94 pound as jung's
dissertation
adviser
?
?
Ezra-Pounds-Chinese-Friends-Stories-in-Letters
a.
fang and pound's bilingual confucius 87 ?
?
?
?
?
:Mencius,2.
1.
6.
3:''?
?
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?
allmenhaveamindwhichcannot
bear to see the suVerings of others'' (Legge, ii. 202).
64 EP to Fang (TL-1; Beinecke)
[St Elizabeths Hospital] [Washington, DC] [16 June 1952]
Achilles
There is a bloke named W. Yandell Elliott, Haaavud Summer School, said to
be DIrecting Mr Kissinger to edit a Xabby mug'sgaZoon named ''ConXuence. '' Elliot a cheerful an' exuberant/BUT Achilles MIGHT get it into Yelliott'z head
that it is asinine to mention philosophy or ethics without mentioning KUNG. That the League of Nation[s], UN, unesco, etc. were fahrts in various bales of wind/BUT there is no use wasting time in going into that. Full bribes, fullB-
lights [Fulbright] etc /
There ought to be chairs of sinology/not diminution of oriental studies. AND
there ought to be METHOD, Kung, to Agassiz, and a drive against abstract blather, implied in any mention of Kung, Agassiz or Dante . . . kussing out . . .
quel che la cosa per nome
Apprende ben; ma la sua quiditate
Veder non puote,
BASIS/Kung
plus a revival of greek studies, Sophokles at the top.
Those blokes got a mag/but NO writers whatsobloody ever. all slop at
Maritain-Matthiessen grade, or I dare say below if there is a lower.
Elliot COULD be useful/even to himself, if he wd/move ON not wait for more other kawlidges to insert Kung and Fenollosa BEFORE the Bastun
beanery starts.
IF you don't yet know Elliott (W. Y. ), you can say I asked you to save his soul,
mind, or central correlation <? ? > point, depending on which term you consider most likely to convey a meaning and/or impulse.
W. Yandell Elliott . . . Kissinger: William Yandell Elliott (1896-1979) founded Harvard Summer Insti- tute in 1952. Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (b. 1923), then a Ph. D. candidate, edited its journal ConXuence.
Agassiz: see Glossary on Agassiz, Louis.
quel che . . . Veder non puote: ''one who well understands the thing by its name, but cannot see its true
meaning (if no one points it out)'' (Dante, Paradiso, 20. 91-3).
Maritain-Matthiessen: the Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain (1882-1973) was then at Princeton.
The literary critic Francis Otto Matthiessen (1902-50) was a Harvard professor.
? ? 5
Pound as Miss Jung's Dissertation Adviser ''One's opinions change''
Arriving at the University of Washington with a BA from Beijing's Catholic University, Angela Chih-ying Jung (Rong Zhiying ? ? ? , b. 1926) had to determine what direction her professional future should take (see Fig. 5. 1). It didn't take her long to decide to pursue a Ph. D. in English and comparative literature. It was by coincidence, nevertheless, that she chose Ezra Pound as a subject. In a seminar she attended in spring 1952, she noticed a student drawing Chinese characters in a notebook. Before she was able to correct his mistakes, the young man showed her the book from which he was copying these characters, The Cantos of Ezra Pound. In the following weeks Jung immersed herself in The Cantos, ''attracted to Pound's profuse use of Chinese themes'' (Jung, ''Ezra Pound and China,'' University of Washington dissertation, 1955).
From The Cantos Jung moved on to Pound's Cathay ''For the most part from the Chinese of Rihaku [Li Po], from the notes of the late Ernest Fenollosa'' (1915; rpt. Personae, 130) and his Confucian translations--Ta Hio (1928), The Unwobbling Pivot (1947), and The Analects (1951). As a student from China she could not resist digging into Pound's Chinese borrowings. It was not difficult to identify the Chinese treasures that yielded Pound Cathay via Fenollosa and Mori. Nor was it difficult to account for the figures and events chronicled in his Chinese History Cantos (Cantos 52-61). But what source books in English or French or Chinese did Pound use for the composition of these cantos? How much Chinese did he understand? Already Jung had a topic for her dissertation: ''The Chinese Enigma of Ezra Pound'' (Jung, ''Ezra Pound and China'').
Unless she contacted Pound, these puzzles would remain puzzles. In late February Jung plucked up enough courage to write to the poet, who was still incarcerated in Washington, DC's St Elizabeths Hospital. In that letter she told Pound how much she admired his China-related poems and how curious she was about the origin of his interest in Chinese culture. Just when Jung was giving up hope of hearing from Pound, a reply from him arrived. He would answer her questions when she got to St Elizabeths.
pound as jung's dissertation adviser 89
It must have occurred to Pound that Miss Jung would provide a unique perspective. Between February and March he wrote her four more letters. In one letter he copied out a little Chinese poem he had composed and asked if it made sense to her at all. The attempt anticipated a single-line Chinese poem within Canto 110: ''yu ? eh4. 5 j ming2 j mo4. 5 j hsien1 j p'eng2'' (? ? ? ? ? or ''moon bright not appear friends''). Earlier, Achilles Fang had told him that these lines could not mean what he intended. In another letter he tried to find out what Miss Jung and her fellow Chinese students thought of American education: ''do they verbally object to the falsification of history (and of news)? do they object to having the husks and rubbish of the occident offered them in place of Dante (Paradiso) and Sophokles? '' (Letter 67). None of Jung's replies has survived. But from Pound's side of the correspondence we can assume that Jung tried to interpret his little Chinese poem, which only led him to echo his habitual remarks about the character: ''ideogram INCLUSIVE, sometime not the least ambiguous but ideogramic mind not always trying to split things into fragments'' (Letter 68).
