Pound
[signed] EP
The widow Frobenius: see Glossary on Frobenius, Leo.
[signed] EP
The widow Frobenius: see Glossary on Frobenius, Leo.
Ezra-Pounds-Chinese-Friends-Stories-in-Letters
H.
Fang?
How did he get to know Pound?
Born to a merchant family in Lijiang, Fang (Fang Baoxian ?
?
?
, b.
1923) came to America via India in 1945.
After taking a master's degree at Ohio State University (1950), he started to work on a Ph.
D.
in physics at the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC.
There he met and married Josefine Maria Riss from Austria, who held a Ph.
D.
from the University of Graz and would soon start working toward a degree in library science.
Among their friends was CUA Professor of English Giovanni Giovannini, who later became their firstborn Paula's godfather.
Early in 1953 Professor Giovannini took P. H. Fang to Pound at St Elizabeths Hospital. The American poet, Giovannini told Fang, had translated Li Bo's poems and Confucius' Analects. P. H. Fang was impressed. In the next five or more years he and Josephine (officially spelt that way in the US) visited Pound countless times. More than once or twice they took their daughter Paula and son David with them. On Pound's birthdays Josephine would make a kind of cake she knew Pound was fond of and it was usually Paula who would carry it to where the Pounds received their visitors. In a letter of 6 January 1959 Dorothy Pound wrote of one such visit: ''Paula may remember bringing EP his birthday cake at St. E's'' (Beinecke).
The Fangs' visits coincided with the moment Pound was trying to bring out an edition of the Confucian Odes with a Chinese seal text and a sound key. With a visitor from China, naturally he would talk endlessly about Confucius, Fenollosa, and Fenollosa's essay on ''The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry. '' One day, when Pound began quoting Fenollosa and marveling at the Chinese character again, P. H. Fang surprised Pound by remarking that the scholar-priests of his hometown still used primitive picto- graphs. This was the first time he told Pound that he was from Lijiang on the borders of Tibet. Lijiang was the center of the ancient Naxi kingdom, which flourished from the eighth to the eighteenth centuries. Its landscape, along with a unique culture, had fascinated Rock and Goullart. And it would soon surface in Pound's new cantos in Thrones and Drafts and Fragments:
at Li Chiang, the snow range,
a wide meadow (Canto 101/746)
By the temple pool, Lung Wang's
the clear discourse
as Jade stream (Canto 112/804)
198 p. h. fang and naxi rites in the cantos
The ''earthly paradise'' over Lijiang is real, Fang testifies. Starting from 1973 he has been returning to his hometown regularly. The ''snow range'' remains as majestic and serene as it has ever been; and so do ''the temple pool'' and the ''Jade stream'' (see Fig. 10. 1). Fang is too modest to consider his role as important, but his visits to St Elizabeths served to open Pound's eyes to a China not only beyond the Chinas of De Mailla and Legge but also beyond those of Carsun Chang and Achilles Fang, resulting in a new direction in the late cantos.
From that point on, whenever P. H. Fang showed up, Pound would ask him to draw a few Naxi pictographs and teach him how to pronounce them. Among the dozen or more Naxi pictographs Fang drew for Pound were those for the ''sun'' and the ''moon. '' In Canto 112 Pound reproduces two Naxi pictographs, one for ''fate's tray'' or, as Rock puts it, ''a large winnowing tray made of the small bamboo,'' embodying ''a fate, a life,'' and the other for the ''moon'' (see Canto 112/805). Although both pictographs occur in Rock's ''2K'a-2ma ? -1gyu-3mi-2gkyi'' and ''2Muan 1Bpo ? ,'' it is safe to assume that Pound had learned the Naxi sign for the moon first from P. H. Fang.
On those early visits to St Elizabeths, P. H. Fang spent no less time chatting with Pound about his people's strange ceremonies--2Muan 1Bpo ? (Sacrifice to Heaven) and 2Ndaw 1Bpo ? (Sacrifice to Earth). He must have prepared Pound for Rock's accounts of these Naxi rituals. 2Muan 1Bpo ? subsequently found its way into Canto 98 and 2Ndaw 1Bpo ? into Canto 112.
In late 1953, with a Ph. D. in hand Fang moved to Dresher (near Philadelphia) to take a job at Philco. In 1954 Rock paid Fang a visit on a trip to the East Coast from Hawaii, where he was a research professor. He had been a friend of Fang's parents. When in Lijiang during the 1920s and 1930s, the botanist had borrowed sums of local silver dollars from the elder Fang, which he had chosen to pay back in the early 1950s by sending checks of American dollars to P. H. Fang at the Catholic University. Before departure on his 1954 visit, Rock took out two of his monographs--''2K'a-2ma ? -1gyu- 3mi-2gkyi'' and ''2Muan 1Bpo ? ''--and inscribed them to P. H. Fang. Believing that these papers would answer most of Pound's queries about the Naxi script and rites, Fang sent them to St Elizabeths through Giovannini.
