No More Learning

The blasted Wrecrackers outside make thinking impossible. Salute to D. P.
[signed] ?
Shapiro . . . Ransom: Karl Shapiro (1913-2000), editor of Poetry; Stephen Spender (1909-95), co-editor of Encounter; John Crowe Ransom (1888-1974), editor of Kenyon Review.
Rodman . . . Williams: Sheldon Rodman, ed. , Mortal Triumph and Poems (1932); Rolfe Humphries, ed. , New Poems (1953); Oscar Williams, ed. , Book of New Poems of 1943 (1943).
Tom Sullivan: David Wang refers to Tom Sullivan as a newcomer to New York and ''an admirer of il maestro'' (2 May 1957, Beinecke).
Brook[s] Adams: see Glossary on Adams, Brooks.
Zi[e]linski: Thaddeus Zielinski (1859-1944), Polish professor of Greek. Henry Swabey's translation
of his ''The Sybyl'' (Paris: Rieder, 1924) appeared in Edge, 2 (December 1956).
Nora: Nora Devereaux Lyden, a divorced mother with two sons, was brought to EP and his circle
by John Kasper.
Luciano . . . Costello: New York organized crime bosses Charles Luciano and Frank Costello. Eberhart: Richard Eberhart (1904-2005), professor and poet-in-residence at Dartmouth College,
1956-70.
Stevenson: Adlai Stevenson was Democratic presidential candidate in 1952 and 1956. Eden: Sir Anthony Eden (1897-1977), British prime minister (1955-7).
Graal: unidentiWed.
Elvis the Pelvis: see Letter 156 n.
Dulles: John Foster Dulles (1888-1959), US Secretary of State from 1953 to 1959. Sharp: Bob Sharp. See Letter 146.
Les Blackaston: unidentiWed.
Chatel: Jean Chatel, an aspiring novelist, later became a psychiatrist.
158 EP to Wang (TLS-1; Beinecke)
[St Elizabeths Hospital] [Washington, DC] 28 Sp/57
You wd/have got in with yr/godman/BUT it is unconfucian NOT to observe the Xight of time/
194 from poetry to politics
mebbe as the request to get on Sat/ didn't arrive till Monday they tho[ugh]t it not worth answer.
I had some suggestions.
still have 'em if yu get here.
K[asper]/ probably in ERROR mixing with ignorant / which is diVerent from
the crowd.
Guard against sedition. USE the law, even when the tyrants do not.
The theory of the law, the words of the law, until changed by constitutional
and legal process.
Note that Kerr and Ritchie are more astute.
CONSTITUTION PARTY
Ritchie combining with Peters who has vast amount of PARTICULAR
knowledge.
though stuck in his own generation.
Whether Maverick will open the other part of his mind, I dont know. he has
again been allowed to TEACH
which may be a bad sign, BUT he does go into detail and up to date has
answered question and LOOKED at texts.
HAS NOT yet grasped sense of stamp scrip/but may be demurring to Wnd
out if I know what the hell I am talking about. yrz
Kerr and Ritchie: Gordon Kerr, an instructor at Aberdeen University, informed EP of the success of his ''Pound campaign'' (15 June 1953, Beinecke). Eleanor Ritchie at Berkeley described to EP admirers' discussions of his poems (6 November 1956, Beinecke).
? ? Maverick: see Letter 135 n. : see Letter 149 n.
? 159 EP to Wang (TLS-1)
[St Elizabeths Hospital] [Washington, DC] 11 Jan 58
Appeal to N. H. Pearson, 233 N. G. S. Yale Station, New Haven Conn. He has just had member of family in nervous breakdown/ so is distracted at moment.
So keep him in reserve until real danger of deportation/
IF deportable, INSIST on going to Formosa, not to Moscovite dependency say yu are OBviously not howling for white supremacy/and that study of
systematic defamation shd/ be made by some FOUNDATION. needs 200 researchers ENdowed.
from poetry to politics 195
IMPrimatur, and for greater etc. and copies not only to Stock
but to
Chas. Martell, 25 College St. Canton, N. Y.
Wm. Cookson, 5 Cranbourne Court, Albert Bridge Rd. London, s. w. 11 England Desmond O'Grady, 40 via Pisa, Roma, Italy
Vanni Scheiwiller, 6 via Melzi D'Eril, Milano, Italy. alzo L Dudek / Delta
1143 Sixth Av. Verdun, Montreal, Canada.
AND Sheri [Martinelli] wants a copy.
yrz [signed] E. P.
I shouldn't send anything ELSE with it to any of them. Goullart been heard from.