Jung's goal was to get from Pound as much insight as possible for a disser- tation on his various Chinese projects. During her four-month stay in Washing- ton (April to August 1952), she visited Pound no less than fifteen times. Two of those interviews--the first, and another on 21 June when T. S. Eliot was present--are described in vivid detail in her memoir of 1974, ''Homage to a Confucian Poet'' (Paideuma, 3/3. 301-2). On her first visit, according to Jung, Pound brought from his room two armfuls of China-related books. Handing her his copy of James Legge's bilingual Four Books, he stated: ''This little book has been my bible for years, the only thing I could hang onto during those hellish days at Pisa . . . Had it not been for this book, from which I drew my strength, I would really have gone insane . . . so you see how I am indebted to Kung. '' Later, when Jung mentioned his little Chinese poem, Pound said: ''If I wrote it in English it would probably fill a book. That is why I used the ideogram; each of them could embody what one must say in a hundred lines. Besides I like the sound. '' Jung reminded Pound that he had written in 1940 that ''the great part of Chinese sound is (of) no use at all. '' To this he retorted: ''If I did, I don't remember. At any rate one's opinions change as one progresses . . . He should not be held responsible for what he said or wrote decades earlier. I have never heard how Chinese poetry should be read, but I like to play with it my own way. '' As to Jung's account of the other visit, Eliot rather than Pound is the focus of attention.
By the end of July Miss Jung got word from her adviser at the University of Washington that Harvard University Press had granted her permission to inspect Pound's Confucian Odes manuscript. Pound was vexed to learn this from Dorothy, who learned it from Jung herself. Neither Jung nor Harvard University Press had asked him for permission. In annoyance Pound let Dorothy
90 pound as jung's dissertation adviser
send a telegram to Achilles Fang: ''Odes not open for inspection of traveling students'' (Lilly). Jung was upset when a secretary at the press handed her this telegram instead of the manuscript she had expected to read.
Of course, Pound did not mean to embarrass Miss Jung. On her last visit to St Elizabeths, to her surprise, he handed her some notes he had prepared: ''China and E. P. '' as a title for her dissertation, followed by private information about his Chinese undertakings: ''the Fenollosa coincidence,'' ''Cathay,'' ''Canto XIII,'' ''49th canto from ms in family,'' ''The Chinese Cantos/sources LI KI, Histoire Generale de la Chine,'' and so on. They were of enormous help to Miss Jung's dissertation, ''Ezra Pound and China,'' which was completed in 1955.
Fifteen years later, in 1966-7, Jung, as professor of Chinese at the University of Oregon, took a nine-month sabbatical leave in Florence, Italy, to work on a Pound book (the result being Italian Images of Ezra Pound, ed. and trans. Angela Jung and Guido Palandri, 1979). Her visit to Italy would be incomplete without meeting Pound. From his Milan publisher, Vanni Scheiwiller, Jung got the phone number of his daughter Mary de Rachewiltz. De Rachewiltz suggested over the phone that she write to Pound at Sant'Ambrogio above Rapallo. In her letter Jung expressed her wish for another interview. To her joy, she received a reply from his companion Olga Rudge (1895-1996), writing on behalf of him: ''Mr. Pound thanks you for your letter and would be happy to see you again and meet your husband . . . . You could arrive here in time for lunch with us & get back to Florence the same day, leaving after tea'' (AJP). On 21 March 1967 Jung alone took a train to Rapallo. With Olga Rudge's direction, she did not have any difficulty finding Sant'Ambrogio. The eloquent poet had now become taciturn. Olga Rudge, whom Jung first met at St Elizabeths, did most of the talking. After lunch the three of them took a walk. When reaching a high point overlooking Gulf of Tigullio, Jung asked Pound, ''Can I take a picture of you? '' Without a word Pound posed for a picture (see Fig. 5. 2).
? Fig. 5. 1. Angela Jung, 1952. (Angela Jung Palandri)
? Fig. 5. 2. EP at Sant'Ambrogio, 1967. (Angela Jung Palandri)
pound as jung's dissertation adviser 93
65 EP to Jung (ALS-2; AJP)
Dear Miss Jung,
I will try to answer your questions when you get here in april.
I like to get letters, but can not do much in the way of reply.
if you have any spare texts, I mean chinese texts of good poetry--that you are
not using, I should be glad to borrow one or two--not a lot all @ once as I still read very slowly.
@ any rate I shall hope to see you in April. visiting hours 2-4 P. M. Cordially yours
[signed] Ezra Pound
66 EP to Jung (ALS-3; AJP)
Dear Miss Jung,
I have a friend who really knows, & who says my little poem <vide infra>
can't possibly mean what he thinks I want it to mean.
If you really want to help me you might tell me what you think it means, if it
makes sense @ all.
The 4th line is a trick line, that I did not expect a chinese to approve. but it
helps me remember the sound belonging to the ideograms--very difficult if one has begun to read by eye only & never been for more than an hour or so with anyone who speaks chinese.
--AND then: people who speak a language are often incapable of either reading or singing a poem.
The other problem would be: how many more ideograms would I have to add to make my meaning clear if it is possible to get @ it.
