[St
Elizabeths
Hospital] [Washington, DC] 25 Jan [1952]
e
e
a.
e
e
a.
Ezra-Pounds-Chinese-Friends-Stories-in-Letters
But he could not have spelt his name as Tcheou, which would stand for ?
.
My colleague here, former ex-consul (Boston) Wang, has written to his N. Y. friends. If this source fails, I shall write to Tucci.
Yesterday I mailed you my Chronicle of Three Kingdoms; but it is so dull. Vol. 2, which will contain the facts about
Lieou-Tchin died in hall of the forebears-- when his father wd/ not die Wghting--
by suicide, slaying his children and consort [54/281] is to appear next summer.
Jas. Laughlin was here sometime ago. He is going to turn over your Ode MSS to me so that I may sort out the seal-script text for you. J. L. told me that old Kimbal seems to be losing his mind.
[Cambridge, Mass. ] Dec. 29, 1951
? 72 a. fang and pound's bilingual confucius
With best wishes for the New Year,
Respectfully [signed] Achilles Fang
? ? : in a letter to EP of 4 January 1952 (Lilly), Fang forwards the address of ? ? (EP's Sig. Tcheou). See Letters 12 and 23.
my Chronicle of Three Kingdoms: see Letter 43 n. Jas. Laughlin: see Glossary on Laughlin, James. old Kimbal: see Glossary on Kimball, Dudley.
51 EP to Fang (TL-1; Beinecke)
[St Elizabeths Hospital] [Washington, DC] [4 January 1952]
O FANG
Thanks re/ Tsheou, who did NOT spell it like the dynasty/either in ideogram
or in wop [Italian].
O, FANG, godddDAMMIT
ALL that odes ms/ is measured out to a milligram, so that the ENGLISH and the romanj can be set page by page, so as to SHOW the strophic form of the original. WHEN the english strophes etc/ are COMposed, as pages then one can cut up the seal text so that a strip of SEAL would face and correspond, with and to the translation. ALL of which the Kimball SWORE he understood/and made sample page of english and romanj/and SAID he wd/ then cut the metal plates for the seal, AS
I should indicate by cutting up the fotos/ benediction
and WHOOF.
[In DP's hand:] Private P. S.
I do wish this could be got under way- - -
EP wants it for his own use . . . & the delay makes him furious. This was all two years ago.
a very pretty page, after several tries.
52 EP to Fang (TL-2; Beinecke)
[St Elizabeths Hospital] [Washington, DC] [14 January 1952]
O FANG
Gloria enjoying yr/ history, wants [to] know if yu hv/ published anything
else (apart from note on Stones). I dont dare tell her she took the bk/ by mistake
a. fang and pound's bilingual confucius 73
before I had read it, as she is already too much overawed, and wd/ be too distressed at having done so.
Than' Q. for the volume. In mean time the ignote but admirable Schmidt has sent in 8 vols/ southern anthol/ plus 5 or 6 of Chu Hsi's commentary. <? ? ? ? > How many characters are going into yr/ new Dictionary? I note that
Mathews seems to hv/ omitted ? ?
a lot of combines seem to keep und fu, which wd/ here be fu fu? ? ? 2-5 as with
? which makes sense as it applies to dust, line preceding has whirl-wind.
As to cultural discipline, young Pablos charged in yester with 6 or 7 copies Stone Edtn/ 4 or 5 bought for his friends and 2 for Valle. He sd/ Bob NEEDED
it and that I wd/ prob/ get writers cramp signing the lot.
The impertinence on back of cover is, as I trust you have recognized, a whim
of the producer and pub/r, and was not submitted for my approval.
Another I cant Wnd in our beloved Mathews is earth under hemp/ ? rad[ical]
32/ under rad 200. Fog like hemp plantation? underbrush, or dirty cloth?
whoever this moralizing bloke is, his continual e^rh pu, is VURRY NOT music.