Martell: Charles Martell had short articles on EP published in The Laurentian of St Lawrence University, where he was a student till 1957.
Cookson: William Cookson (1939-2003) founded the Poundian journal Agenda and edited SP. See memorial issue of Agenda, 39/4 (Summer 2003).
O'Grady: Desmond O'Grady, a poet and a correspondent. In 1960 EP looked him up in Rome and stayed at his apartment for several days.
Vanni Scheiwiller: see Glossary on Scheiwiller, Vanni.
Dudek: Louis Dudek of McGill University corresponded with EP. CBC aired his ''Letters of Ezra
? Pound'' on 14 September 1957. Goullart: see Letter 165 n.
160 Wang to EP (TL-1; Beinecke)
Lemme know fer shoor if thou hast received the Chinese jacket. Sent it by parcel post with insurance (''swallow's comb'' in Chinese). ? ?
Yes, already sent copies to England, Italia, and Australia. Am really in deep trouble. Lost my job with the YMCA as a result of pressure from the ADL [Anti- Defamation League]. Accused of ''anti-Semitism'' mainly because of Rattray's article in the NATION and Ridgeway's article in the IVY MAGAZINE. If matters are not cleared up, may be forcibly sent back to RED China against my wishes. Pray that E. P. will at least help by calling Rattray a liar. See no other way out. Eagerly await E. P. 's instruction.
Will be with Doc Williams on Friday.
Do you have a spare copy of EDGE No. 8? Would like veerrrry much to have it.
Chinese jacket: in a letter to EP of 8 January 1958 Wang writes: ''Your Chinese jacket already made and sent from Hong Kong'' (Beinecke).
[New York] Jan. 14 [1958]
? 10
P. H. Fang and the Naxi Rites in The Cantos ''I have found your Muen Bpo & KA MA gyu''
Lijiang in remote southwest China has been a hot tourist attraction ever since its inclusion in the list of UNESCO's World Heritage sites (see Fig. 10. 1). Many have attributed this distinction to the legacy of the American botanist Joseph Rock (1884- 1962), including his monographs and books about the Naxi ethnic group inhabiting the Lijiang area. Some have also linked this honor to Forgotten Kingdom, a 1955 book by the Belarus-born traveler Peter Goullart. Few are aware of Pound's contri- bution to this glory. Among the beautiful lyrics of Pound's final cantos are those about the landscape of Lijiang and the strange culture of the Naxi.
Carroll Terrell and others are not wrong in identifying Rock's ''The Romance of 2K'a-2ma ? -1gyu-3mi-2gkyi,'' ''The 2Muan 1Bpo ? Ceremony,'' and The Ancient Na- khi Kingdom of Southwest China as sources of the Naxi (Na-khi) passages in Thrones and Drafts and Fragments (Terrell, 674, 713). But was Rock the first to introduce Pound to the Naxi? Rock and Pound exchanged letters for several years of which one from Rock to Pound (dated 3 January 1956) has been discovered. In it Rock refers to a Naxi native: ''My friend Pao-hsien Fang, a Na-khi boy whose parents I used to know for many years in Likiang, Yunnan, sent me a letter written by Prof. G. Giovannini of the Catholic University of America. In the letter Mr. Giovannini told Fang that he had given you two of my papers on the Na-khi . . . among whom I lived for 27 years'' (Beinecke).
P. H. Fang, the ''Na-khi boy,'' now a retired Boston College research professor, confirmed in a 2003 interview (see Fig. 10. 2) that he was a mutual friend of Rock and Pound and that in 1954 he loaned to Pound inscribed copies of ''The Romance of 2K'a-2ma ? -1gyu-3mi-2gkyi'' and ''The 2Muan 1Bpo ? Ceremony. '' Upon Pound's return to Italy, Fang obviously asked about these monographs, for in a letter to him of 15 July 1958 Pound wrote: ''I have found your Muen Bpo & KA MA gyu in my luggage. '' Also, on 5 August 1958, Pound wrote to Peter Goullart, asking how he could ''get copies of [Rock's] Na Khi stuff'': ''have had to send Fang's copies back to him'' (Beinecke). Pound had used Fang's copy of ''2K'a-2ma ? -1gyu- 3mi-2gkyi'' so frequently that by 1958 its soft cover was worn off and replaced by
p. h. fang and naxi rites in the cantos 197
a hard binder. Fang still keeps this copy with Pound's note in red ink: ''Sorry the binder has omitted Rock's dedication to Fang'' (see Fig. 10. 3). In a January 1959 card to Ezra and Dorothy Pound Fang acknowledged the return of this and the other Rock monograph: ''Thank you for these books you sent back and the beautiful binding with your precious signature'' (Letter 164).