In early 1956 Fang moved back to DC to start on a research job at Catholic University. When he resumed his visits to St Elizabeths, Pound would keep him longer for his Naxi lessons. He would pick a word here and a word there from ''2K'a-2ma ? -1gyu-3mi-2gkyi'' or ''2Muan 1Bpo ? '' and ask P. H. Fang to pronounce them and explain their meanings. P. H. Fang's copy of ''2K'a-2ma ? -1gyu-3mi-2gkyi'' bears some of his glosses and corrections for Pound. On page 9, for instance, above the phonetic symbol ''1Yu-'' is the English word ''sheep'' in Fang's hand. From the Naxi pictograph for ''shepherd,'' a figure with a sheep's head, Pound could have guessed what ''1Yu-'' in Rock's ''1Yu-boy'' meant. P. H. Fang's gloss points to Pound's insistence on making certain what each part of a Naxi compound signified. In describing the pronunciation of the
p. h. fang and naxi rites in the cantos 199
Naxi word for ''cuckoo,'' Rock states that ''The word 3gkye-2bpu is the most difficult to pronounce. '' Next to this is given in Fang's hand ''eng geek. '' No doubt, it was at Pound's urging that Fang facilitated the ''unpronounceable'' word. On that same page, Fang corrects a mistake in Rock's description of the Naxi pictograph for ''three months of spring. '' His copy shows that ''four'' in ''four horizontal lines'' is crossed out and changed to ''3. '' Going through Rock's monographs with Pound, P. H. Fang must have facilitated far more unpro- nounceable words and corrected far more inaccuracies than those that have been recorded.
To this day, P. H. Fang holds that Lijiang was brought alive to the West less by Rock than by Goullart and Pound. To him Goullart's and Pound's Lijiang is more palpable and joyful than Rock's. After reading Forgotten Kingdom he wrote to Goullart to say how grateful he was for the ''obvious affection'' shown there for his native land. For Pound's efforts to turn Rock's ''limited resources'' into poetry, Fang was similarly full of admiration. In December 1958, after reading the Naxi cantos of Thrones, he got so thrilled that he wrote: ''I wish more cantos from you will resurrect ? ? [Lijiang], after the Revolution [of 1911], Republic, the People's Republic, Commune etc. '' (Letter 164). A year later he sent Pound another card, stating ''my beloved country and my beloved village will be immortalized through your pen and your words'' (Letter 166). By then Pound had stopped communicating with the outside world. Nonetheless, his dialogue with the native from Lijiang was destined to endure. The memorable Naxi passages in the final cantos should be viewed as his responses to P. H. Fang's appreciative greetings (see Fig. 10. 4).
? Fig. 10. 1. ''By the temple pool, Lung Wang's / the clear discourse / as Jade stream'' (Canto 112) (P. H. Fang)
? Fig. 10. 2. P. H. and Josephine Fang with Zhaoming Qian, 2003.
? Fig. 10. 3. EP's note to P. H. Fang. (P. H. Fang)
? Fig. 10. 4. The Fangs to EP and DP, 1959. (Brunnenburg)
Greetings
From Our House to Your House . . .
p. h. fang and naxi rites in the cantos 203
161 The Fangs to EP and DP (ACS; Beinecke) [Washington, DC]
[signed] The Fangs ? ? ? ?
162 EP to P. H. Fang (ALS-2; PHF)
Dear Fang
I have found your Muen Bpo & KA MA gyu in my luggage. Are you in a
hurry or do you merely want to know they are safe.
Sorry for confusion. Greetings to G. Giov[annini]. & La Dr[ie`re]. auguri [best
wishes] for the most recent edition of the Fang.
Cordially [signed] E Pound
G. Giov[annini]. : Giovanni Giovannini (1906-85), professor of English at the Catholic University of America. His notes relating to visits with EP, 1952-56 are kept at the Lilly Library.
La Dr[ie`re]. : see Letter 75 n.
163 EP to P. H. Fang (ANS; PHF)
Sorry the
binder has omitted Rock's dedication to Fang.
Ez Pound
[Brunnenburg] [Italy] Aug. 1958
[December] 1957
[Brunnenburg] [Italy] 15 July [1958]
204 p. h. fang and naxi rites in the cantos
164 P. H. Fang to EP (ACS; Lilly)
[Washington, DC]
[January] 1959
Dear Poet,
Thank you for these books you sent back and the beautiful binding with your
precious signature.
Is the design of ? ? [hexagrams] in this greeting card appropriate?
I wish more cantos from you will resurrect ? ? [Lijiang], after the
Revolution [of 1911], Republic, People's Republic, Commune etc. Please let us hear from you!
Merry Christmas & Happy New Year
Paul, Josefine Paula, David, Maria, Anna, Peter, John-Michael Fang
165 EP to P. H. Fang (TLS-1; PHF)
Dear Mr Fang
I have at last got hold of Rock's ''Ancient Kingdom'' with its fine photographs. Have you his Vienna address?
Can you urge him to contact the Forschungsinstitut in Frankfurt?
The widow Frobenius is a friend, and my name useful there.
also can he stop at my daughters.
Mary de Rachewiltz, Schloss Brunnenburg-Tirolo
MERANO Italy,
My son in law is doing nicely in Egyptology, and should be useful in contacts
in Rome. Not that Rock needs them. BUT the more we correlate the better. Goullart's book is very lively. You could also ask Rock about Goullart who
stayed with him in Li-Chiang.
cordially yours E.
Pound
[signed] EP
The widow Frobenius: see Glossary on Frobenius, Leo.
Goullart's book: Forgotten Kingdom (London: Murray, 1955) by Peter Goullart of Belarus, who lived in
Lijiang from 1939 to 1947. Goullart and EP corresponded in 1958-9 (Beinecke).