Cordially yours [signed] Ezra Pound
S. Elizabeths Hospl. Wash/ DC 29 Fb [1952]
St Elizabeths Hospl Washington DC 4 March '52 or better 4650
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
94 pound as jung's dissertation adviser
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
or better 4650: dating from the reign of ''Hoang Ti'' of Canto 53, c. 2698 bc.
67 EP to Jung (TL-1; AJP)
[St Elizabeths Hospital] [Washington, DC] [18 March 1952]
Further queries:
Do Miss J. c-y and her friends write down what they think (apart from writing
verses)?
do they verbally object to the falsification of history (and of news)?
do they object to having the husks and rubbish of the occident offered them
in place of Dante (Paradiso) and Sophokles?
Any of them want to translate the Seafarer into ideogram? Years ago one
compatriot of Miss J. got through 6 or 8 lines, but apparently with crushing endeavour. He worked at my little table in London for an hour and half, but NEVER returned.
68 EP to Jung (TL-2; AJP)
[St Elizabeths Hospital] [Washington, DC] [24 March 1952]
notes from an anonymous correspondent w[h]ose identity Miss Chih-ying Jung may guess at.
ideogram INCLUSIVE, sometime not the least ambiguous
but ideogramic mind not always trying to split things into fragments (syn- tacticly etc. )
sometimes VERY clear (at others impenetrable, at least to occidental and unskilled reader).
seems very important to distinguish the merely pictorial ideograms, such as old huah /, from the ''newer'' where the idea of flower (vegetation) is joined with idea of change/ metamorphoses continuing in nature/
pound as jung's dissertation adviser 95
meant in first line to drive in the ''respect for kind of intelligence that enables cherry-stone to make cherries'' as emphasized in big scrawl preceding translation of ''Analects. ''
I have the usual classics/finished a translation of the Shih [Odes] three years ago/but the powers of darkness and the enthusiastic but NON-functioning printers have, so far as I know, got no further than they were TWO years ago/ microscopic measurements of the format/to get the proportion of the page/keep the strophe divisions AND give the first seal text/that is to say to provide what we have not, a text in seal character for american students /
to go back to line one/ what I was trying to get across was respect for the changing power in florescence.
outside the classics available in Legge's series and those in Fenollosa's notes, I am very ignorant/ have been able to get two anthologies, one of which is lent to your more or less homophone Gloria French, Mrs. W[illiam]. French
1702 De Witt Ave. Alexandria. Va.
who hopes to meet you when you get to Washington. She is working hard, but of course none of us have the FAINTEST idea what chinese poetry really SOUNDS like.
and I will now try to get a more specific notion of the lines that say something about wind, horse and water.
anonymously yours, and hoping to see you next month.
old huah /, from the ''newer'': hua ? is archaic for ? , a character in EP's Chinese poem. For Jung's ''line by line prose interpretation'' of the poem, see Angela Jung Palandri, ''Homage to a Confucian Poet,'' Paideuma, 3/3 (Winter 1974), 303.
first line: first line of EP's Chinese poem: ? ? ? ? . big scrawl: ? in EP's hand in Confucius, 193.
69 EP to Jung (ALS-1; AJP)
[St Elizabeths Hospital] [Washington, DC] 24 march [1952]
Honbl glory produces wheat-ear?
No, I do not know the Shuo Wen C. T. & would be very grateful if you can
bring a borrowed copy with you.
Very truly yours [signed] Ezra Pound
glory produces wheat-ear: ? ? ? . Jung ? means ''glory'' and the left side of ying ? depicts a wheat stalk beneath a head.
Shuo Wen C. T. : see Glossary on Xu Shen.
6
Pound and Carsun Chang ''Confucianism as Confucius had it''
By 1953 Pound was once more moving ahead with his Paradiso. The Wrst Wve cantos he composed at St Elizabeths Hospital, Cantos 85-9 of Section Rock-Drill (1955), again centered on Chinese history.
LING2 ?
Our dynasty came in because of a great sensibility.
(Canto 85/563)
Digging into Couvreur's trilingual and Legge's bilingual Shu jing, Pound had another Chinese scholar to turn to for insights. The new Chinese friend, Carsun Chang, was taken to St Elizabeths by William McNaughton, a student at Georgetown University and a regular visitor.
Carsun Chang (Zhang Junmai ? ? ? , 1886-1969) was known in China as a third force in politics in opposition to Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong and in the West as China's delegate to the 1945 United Nations Conference on Inter- national Organization, signing the ''Charter of the United Nations. '' After studying at Japan's Waseda University (1906-10) and Germany's Berlin Univer- sity (1913-15), Chang served as the editor-in-chief of the Shanghai newspaper China Times (1916-17) and as a professor of philosophy at Beijing University (1918-22). His early essay ''On the National Constitution'' earned him recogni- tion as a leading constitutionist and political scientist. Consequently, he was appointed president of Shanghai's National Institute of Political Science in 1924 and commissioned to draft the Republic of China's constitution in 1946 (Roger B. Jeans, Democracy and Socialism in Republican China: The Politics of Zhang Junmai [Carsun Chang] 1906-1941 (Oxford: Rowman & LittleWeld, 1997)).
