It gives me great pleasure to know that you are making the
proposal
that Confucius be included in the university curriculum.
Ezra-Pounds-Chinese-Friends-Stories-in-Letters
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. Keep your peace of mind and your health! This is my hope.
yours sincerely Carsun Chang
826 Baker st. San Francisco 30 March 1957
104 pound and carsun chang
March D'Arcy: perhaps Martin D'Arcy, author of The Mind and Heart of Love (1945). See Pound/ Theobald, 59 (10 July 1957): ''Father D'Arcy sd/to have purrsuaded N. Car. to be about to print it. ''
Ssu Ma Chien: see Glossary on Sima Qian.
73 Kwock to EP (ALS-2; Beinecke)
My dear Ezra--
Met your Washington new friend Carsun Chang several days ago/spoken
highly of you & your philosophy/said he'll write ''The Philosophy of E. P. ''/ he'll be back in S. F. next month to deliver a series of lectures on Confucianism/ and to help revive the local Confucian Society which has been closed the past several years due to the lack of real leadership/will you like us to reprint your Analects in a bilingual edition/we are ordering some new Chinese types from Japan/Regards to Dorothy & Dennis O'Donovan.
? ? ? ? ? [Day by day make it new] with highest regards,
C. H. Kwock
The Chinese World
Dennis O'Donovan: unidentiWed.
74 Kwock to EP (ALS-1; Beinecke)
[736 Grant Avenue] [San Francisco] 2/5/55
My esteemed ? --
Thank you for your excellent suggestion/have been thinking along that line
too/Dr Carsun Chang also likes the idea/he'll leave here for Seattle by bus Feb. 17/and then enplane for the Capital about Feb. 22/so he'll see you on Feb 25 or 26 or 27/and explain why he has to use the James Legge translation/because that's the available one here!
C. H. Kwock
? : xin meaning ''make it new,'' used as a salutation.
James Legge translation: in his lectures Chang cited Confucian ideas in Legge's translation. Kwock
had sent EP English translations of these lectures.
736 Grant, S. F. 12/18/54
pound and carsun chang 105
William McNaughton's Memoir:
''What Pound and Carsun Chang Talked About at St Elizabeths''
I met Dr Chang through mutual friends in the intellectual Chinese community in Washington, DC. Chang then had a private cubicle at the Library of Con- gress, where he was working on his book on neo-Confucian philosophy. When he heard that I was acquainted with Pound, he asked if it would be possible for me to introduce him to Pound. Having received Pound's permission to do so, I took Dr Chang with me the next time I went to St Elizabeths. It was almost certainly the second or third Tuesday in November 1953. Over the next eighteen months Dr Chang went to see Pound many times. I would judge that there were a total of about ten interviews between the two men, all taking place not later than May 1955.
During their Wrst meeting Pound told Chang--rather frankly, I thought, in view of Chang's absorption at that time in his work on neo-Confucianism--that he (Pound) wanted Confucianism as Confucius had it and that he ''found little of interest in later dilatations. '' Among ''late dilutations'' it was clear that Pound intended to include neo-Confucianism.
Pound and Dr Chang talked about Pound's work; about Leopoldine reforms; and about Thomas JeVerson. Chang knew a good deal about JeVerson. He told Pound how he had come to draft a constitution for China on JeVersonian principles. The draft later became the basis of the Constitution which was adopted and which is still supposed to be in eVect in Taiwan.