? this is ridiKUlus, must hv/seen it dozen times, but cant Wnd in M/ ? having 2
todowithjou 3133/orwott'ell? oftenmeaningnotimportant. butwantsome indication of approx sound.
yeh3 ? ?
Gloria: Gloria French, wife of the American poet and musician William French.
Schmidt: unidentiWed.
southern anthol . . . <? ? ? ? >: Chuci, an anthology of poems by Qu Yuan and other ancient
Chinese poets annotated by Zhu Xi.
Valle: retired lieutenant general Pedro A. del Valle, a defender of EP, is listed in Canto 105/771.
53 Fang to EP (TLS-1; Lilly)
[Cambridge, Mass. ] Jan 15, 1952
Dear Mr Pound,
Exceedingly glad to hear that you've got Ch'u-tz'u [Southern Anthology], for
you will meet again a number of familiar faces. ? ? is Ch'u ? Yu ? an (*kiu t ngiOn <*6th cent. sounds; we are not certain of earlier sounds>): you have AFTER CH'U ? YUAN, which seems to be based on Giles' History (text ? ? , ? ? : ? ? ? ? ? ? ? . . . ) and SONG OF THE BOWMEN OF SHU, which in 1915 Cathay was attributed to KUTSUGEN (which is Jap. pronunciation of our poet).
? ? is So ? -Gioku of Canto 4, sinice^ Sung Yu ? (*Suong ? ngiwok) but the text of ''This wind, sire, is the king's wind, . . . '' (a fu poem on Wind ? ? ) is not in Ch'u-tz'u.
You will Wnd HIGHTOWER's Topics (chapter 4) quite informative in this connexion.
e
74 a. fang and pound's bilingual confucius
The poet who aVects erh-pu ? ? (* ? n ? z ? i piu t) is Liu Hsiang (Hightower p. 22).
? fou (*biu t ? ), ''dusty''
? mo (*mua^ ? ) & mei (* ? mua^i), ''dust, dirt''
? (more correctly ? ) 1/4 ? 1/4 ? .
I really don't know how many characters our dictionary is going to contain.
Certainly more than Mathews. I think of putting all the ideograms in ? ? in ours. Very Xattered to hear Gloria (? ) ''enjoying'' my dull book. (By the way, if you need another copy, I can manage to send you one. ) This is my Wrst book (oh, yes, I wrote a German grammar in Chinese some years ago. ) In the Monumenta Serica (published in Peking by Catholic fathers, I am neither Cath. nor Christian), a sinological quarterly I used to be an editor of, contains some dozen or more articles, all pretty dull. Besides the 3 pieces in Harv. Journ. of Asiatic Studies, there is going to be another in the coming issue (6 weeks more): translation of Wen-fu. Perhaps you've looked through The Art of Letters by Reverend E. R. Hughes, M. A. (Wrst class FOOL) published by Bollingen. My translation is, as I hope, quite accurate and not unreadable (MacLeish has gone through it). Then, there's a 24-page review of ex-
missionary H[ughes]'s fool book. Both of these I shall send to you.
Yours respectfully [signed] Achilles Fang
Ch'u ? Yu ? an: see Glossary on Qu Yuan.
SONG OF THE BOWMEN OF SHU: Cathay opening poem, ''Song of the Bowmen of Shu,'' a variant
on Ode 167.
So ? -Gioku . . . Sung Yu ? : EP alludes to ''The Wind'' by Song Yu (So ? -Gyoku in Japanese, 3rd century bc)
in Canto 4.
HIGHTOWER's Topics: James Robert Hightower, Topics in Chinese Literature: Outlines and Bibliog-
raphies (Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1950).
Liu Hsiang: Liu Xiang (c. 77-6 bc). His ''Nine Laments'' is collected in Southern Anthology.
? ? : Cihai dictionary. See Letter 38 n.