[Rapallo] [Italy] 25 Ag [1959]
p. h. fang and naxi rites in the cantos 205
166 P. H. Fang to EP (ACS; Brunnenburg) [Washington, DC]
[December] 1959 We followed your work with gratitude: my beloved country and my beloved
village will be immortalized through your pen and your words.
[signed] ? ? ?
This page intentionally left blank
Appendix
Ezra Pound's Typescript
for ''Preliminary Survey'' (1951)
Understanding of the Chinese language has been perhaps retarded by the assumption that because the ideogramic signs do not inflect, the spoken language, which children are said to acquire so much more readily than their <foreign> elders, is not inflected.
It is however permitted us to speculate whether the <early> creators and inscribers did not behave rather as we do when speech is not quite precise enough, that is when we add a map or a diagram to make a more exact communication.
It is even permitted us to suppose that the original chinese speech was not only inflected but also agglutinative. Enlightened speculation would make use of Leo Frobenius' ''Child- hood of Man'' (1909, Lippencott, translated by A. H. Keane, late v. p. of the Anthropological Society of Gt Britain); of Fenollosa's notes and of Bernhard Karlgren's examination of early oracle bones, this last <as control and> to keep the follower of Fenollosa from becoming too wildly fanciful. 1 The Frobenius will be more illuminating to those who know also his later Erlebte Erdteile Bd/ 7, Frankfurter Societats Druckerei, Frankfurt, a/M 1927. 2 But on the supposition that the <spoken> language might be both inflected and agglutinative let us try to put ourselves in the place of a primitive man in the animalistic era. He wished to make the least sound possible, the sounds least likely to startle his game. 64 out of the 466 sounds in Mr O. Z. Tsang's dictionary begin with ch, the commonest bird sound. 3
If we were presented with all the forms of the greek verb lambano, listed as separate words, and indicated by pictures of the various possible subjects of the verb, greek wd/ be even more discouraging to beginners. Neither is it necessary to assume that the primitive mind uses just our kind of category. Years ago in studying the Japanese Noh it became appeared that the authors had categories of their own, not ours; hence the suggestion that the graph ''tree'' plus ''each'' [? ]4 might be translated ''organic category. ''
1
See Leo Frobenius, Childhood of Man, trans. A. H. Keane (London: Seeley & Company Limited, 1909); Fenollosa/Pound, The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry: A Critical Edition, ed. Haun Saussy et al. (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008); Dictionary of Old and Middle Chinese: Bernhard Karlgren's Grammata serica recensa alphabetically arranged, ed. Tor Ulving (Go ? teborg: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis, 1997).
2
Leo Frobenius, Erlebte Erdteile (Parts of the Earth Experienced), 7 vols. (Frankfurt: Frankfurter Societa ? ts-Druckerei, 1925-9).
3 4
Going through Pound's manuscript in 1951 Achilles Fang inserted about half of the characters surveyed. They are placed within square brackets.
O. Z. Tsang, A Complete Chinese-English Dictionary (Shanghai: Lin Nan Middle School, 1920).
208 appendix: ''preliminary survey''(1951)
Let us grant that Karlgren is right in saying that spoken chinese preceded the ideogram. This wd/ have little effect on a translation of the ODES composed long after the ideogramic system had developed but it wd/ have definite bearing of the formation of chinese speech. Again, standing beside the hunter, he is not greatly concerned with the sex of the game. He calls his companion's attention to it, and the companion can observe whether it be single or plural, but verb can inflect, and the so mysterious chinese pronouns may also inflect in indication of its <the object's> position, its farness or nearness.
Let us again approach our 64 ch sounds
chu, chueh ch'i chi chih ching chiang cheng chung chiung
We know that King Wan gave great attention to choosing his CHIH ? , and a struggle
toward an exact philosophic terminology will have led us to consider this the point of rest, the centrum circoli of Dante's vision in the Vita Nuova. 5
The chih whether we write it with the hitching post sign or with the leaf bursting from the branch is undoubtedly ON the spot. Despite exceptions a good many ch sounds can be read as indicative of place or of motion.
The ideogram is uninflected, yes, and it shows what need not be shown to the companion in the forest, that is, whether an altar or a tool or a grass shoot is being prepared or approaching, with chueh or chieh.
The chung is the middle in profundity, the weight drawing to the centre.
The careful reader will want fuller examples, which I shall try to give without prejudice, having first indicated a few more general suggestions.
yu ? toward or approaching, yu grasped
yuan, the yon at rest, yih the wilderness beyond it.
For agglutinative suggestions we may begin with ang up, iang down from above, ao
possibly high ung possibly weight. I am for the moment neglecting the question of tone, as it happens by chance to be omitted from Mr Tsang's excellent dictionary. It never yet did a problem any harm to have it approached from a different angle. The root problem will be whether tone functions as inflection or as a clear distinction between quite different concepts, or with nuances or both. (as for example Li strength, and Li measure, the latter including i rectitude)
A certain number of ''an'' certainly agglutinate into words implying tranquility. Further examination will show how much is related and how much fortuitous.
The mysterious WEI might seem to have no common fount for its fifty meanings, but starting from a root picture of leather most of these meanings can be found in association with either the thong or the curtain, or to have leathery qualities. Eighteen KO (leather) ideograms are on the contrary, with two exceptions, apparently heteroclite.