Chang used to describe his career as ''vacillating between the worlds of scholarship and practical politics. '' For three decades he lectured and wrote on democratic socialism and Confucianism while keeping abreast of domestic political events. In 1953, when McNaughton Wrst took him to St Elizabeths, he was in exile in Washington, DC, at work on a study in English (The Development of Neo-Confucian Thought, 2 vols. (New York: Bookman Associates, 1957, 1962))
pound and carsun chang 97
(see Figs. 6. 1 and 6. 2). Not surprisingly, he was as enthusiastic as Pound about their meetings and their exchange of ideas.
Of the Pound-Chang correspondence only three letters and a postcard from Chang to Pound have survived. Among Pound's Rock-Drill typescripts at the Beinecke Library, nevertheless, is a leaf bearing both Pound's and Chang's autographs (see Fig. 6. 3). What Pound wrote were the characters ? (''the hitching post''), ? (''sensibility''), and ? (''sincerity''), and what Chang put down were his Chinese and English names. Evidently the two men discussed the three Confucian terms, two of which, ? and ? , were to recur in Rock-Drill.
Two letters to Pound from Chang's friend C. H. Kwock (see Fig. 6. 4), and especially William McNaughton's memoir, ''What Pound and Carsun Chang Talked about at St Elizabeths,'' can teach us something more about the Pound- Chang exchange. Chang was opposed to a ''hackneyed exposition of the basic thought of Confucius,'' what he called a ''museum approach'' to a living tradition (The Development of Neo-Confucian Thought, i. 7). Pound, by contrast, was for ''Confucianism as Confucius had it. '' Ironically, in their conversations the neo-Confucian Chang proved to be the more orthodox Confucian. McNaughton's memoir written for this volume also sheds light on the sources of some obscure Rock-Drill passages and the circumstances of their composition. Lines such as ''? /? /? /? /it may depend on one man'' in Canto 86/583 and ''To know the histories ? /? to know good from evil/And know whom to trust'' in Canto 89/610 come alive when read together with this material.
? Fig. 6. 1. Carsun Chang in Washington, DC, 1953. (Diana Chang and June Chang Tung)
? Fig. 6. 2. Carsun Chang in San Francisco, 1957. (Diana Chang and Jung Chang Tung)
? Fig. 6. 3. Autographs of EP and Chang, 1953. (Beinecke)
? Fig. 6. 4. C. H. Kwock interviewing jazz musician Louis Armstrong in San Francisco, 1958. (C. H. Kwock)
102
pound and carsun chang
70
Dear E. Pound,
It was a great pleasure to have a talk with you.
The Chinese scholars since World War I tried to make Confucius discredited.
Dr. Hu Shih, the former Chinese ambassador to Washington, started a movement: pulling down the house of Confucius. Now it is much worse on the mainland of China; the Communists are trying to uproot the Chinese tradition of Confucius.
It gives me great pleasure to know that you are making the proposal that Confucius be included in the university curriculum.
After reading your books on Confucius I shall write an article in which your opinions on Confucius will be made known to the Chinese. I hope that you will give me a note to show how and for what reason you appreciate Confucius. This will encourage the Chinese to respect their own tradition and to Wght against Communism.
I submitted my article to you: Wang Shou-jen or Wang Yang-ming. He brought the Chinese philosophical thought to a climax.
Please tell me the lines which you wrote on Confucius, which should be included in my article on your work in the country.
My work: Neo-Confucianism, the philosophy of Sung period, will be pub- lished in the next year. I shall send you a copy in showing my gratitude for your work on Confucius.
yours sincerely Carsun Chang
Hu Shih: see Glossary on Hu Shi.
Wang Shou-jen: see Glossary on Wang Shouren.
My work: The Development of Neo-Confucian Thought (1957, 1961).
71 Chang to EP (ALS-1; Beinecke)
Washington, D. C.
Chang to EP (ALS-3; Beinecke)
Washington, D. C.
Dear Mr. Pound:
I have not come to see you for a long time, because I went to the PaciWc coast
to attend my son's wedding & to give ten lectures in San Francisco.
502 third st. S. E. 14 November 1953
113 4th st. S. E. 15 March 1955
pound and carsun chang 103
I suppose you received all the translated texts of my lectures from Mr. Kwock, editor of the Chinese World. I tried to arouse the Chinese for a moral revival.
Mr. Bill MacNaughton [McNaughton] has moved away from the A street, so I lost contact with him. He must come often to see you. Please tell him to come to the Library of Congress, so we can come to you together.
Enclosed is a list of your friends, who are living in San Francisco. They are looking forward for [to] a change of the present moral atmosphere.
With my best regards to you & your wife.
yours sincerely Carsun Chang
Kwock: see Glossary on Kwock, C. H.
72 Chang to EP (ALS-2; Beinecke)
Dear Mr. Pound,
Thank you very much for telling me to approach Mr. March D'Arcy through
Mr. T. C. Chao.
The Wrst volume of my book ''Neo-Confucianism'' will be released within
one or two months. The second volume is also ready, but I must try to Wnd a publisher. This is a half of the whole book so I am not sure whether he will like to include in his collection.
Last year I worked as a research fellow in Stanford University. The article on your work, which I promised to Mr. Bill McNaughton to do, has not begun, but I will certainly do it. The Chinese owe you a great deal for spreading the Confucian ideas in the West.
Hoping that you & your wife are going on well. In China there is a saying that a great man cannot avoid the fate of being kept in prison. King Wen was in prison, when he wrote the Book of Change[s]; Confucius came back to the Kingdom of Lu to edit the classics after he had been treated as a foe in the Kingdoms of Chen and Tsai. Ssu Ma Chien wrote his ? ? , after he was sentenced and put into prison. From these lessons you know that your present position is a sign of your greatness.
bear to see the suVerings of others'' (Legge, ii. 202).