German grammar in Chinese: Te-wen chin-liang or Gesprochenes Deutsch (1941).
translation of Wen-fu: ''Rhymeprose on Literature: The We^n-fu of Lu Chi (A. D. 261-303) ? ? :
? ,'' Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 14/3 & 4 (1951).
The Art of Letters: see Fang, ''Review: E. Hughes, The Art of Letters, Lu Chi's 'Wen Fu,' A. D. 302,''
Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 14/3 & 4 (1951).
? 54 EP to Fang (TL-2; Beinecke)
FANG fuss
isn't yu ? 2 ? [I, me] rather like the dative? ? seems to Wt a number of examples.
[St Elizabeths Hospital] [Washington, DC] 25 Jan [1952]
e
e
a. fang and pound's bilingual confucius 75
Erinnerung deutsches GrammatiKKKK [memory of German grammar]
(NO I am NOT going to look up hun spellink) if not why Mat/ 7606 [7605] AND 7601
go to/out got
Gornoze wotthe choinilists [sinologists] do with 'em NOW.
enclose exercise/got to Wnd some means of Wxing approx sound in remains of
disjecta mente [scattered mind].
Any arguments for Hawley, who seems to think ideograms are mere hiero-
glyphics/i. e. just pictures without concepts tied into 'em? (this prob/an exag- geration de ma parte <but I dont believe they just procede [proceed] on mere basis of melting diVerences down into sames. >
When F/ has nothing better to do/cd/he spare a few words re/the trans- formation from old seal to modern forms? when done, by whom? how long it took to do it?
F/seen a poor rag called ''Philosophy of East and West. '' Hawaii Univ/ unreadable save for grain of sense from Santayana.
? ? ? ?
? ? ? ?
? ? ? ?
? ? ? ?
1. does this make sense
2. does it scan, according to an accepted chinese ear?
3. wd/ 4th line be considered bad taste, stunt merely changing tone? nacherly SOURCE of diVerent sounds, and prob/ earlier diVerences in total FOG. grampaw Wnd berry dif 'kult merember noise appertaining pixchoor abbrev/ if F/objects to Wnal character we can change it/cant fall into Foe and Lao
''Philosophy of East and West'': Essays in East-West Philosophy: An Attempt at World Philosophical Synthesis, ed. Charles A. Moore (1951).
Santayana: see Glossary on Santayana, George.
? ? ? ? . . . ? ? ? ? : a poem of EP's own composition. See also Letters 55 and 66. Lao: see Glossary on Laozi.
55 Fang to EP (TLS-1; Lilly)
[Cambridge, Mass. ] Feb. 5 [1952]
Dear Mr Pound,
Excuse me this delay; have been a bit unwell, weather. ? 1/4 ? ling. ? 1/4 ?
huang.
76
a. fang and pound's bilingual confucius
The four lines
? ? ? ? ? kan ? z ? ? ? a ? ng ? si k ? ? Ong ? ? ? ? ? ? a? ien ^ts ? i ? ? ^ts ? ? ? u ? a? wa ? ? ? ? ? sien ? ^ts ? i ? tsa^: i ? ^t ? ? ung ? ? ? ? ? s ? ? a ? n dz'a^i ? ? mjie aien ?
(1/4 ? , to appear)
kien ? (to look at)
cannot mean what you intend (granted that I do understand you). As for the
sounds, there are too many gutturals and too many of what the vorchristlicher Christ called snake sounds; one labial does not seem to relieve the overwrought alliteration. And rhyme? The fourth line sounds like a jeu d'esprit. Sorry to disappoint you.
Yes I saw Philosophy of East and West; the people in Hawaii seem to be a strange lot, I am sure.
Of course I have time to write on the transformation from great seal to little seal (which is the script conventionalised from the reform script of Li Ssu, Li-sse ? in Canto LIV; cf. ? ? ? . . . ? ? ? <Some critics think this sentence to be an interpolation. > in Pivot 28), but I should like to know what you exactly want me to write: history? comparison of the two? (The so-called great seal scripts are not all too numerous, whereas the Shuo-wen is entirely based on the lesser seal. )
Yours respectfully [signed] Achilles Fang
Li Ssu: Li Si (c. 280-208 bc). , prime minister to the First Emperor of Qin (r. 246-210 bc), made the ''lesser seal'' a standard Chinese script.