What do we know about P. H. Fang? How did he get to know Pound? Born to a merchant family in Lijiang, Fang (Fang Baoxian ? ? ? , b. 1923) came to America via India in 1945. After taking a master's degree at Ohio State University (1950), he started to work on a Ph. D. in physics at the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. There he met and married Josefine Maria Riss from Austria, who held a Ph. D. from the University of Graz and would soon start working toward a degree in library science. Among their friends was CUA Professor of English Giovanni Giovannini, who later became their firstborn Paula's godfather.
Early in 1953 Professor Giovannini took P. H. Fang to Pound at St Elizabeths Hospital. The American poet, Giovannini told Fang, had translated Li Bo's poems and Confucius' Analects. P. H. Fang was impressed. In the next five or more years he and Josephine (officially spelt that way in the US) visited Pound countless times. More than once or twice they took their daughter Paula and son David with them. On Pound's birthdays Josephine would make a kind of cake she knew Pound was fond of and it was usually Paula who would carry it to where the Pounds received their visitors. In a letter of 6 January 1959 Dorothy Pound wrote of one such visit: ''Paula may remember bringing EP his birthday cake at St. E's'' (Beinecke).
The Fangs' visits coincided with the moment Pound was trying to bring out an edition of the Confucian Odes with a Chinese seal text and a sound key. With a visitor from China, naturally he would talk endlessly about Confucius, Fenollosa, and Fenollosa's essay on ''The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry. '' One day, when Pound began quoting Fenollosa and marveling at the Chinese character again, P. H. Fang surprised Pound by remarking that the scholar-priests of his hometown still used primitive picto- graphs. This was the first time he told Pound that he was from Lijiang on the borders of Tibet. Lijiang was the center of the ancient Naxi kingdom, which flourished from the eighth to the eighteenth centuries. Its landscape, along with a unique culture, had fascinated Rock and Goullart. And it would soon surface in Pound's new cantos in Thrones and Drafts and Fragments:
at Li Chiang, the snow range,
a wide meadow (Canto 101/746)
By the temple pool, Lung Wang's
the clear discourse
as Jade stream (Canto 112/804)
198 p. h. fang and naxi rites in the cantos
The ''earthly paradise'' over Lijiang is real, Fang testifies. Starting from 1973 he has been returning to his hometown regularly. The ''snow range'' remains as majestic and serene as it has ever been; and so do ''the temple pool'' and the ''Jade stream'' (see Fig. 10. 1). Fang is too modest to consider his role as important, but his visits to St Elizabeths served to open Pound's eyes to a China not only beyond the Chinas of De Mailla and Legge but also beyond those of Carsun Chang and Achilles Fang, resulting in a new direction in the late cantos.
From that point on, whenever P. H. Fang showed up, Pound would ask him to draw a few Naxi pictographs and teach him how to pronounce them. Among the dozen or more Naxi pictographs Fang drew for Pound were those for the ''sun'' and the ''moon.
'' In Canto 112 Pound reproduces two Naxi pictographs, one for ''fate's tray'' or, as Rock puts it, ''a large winnowing tray made of the small bamboo,'' embodying ''a fate, a life,'' and the other for the ''moon'' (see Canto 112/805). Although both pictographs occur in Rock's ''2K'a-2ma ? -1gyu-3mi-2gkyi'' and ''2Muan 1Bpo ? ,'' it is safe to assume that Pound had learned the Naxi sign for the moon first from P. H. Fang.
On those early visits to St Elizabeths, P. H. Fang spent no less time chatting with Pound about his people's strange ceremonies--2Muan 1Bpo ? (Sacrifice to Heaven) and 2Ndaw 1Bpo ? (Sacrifice to Earth). He must have prepared Pound for Rock's accounts of these Naxi rituals. 2Muan 1Bpo ? subsequently found its way into Canto 98 and 2Ndaw 1Bpo ? into Canto 112.
In late 1953, with a Ph. D. in hand Fang moved to Dresher (near Philadelphia) to take a job at Philco. In 1954 Rock paid Fang a visit on a trip to the East Coast from Hawaii, where he was a research professor. He had been a friend of Fang's parents. When in Lijiang during the 1920s and 1930s, the botanist had borrowed sums of local silver dollars from the elder Fang, which he had chosen to pay back in the early 1950s by sending checks of American dollars to P. H. Fang at the Catholic University. Before departure on his 1954 visit, Rock took out two of his monographs--''2K'a-2ma ? -1gyu- 3mi-2gkyi'' and ''2Muan 1Bpo ? ''--and inscribed them to P. H. Fang. Believing that these papers would answer most of Pound's queries about the Naxi script and rites, Fang sent them to St Elizabeths through Giovannini.