64 EP to Fang (TL-1; Beinecke)
[St Elizabeths Hospital] [Washington, DC] [16 June 1952]
Achilles
There is a bloke named W. Yandell Elliott, Haaavud Summer School, said to
be DIrecting Mr Kissinger to edit a Xabby mug'sgaZoon named ''ConXuence. '' Elliot a cheerful an' exuberant/BUT Achilles MIGHT get it into Yelliott'z head
that it is asinine to mention philosophy or ethics without mentioning KUNG. That the League of Nation[s], UN, unesco, etc. were fahrts in various bales of wind/BUT there is no use wasting time in going into that. Full bribes, fullB-
lights [Fulbright] etc /
There ought to be chairs of sinology/not diminution of oriental studies. AND
there ought to be METHOD, Kung, to Agassiz, and a drive against abstract blather, implied in any mention of Kung, Agassiz or Dante . . . kussing out . . .
quel che la cosa per nome
Apprende ben; ma la sua quiditate
Veder non puote,
BASIS/Kung
plus a revival of greek studies, Sophokles at the top.
Those blokes got a mag/but NO writers whatsobloody ever. all slop at
Maritain-Matthiessen grade, or I dare say below if there is a lower.
Elliot COULD be useful/even to himself, if he wd/move ON not wait for more other kawlidges to insert Kung and Fenollosa BEFORE the Bastun
beanery starts.
IF you don't yet know Elliott (W. Y. ), you can say I asked you to save his soul,
mind, or central correlation <? ? > point, depending on which term you consider most likely to convey a meaning and/or impulse.
W. Yandell Elliott . . . Kissinger: William Yandell Elliott (1896-1979) founded Harvard Summer Insti- tute in 1952. Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (b. 1923), then a Ph. D. candidate, edited its journal ConXuence.
Agassiz: see Glossary on Agassiz, Louis.
quel che . . . Veder non puote: ''one who well understands the thing by its name, but cannot see its true
meaning (if no one points it out)'' (Dante, Paradiso, 20. 91-3).
Maritain-Matthiessen: the Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain (1882-1973) was then at Princeton.
The literary critic Francis Otto Matthiessen (1902-50) was a Harvard professor.
? ? 5
Pound as Miss Jung's Dissertation Adviser ''One's opinions change''
Arriving at the University of Washington with a BA from Beijing's Catholic University, Angela Chih-ying Jung (Rong Zhiying ? ? ? , b. 1926) had to determine what direction her professional future should take (see Fig. 5. 1). It didn't take her long to decide to pursue a Ph. D. in English and comparative literature. It was by coincidence, nevertheless, that she chose Ezra Pound as a subject. In a seminar she attended in spring 1952, she noticed a student drawing Chinese characters in a notebook. Before she was able to correct his mistakes, the young man showed her the book from which he was copying these characters, The Cantos of Ezra Pound. In the following weeks Jung immersed herself in The Cantos, ''attracted to Pound's profuse use of Chinese themes'' (Jung, ''Ezra Pound and China,'' University of Washington dissertation, 1955).
From The Cantos Jung moved on to Pound's Cathay ''For the most part from the Chinese of Rihaku [Li Po], from the notes of the late Ernest Fenollosa'' (1915; rpt. Personae, 130) and his Confucian translations--Ta Hio (1928), The Unwobbling Pivot (1947), and The Analects (1951). As a student from China she could not resist digging into Pound's Chinese borrowings. It was not difficult to identify the Chinese treasures that yielded Pound Cathay via Fenollosa and Mori. Nor was it difficult to account for the figures and events chronicled in his Chinese History Cantos (Cantos 52-61). But what source books in English or French or Chinese did Pound use for the composition of these cantos? How much Chinese did he understand? Already Jung had a topic for her dissertation: ''The Chinese Enigma of Ezra Pound'' (Jung, ''Ezra Pound and China'').
Unless she contacted Pound, these puzzles would remain puzzles. In late February Jung plucked up enough courage to write to the poet, who was still incarcerated in Washington, DC's St Elizabeths Hospital. In that letter she told Pound how much she admired his China-related poems and how curious she was about the origin of his interest in Chinese culture. Just when Jung was giving up hope of hearing from Pound, a reply from him arrived. He would answer her questions when she got to St Elizabeths.
pound as jung's dissertation adviser 89
It must have occurred to Pound that Miss Jung would provide a unique perspective. Between February and March he wrote her four more letters. In one letter he copied out a little Chinese poem he had composed and asked if it made sense to her at all. The attempt anticipated a single-line Chinese poem within Canto 110: ''yu ? eh4. 5 j ming2 j mo4. 5 j hsien1 j p'eng2'' (? ? ? ? ? or ''moon bright not appear friends''). Earlier, Achilles Fang had told him that these lines could not mean what he intended. In another letter he tried to find out what Miss Jung and her fellow Chinese students thought of American education: ''do they verbally object to the falsification of history (and of news)? do they object to having the husks and rubbish of the occident offered them in place of Dante (Paradiso) and Sophokles? '' (Letter 67). None of Jung's replies has survived. But from Pound's side of the correspondence we can assume that Jung tried to interpret his little Chinese poem, which only led him to echo his habitual remarks about the character: ''ideogram INCLUSIVE, sometime not the least ambiguous but ideogramic mind not always trying to split things into fragments'' (Letter 68).