Shuo-wen: see Glossary on Xu Shen.
56 EP to Fang (TL-3; Beinecke)
[St Elizabeths Hospital] [Washington, DC] [February 1952]
O Fang
Mat/ 1848 fei4/? I take it variants alle sameee
? intensiWcation of ?
much more interesting kai ts'o ? ? /I take it coin? METATHEMENON [currency fraud] even if the knife ? isn't in text.
e
a. fang and pound's bilingual confucius 77
bit dull, if it ain't. <may be author was just dumb. >
----------
Certain points shd/ be deferred until possible to talk/ what I am after re/
shift from seal/is the cutting down from the 500 or whatever radicals to 214/ How much actual reorganization of the whole system of concepts occurred.
So far hv/ seen no printed emphasis on great diVerence between a mere abbreviated picture/ hieroglyph, and that graph/ coupled with a more general concept/such as change or magic/
one hwa [? ] being mere picture/what Mat/ calls LATER hwa [? ] man / spoon/ under the growing leaves.
Total impossibility to form any idea of REAL sound of any language save by HEARING it spoken/ eRRRe eRRRe AOOW (spanish in Madrid streets)
I suspected four of Mat's hsin in a row was overdoing it.
Gloria says: but it dont sing. Referring to the T'ang anthol/ to my mind the K'ung anthol/ and almost ANY chinese verse I have looked at ''sings''/ AND gives a measure (musical bar) <times the sound>
BUT I have not the slightest idea whether there is ANY similarity between the noise I make when ''singing'' the syllables.
(EVEN supposing I had some faint concept of what the diVerence between tones 1, 2, 3, 4 are. ) <re the chinese sounds. >
Which I have NOT. and am unlikely to obtain from ANY printed statement about it. unless illustrated by musical notes
For years I never made ANY attempt to hitch ANY sound to the ideograms/ content with the meaning and the visual form.
Whomever I have got to in South anth/ 13/15 seems to be linking up a lot of horse radicals/and (now) bow radicals/
? ? as voulu as the four hsin
kan/ Xien, sien. acc/ A. F.
and as to what the Hnbl/ F/ means by gutturals ? ? ? dunno. snakes/ sibilants. 40
years ago a hen on the North Am/ Rev told me Mr Tennyson objected to 'em. (quite irrelevant to case before her/ which was consonants in ang/ sax/
alliteration . . . but still schnakes/ schnakes/ no bon.
Have managed to remember six sounds in a row in one line which Mat/
represents as K'ung fan chi erh kan hui
By which alphabetic etc/ he conveys NOTHING whatsoDAM to grampaw.
the sense is O. K. but no real idea of the sound. What I (egomet ipse [myself alone]) was after, as to meaning in Wrst eVort was to intensify sense of respect or vegetable intelligence (vide Agassiz) and to blast all Mesopotamian Xabbiness and going oV into the indeWnite. Focus damn well gittin down and taking hold of ROOT/ grabbing terram Wrmam. /
? ? ? ? ? ? 78 a. fang and pound's bilingual confucius
whoosis' comment of Guido's Donna mi prega/ kussing them as ''prende occhio per la mente [take the eye for the mind]. '' visual faculty augmented by attentive examination of Xoral (or any vegetative) metamorphoses.
How MANY words of modern chinese wd/ be required?
////
judging by F's consonants/ there was an awful slurring and same-ing of
earlier diVerent sounds/ such is as now obliterating english, in murkn polyglot am unconvinced that whoever changed a spirit swirl into a bent elbow THOUGHT he was merely making a copy of the wiggle even in an attempt to
improve its plastic (shape)
? ? ?
as to representation that ANY beholder can understand, the Egyptians ''lay it
open to the meanest capacity. ''
and SO forth/ dont hurry to reply if you are ill or busy.