On one of my visits to St Elizabeths with Carsun Chang, Pound said to him, ''If there were only four Confucians in China who would get together and work with each other, they could save China. '' ''Four? '' Dr Chang laughed. ''One is enough. '' In the exchange Chang showed himself, perhaps, to be the more orthodox Confucian. But into the Rock-Drill cantos, Pound did write from the Canonic Book of History the idea that ''? / ? / ? / ? / it may depend on one man'' (86/583). Before Dr Chang and I left that day, Pound said to me, ''Bring him out again. He is somebody you can talk to. He is interested in the deWnition of words. '' Mrs Pound also asked me to bring Chang out again. ''Eppy,'' she said, ''is very hungry for adult company out here. ''
Later on Chang asked Pound to write an introduction for his book on Chinese philosophy. Pound wrote one page in which he said he thought that the reader would be delighted with a book about a thinker who once clapped his hands with joy at the sight of a leaf. Chang decided not to use the introduction. He had wanted something more scholarly, and Pound had written the introduction ''like a poet. '' (In addition to his formal Chinese education, Dr Chang had been a post- graduate student in Germany, and his attitude perhaps had been colored by Germanic ideas of scholarship. ) From Chang's manuscript Pound got the ''rules for a man in government'' which appear at the beginning of Canto 89:
106 pound and carsun chang
To know the histories ?
? to know good from evil
And know whom to trust.
Sometime during one afternoon Chang made the usual objections to Fenol- losa's treatment of the Chinese written character. The talk then turned to James Legge and Arthur Waley, Pound remarked: ''The trouble with Legge's versions is, whenever Confucius disagrees with St Paul, Legge puts in a footnote to say that Confucius must be wrong. ''
Chang quoted the Analects occasionally in Chinese (in his Jiangsu dialect), and then he would translate the passage into very good English. When Pound and Dr Chang took their leave of each other, Pound bowed to Dr Chang over his hands, Chinese-style, and Dr Chang reciprocated.
Chang admired the ''remarkable genius'' of Pound's translations of many paragraphs in the Analects, but he felt that sometimes Pound ''went too far. '' As a speciWc example of Pound's ''going too far,'' Dr Chang cited Pound's version of Analects 8. 2. 2: ''Gentlemen 'bamboo-horse' to their relatives [The bamboo is both hard on the surface and pliant] and the people will rise to manhood. '' (Legge has: ''When those who are in high stations perform well all their duties to their relations, the people are aroused to virtue. '') Chang could not accept the ''bamboo-horse'' translation for tu3 ? , ''ideogrammic'' as it was. Smiling, Pound said he understood the criticism but did not accept it.
I have a note from Pound, dated ''23 Maggio,'' but not postmarked because it was delivered by hand. I believe that it was written 23 May 1954. The note says: ''About time to see Chang again/ get him onto some real occidental writers/ Ric/S/V, as just a bit later than that his neo-Kungists. ETC. '' ''Ric/S/V'' is, of course, Richard St Victor; and the ''neo-Kungists'' are the neo-Confucian philosophers on whom Chang was writing at the time. Pound never did get Chang back to ''essential Confucianism'' and oV the ''neo-Kungists. ''
As important as the ''subjects of conversation'' between two men are the emotional tone and the intellectual spark that plays between the conversants. Between Dr Chang and Pound, for what I could see, there was a genuine aVection; and if during their talks it was clear that Chang excited Pound intellectually, it was apparent afterward, as we rode in our taxi back to Capitol Hill, that Pound excited Dr Chang as well. For Pound, working as he was to get some of the ''wisdom of China'' into his Paradise, the friendship perhaps matched his ideas about ''the laying on of hands,'' as one astute scholar has called it.
7
Achilles Fang and Pound's Classic Anthology ''The barbarians need the ODES''
Much of the Pound-Achilles Fang correspondence during 1953-8 deals with the Confucian Odes project. For Pound the 305 odes handed down from Confucius were both songs to be sung and characters to be deciphered. Accordingly, his edition of the Odes would have to include a singing key and a Chinese character text facing his English translation. In October 1948 Pound consulted Willis Hawley about typeset- ting the characters of the odes. Hawley sent Pound the photocopies of three Chinese texts, suggesting that it would be ''practical to reproduce [one of these texts] instead of setting type'' (Lilly). Of the three texts, the Tang script was ninth century, Song script was eleventh century, and the seal script alone was from Confucius' era. Naturally Pound chose the seal script text for his edition of the Odes.
