I had a crib made by Mori and Ariga, not translation or anything
shaped into sentences, but word for sign, and explanation with each character. For your book Miss Thseng, descendant of Kung read out the stuV to me. Am perfectly able to look up an ideograph and see what shade it can be given,
etc.
BUT it za matr of time. wd be no point in it.
No I am not a sinologue. Dont spread the idea that I read it a zeasy as a
yourapean langwidg. [. . . ]
E.
Mori and Ariga: see Glossary on Mori Kainan and Ariga Nagao respectively.
[Rapallo]
? 3
Yang as Pound's Opponent and Collaborator
''To sacriWce to a spirit not one's own is Xattery''
In 1937-8 Pound regularly spent four to Wve hours a day learning Chinese. From James Legge's bilingual Confucian Four Books he moved on to the Confucian Book of Odes, Shi jing, in the original. ''I MAY be able to read in time, at the rate of three lines a day,'' he told the Japanese poet Katue Kitasono, who sent him Shi jing in four volumes (Pound/Japan, 45). To write about China and to begin to translate the Confucian Four Books, Pound could not rely only on his own sets of Chinese-English dictionaries and Legge's bilingual Confucian Four Books. Starting from the late summer of 1939, almost every time he traveled to Rome, he would stop by the Italian Institute for the Middle and Far East (IsMEO) (see Fig. 3. 1) to look up some Chinese materials, and it was there that he met the Chinese instructor Fengchi Yang.
Fengchi Yang(Yang Fengqi ? ? ? , 1908-70) had been an assistant professor of modern history at Beijing's Qinghua University (see Fig. 3. 2). He came to Italy around 1935 to pursue a higher degree. When he and Pound Wrst met in September 1939, Yang had just earned a doctorate in letters from the University of Rome and was beginning to teach Chinese at the IsMEO. As an ''enemy alien,'' he would soon lose his job. It was not until the Italian fascist regime collapsed in 1944 that he was able to return to the IsMEO.
To continue a conversation at the IsMEO Library, Pound wrote to Yang on 2 October 1939. He was then seriously deluded about Japanese culpability for the war in China. His letters, like his 1941-3 radio broadcasts from Rome, are characterized by Italian fascism and anti-Semitism. In his Wrst letter he tried to convince Yang that China's worst enemy was not Japan but ''international usury'' (Letter 9). Not hearing from Yang for ten months, Pound wrote again on 22 August 1940, this time questioning the moral foundation of the Nationalist Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek: ''I hear that Chiang Kai-shek was converted to Christianity, which seems WRONG for a Chinese'' (Letter 10). While Pound's intention was to challenge Yang to a debate, he did not want to alienate him. So he quoted the Confucian epigram, ''? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? '' (see Fig. 3. 3).
yang as pound's opponent and collaborator 19
The phrase from Legge's bilingual Four Books would come back to his mind in mid-1945, and consequently it surfaces in Canto 77 with an English translation: ''To sacriWce to a spirit not one's own is Xattery. ''
In his reply Yang called Chiang ''the greatest and bravest statesman''; because he was trying to save China, Chiang ''always had the esteem of the Chinese people, and naturally also of our troops'' (Letter 11). As to Chiang's moral principles, Yang explained, they were modern and democratic as set forth by Sun Yat-sen, the founding father of the Republic of China.
In his next letter Pound was careful to acknowledge his ignorance about Chinese reality. However, he irritated Yang by stating that ''foreigners who have learned something from China have almost always had to INVADE it, later absorbing the culture'' (Letter 12). Yang's rebuttal of this simplistic assertion was blunt: ''It is not always true, as you said, that foreigners had to invade China to learn or take something from the country. For example, Korea and Indochina have absorbed Chinese culture without invading it'' (Letter 13).
Subsequently, Pound wrote in a more reserved manner, as if apologizing for his earlier impertinence. In one letter he conceded that China had a just claim to its sovereignty. Yang inXuenced Pound toward a slightly better understanding of the conXict between China and Japan. This does not suggest, however, that Pound changed his political view. He still believed ''? ? ? ? ? . '' The Mencian epigram is inscribed in Letter 16, just as its English translation is appended to Canto 78: ''In 'The Spring and Autumn' j there j are j no j righteous j wars. '' More than several times what Pound said to Yang can be related to the Pisan Cantos (Cantos 74-84), whose Chinese quotations his Confucian studies during World War II anticipated.