? .
My colleague here, former ex-consul (Boston) Wang, has written to his N. Y. friends. If this source fails, I shall write to Tucci.
Yesterday I mailed you my Chronicle of Three Kingdoms; but it is so dull. Vol. 2, which will contain the facts about
Lieou-Tchin died in hall of the forebears-- when his father wd/ not die Wghting--
by suicide, slaying his children and consort [54/281] is to appear next summer.
Jas. Laughlin was here sometime ago. He is going to turn over your Ode MSS to me so that I may sort out the seal-script text for you. J. L. told me that old Kimbal seems to be losing his mind.
[Cambridge, Mass. ] Dec. 29, 1951
? 72 a. fang and pound's bilingual confucius
With best wishes for the New Year,
Respectfully [signed] Achilles Fang
? ? : in a letter to EP of 4 January 1952 (Lilly), Fang forwards the address of ? ? (EP's Sig. Tcheou). See Letters 12 and 23.
my Chronicle of Three Kingdoms: see Letter 43 n. Jas. Laughlin: see Glossary on Laughlin, James. old Kimbal: see Glossary on Kimball, Dudley.
51 EP to Fang (TL-1; Beinecke)
[St Elizabeths Hospital] [Washington, DC] [4 January 1952]
O FANG
Thanks re/ Tsheou, who did NOT spell it like the dynasty/either in ideogram
or in wop [Italian].
O, FANG, godddDAMMIT
ALL that odes ms/ is measured out to a milligram, so that the ENGLISH and the romanj can be set page by page, so as to SHOW the strophic form of the original. WHEN the english strophes etc/ are COMposed, as pages then one can cut up the seal text so that a strip of SEAL would face and correspond, with and to the translation. ALL of which the Kimball SWORE he understood/and made sample page of english and romanj/and SAID he wd/ then cut the metal plates for the seal, AS
I should indicate by cutting up the fotos/ benediction
and WHOOF.
[In DP's hand:] Private P. S.
I do wish this could be got under way- - -
EP wants it for his own use . . . & the delay makes him furious. This was all two years ago.
a very pretty page, after several tries.
52 EP to Fang (TL-2; Beinecke)
[St Elizabeths Hospital] [Washington, DC] [14 January 1952]
O FANG
Gloria enjoying yr/ history, wants [to] know if yu hv/ published anything
else (apart from note on Stones). I dont dare tell her she took the bk/ by mistake
a. fang and pound's bilingual confucius 73
before I had read it, as she is already too much overawed, and wd/ be too distressed at having done so.
Than' Q. for the volume. In mean time the ignote but admirable Schmidt has sent in 8 vols/ southern anthol/ plus 5 or 6 of Chu Hsi's commentary. <? ? ? ? > How many characters are going into yr/ new Dictionary? I note that
Mathews seems to hv/ omitted ? ?
a lot of combines seem to keep und fu, which wd/ here be fu fu? ? ? 2-5 as with
? which makes sense as it applies to dust, line preceding has whirl-wind.
As to cultural discipline, young Pablos charged in yester with 6 or 7 copies Stone Edtn/ 4 or 5 bought for his friends and 2 for Valle. He sd/ Bob NEEDED
it and that I wd/ prob/ get writers cramp signing the lot.
The impertinence on back of cover is, as I trust you have recognized, a whim
of the producer and pub/r, and was not submitted for my approval.
Another I cant Wnd in our beloved Mathews is earth under hemp/ ? rad[ical]
32/ under rad 200. Fog like hemp plantation? underbrush, or dirty cloth?
whoever this moralizing bloke is, his continual e^rh pu, is VURRY NOT music.
? this is ridiKUlus, must hv/seen it dozen times, but cant Wnd in M/ ? having 2
todowithjou 3133/orwott'ell? oftenmeaningnotimportant. butwantsome indication of approx sound.
yeh3 ? ?