In 1949-50 the Odes seal text supplied by Hawley passed from James Laughlin of New Directions to Laughlin's printer Dudley Kimball. Numerous letters concerning the layouts of the three-way Odes project were exchanged between Pound, Hawley, Laughlin, and Kimball. Laughlin working on the Stone-Classics edition of The Great Digest & The Unwobbling Pivot became increasingly reluctant to take on another complex project. By late 1951 Pound was losing patience. It was at that point that Achilles Fang came to his rescue (see Fig. 7. 1). He approached the director of Harvard University Press, Thomas Wilson, and succeeded in stirring an interest.
The letters collected here provide a detailed record of Pound's and Harvard's conXicting desires, and of Fang's role as a mediator. Harvard's enthusiasm was for Pound's translation of the Odes. Pound, however, absolutely would not pull out from his manuscript the singing syllables and the characters (see Figs. 7. 2 and 7. 3). The negotiation of a contract broke down in late November 1952 after a letter from Wilson gave Pound the impression that Harvard did not value the sound key and the seal text. Pound began to think of other publishers. In January 1953 John Kasper, co-editor (with David Horton) of the Square Dollar series, reported to Pound Macmillan's and Twayne's interest in this project (Lilly). Meanwhile, Achilles Fang assured Pound that Harvard University Press would carry out his wishes. Right
108 a. fang and pound's classic anthology
before Kasper was going to get the Odes manuscript from Fang, Pound changed his mind. With his energy almost exhausted he would have to rely on Fang to see the project through, and the logical place for the Harvard scholar to do his part of the job was Cambridge. By June 1953 Harvard Press oVered Pound two contracts, Wrst to publish a ''trade edition'' and then to bring out a three-way, ''scholar's edition. '' In August Pound signed both contracts.
Pound experienced little excitement when the ''trade edition'' of the Odes, The Classic Anthology DeWned by Confucius, came out in 1954. ''WHEN the real edition is done,'' he grumbled, ''there shd/alzo be a[n] index, or table of contents, or both'' (Letter 112). He was pleased, though, with Fang's introduc- tion, which includes a syllable-for-syllable transcription of Ode 1 and a footnote announcing a ''forthcoming,'' three-way edition of the Odes. Fang's eVort to aYx a seal script ? (Odes) on the cover also won Pound's approval (see Fig. 7. 4). Several other details of the production, nonetheless, made him paranoid. The typography of his name larger than that of Confucius on the cover especially irritated his eye. ''It is the most BEEyewteeful anthology in the world,'' he told Fang, ''and CONFUCIO had more to do with making it than had yr/anon/ crspdt'' (Letter 112). ''Remember I want <to see> front matter of real EDI- TION when and/or/if'' (Letter 115). However, the ''real EDITION'' never appeared.
Pound's correspondence with Fang of 1956-8 is characterized by impatience. Fang kept assuring Pound that Wilson had no intention to back out. Pound began to suspect whether the delay could have been caused by Fang's wasting time on the accuracy of his sound key. He wrote wryly to him on 4 February 1956: ''if you are waiting to satisfy your letch for precision Gaw Damn it/there is NO alphabetic representation of chinese sound, let alone any fad of spelling it in amurkn alPHAbet'' (Letter 123). By mid-June 1956, when there was still no movement, he wrote to Wilson, stating: ''IF this means that Fang is bored with matter I wish you would return me the ms/and I myself prepare it for the press'' (Beinecke).
In 1955-8 Achilles Fang busily corresponded with Pound's family (wife Doro- thy, son Omar, and daughter Mary Rudge) and friends in eVorts to get Pound released from St Elizabeths Hospital (see Fig. 7. 5). In a letter of 10 August 1955 to Archibald MacLeish, for instance, he wrote: ''I told [Mary] everything you told last winter--that the psychiatrists are willing to release him, that Dr Milton E[isenhower]. could be of some use, and that EP is the only obstacle'' (Beinecke). Meanwhile, he was preparing his dissertation. In late 1956, perhaps as a result of Pound's chiding, he put aside all other projects to work on the sound key and the seal text. For nearly a year from January to October 1957, however, Fang neglected to inform Pound of the progress of the project.