Jung's goal was to get from Pound as much insight as possible for a disser- tation on his various Chinese projects. During her four-month stay in Washing- ton (April to August 1952), she visited Pound no less than fifteen times. Two of those interviews--the first, and another on 21 June when T. S. Eliot was present--are described in vivid detail in her memoir of 1974, ''Homage to a Confucian Poet'' (Paideuma, 3/3. 301-2). On her first visit, according to Jung, Pound brought from his room two armfuls of China-related books. Handing her his copy of James Legge's bilingual Four Books, he stated: ''This little book has been my bible for years, the only thing I could hang onto during those hellish days at Pisa . . . Had it not been for this book, from which I drew my strength, I would really have gone insane . . . so you see how I am indebted to Kung. '' Later, when Jung mentioned his little Chinese poem, Pound said: ''If I wrote it in English it would probably fill a book. That is why I used the ideogram; each of them could embody what one must say in a hundred lines. Besides I like the sound. '' Jung reminded Pound that he had written in 1940 that ''the great part of Chinese sound is (of) no use at all. '' To this he retorted: ''If I did, I don't remember. At any rate one's opinions change as one progresses . . . He should not be held responsible for what he said or wrote decades earlier. I have never heard how Chinese poetry should be read, but I like to play with it my own way. '' As to Jung's account of the other visit, Eliot rather than Pound is the focus of attention.
By the end of July Miss Jung got word from her adviser at the University of Washington that Harvard University Press had granted her permission to inspect Pound's Confucian Odes manuscript. Pound was vexed to learn this from Dorothy, who learned it from Jung herself. Neither Jung nor Harvard University Press had asked him for permission. In annoyance Pound let Dorothy
90 pound as jung's dissertation adviser
send a telegram to Achilles Fang: ''Odes not open for inspection of traveling students'' (Lilly). Jung was upset when a secretary at the press handed her this telegram instead of the manuscript she had expected to read.
Of course, Pound did not mean to embarrass Miss Jung. On her last visit to St Elizabeths, to her surprise, he handed her some notes he had prepared: ''China and E. P. '' as a title for her dissertation, followed by private information about his Chinese undertakings: ''the Fenollosa coincidence,'' ''Cathay,'' ''Canto XIII,'' ''49th canto from ms in family,'' ''The Chinese Cantos/sources LI KI, Histoire Generale de la Chine,'' and so on. They were of enormous help to Miss Jung's dissertation, ''Ezra Pound and China,'' which was completed in 1955.
Fifteen years later, in 1966-7, Jung, as professor of Chinese at the University of Oregon, took a nine-month sabbatical leave in Florence, Italy, to work on a Pound book (the result being Italian Images of Ezra Pound, ed. and trans. Angela Jung and Guido Palandri, 1979). Her visit to Italy would be incomplete without meeting Pound. From his Milan publisher, Vanni Scheiwiller, Jung got the phone number of his daughter Mary de Rachewiltz. De Rachewiltz suggested over the phone that she write to Pound at Sant'Ambrogio above Rapallo. In her letter Jung expressed her wish for another interview. To her joy, she received a reply from his companion Olga Rudge (1895-1996), writing on behalf of him: ''Mr. Pound thanks you for your letter and would be happy to see you again and meet your husband . . . . You could arrive here in time for lunch with us & get back to Florence the same day, leaving after tea'' (AJP). On 21 March 1967 Jung alone took a train to Rapallo. With Olga Rudge's direction, she did not have any difficulty finding Sant'Ambrogio. The eloquent poet had now become taciturn. Olga Rudge, whom Jung first met at St Elizabeths, did most of the talking. After lunch the three of them took a walk. When reaching a high point overlooking Gulf of Tigullio, Jung asked Pound, ''Can I take a picture of you? '' Without a word Pound posed for a picture (see Fig. 5. 2).
? Fig. 5. 1. Angela Jung, 1952. (Angela Jung Palandri)
? Fig. 5. 2. EP at Sant'Ambrogio, 1967. (Angela Jung Palandri)
pound as jung's dissertation adviser 93
65 EP to Jung (ALS-2; AJP)
Dear Miss Jung,
I will try to answer your questions when you get here in april.
I like to get letters, but can not do much in the way of reply.
if you have any spare texts, I mean chinese texts of good poetry--that you are
not using, I should be glad to borrow one or two--not a lot all @ once as I still read very slowly.
@ any rate I shall hope to see you in April. visiting hours 2-4 P. M. Cordially yours
[signed] Ezra Pound
66 EP to Jung (ALS-3; AJP)
Dear Miss Jung,
I have a friend who really knows, & who says my little poem <vide infra>
can't possibly mean what he thinks I want it to mean.
If you really want to help me you might tell me what you think it means, if it
makes sense @ all.
The 4th line is a trick line, that I did not expect a chinese to approve. but it
helps me remember the sound belonging to the ideograms--very difficult if one has begun to read by eye only & never been for more than an hour or so with anyone who speaks chinese.
--AND then: people who speak a language are often incapable of either reading or singing a poem.
The other problem would be: how many more ideograms would I have to add to make my meaning clear if it is possible to get @ it.