Gloria: Gloria French, wife of the American poet and musician William French.
Schmidt: unidentiWed.
southern anthol . . . <? ? ? ? >: Chuci, an anthology of poems by Qu Yuan and other ancient
Chinese poets annotated by Zhu Xi.
Valle: retired lieutenant general Pedro A. del Valle, a defender of EP, is listed in Canto 105/771.
53 Fang to EP (TLS-1; Lilly)
[Cambridge, Mass. ] Jan 15, 1952
Dear Mr Pound,
Exceedingly glad to hear that you've got Ch'u-tz'u [Southern Anthology], for
you will meet again a number of familiar faces. ? ? is Ch'u ? Yu ? an (*kiu t ngiOn <*6th cent. sounds; we are not certain of earlier sounds>): you have AFTER CH'U ? YUAN, which seems to be based on Giles' History (text ? ? , ? ? : ? ? ? ? ? ? ? . . . ) and SONG OF THE BOWMEN OF SHU, which in 1915 Cathay was attributed to KUTSUGEN (which is Jap. pronunciation of our poet).
? ? is So ? -Gioku of Canto 4, sinice^ Sung Yu ? (*Suong ? ngiwok) but the text of ''This wind, sire, is the king's wind, . . . '' (a fu poem on Wind ? ? ) is not in Ch'u-tz'u.
You will Wnd HIGHTOWER's Topics (chapter 4) quite informative in this connexion.
e
74 a. fang and pound's bilingual confucius
The poet who aVects erh-pu ? ? (* ? n ? z ? i piu t) is Liu Hsiang (Hightower p. 22).
? fou (*biu t ? ), ''dusty''
? mo (*mua^ ? ) & mei (* ? mua^i), ''dust, dirt''
? (more correctly ? ) 1/4 ? 1/4 ? .
I really don't know how many characters our dictionary is going to contain.
Certainly more than Mathews. I think of putting all the ideograms in ? ? in ours. Very Xattered to hear Gloria (? ) ''enjoying'' my dull book. (By the way, if you need another copy, I can manage to send you one. ) This is my Wrst book (oh, yes, I wrote a German grammar in Chinese some years ago. ) In the Monumenta Serica (published in Peking by Catholic fathers, I am neither Cath. nor Christian), a sinological quarterly I used to be an editor of, contains some dozen or more articles, all pretty dull. Besides the 3 pieces in Harv. Journ. of Asiatic Studies, there is going to be another in the coming issue (6 weeks more): translation of Wen-fu. Perhaps you've looked through The Art of Letters by Reverend E. R. Hughes, M. A. (Wrst class FOOL) published by Bollingen. My translation is, as I hope, quite accurate and not unreadable (MacLeish has gone through it). Then, there's a 24-page review of ex-
missionary H[ughes]'s fool book. Both of these I shall send to you.
Yours respectfully [signed] Achilles Fang
Ch'u ? Yu ? an: see Glossary on Qu Yuan.
SONG OF THE BOWMEN OF SHU: Cathay opening poem, ''Song of the Bowmen of Shu,'' a variant
on Ode 167.
So ? -Gioku . . . Sung Yu ? : EP alludes to ''The Wind'' by Song Yu (So ? -Gyoku in Japanese, 3rd century bc)
in Canto 4.
HIGHTOWER's Topics: James Robert Hightower, Topics in Chinese Literature: Outlines and Bibliog-
raphies (Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1950).
Liu Hsiang: Liu Xiang (c. 77-6 bc). His ''Nine Laments'' is collected in Southern Anthology.
? ? : Cihai dictionary. See Letter 38 n.
German grammar in Chinese: Te-wen chin-liang or Gesprochenes Deutsch (1941).
translation of Wen-fu: ''Rhymeprose on Literature: The We^n-fu of Lu Chi (A. D. 261-303) ? ? :
? ,'' Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 14/3 & 4 (1951).