Starting in the midst of the CH sounds we find
CHAO out of 20 we have six knives (let us say bright knife blades) 2 claws and one lance. Chao, omen (dots separated by something listed as legs rad/ not under pa); summon
(cutting voice)
ideogram chao or hua, search, paddle, to oar; beckon (hand plus knife-blade voice)
bright (sun blade); dawn (whence ch'ao court, a. m. attendance at court etc. ) enlighten, etc. fiery gla[n]ce, summons.
5
Cf. Confucius, 232: ''There is no more important technical term in the Confucian philosophy than this chih (3) the hitching post, position, place one is in, and works from. ''
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? appendix: ''preliminary survey''(1951) 209
claws: bamboo claw, a skimmer or ladle.
basket for catching fish (to claw fish, seems unlikely, and the sign is more probably
allied to cho or chao to cover).
first, begin[n]ing, Chu (or chao) clear, bright.
announcer, edict
hasten to visit, pierce.
We have clear indication of the root meaning to cut, and slight possibility of
combination with AO (to examine later) in CH'AO
eleven rather uninteresting ideograms, 4 containing shao (few) and three nest. Nest
with knife, attack; idem with strength, toil at, fag; quarrel; ridicule (court voice); seize, take ladle out (vide chao, ladle) fray, slight epidemic, ch'ao or chao paper money.
TEN CH'E^N circumflex
1. [? ] dust, stirring of earth beneath the deer's feet
2. [? ] dawn
3. [? ] coffin, especially the inner one
4. [? ] stare scornfully, glare
5. [? ]ministerofstate(pictoriallythebigeye,sonorously? the''bignoise'')
6. [? ] large clam, a sacrificial vessel
7. [? ] inner garments, lie beneath, give alms, patronize. The congeries
clear in the pictogram, dress and relatives or affection.
8. [? ] avail one's self, take advantage, follow, GO TO MAEKET
9. [? ] a day, a time, 7 to 9 a. m. , 5th of the 12 stems, third moon, seasonable
animals
10. [? ] (printed chen in text) arrange, set in order, spread out. I shd/ say
rather SHAKE into order. And the old stale, that which needs to be shaken.
The pictorial link is <radical> sign 9 which appears in the composition in 2, and in 6, sacrificial vessel, as well as in Chen (not circumflex) pregnant, in che^n [? ] circumflex rouse, idem 22 rich, wealthy, give [? ], and under the cloud rad/ in the SHAKE sign, [? ]
Which brings us again to our CHENG focus.
CHENG, CHE^NG, and CHING
Let us break the alphabetic order to look at <the> two very interesting CHENG
ideograms. The better known (to perfect, bring to focus) shows the sun's lance coming to rest on the precise spot. The other a mouth over the mysterious jen (gen) ninth of the ten divining stems in no case to be mistaken for the similar sign meaning a king. T. lists a ''Six Jen'' as a book of magic regarding the lucky stars.
We have, in the sound, locative CH verb in its intensive form. The graph is fruit not of the animalistic era but sabic, our precursors have passed from the realm of magic to that astrologic observation we may as well say astronomic. There can be <no> hesitation in admitting that CHENG has to do with motion.
CHE^NG with e^ circumflex
The best known ideograms are: [? ] to correct, govern, reality lawful regular (chih rad/) 10th in T's list
[? ] GOVERNMENT, to rule, chih in composition with going along radical. 8th in T's list.
? ? appendix: ''preliminary survey''(1951)
And for clarity we will number the rest.
1. [? ] an assistant
2. [? ] to ride, take advantage of opportunity
3. [? ] spy out the attentive man looking at che^n (inquire) the great
ideogram from the Book of Changes translated by Z. D. Sung, firm and
correct, to have a shell and a direction. 6
4. [? ] attack, invade, levy taxes
5. [? ] summon, testify, prove, enlist, proof, evidence
6. [? ] rescue, aid by hand (watch the ideograms which contain the aid
component)
7. [? ] get free from, make an effort
9. [? ] the common orange
11. [? ] with the water rad/, clear, limpid, settle
12. [? ] fire rad/ vapor, distill, bring forward, multitude mist, a prince, to
decoct, bring forward. A confusing lot until one gets to the root of the picture: the WINTER SACRIFICE, which includes the sign (no. 1. ) for an assistant)
13. [? ]tocontest,wrangle,quarrel(thisideogramisincludedin7,14,16,17, and 20) I suspect someone's ear was unattentive at some moment during the past 5000 years, and that there is a pull from ANG (up)
14. [? ] a fabulous leopard with five tails and a horn.
15. [? ] chronic malady
16. [? ] look angrily, open the eye
17. [? ] harpsichord, a kite (? ang), an aerial harp fixed to a kite.
18. [? ] To steam, boil, vapor, hemp torches, all, numerous, you have
guessed that this grass head ideogram contains ''winter sacrifice. ''
19. [? ] SINCERITY, the perfect word, the sun coming to rest on the precise
spot verbally.
20. [? ] To remonstrate (word and contest)
21. [? ] witness, evidence. Word and sacrificial dish as found in teng (com-
plete, record)
22. [? ] plain, prairie, a feudal state under Chou.
CHIEH [? ]. to lie between, assist, good.