? 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. Keep your peace of mind and your health! This is my hope.
yours sincerely Carsun Chang
826 Baker st. San Francisco 30 March 1957
104 pound and carsun chang
March D'Arcy: perhaps Martin D'Arcy, author of The Mind and Heart of Love (1945). See Pound/ Theobald, 59 (10 July 1957): ''Father D'Arcy sd/to have purrsuaded N. Car. to be about to print it. ''
Ssu Ma Chien: see Glossary on Sima Qian.
73 Kwock to EP (ALS-2; Beinecke)
My dear Ezra--
Met your Washington new friend Carsun Chang several days ago/spoken
highly of you & your philosophy/said he'll write ''The Philosophy of E. P. ''/ he'll be back in S. F. next month to deliver a series of lectures on Confucianism/ and to help revive the local Confucian Society which has been closed the past several years due to the lack of real leadership/will you like us to reprint your Analects in a bilingual edition/we are ordering some new Chinese types from Japan/Regards to Dorothy & Dennis O'Donovan.
? ? ? ? ? [Day by day make it new] with highest regards,
C. H. Kwock
The Chinese World
Dennis O'Donovan: unidentiWed.
74 Kwock to EP (ALS-1; Beinecke)
[736 Grant Avenue] [San Francisco] 2/5/55
My esteemed ? --
Thank you for your excellent suggestion/have been thinking along that line
too/Dr Carsun Chang also likes the idea/he'll leave here for Seattle by bus Feb. 17/and then enplane for the Capital about Feb. 22/so he'll see you on Feb 25 or 26 or 27/and explain why he has to use the James Legge translation/because that's the available one here!
C. H. Kwock
? : xin meaning ''make it new,'' used as a salutation.
James Legge translation: in his lectures Chang cited Confucian ideas in Legge's translation. Kwock
had sent EP English translations of these lectures.
736 Grant, S. F. 12/18/54
pound and carsun chang 105
William McNaughton's Memoir:
''What Pound and Carsun Chang Talked About at St Elizabeths''
I met Dr Chang through mutual friends in the intellectual Chinese community in Washington, DC. Chang then had a private cubicle at the Library of Con- gress, where he was working on his book on neo-Confucian philosophy. When he heard that I was acquainted with Pound, he asked if it would be possible for me to introduce him to Pound. Having received Pound's permission to do so, I took Dr Chang with me the next time I went to St Elizabeths. It was almost certainly the second or third Tuesday in November 1953. Over the next eighteen months Dr Chang went to see Pound many times. I would judge that there were a total of about ten interviews between the two men, all taking place not later than May 1955.
During their Wrst meeting Pound told Chang--rather frankly, I thought, in view of Chang's absorption at that time in his work on neo-Confucianism--that he (Pound) wanted Confucianism as Confucius had it and that he ''found little of interest in later dilatations. '' Among ''late dilutations'' it was clear that Pound intended to include neo-Confucianism.
Pound and Dr Chang talked about Pound's work; about Leopoldine reforms; and about Thomas JeVerson. Chang knew a good deal about JeVerson. He told Pound how he had come to draft a constitution for China on JeVersonian principles. The draft later became the basis of the Constitution which was adopted and which is still supposed to be in eVect in Taiwan.
On one of my visits to St Elizabeths with Carsun Chang, Pound said to him, ''If there were only four Confucians in China who would get together and work with each other, they could save China. '' ''Four? '' Dr Chang laughed. ''One is enough. '' In the exchange Chang showed himself, perhaps, to be the more orthodox Confucian. But into the Rock-Drill cantos, Pound did write from the Canonic Book of History the idea that ''? / ? / ? / ? / it may depend on one man'' (86/583). Before Dr Chang and I left that day, Pound said to me, ''Bring him out again. He is somebody you can talk to. He is interested in the deWnition of words. '' Mrs Pound also asked me to bring Chang out again. ''Eppy,'' she said, ''is very hungry for adult company out here. ''
Later on Chang asked Pound to write an introduction for his book on Chinese philosophy. Pound wrote one page in which he said he thought that the reader would be delighted with a book about a thinker who once clapped his hands with joy at the sight of a leaf. Chang decided not to use the introduction. He had wanted something more scholarly, and Pound had written the introduction ''like a poet. '' (In addition to his formal Chinese education, Dr Chang had been a post- graduate student in Germany, and his attitude perhaps had been colored by Germanic ideas of scholarship. ) From Chang's manuscript Pound got the ''rules for a man in government'' which appear at the beginning of Canto 89:
106 pound and carsun chang
To know the histories ?