In early 1956 Fang moved back to DC to start on a research job at Catholic University. When he resumed his visits to St Elizabeths, Pound would keep him longer for his Naxi lessons. He would pick a word here and a word there from ''2K'a-2ma ? -1gyu-3mi-2gkyi'' or ''2Muan 1Bpo ? '' and ask P. H. Fang to pronounce them and explain their meanings. P. H. Fang's copy of ''2K'a-2ma ? -1gyu-3mi-2gkyi'' bears some of his glosses and corrections for Pound. On page 9, for instance, above the phonetic symbol ''1Yu-'' is the English word ''sheep'' in Fang's hand. From the Naxi pictograph for ''shepherd,'' a figure with a sheep's head, Pound could have guessed what ''1Yu-'' in Rock's ''1Yu-boy'' meant. P. H. Fang's gloss points to Pound's insistence on making certain what each part of a Naxi compound signified. In describing the pronunciation of the
p. h. fang and naxi rites in the cantos 199
Naxi word for ''cuckoo,'' Rock states that ''The word 3gkye-2bpu is the most difficult to pronounce. '' Next to this is given in Fang's hand ''eng geek. '' No doubt, it was at Pound's urging that Fang facilitated the ''unpronounceable'' word. On that same page, Fang corrects a mistake in Rock's description of the Naxi pictograph for ''three months of spring. '' His copy shows that ''four'' in ''four horizontal lines'' is crossed out and changed to ''3. '' Going through Rock's monographs with Pound, P. H. Fang must have facilitated far more unpro- nounceable words and corrected far more inaccuracies than those that have been recorded.
To this day, P. H. Fang holds that Lijiang was brought alive to the West less by Rock than by Goullart and Pound. To him Goullart's and Pound's Lijiang is more palpable and joyful than Rock's. After reading Forgotten Kingdom he wrote to Goullart to say how grateful he was for the ''obvious affection'' shown there for his native land. For Pound's efforts to turn Rock's ''limited resources'' into poetry, Fang was similarly full of admiration. In December 1958, after reading the Naxi cantos of Thrones, he got so thrilled that he wrote: ''I wish more cantos from you will resurrect ? ? [Lijiang], after the Revolution [of 1911], Republic, the People's Republic, Commune etc. '' (Letter 164). A year later he sent Pound another card, stating ''my beloved country and my beloved village will be immortalized through your pen and your words'' (Letter 166). By then Pound had stopped communicating with the outside world. Nonetheless, his dialogue with the native from Lijiang was destined to endure. The memorable Naxi passages in the final cantos should be viewed as his responses to P. H. Fang's appreciative greetings (see Fig. 10. 4).
? Fig. 10. 1. ''By the temple pool, Lung Wang's / the clear discourse / as Jade stream'' (Canto 112) (P. H. Fang)
? Fig. 10. 2. P. H. and Josephine Fang with Zhaoming Qian, 2003.
? Fig. 10. 3. EP's note to P. H. Fang. (P. H. Fang)
? Fig. 10. 4. The Fangs to EP and DP, 1959. (Brunnenburg)
Greetings
From Our House to Your House . . .
p. h. fang and naxi rites in the cantos 203
161 The Fangs to EP and DP (ACS; Beinecke) [Washington, DC]
[signed] The Fangs ? ? ? ?
162 EP to P. H. Fang (ALS-2; PHF)
Dear Fang
I have found your Muen Bpo & KA MA gyu in my luggage. Are you in a
hurry or do you merely want to know they are safe.
Sorry for confusion. Greetings to G. Giov[annini]. & La Dr[ie`re]. auguri [best
wishes] for the most recent edition of the Fang.
Cordially [signed] E Pound
G. Giov[annini]. : Giovanni Giovannini (1906-85), professor of English at the Catholic University of America. His notes relating to visits with EP, 1952-56 are kept at the Lilly Library.
La Dr[ie`re]. : see Letter 75 n.
163 EP to P. H. Fang (ANS; PHF)
Sorry the
binder has omitted Rock's dedication to Fang.
Ez Pound
[Brunnenburg] [Italy] Aug. 1958
[December] 1957
[Brunnenburg] [Italy] 15 July [1958]
204 p. h. fang and naxi rites in the cantos
164 P. H. Fang to EP (ACS; Lilly)
[Washington, DC]
[January] 1959
Dear Poet,
Thank you for these books you sent back and the beautiful binding with your
precious signature.
Is the design of ? ? [hexagrams] in this greeting card appropriate?