I think we have here CH, one, two, that is the IEH equals erh, sequence, increase,
with the hand root using both, and the limit meaning from the idea of sequence the verbal idea of place
CH, i, erh.
CH'IEH
The same, with perhaps greater emphasis on the ONE, TWO, idea, whether to
separate or to put together. In both the united and divided forms, the same concepts, water penetrating between, comb sequence, eyelashed on-to'd.
6
210
Z.
Early in 1953 Professor Giovannini took P. H. Fang to Pound at St Elizabeths Hospital. The American poet, Giovannini told Fang, had translated Li Bo's poems and Confucius' Analects. P. H. Fang was impressed. In the next five or more years he and Josephine (officially spelt that way in the US) visited Pound countless times. More than once or twice they took their daughter Paula and son David with them. On Pound's birthdays Josephine would make a kind of cake she knew Pound was fond of and it was usually Paula who would carry it to where the Pounds received their visitors. In a letter of 6 January 1959 Dorothy Pound wrote of one such visit: ''Paula may remember bringing EP his birthday cake at St. E's'' (Beinecke).
The Fangs' visits coincided with the moment Pound was trying to bring out an edition of the Confucian Odes with a Chinese seal text and a sound key. With a visitor from China, naturally he would talk endlessly about Confucius, Fenollosa, and Fenollosa's essay on ''The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry. '' One day, when Pound began quoting Fenollosa and marveling at the Chinese character again, P. H. Fang surprised Pound by remarking that the scholar-priests of his hometown still used primitive picto- graphs. This was the first time he told Pound that he was from Lijiang on the borders of Tibet. Lijiang was the center of the ancient Naxi kingdom, which flourished from the eighth to the eighteenth centuries. Its landscape, along with a unique culture, had fascinated Rock and Goullart. And it would soon surface in Pound's new cantos in Thrones and Drafts and Fragments:
at Li Chiang, the snow range,
a wide meadow (Canto 101/746)
By the temple pool, Lung Wang's
the clear discourse
as Jade stream (Canto 112/804)
198 p. h. fang and naxi rites in the cantos
The ''earthly paradise'' over Lijiang is real, Fang testifies. Starting from 1973 he has been returning to his hometown regularly. The ''snow range'' remains as majestic and serene as it has ever been; and so do ''the temple pool'' and the ''Jade stream'' (see Fig. 10. 1). Fang is too modest to consider his role as important, but his visits to St Elizabeths served to open Pound's eyes to a China not only beyond the Chinas of De Mailla and Legge but also beyond those of Carsun Chang and Achilles Fang, resulting in a new direction in the late cantos.
From that point on, whenever P. H. Fang showed up, Pound would ask him to draw a few Naxi pictographs and teach him how to pronounce them. Among the dozen or more Naxi pictographs Fang drew for Pound were those for the ''sun'' and the ''moon. '' In Canto 112 Pound reproduces two Naxi pictographs, one for ''fate's tray'' or, as Rock puts it, ''a large winnowing tray made of the small bamboo,'' embodying ''a fate, a life,'' and the other for the ''moon'' (see Canto 112/805). Although both pictographs occur in Rock's ''2K'a-2ma ? -1gyu-3mi-2gkyi'' and ''2Muan 1Bpo ? ,'' it is safe to assume that Pound had learned the Naxi sign for the moon first from P. H. Fang.
On those early visits to St Elizabeths, P. H. Fang spent no less time chatting with Pound about his people's strange ceremonies--2Muan 1Bpo ? (Sacrifice to Heaven) and 2Ndaw 1Bpo ? (Sacrifice to Earth). He must have prepared Pound for Rock's accounts of these Naxi rituals. 2Muan 1Bpo ? subsequently found its way into Canto 98 and 2Ndaw 1Bpo ? into Canto 112.
In late 1953, with a Ph. D. in hand Fang moved to Dresher (near Philadelphia) to take a job at Philco. In 1954 Rock paid Fang a visit on a trip to the East Coast from Hawaii, where he was a research professor. He had been a friend of Fang's parents. When in Lijiang during the 1920s and 1930s, the botanist had borrowed sums of local silver dollars from the elder Fang, which he had chosen to pay back in the early 1950s by sending checks of American dollars to P. H. Fang at the Catholic University. Before departure on his 1954 visit, Rock took out two of his monographs--''2K'a-2ma ? -1gyu- 3mi-2gkyi'' and ''2Muan 1Bpo ? ''--and inscribed them to P. H. Fang. Believing that these papers would answer most of Pound's queries about the Naxi script and rites, Fang sent them to St Elizabeths through Giovannini.