The Art of Letters: see Fang, ''Review: E. Hughes, The Art of Letters, Lu Chi's 'Wen Fu,' A. D. 302,''
Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 14/3 & 4 (1951).
? 54 EP to Fang (TL-2; Beinecke)
FANG fuss
isn't yu ? 2 ? [I, me] rather like the dative? ? seems to Wt a number of examples.
[St Elizabeths Hospital] [Washington, DC] 25 Jan [1952]
e
e
a. fang and pound's bilingual confucius 75
Erinnerung deutsches GrammatiKKKK [memory of German grammar]
(NO I am NOT going to look up hun spellink) if not why Mat/ 7606 [7605] AND 7601
go to/out got
Gornoze wotthe choinilists [sinologists] do with 'em NOW.
enclose exercise/got to Wnd some means of Wxing approx sound in remains of
disjecta mente [scattered mind].
Any arguments for Hawley, who seems to think ideograms are mere hiero-
glyphics/i. e. just pictures without concepts tied into 'em? (this prob/an exag- geration de ma parte <but I dont believe they just procede [proceed] on mere basis of melting diVerences down into sames. >
When F/ has nothing better to do/cd/he spare a few words re/the trans- formation from old seal to modern forms? when done, by whom? how long it took to do it?
F/seen a poor rag called ''Philosophy of East and West. '' Hawaii Univ/ unreadable save for grain of sense from Santayana.
? ? ? ?
? ? ? ?
? ? ? ?
? ? ? ?
1. does this make sense
2. does it scan, according to an accepted chinese ear?
3. wd/ 4th line be considered bad taste, stunt merely changing tone? nacherly SOURCE of diVerent sounds, and prob/ earlier diVerences in total FOG. grampaw Wnd berry dif 'kult merember noise appertaining pixchoor abbrev/ if F/objects to Wnal character we can change it/cant fall into Foe and Lao
''Philosophy of East and West'': Essays in East-West Philosophy: An Attempt at World Philosophical Synthesis, ed. Charles A. Moore (1951).
Santayana: see Glossary on Santayana, George.
? ? ? ? . . . ? ? ? ? : a poem of EP's own composition. See also Letters 55 and 66. Lao: see Glossary on Laozi.
55 Fang to EP (TLS-1; Lilly)
[Cambridge, Mass. ] Feb. 5 [1952]
Dear Mr Pound,
Excuse me this delay; have been a bit unwell, weather. ? 1/4 ? ling. ? 1/4 ?
huang.
76
a. fang and pound's bilingual confucius
The four lines
? ? ? ? ? kan ? z ? ? ? a ? ng ? si k ? ? Ong ? ? ? ? ? ? a? ien ^ts ? i ? ? ^ts ? ? ? u ? a? wa ? ? ? ? ? sien ? ^ts ? i ? tsa^: i ? ^t ? ? ung ? ? ? ? ? s ? ? a ? n dz'a^i ? ? mjie aien ?
(1/4 ? , to appear)
kien ? (to look at)
cannot mean what you intend (granted that I do understand you). As for the
sounds, there are too many gutturals and too many of what the vorchristlicher Christ called snake sounds; one labial does not seem to relieve the overwrought alliteration. And rhyme? The fourth line sounds like a jeu d'esprit. Sorry to disappoint you.
Yes I saw Philosophy of East and West; the people in Hawaii seem to be a strange lot, I am sure.
Of course I have time to write on the transformation from great seal to little seal (which is the script conventionalised from the reform script of Li Ssu, Li-sse ? in Canto LIV; cf. ? ? ? . . . ? ? ? <Some critics think this sentence to be an interpolation. > in Pivot 28), but I should like to know what you exactly want me to write: history? comparison of the two? (The so-called great seal scripts are not all too numerous, whereas the Shuo-wen is entirely based on the lesser seal. )
Yours respectfully [signed] Achilles Fang
Li Ssu: Li Si (c. 280-208 bc). , prime minister to the First Emperor of Qin (r. 246-210 bc), made the ''lesser seal'' a standard Chinese script.