I wish more cantos from you will resurrect ? ? [Lijiang], after the
Revolution [of 1911], Republic, People's Republic, Commune etc. Please let us hear from you!
Merry Christmas & Happy New Year
Paul, Josefine Paula, David, Maria, Anna, Peter, John-Michael Fang
165 EP to P. H. Fang (TLS-1; PHF)
Dear Mr Fang
I have at last got hold of Rock's ''Ancient Kingdom'' with its fine photographs. Have you his Vienna address?
Can you urge him to contact the Forschungsinstitut in Frankfurt?
The widow Frobenius is a friend, and my name useful there.
also can he stop at my daughters.
Mary de Rachewiltz, Schloss Brunnenburg-Tirolo
MERANO Italy,
My son in law is doing nicely in Egyptology, and should be useful in contacts
in Rome. Not that Rock needs them. BUT the more we correlate the better. Goullart's book is very lively. You could also ask Rock about Goullart who
stayed with him in Li-Chiang.
cordially yours E. Pound
[signed] EP
The widow Frobenius: see Glossary on Frobenius, Leo.
Goullart's book: Forgotten Kingdom (London: Murray, 1955) by Peter Goullart of Belarus, who lived in
Lijiang from 1939 to 1947. Goullart and EP corresponded in 1958-9 (Beinecke).
[Rapallo] [Italy] 25 Ag [1959]
p. h. fang and naxi rites in the cantos 205
166 P. H. Fang to EP (ACS; Brunnenburg) [Washington, DC]
[December] 1959 We followed your work with gratitude: my beloved country and my beloved
village will be immortalized through your pen and your words.
[signed] ? ? ?
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Appendix
Ezra Pound's Typescript
for ''Preliminary Survey'' (1951)
Understanding of the Chinese language has been perhaps retarded by the assumption that because the ideogramic signs do not inflect, the spoken language, which children are said to acquire so much more readily than their <foreign> elders, is not inflected.
It is however permitted us to speculate whether the <early> creators and inscribers did not behave rather as we do when speech is not quite precise enough, that is when we add a map or a diagram to make a more exact communication.
It is even permitted us to suppose that the original chinese speech was not only inflected but also agglutinative. Enlightened speculation would make use of Leo Frobenius' ''Child- hood of Man'' (1909, Lippencott, translated by A. H. Keane, late v. p. of the Anthropological Society of Gt Britain); of Fenollosa's notes and of Bernhard Karlgren's examination of early oracle bones, this last <as control and> to keep the follower of Fenollosa from becoming too wildly fanciful. 1 The Frobenius will be more illuminating to those who know also his later Erlebte Erdteile Bd/ 7, Frankfurter Societats Druckerei, Frankfurt, a/M 1927. 2 But on the supposition that the <spoken> language might be both inflected and agglutinative let us try to put ourselves in the place of a primitive man in the animalistic era. He wished to make the least sound possible, the sounds least likely to startle his game. 64 out of the 466 sounds in Mr O. Z. Tsang's dictionary begin with ch, the commonest bird sound. 3
If we were presented with all the forms of the greek verb lambano, listed as separate words, and indicated by pictures of the various possible subjects of the verb, greek wd/ be even more discouraging to beginners. Neither is it necessary to assume that the primitive mind uses just our kind of category. Years ago in studying the Japanese Noh it became appeared that the authors had categories of their own, not ours; hence the suggestion that the graph ''tree'' plus ''each'' [? ]4 might be translated ''organic category. ''
1
See Leo Frobenius, Childhood of Man, trans. A. H. Keane (London: Seeley & Company Limited, 1909); Fenollosa/Pound, The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry: A Critical Edition, ed. Haun Saussy et al. (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008); Dictionary of Old and Middle Chinese: Bernhard Karlgren's Grammata serica recensa alphabetically arranged, ed. Tor Ulving (Go ? teborg: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis, 1997).
2
Leo Frobenius, Erlebte Erdteile (Parts of the Earth Experienced), 7 vols. (Frankfurt: Frankfurter Societa ? ts-Druckerei, 1925-9).
3 4
Going through Pound's manuscript in 1951 Achilles Fang inserted about half of the characters surveyed. They are placed within square brackets.
O. Z. Tsang, A Complete Chinese-English Dictionary (Shanghai: Lin Nan Middle School, 1920).
208 appendix: ''preliminary survey''(1951)
Let us grant that Karlgren is right in saying that spoken chinese preceded the ideogram. This wd/ have little effect on a translation of the ODES composed long after the ideogramic system had developed but it wd/ have definite bearing of the formation of chinese speech. Again, standing beside the hunter, he is not greatly concerned with the sex of the game.