In early 1956 Fang moved back to DC to start on a research job at Catholic University. When he resumed his visits to St Elizabeths, Pound would keep him longer for his Naxi lessons. He would pick a word here and a word there from ''2K'a-2ma ? -1gyu-3mi-2gkyi'' or ''2Muan 1Bpo ? '' and ask P. H. Fang to pronounce them and explain their meanings. P. H. Fang's copy of ''2K'a-2ma ? -1gyu-3mi-2gkyi'' bears some of his glosses and corrections for Pound. On page 9, for instance, above the phonetic symbol ''1Yu-'' is the English word ''sheep'' in Fang's hand. From the Naxi pictograph for ''shepherd,'' a figure with a sheep's head, Pound could have guessed what ''1Yu-'' in Rock's ''1Yu-boy'' meant. P. H. Fang's gloss points to Pound's insistence on making certain what each part of a Naxi compound signified. In describing the pronunciation of the
p. h. fang and naxi rites in the cantos 199
Naxi word for ''cuckoo,'' Rock states that ''The word 3gkye-2bpu is the most difficult to pronounce. '' Next to this is given in Fang's hand ''eng geek. '' No doubt, it was at Pound's urging that Fang facilitated the ''unpronounceable'' word. On that same page, Fang corrects a mistake in Rock's description of the Naxi pictograph for ''three months of spring. '' His copy shows that ''four'' in ''four horizontal lines'' is crossed out and changed to ''3. '' Going through Rock's monographs with Pound, P. H. Fang must have facilitated far more unpro- nounceable words and corrected far more inaccuracies than those that have been recorded.
To this day, P. H. Fang holds that Lijiang was brought alive to the West less by Rock than by Goullart and Pound. To him Goullart's and Pound's Lijiang is more palpable and joyful than Rock's. After reading Forgotten Kingdom he wrote to Goullart to say how grateful he was for the ''obvious affection'' shown there for his native land. For Pound's efforts to turn Rock's ''limited resources'' into poetry, Fang was similarly full of admiration. In December 1958, after reading the Naxi cantos of Thrones, he got so thrilled that he wrote: ''I wish more cantos from you will resurrect ? ? [Lijiang], after the Revolution [of 1911], Republic, the People's Republic, Commune etc. '' (Letter 164). A year later he sent Pound another card, stating ''my beloved country and my beloved village will be immortalized through your pen and your words'' (Letter 166). By then Pound had stopped communicating with the outside world. Nonetheless, his dialogue with the native from Lijiang was destined to endure. The memorable Naxi passages in the final cantos should be viewed as his responses to P. H. Fang's appreciative greetings (see Fig. 10. 4).
? Fig. 10. 1. ''By the temple pool, Lung Wang's / the clear discourse / as Jade stream'' (Canto 112) (P. H. Fang)
? Fig. 10. 2. P. H. and Josephine Fang with Zhaoming Qian, 2003.
? Fig. 10. 3. EP's note to P. H. Fang. (P. H. Fang)
? Fig. 10. 4. The Fangs to EP and DP, 1959. (Brunnenburg)
Greetings
From Our House to Your House . . .
p. h. fang and naxi rites in the cantos 203
161 The Fangs to EP and DP (ACS; Beinecke) [Washington, DC]
[signed] The Fangs ? ? ? ?
162 EP to P. H. Fang (ALS-2; PHF)
Dear Fang
I have found your Muen Bpo & KA MA gyu in my luggage. Are you in a
hurry or do you merely want to know they are safe.
Sorry for confusion. Greetings to G. Giov[annini]. & La Dr[ie`re]. auguri [best
wishes] for the most recent edition of the Fang.
Cordially [signed] E Pound
G. Giov[annini]. : Giovanni Giovannini (1906-85), professor of English at the Catholic University of America. His notes relating to visits with EP, 1952-56 are kept at the Lilly Library.
La Dr[ie`re]. : see Letter 75 n.
163 EP to P. H. Fang (ANS; PHF)
Sorry the
binder has omitted Rock's dedication to Fang.
Ez Pound
[Brunnenburg] [Italy] Aug. 1958
[December] 1957
[Brunnenburg] [Italy] 15 July [1958]
204 p. h. fang and naxi rites in the cantos
164 P. H. Fang to EP (ACS; Lilly)
[Washington, DC]
[January] 1959
Dear Poet,
Thank you for these books you sent back and the beautiful binding with your
precious signature.
Is the design of ? ? [hexagrams] in this greeting card appropriate?
I wish more cantos from you will resurrect ? ? [Lijiang], after the
Revolution [of 1911], Republic, People's Republic, Commune etc. Please let us hear from you!
Merry Christmas & Happy New Year
Paul, Josefine Paula, David, Maria, Anna, Peter, John-Michael Fang
165 EP to P. H. Fang (TLS-1; PHF)
Dear Mr Fang
I have at last got hold of Rock's ''Ancient Kingdom'' with its fine photographs. Have you his Vienna address?
Can you urge him to contact the Forschungsinstitut in Frankfurt?
The widow Frobenius is a friend, and my name useful there.
also can he stop at my daughters.
Mary de Rachewiltz, Schloss Brunnenburg-Tirolo
MERANO Italy,
My son in law is doing nicely in Egyptology, and should be useful in contacts
in Rome. Not that Rock needs them. BUT the more we correlate the better. Goullart's book is very lively. You could also ask Rock about Goullart who
stayed with him in Li-Chiang.
cordially yours E.
Pound
[signed] EP
The widow Frobenius: see Glossary on Frobenius, Leo.
Goullart's book: Forgotten Kingdom (London: Murray, 1955) by Peter Goullart of Belarus, who lived in
Lijiang from 1939 to 1947. Goullart and EP corresponded in 1958-9 (Beinecke).
[Rapallo] [Italy] 25 Ag [1959]
p. h. fang and naxi rites in the cantos 205
166 P. H. Fang to EP (ACS; Brunnenburg) [Washington, DC]
[December] 1959 We followed your work with gratitude: my beloved country and my beloved
village will be immortalized through your pen and your words.