Cordially yours [signed] Ezra Pound
S. Elizabeths Hospl. Wash/ DC 29 Fb [1952]
St Elizabeths Hospl Washington DC 4 March '52 or better 4650
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
94 pound as jung's dissertation adviser
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
or better 4650: dating from the reign of ''Hoang Ti'' of Canto 53, c. 2698 bc.
67 EP to Jung (TL-1; AJP)
[St Elizabeths Hospital] [Washington, DC] [18 March 1952]
Further queries:
Do Miss J. c-y and her friends write down what they think (apart from writing
verses)?
do they verbally object to the falsification of history (and of news)?
do they object to having the husks and rubbish of the occident offered them
in place of Dante (Paradiso) and Sophokles?
Any of them want to translate the Seafarer into ideogram? Years ago one
compatriot of Miss J. got through 6 or 8 lines, but apparently with crushing endeavour. He worked at my little table in London for an hour and half, but NEVER returned.
68 EP to Jung (TL-2; AJP)
[St Elizabeths Hospital] [Washington, DC] [24 March 1952]
notes from an anonymous correspondent w[h]ose identity Miss Chih-ying Jung may guess at.
ideogram INCLUSIVE, sometime not the least ambiguous
but ideogramic mind not always trying to split things into fragments (syn- tacticly etc. )
sometimes VERY clear (at others impenetrable, at least to occidental and unskilled reader).
seems very important to distinguish the merely pictorial ideograms, such as old huah /, from the ''newer'' where the idea of flower (vegetation) is joined with idea of change/ metamorphoses continuing in nature/
pound as jung's dissertation adviser 95
meant in first line to drive in the ''respect for kind of intelligence that enables cherry-stone to make cherries'' as emphasized in big scrawl preceding translation of ''Analects. ''
I have the usual classics/finished a translation of the Shih [Odes] three years ago/but the powers of darkness and the enthusiastic but NON-functioning printers have, so far as I know, got no further than they were TWO years ago/ microscopic measurements of the format/to get the proportion of the page/keep the strophe divisions AND give the first seal text/that is to say to provide what we have not, a text in seal character for american students /
to go back to line one/ what I was trying to get across was respect for the changing power in florescence.
outside the classics available in Legge's series and those in Fenollosa's notes, I am very ignorant/ have been able to get two anthologies, one of which is lent to your more or less homophone Gloria French, Mrs. W[illiam]. French
1702 De Witt Ave. Alexandria. Va.
who hopes to meet you when you get to Washington. She is working hard, but of course none of us have the FAINTEST idea what chinese poetry really SOUNDS like.
and I will now try to get a more specific notion of the lines that say something about wind, horse and water.
anonymously yours, and hoping to see you next month.
old huah /, from the ''newer'': hua ? is archaic for ? , a character in EP's Chinese poem. For Jung's ''line by line prose interpretation'' of the poem, see Angela Jung Palandri, ''Homage to a Confucian Poet,'' Paideuma, 3/3 (Winter 1974), 303.
first line: first line of EP's Chinese poem: ? ? ? ? . big scrawl: ? in EP's hand in Confucius, 193.
69 EP to Jung (ALS-1; AJP)
[St Elizabeths Hospital] [Washington, DC] 24 march [1952]
Honbl glory produces wheat-ear?
No, I do not know the Shuo Wen C. T. & would be very grateful if you can
bring a borrowed copy with you.
Very truly yours [signed] Ezra Pound
glory produces wheat-ear: ? ? ? . Jung ? means ''glory'' and the left side of ying ? depicts a wheat stalk beneath a head.
Shuo Wen C. T. : see Glossary on Xu Shen.
6
Pound and Carsun Chang ''Confucianism as Confucius had it''
By 1953 Pound was once more moving ahead with his Paradiso. The Wrst Wve cantos he composed at St Elizabeths Hospital, Cantos 85-9 of Section Rock-Drill (1955), again centered on Chinese history.
LING2 ?
Our dynasty came in because of a great sensibility.
(Canto 85/563)
Digging into Couvreur's trilingual and Legge's bilingual Shu jing, Pound had another Chinese scholar to turn to for insights. The new Chinese friend, Carsun Chang, was taken to St Elizabeths by William McNaughton, a student at Georgetown University and a regular visitor.
Carsun Chang (Zhang Junmai ? ? ? , 1886-1969) was known in China as a third force in politics in opposition to Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong and in the West as China's delegate to the 1945 United Nations Conference on Inter- national Organization, signing the ''Charter of the United Nations. '' After studying at Japan's Waseda University (1906-10) and Germany's Berlin Univer- sity (1913-15), Chang served as the editor-in-chief of the Shanghai newspaper China Times (1916-17) and as a professor of philosophy at Beijing University (1918-22). His early essay ''On the National Constitution'' earned him recogni- tion as a leading constitutionist and political scientist. Consequently, he was appointed president of Shanghai's National Institute of Political Science in 1924 and commissioned to draft the Republic of China's constitution in 1946 (Roger B. Jeans, Democracy and Socialism in Republican China: The Politics of Zhang Junmai [Carsun Chang] 1906-1941 (Oxford: Rowman & LittleWeld, 1997)).
Chang used to describe his career as ''vacillating between the worlds of scholarship and practical politics. '' For three decades he lectured and wrote on democratic socialism and Confucianism while keeping abreast of domestic political events. In 1953, when McNaughton Wrst took him to St Elizabeths, he was in exile in Washington, DC, at work on a study in English (The Development of Neo-Confucian Thought, 2 vols. (New York: Bookman Associates, 1957, 1962))
pound and carsun chang 97
(see Figs. 6. 1 and 6. 2). Not surprisingly, he was as enthusiastic as Pound about their meetings and their exchange of ideas.
