No More Learning

How this affected his thought, writing and broadcasting would be worth serious investigation. Further information on Kitasono is available in Kikyo Sasaki, Katue Kitasono and Modernist Magazines (Tokyo: Press Biblioman, 1981) and Yasuo Fujitomi, Katue Kitasono: A Biographical Study (Tokyo: Yuseido, 1983); see also Plastic Poems: Kitasono Katue and the VOU Group (Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, 1986). [The publication of John Solt's study of Kitasono is eagerly awaited. ]
? SECTIONII: 1936-66
27
31: Katue Kiiasono to Ezra Pound
TLS-2 No. 1649, Nishi 1-chome, Magomemachi, Omori-ku, Tokio. Japan. 26 April 1936
Dear Sir,
You will please excuse me that I take the liberty of writing you. For a long time, since Imagism movement, we have always expected you as a leader on new literature. Especially your profound appreciation in the Chinese literature and the Japanese literature has greatly pleased us.
Last year, we established "VOU Club" and have continued our lively strife for the newest art. Now the existence of our group has come to be attentively watched by the younger generations of this country.
We started from Dada and passed Surrealism. And at present we are connected with no "-ism" of Europe. Under the close influence of contem- porary architecture and technology, we are making progress in our theory on art and are forming a characteristic form of ourselves.
"VOU Club" consists of poets, artists, composers, architects and tech- nologists. The members are now twenty one, two-third of them being poets. I send you two copies of our review VOU under separate cover. I shall be very much obliged if you will kindly make some ideas of our group by
them.
Hoping you will receive this letter as soon as possible.
I remain. Yours truly, Katue Kitasono
32: Ezra Pound to Katue Kitasono
TLS-2 On stationery imprinted: Anno XIV 1936, Via Marsala 12-5, Rapallo, with Gaudier-Brzeska profile head. 24 May 1936
Dear Mr Katue
Thank you for your friendly letter of April 26. YoumustnotrunawaywiththeideathatI reallyknowenoughto
read Japanese, or that I can do more than spell out ideograms very slow- ly with a dictionary.
I had all Fenollosa's notes, and the results of what he had learned from Umewaka Minoru, Dr. Mori. Dr. Ariga. But since Tami Koume was
? 28 SECTIONII: 1936-66
killed in that earth quake I have had no one to explain the obscure pas- sages or fill up the enormous gaps of my ignorance.
Had Tami lived I might have come to Tokio. It is one thing to live on the sea coast and another to have traveling expenses.
Your magazine will, I suppose, arrive in due time. Printed matter takes longer than letters.
Your technologists can perhaps follow what people suppose, WRONGLY, to be no fit subject for a poet (despite Dante, Shakespear, and various other excellent writers who have understood why a poet can not neglect ethics, and why an ethic which is afraid of analyzing the motives of actions is very poor sham).
I believe C. H. Douglas' writings are known in Tokio. I wonder whether Gesell is yet known there?
Two things 1 should do before I die, and they are to contrive a better
understanding between the U. S. A. and Japan, and between Italy and
Japan.
And this line of action I should always be glad to discuss with
any traveling student, or any official who came through Rapallo or whom I could meet in Rome or Venice.
Surrealism existed in Italy (though I think the young frenchmen do not in the least know it) in {a. d. ) 1290, and Cavalcanti was certainly sur- realist.
And if (some of) the Noh plays are not surrealist in the best sense, I shd. welcome a statement as to what they shd. be called.
I am sending you my Cavalcanti. I wonder whether my ABC of Reading has yet got to Japan.
May the club, whatever the number of its members, stay 21 years young.
33: Katue Kitasono to Ezra Pound TLS-2 [n. p. ] [17 July 1936]
Dear Mr. E. Pound,
Many thanks for your kindly letter of May 24, and your wonderful work Cavalcanti. They were brought to my Mediterranean blue desk, passing through the garden where smell sweet the white flowers of Gardenia.
very truly yours Ezra Pound
? SECTIONII: 1936-66
29
I cannot do more than spell out Italian very slowly with a dictionary as wellasyoucannotdomorethanonJapanese. ButI hopeyouwouldnever give up your interest and love over Japanese as I should never be desperated of Italian.