[signed] ? ? ?
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Appendix
Ezra Pound's Typescript
for ''Preliminary Survey'' (1951)
Understanding of the Chinese language has been perhaps retarded by the assumption that because the ideogramic signs do not inflect, the spoken language, which children are said to acquire so much more readily than their <foreign> elders, is not inflected.
It is however permitted us to speculate whether the <early> creators and inscribers did not behave rather as we do when speech is not quite precise enough, that is when we add a map or a diagram to make a more exact communication.
It is even permitted us to suppose that the original chinese speech was not only inflected but also agglutinative. Enlightened speculation would make use of Leo Frobenius' ''Child- hood of Man'' (1909, Lippencott, translated by A. H. Keane, late v. p. of the Anthropological Society of Gt Britain); of Fenollosa's notes and of Bernhard Karlgren's examination of early oracle bones, this last <as control and> to keep the follower of Fenollosa from becoming too wildly fanciful. 1 The Frobenius will be more illuminating to those who know also his later Erlebte Erdteile Bd/ 7, Frankfurter Societats Druckerei, Frankfurt, a/M 1927. 2 But on the supposition that the <spoken> language might be both inflected and agglutinative let us try to put ourselves in the place of a primitive man in the animalistic era. He wished to make the least sound possible, the sounds least likely to startle his game. 64 out of the 466 sounds in Mr O. Z. Tsang's dictionary begin with ch, the commonest bird sound. 3
If we were presented with all the forms of the greek verb lambano, listed as separate words, and indicated by pictures of the various possible subjects of the verb, greek wd/ be even more discouraging to beginners. Neither is it necessary to assume that the primitive mind uses just our kind of category. Years ago in studying the Japanese Noh it became appeared that the authors had categories of their own, not ours; hence the suggestion that the graph ''tree'' plus ''each'' [? ]4 might be translated ''organic category. ''
1
See Leo Frobenius, Childhood of Man, trans. A. H. Keane (London: Seeley & Company Limited, 1909); Fenollosa/Pound, The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry: A Critical Edition, ed. Haun Saussy et al. (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008); Dictionary of Old and Middle Chinese: Bernhard Karlgren's Grammata serica recensa alphabetically arranged, ed. Tor Ulving (Go ? teborg: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis, 1997).
2
Leo Frobenius, Erlebte Erdteile (Parts of the Earth Experienced), 7 vols. (Frankfurt: Frankfurter Societa ? ts-Druckerei, 1925-9).
3 4
Going through Pound's manuscript in 1951 Achilles Fang inserted about half of the characters surveyed. They are placed within square brackets.
O. Z. Tsang, A Complete Chinese-English Dictionary (Shanghai: Lin Nan Middle School, 1920).
208 appendix: ''preliminary survey''(1951)
Let us grant that Karlgren is right in saying that spoken chinese preceded the ideogram. This wd/ have little effect on a translation of the ODES composed long after the ideogramic system had developed but it wd/ have definite bearing of the formation of chinese speech. Again, standing beside the hunter, he is not greatly concerned with the sex of the game. He calls his companion's attention to it, and the companion can observe whether it be single or plural, but verb can inflect, and the so mysterious chinese pronouns may also inflect in indication of its <the object's> position, its farness or nearness.
Let us again approach our 64 ch sounds
chu, chueh ch'i chi chih ching chiang cheng chung chiung
We know that King Wan gave great attention to choosing his CHIH ? , and a struggle
toward an exact philosophic terminology will have led us to consider this the point of rest, the centrum circoli of Dante's vision in the Vita Nuova. 5
The chih whether we write it with the hitching post sign or with the leaf bursting from the branch is undoubtedly ON the spot. Despite exceptions a good many ch sounds can be read as indicative of place or of motion.
The ideogram is uninflected, yes, and it shows what need not be shown to the companion in the forest, that is, whether an altar or a tool or a grass shoot is being prepared or approaching, with chueh or chieh.
The chung is the middle in profundity, the weight drawing to the centre.
The careful reader will want fuller examples, which I shall try to give without prejudice, having first indicated a few more general suggestions.
yu ? toward or approaching, yu grasped
yuan, the yon at rest, yih the wilderness beyond it.
For agglutinative suggestions we may begin with ang up, iang down from above, ao
possibly high ung possibly weight. I am for the moment neglecting the question of tone, as it happens by chance to be omitted from Mr Tsang's excellent dictionary. It never yet did a problem any harm to have it approached from a different angle. The root problem will be whether tone functions as inflection or as a clear distinction between quite different concepts, or with nuances or both. (as for example Li strength, and Li measure, the latter including i rectitude)
A certain number of ''an'' certainly agglutinate into words implying tranquility. Further examination will show how much is related and how much fortuitous.
The mysterious WEI might seem to have no common fount for its fifty meanings, but starting from a root picture of leather most of these meanings can be found in association with either the thong or the curtain, or to have leathery qualities. Eighteen KO (leather) ideograms are on the contrary, with two exceptions, apparently heteroclite.
Starting in the midst of the CH sounds we find
CHAO out of 20 we have six knives (let us say bright knife blades) 2 claws and one lance. Chao, omen (dots separated by something listed as legs rad/ not under pa); summon
(cutting voice)
ideogram chao or hua, search, paddle, to oar; beckon (hand plus knife-blade voice)
bright (sun blade); dawn (whence ch'ao court, a. m. attendance at court etc. ) enlighten, etc. fiery gla[n]ce, summons.