Of the Pound-Chang correspondence only three letters and a postcard from Chang to Pound have survived. Among Pound's Rock-Drill typescripts at the Beinecke Library, nevertheless, is a leaf bearing both Pound's and Chang's autographs (see Fig. 6. 3). What Pound wrote were the characters ? (''the hitching post''), ? (''sensibility''), and ? (''sincerity''), and what Chang put down were his Chinese and English names. Evidently the two men discussed the three Confucian terms, two of which, ? and ? , were to recur in Rock-Drill.
Two letters to Pound from Chang's friend C. H. Kwock (see Fig. 6. 4), and especially William McNaughton's memoir, ''What Pound and Carsun Chang Talked about at St Elizabeths,'' can teach us something more about the Pound- Chang exchange. Chang was opposed to a ''hackneyed exposition of the basic thought of Confucius,'' what he called a ''museum approach'' to a living tradition (The Development of Neo-Confucian Thought, i. 7). Pound, by contrast, was for ''Confucianism as Confucius had it. '' Ironically, in their conversations the neo-Confucian Chang proved to be the more orthodox Confucian. McNaughton's memoir written for this volume also sheds light on the sources of some obscure Rock-Drill passages and the circumstances of their composition. Lines such as ''? /? /? /? /it may depend on one man'' in Canto 86/583 and ''To know the histories ? /? to know good from evil/And know whom to trust'' in Canto 89/610 come alive when read together with this material.
? Fig. 6. 1. Carsun Chang in Washington, DC, 1953. (Diana Chang and June Chang Tung)
? Fig. 6. 2. Carsun Chang in San Francisco, 1957. (Diana Chang and Jung Chang Tung)
? Fig. 6. 3. Autographs of EP and Chang, 1953. (Beinecke)
? Fig. 6. 4. C. H. Kwock interviewing jazz musician Louis Armstrong in San Francisco, 1958. (C. H. Kwock)
102
pound and carsun chang
70
Dear E. Pound,
It was a great pleasure to have a talk with you.
The Chinese scholars since World War I tried to make Confucius discredited.
Dr. Hu Shih, the former Chinese ambassador to Washington, started a movement: pulling down the house of Confucius. Now it is much worse on the mainland of China; the Communists are trying to uproot the Chinese tradition of Confucius.
It gives me great pleasure to know that you are making the proposal that Confucius be included in the university curriculum.
After reading your books on Confucius I shall write an article in which your opinions on Confucius will be made known to the Chinese. I hope that you will give me a note to show how and for what reason you appreciate Confucius. This will encourage the Chinese to respect their own tradition and to Wght against Communism.
I submitted my article to you: Wang Shou-jen or Wang Yang-ming. He brought the Chinese philosophical thought to a climax.
Please tell me the lines which you wrote on Confucius, which should be included in my article on your work in the country.
My work: Neo-Confucianism, the philosophy of Sung period, will be pub- lished in the next year. I shall send you a copy in showing my gratitude for your work on Confucius.
yours sincerely Carsun Chang
Hu Shih: see Glossary on Hu Shi.
Wang Shou-jen: see Glossary on Wang Shouren.
My work: The Development of Neo-Confucian Thought (1957, 1961).
71 Chang to EP (ALS-1; Beinecke)
Washington, D. C.
Chang to EP (ALS-3; Beinecke)
Washington, D. C.
Dear Mr. Pound:
I have not come to see you for a long time, because I went to the PaciWc coast
to attend my son's wedding & to give ten lectures in San Francisco.
502 third st. S. E. 14 November 1953
113 4th st. S. E. 15 March 1955
pound and carsun chang 103
I suppose you received all the translated texts of my lectures from Mr. Kwock, editor of the Chinese World. I tried to arouse the Chinese for a moral revival.
Mr. Bill MacNaughton [McNaughton] has moved away from the A street, so I lost contact with him. He must come often to see you. Please tell him to come to the Library of Congress, so we can come to you together.
Enclosed is a list of your friends, who are living in San Francisco. They are looking forward for [to] a change of the present moral atmosphere.
With my best regards to you & your wife.
yours sincerely Carsun Chang
Kwock: see Glossary on Kwock, C. H.
72 Chang to EP (ALS-2; Beinecke)
Dear Mr. Pound,
Thank you very much for telling me to approach Mr. March D'Arcy through
Mr. T. C. Chao.
The Wrst volume of my book ''Neo-Confucianism'' will be released within
one or two months. The second volume is also ready, but I must try to Wnd a publisher. This is a half of the whole book so I am not sure whether he will like to include in his collection.
Last year I worked as a research fellow in Stanford University. The article on your work, which I promised to Mr. Bill McNaughton to do, has not begun, but I will certainly do it. The Chinese owe you a great deal for spreading the Confucian ideas in the West.
Hoping that you & your wife are going on well. In China there is a saying that a great man cannot avoid the fate of being kept in prison. King Wen was in prison, when he wrote the Book of Change[s]; Confucius came back to the Kingdom of Lu to edit the classics after he had been treated as a foe in the Kingdoms of Chen and Tsai. Ssu Ma Chien wrote his ? ? , after he was sentenced and put into prison. From these lessons you know that your present position is a sign of your greatness.