While the politics of Pound and Yang diverged, their literary interests shared much common ground. Throughout the years 1939-42 Yang served as an informant. He helped Pound locate various Chinese books and identify numer- ous Chinese characters. His assistance became vital in 1941-2 when Pound took up translating into Italian two of the Confucian Four Books. Pound sent Yang part of his draft of the Ta S'eu (1942) for evaluation. As Letter 21 testiWes, Yang approved not only Pound's Italian translation but also his inserted commentary. In his reply Pound could not resist repeating his usual observation about translation and about the ''ideogram'': ''And in a classical and ancient text, I think one has to preserve the original meanings of the ideograms, and not to follow the formless and colorless value given words in a newspaper of today'' (Letter 22). In that letter Pound also disclosed his intention to translate into Italian all four of the Confucian Four Books: Wrst ''Ta S'eu'' and then ''Mencius, one book at a time. ''
Pound's plan was cut short upon his arrest for making pro-fascist radio broad- casts from Rome. On 3 May 1945 he was ''working on the Mencius when the Partigiani came to the front door with a tommy-gun'' (Letters in Captivity, 113).
? Fig. 3. 1. EP in Rome, c. 1941. (HRHRC)
? Fig. 3. 2. Fengchi Yang, c. 1960. (Lionello Lanciotti)
? Fig. 3. 3. Letter 10. (Beinecke)
yang as pound's opponent and collaborator 23
9 EP to Yang (TL-2; LL/Beinecke)
2 Ott [October 1939]
Illmo Dott Yang Fengchi
Caro Dottore Yang (se questo e` il nome di famiglia, e Caro Dottore Fengchi
se questo e` il patronimico)
Non dubito dell'eroismo di Ch[i]ang Kai Chek, e sono stato tanto contento
[di] incontrarVi perche volevo sapere precisamente il punto di vista della Cina interiore. MA
? ?
Non so se voi ed il Generale [si] rendono contro [conto] del grado in cui
TUTTI i NOMI, tutte le parole sono stato falsiWcato nell'occidente. Le demo- crazie non lo sono, sono USUROCRAZIE.
Io credo che il peggior nemico della Cina non e` <Giappone> ma ? ? ?
specialmente quell'usura internazionale.
La rivoluzione Russa intendeva attaccare al capitale, ma invece fu pervertito e deviene [divenne] un attacco alla proprieta`. Forse adesso Stalin incomincia a renders[i] conto.
Spero vederVi presto a Roma la settimana prossima, ed intanto vi prego di credere che quando dico pace con onore non intendo un onore vuoto. Ho una fede nell'immortalita` della Cina e credo che nessun studente della storia puo` mancare d'averla ma ho visto mio paese trad[i]to; cioe` ho appreso del tradi- mento settant'anni DOPO IL FATTO. Mi pare che quando possibile si deve evitare tali ritardi. Non so quando la penetrazione dell'usura internazionale nella Cina ha cominciato ad essere un pericolo per Voi; o in che grado voi [vi] siete resi conto della forza e natura della penetrazione.
[In]somma posso anche benissimo avere impressioni falsissimi della s[it]uazione, perche ? quasi nessuno nell'occidente ha mezzi [di] informazione; anche rudimentarii.
cordialissimi saluti ed a presto
[Dear Dr Yang (if that's your family name, and Dear Dr Fengchi if that's your patronymic):
I do not doubt the heroism of Chiang Kai-shek. I am glad to have met you because I wanted to know the point of view of the Chinese interior, BUT ? ? [precisely named].
I don't know if you and the [Secretary] General are aware of the extent to which THE NAMES OF ALL THINGS, all words, have been falsiWed in the West. The democracies aren't democracies; they are USUROCRACIES.
Via Marsala 12. 5 Rapallo
? 24 yang as pound's opponent and collaborator
China's worst enemy is not Japan but ? ? ? [usury], speciWcally inter- national usury.
The Russian Revolution intended to attack capital, but instead it was perverted and became an attack on property. Perhaps now Stalin is beginning to see it.