? to know good from evil
And know whom to trust.
Sometime during one afternoon Chang made the usual objections to Fenol- losa's treatment of the Chinese written character. The talk then turned to James Legge and Arthur Waley, Pound remarked: ''The trouble with Legge's versions is, whenever Confucius disagrees with St Paul, Legge puts in a footnote to say that Confucius must be wrong. ''
Chang quoted the Analects occasionally in Chinese (in his Jiangsu dialect), and then he would translate the passage into very good English. When Pound and Dr Chang took their leave of each other, Pound bowed to Dr Chang over his hands, Chinese-style, and Dr Chang reciprocated.
Chang admired the ''remarkable genius'' of Pound's translations of many paragraphs in the Analects, but he felt that sometimes Pound ''went too far. '' As a speciWc example of Pound's ''going too far,'' Dr Chang cited Pound's version of Analects 8. 2. 2: ''Gentlemen 'bamboo-horse' to their relatives [The bamboo is both hard on the surface and pliant] and the people will rise to manhood. '' (Legge has: ''When those who are in high stations perform well all their duties to their relations, the people are aroused to virtue. '') Chang could not accept the ''bamboo-horse'' translation for tu3 ? , ''ideogrammic'' as it was. Smiling, Pound said he understood the criticism but did not accept it.
I have a note from Pound, dated ''23 Maggio,'' but not postmarked because it was delivered by hand. I believe that it was written 23 May 1954. The note says: ''About time to see Chang again/ get him onto some real occidental writers/ Ric/S/V, as just a bit later than that his neo-Kungists. ETC. '' ''Ric/S/V'' is, of course, Richard St Victor; and the ''neo-Kungists'' are the neo-Confucian philosophers on whom Chang was writing at the time. Pound never did get Chang back to ''essential Confucianism'' and oV the ''neo-Kungists. ''
As important as the ''subjects of conversation'' between two men are the emotional tone and the intellectual spark that plays between the conversants. Between Dr Chang and Pound, for what I could see, there was a genuine aVection; and if during their talks it was clear that Chang excited Pound intellectually, it was apparent afterward, as we rode in our taxi back to Capitol Hill, that Pound excited Dr Chang as well. For Pound, working as he was to get some of the ''wisdom of China'' into his Paradise, the friendship perhaps matched his ideas about ''the laying on of hands,'' as one astute scholar has called it.
7
Achilles Fang and Pound's Classic Anthology ''The barbarians need the ODES''
Much of the Pound-Achilles Fang correspondence during 1953-8 deals with the Confucian Odes project. For Pound the 305 odes handed down from Confucius were both songs to be sung and characters to be deciphered. Accordingly, his edition of the Odes would have to include a singing key and a Chinese character text facing his English translation. In October 1948 Pound consulted Willis Hawley about typeset- ting the characters of the odes. Hawley sent Pound the photocopies of three Chinese texts, suggesting that it would be ''practical to reproduce [one of these texts] instead of setting type'' (Lilly). Of the three texts, the Tang script was ninth century, Song script was eleventh century, and the seal script alone was from Confucius' era. Naturally Pound chose the seal script text for his edition of the Odes.