Shuo-wen: see Glossary on Xu Shen.
56 EP to Fang (TL-3; Beinecke)
[St Elizabeths Hospital] [Washington, DC] [February 1952]
O Fang
Mat/ 1848 fei4/? I take it variants alle sameee
? intensiWcation of ?
much more interesting kai ts'o ? ? /I take it coin? METATHEMENON [currency fraud] even if the knife ? isn't in text.
e
a. fang and pound's bilingual confucius 77
bit dull, if it ain't. <may be author was just dumb. >
----------
Certain points shd/ be deferred until possible to talk/ what I am after re/
shift from seal/is the cutting down from the 500 or whatever radicals to 214/ How much actual reorganization of the whole system of concepts occurred.
So far hv/ seen no printed emphasis on great diVerence between a mere abbreviated picture/ hieroglyph, and that graph/ coupled with a more general concept/such as change or magic/
one hwa [? ] being mere picture/what Mat/ calls LATER hwa [? ] man / spoon/ under the growing leaves.
Total impossibility to form any idea of REAL sound of any language save by HEARING it spoken/ eRRRe eRRRe AOOW (spanish in Madrid streets)
I suspected four of Mat's hsin in a row was overdoing it.
Gloria says: but it dont sing. Referring to the T'ang anthol/ to my mind the K'ung anthol/ and almost ANY chinese verse I have looked at ''sings''/ AND gives a measure (musical bar) <times the sound>
BUT I have not the slightest idea whether there is ANY similarity between the noise I make when ''singing'' the syllables.
(EVEN supposing I had some faint concept of what the diVerence between tones 1, 2, 3, 4 are. ) <re the chinese sounds. >
Which I have NOT. and am unlikely to obtain from ANY printed statement about it. unless illustrated by musical notes
For years I never made ANY attempt to hitch ANY sound to the ideograms/ content with the meaning and the visual form.
Whomever I have got to in South anth/ 13/15 seems to be linking up a lot of horse radicals/and (now) bow radicals/
? ? as voulu as the four hsin
kan/ Xien, sien. acc/ A. F.
and as to what the Hnbl/ F/ means by gutturals ? ? ? dunno. snakes/ sibilants. 40
years ago a hen on the North Am/ Rev told me Mr Tennyson objected to 'em. (quite irrelevant to case before her/ which was consonants in ang/ sax/
alliteration . . . but still schnakes/ schnakes/ no bon.
Have managed to remember six sounds in a row in one line which Mat/
represents as K'ung fan chi erh kan hui
By which alphabetic etc/ he conveys NOTHING whatsoDAM to grampaw.
the sense is O. K. but no real idea of the sound. What I (egomet ipse [myself alone]) was after, as to meaning in Wrst eVort was to intensify sense of respect or vegetable intelligence (vide Agassiz) and to blast all Mesopotamian Xabbiness and going oV into the indeWnite. Focus damn well gittin down and taking hold of ROOT/ grabbing terram Wrmam. /
? ? ? ? ? ? 78 a. fang and pound's bilingual confucius
whoosis' comment of Guido's Donna mi prega/ kussing them as ''prende occhio per la mente [take the eye for the mind]. '' visual faculty augmented by attentive examination of Xoral (or any vegetative) metamorphoses.
How MANY words of modern chinese wd/ be required?
////
judging by F's consonants/ there was an awful slurring and same-ing of
earlier diVerent sounds/ such is as now obliterating english, in murkn polyglot am unconvinced that whoever changed a spirit swirl into a bent elbow THOUGHT he was merely making a copy of the wiggle even in an attempt to
improve its plastic (shape)
? ? ?
as to representation that ANY beholder can understand, the Egyptians ''lay it
open to the meanest capacity. ''
and SO forth/ dont hurry to reply if you are ill or busy.
? .