I hope to see you in Rome next week, and meanwhile I ask you to believe that when I say peace with honor I don't mean an empty honor. I have faith in the immortality of China and I believe that no history student can fail to have this faith, but I have seen the betrayal of my country; that is, I have become aware of the betrayal seventy years AFTER IT STARTED. It seems to me if possible we have to avoid such delays. I don't know how far the penetration of international usury into China has begun to be a threat to you or to what extent you are aware of the strength and nature of the penetration.
In any case, it's possible that my impressions are completely wrong because almost nobody in the West has access to information, even of the most rudimentary kind.
Best regards, I'll see you soon. ]
(TL-2; LL/Beinecke): the second leaf of the original letter is lost. The passage from ''[In]somma posso'' (In any case) on is transcribed from its carbon copy (Beinecke).
Ch[i]ang Kai Chek: see Glossary on Chiang Kai-shek.
? ? :Earliest introduced characters in The Cantos (Canto 51/252), ? ? (pronounced zheng ming
and meaning precise naming), are taken from Analects, 13. 3 (Confucius, 249).
Generale: Secretary General Zhu (Segretario Generale Tchu). According to Achilles Fang to EP, 4 January 1951, Zhu Ying ? ? ''now attached to the Chinese Legation at Vatican . . . a resident of
Rome for the past 30 years or so'' (Lilly).
10 EP to Yang (TLS-2; LL)
Caro Dottor Yang
Dopo nostro incontro, ed avendo saputo da Valeri che siete nazionalista, del
partito di Ch[i]ang Kai Chek, ho meditato ancora una volta il testo
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
Poi incontrando alcuni Giapponesi a Roma, e poi meditando ancora; mi pare che essiste [esiste] un modo di fare una pace con onore per la Cina. Naturalmente non conosco le condizioni di oggi giorno in Cina. Vorrei consultarvi, se vi interessa.
Ho sentito che Ch[i]ang Kai Chek fu convertito al Cristianesimo; che a ma [me] pare un ERRORE per un Cinese. In somma un cristiano potrebbe mettere un po' in ordine le sue idee, meditando il ? ? [? ? ], forse un Confuciano
Via Marsala 12. 5 Rapallo 22 Ag/ [August 1940]
yang as pound's opponent and collaborator 25
potrebbe derivare un stimolo dallo studio della teologia medioevale/ o qualche spint[a] per ?
?
ma NON per convertirs[i].
Una altra cosa ho sentito ma non so se sia vero. Mi e` stato detto che Ch[i]ang NON potendo arrivare al <ottenere il> morale <che voleva> dalle sue truppe, coi testi della bibbia, ha ritornato al uso dei testi confuciani.
E [E`] vero anche, o no? che lo studio dei Quattro classici fu sospeso nelle scuole col arrivo della Repub[b]lica in Cina? Lo ho sentito, di disturbi e calamita` susseguente non m'hanno sorpreso.
Forse Ch[i]ang non ha avuto tempo di riXettare [riXettere] sul ritmo della storia della Cina? Forse vuol fare in dieci anni quello che avvera` solamente in 160 anni?
Tutta questa lettera deve leggersi come interrogativa. A questa distanza non si puo` SAPERE. Ma qualche volta a distanza si vede una cosa che non sia visibile da vicino.
cordialissimi saluti [signed] Ezra Pound
[Dear Dr Yang: After our meeting I learned from Valeri that you are a Nation- alist, a member of Chiang Kai-shek's party, and I reexamined the aphorism ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? [''To sacriWce to a spirit not one's own is Xattery'']
Then, after meeting some Japanese in Rome and after reexamining the aphorism, it appears that there is a chance of making an honorable peace with China. Of course I don't know the present situation in China. I want to consult you on this if you are interested.
I hear that Chiang Kai-shek was converted to Christianity, which seems WRONG for a Chinese. In any case, a Christian might get his thoughts in order, meditating the ? ? [Great Learning]. Maybe a Confucian can get stimulus from studying medieval theology so a lift to ? ? [self-cultivation] but NOT to conversion.
I've heard something else and I don't know if it is true. I was told that since Chiang was NOT able to keep up the morale of his troops by using the Bible, he went back to using the Confucian texts.
Also, is it true or not that the study of the ''Four Books'' was suspended in schools with the coming of the Republic of China? I heard this, and the subsequent disturbances and calamities did not surprise me at all.
Maybe Chiang didn't have the time to think of the rhythm of Chinese history?