In 1949-50 the Odes seal text supplied by Hawley passed from James Laughlin of New Directions to Laughlin's printer Dudley Kimball. Numerous letters concerning the layouts of the three-way Odes project were exchanged between Pound, Hawley, Laughlin, and Kimball. Laughlin working on the Stone-Classics edition of The Great Digest & The Unwobbling Pivot became increasingly reluctant to take on another complex project. By late 1951 Pound was losing patience. It was at that point that Achilles Fang came to his rescue (see Fig. 7. 1). He approached the director of Harvard University Press, Thomas Wilson, and succeeded in stirring an interest.
The letters collected here provide a detailed record of Pound's and Harvard's conXicting desires, and of Fang's role as a mediator. Harvard's enthusiasm was for Pound's translation of the Odes. Pound, however, absolutely would not pull out from his manuscript the singing syllables and the characters (see Figs. 7. 2 and 7. 3). The negotiation of a contract broke down in late November 1952 after a letter from Wilson gave Pound the impression that Harvard did not value the sound key and the seal text. Pound began to think of other publishers. In January 1953 John Kasper, co-editor (with David Horton) of the Square Dollar series, reported to Pound Macmillan's and Twayne's interest in this project (Lilly). Meanwhile, Achilles Fang assured Pound that Harvard University Press would carry out his wishes. Right
108 a. fang and pound's classic anthology
before Kasper was going to get the Odes manuscript from Fang, Pound changed his mind. With his energy almost exhausted he would have to rely on Fang to see the project through, and the logical place for the Harvard scholar to do his part of the job was Cambridge. By June 1953 Harvard Press oVered Pound two contracts, Wrst to publish a ''trade edition'' and then to bring out a three-way, ''scholar's edition. '' In August Pound signed both contracts.
Pound experienced little excitement when the ''trade edition'' of the Odes, The Classic Anthology DeWned by Confucius, came out in 1954. ''WHEN the real edition is done,'' he grumbled, ''there shd/alzo be a[n] index, or table of contents, or both'' (Letter 112). He was pleased, though, with Fang's introduc- tion, which includes a syllable-for-syllable transcription of Ode 1 and a footnote announcing a ''forthcoming,'' three-way edition of the Odes. Fang's eVort to aYx a seal script ? (Odes) on the cover also won Pound's approval (see Fig. 7. 4). Several other details of the production, nonetheless, made him paranoid. The typography of his name larger than that of Confucius on the cover especially irritated his eye. ''It is the most BEEyewteeful anthology in the world,'' he told Fang, ''and CONFUCIO had more to do with making it than had yr/anon/ crspdt'' (Letter 112). ''Remember I want <to see> front matter of real EDI- TION when and/or/if'' (Letter 115). However, the ''real EDITION'' never appeared.
Pound's correspondence with Fang of 1956-8 is characterized by impatience. Fang kept assuring Pound that Wilson had no intention to back out. Pound began to suspect whether the delay could have been caused by Fang's wasting time on the accuracy of his sound key. He wrote wryly to him on 4 February 1956: ''if you are waiting to satisfy your letch for precision Gaw Damn it/there is NO alphabetic representation of chinese sound, let alone any fad of spelling it in amurkn alPHAbet'' (Letter 123). By mid-June 1956, when there was still no movement, he wrote to Wilson, stating: ''IF this means that Fang is bored with matter I wish you would return me the ms/and I myself prepare it for the press'' (Beinecke).
In 1955-8 Achilles Fang busily corresponded with Pound's family (wife Doro- thy, son Omar, and daughter Mary Rudge) and friends in eVorts to get Pound released from St Elizabeths Hospital (see Fig. 7. 5). In a letter of 10 August 1955 to Archibald MacLeish, for instance, he wrote: ''I told [Mary] everything you told last winter--that the psychiatrists are willing to release him, that Dr Milton E[isenhower]. could be of some use, and that EP is the only obstacle'' (Beinecke). Meanwhile, he was preparing his dissertation. In late 1956, perhaps as a result of Pound's chiding, he put aside all other projects to work on the sound key and the seal text. For nearly a year from January to October 1957, however, Fang neglected to inform Pound of the progress of the project.