5
Cf. Confucius, 232: ''There is no more important technical term in the Confucian philosophy than this chih (3) the hitching post, position, place one is in, and works from. ''
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? appendix: ''preliminary survey''(1951) 209
claws: bamboo claw, a skimmer or ladle.
basket for catching fish (to claw fish, seems unlikely, and the sign is more probably
allied to cho or chao to cover).
first, begin[n]ing, Chu (or chao) clear, bright.
announcer, edict
hasten to visit, pierce.
We have clear indication of the root meaning to cut, and slight possibility of
combination with AO (to examine later) in CH'AO
eleven rather uninteresting ideograms, 4 containing shao (few) and three nest. Nest
with knife, attack; idem with strength, toil at, fag; quarrel; ridicule (court voice); seize, take ladle out (vide chao, ladle) fray, slight epidemic, ch'ao or chao paper money.
TEN CH'E^N circumflex
1. [? ] dust, stirring of earth beneath the deer's feet
2. [? ] dawn
3. [? ] coffin, especially the inner one
4. [? ] stare scornfully, glare
5. [? ]ministerofstate(pictoriallythebigeye,sonorously? the''bignoise'')
6. [? ] large clam, a sacrificial vessel
7. [? ] inner garments, lie beneath, give alms, patronize. The congeries
clear in the pictogram, dress and relatives or affection.
8. [? ] avail one's self, take advantage, follow, GO TO MAEKET
9. [? ] a day, a time, 7 to 9 a. m. , 5th of the 12 stems, third moon, seasonable
animals
10. [? ] (printed chen in text) arrange, set in order, spread out. I shd/ say
rather SHAKE into order. And the old stale, that which needs to be shaken.
The pictorial link is <radical> sign 9 which appears in the composition in 2, and in 6, sacrificial vessel, as well as in Chen (not circumflex) pregnant, in che^n [? ] circumflex rouse, idem 22 rich, wealthy, give [? ], and under the cloud rad/ in the SHAKE sign, [? ]
Which brings us again to our CHENG focus.
CHENG, CHE^NG, and CHING
Let us break the alphabetic order to look at <the> two very interesting CHENG
ideograms. The better known (to perfect, bring to focus) shows the sun's lance coming to rest on the precise spot. The other a mouth over the mysterious jen (gen) ninth of the ten divining stems in no case to be mistaken for the similar sign meaning a king. T. lists a ''Six Jen'' as a book of magic regarding the lucky stars.
We have, in the sound, locative CH verb in its intensive form. The graph is fruit not of the animalistic era but sabic, our precursors have passed from the realm of magic to that astrologic observation we may as well say astronomic. There can be <no> hesitation in admitting that CHENG has to do with motion.
CHE^NG with e^ circumflex
The best known ideograms are: [? ] to correct, govern, reality lawful regular (chih rad/) 10th in T's list
[? ] GOVERNMENT, to rule, chih in composition with going along radical. 8th in T's list.
? ? appendix: ''preliminary survey''(1951)
And for clarity we will number the rest.
1. [? ] an assistant
2. [? ] to ride, take advantage of opportunity
3. [? ] spy out the attentive man looking at che^n (inquire) the great
ideogram from the Book of Changes translated by Z. D. Sung, firm and
correct, to have a shell and a direction. 6
4. [? ] attack, invade, levy taxes
5. [? ] summon, testify, prove, enlist, proof, evidence
6. [? ] rescue, aid by hand (watch the ideograms which contain the aid
component)
7. [? ] get free from, make an effort
9. [? ] the common orange
11. [? ] with the water rad/, clear, limpid, settle
12. [? ] fire rad/ vapor, distill, bring forward, multitude mist, a prince, to
decoct, bring forward. A confusing lot until one gets to the root of the picture: the WINTER SACRIFICE, which includes the sign (no. 1. ) for an assistant)
13. [? ]tocontest,wrangle,quarrel(thisideogramisincludedin7,14,16,17, and 20) I suspect someone's ear was unattentive at some moment during the past 5000 years, and that there is a pull from ANG (up)
14. [? ] a fabulous leopard with five tails and a horn.
15. [? ] chronic malady
16. [? ] look angrily, open the eye
17. [? ] harpsichord, a kite (? ang), an aerial harp fixed to a kite.
18. [? ] To steam, boil, vapor, hemp torches, all, numerous, you have
guessed that this grass head ideogram contains ''winter sacrifice. ''
19. [? ] SINCERITY, the perfect word, the sun coming to rest on the precise
spot verbally.
20. [? ] To remonstrate (word and contest)
21. [? ] witness, evidence. Word and sacrificial dish as found in teng (com-
plete, record)
22. [? ] plain, prairie, a feudal state under Chou.
CHIEH [? ]. to lie between, assist, good.
I think we have here CH, one, two, that is the IEH equals erh, sequence, increase,
with the hand root using both, and the limit meaning from the idea of sequence the verbal idea of place
CH, i, erh.
CH'IEH
The same, with perhaps greater emphasis on the ONE, TWO, idea, whether to
separate or to put together. In both the united and divided forms, the same concepts, water penetrating between, comb sequence, eyelashed on-to'd.
6
210
Z.