It is a great regret that I have no more knowledge of Noh than an ordinary Japanese. I think you have a better appreciation of it than I. ThoughI maynotbeabletobecomeagoodassistant,foryou,likeTami Koume of whom I don't know at all, I should be happy to be of service to you for your study.
I am pleased with your idea of our technologists and a poet. Our technologists follow what people suppose to be no fit subject for a poet, and our poets give up over what people suppose, wrongly, to be a fit subject for a poet.
In Japan, there are very few who know about Mr. C. H. Douglas' writ- ings, and Mr. Gesell is not known here.
I express my respect and gratitude for your great idea to establish a better understanding between Japan and the U. S. A. , and between Japan and Italy. Please let me know any proper method about it if you have.
I will tell your kindly will to any Japanese student or any official who will travel in Italy.
Cavalcanti is known very little in Japan. But through your translation and your interesting essays I could have some idea about this great poet. Your CavaJcanti will lead me to understand the strange and wonderful Mediaevalism in Italy.
I havealreadyreadyourABCofReading,andapoetessofourclubis now reading it, very interested. Surely it is the best pioneer to show young poets their right course to follow.
In the end of May, Mr. Jean Cocteau passed Japan. He was not as a poet, but an ordinary tourist.
I sendyoumypoeticalworkKonwhichmeansanimaginarygigantic fish. I intended, in each poem, to express the classical atmosphere of Tea Ceremony and Zen, the "l'esprit du japon. " I made only one hundred copies to give them to my most intimate friends.
All the members of our club are very happy with your friendship. At present those who live in Tokio signed for you to show their gratitude.
I remain,
Yours very sincerely, Kitasono Katue
? 30 SECTIONII: 1936-66
34: Katue Kitasono to Ezra Pound TLS-1 [n. p. ] 17 July 1936
Dear Mr. Ezra Pound,
We greet you with our deepest thanks for your sending us your beauti- ful book. How glad we were when we saw your splendid work. Mr. Katue Kitasono has shown your friendly letter to all of us.
We, the Japanese younger generation, heartily wish to success in our work, staying always at the twenty-one years old, as you hoped us in your letter.
Thank you again for your present.
Minoru Nakahara Katue Kitasono
Yours truly,
Soko Yoshida Shuichi Nagayasu M. Yasoshima Itiro Isida
35: Ezra Pound to Katue Kitasono ALS-3 Siena. 12 August 1936 [Anno XIV]
Dear Mr Katue And friends.
Shozo Jwamoto Akiko Ema Haruki Sou Takeshi Fuji Chio Nakamura
Thank you for your two letters. I have come here for the Palio, one of the last ceremonies left in Europe--a horse race with banners & memories. And not having a typewriter with me, I shall answer as briefly as possi- ble.
I. Foranunderstanding,thefirstmovestowardcommunication could be to send any traveling friends to me.
II. Let the Japanese legation in Rome have my Rapallo address or ar- range for me to call there when I next go to Rome.
III. Print a few lines of french or english in your magazine giving such news as you want a few european & american poets to get.
Last year Izzo & Camerino of Venice, Bunting then in the Canary Is- lands, Laughlin & Zukofsky in the U. S. , Angold & a welsh scholar in
SECTIONII: 1936-66
31
England thought they could communicate by circular letter about verse technique, all of them knowing several languages, but alas none of them either Japanese or Chinese ideogram. Bunting writes a beautiful hand in Persian.
IV. I remember that Mr. Yeats was invited to Tokyo university some years ago, but I think he declined the invitation.
Since then several English writers have lectured there, but none of them has been a poet of first rank, so far as 1 remember.
This is the only town where I have ever been able to live in a palace with a painted ceiling. With a pine tree and the cornice of a renaissance church under this window.
36: Ezra Pound to Katue Kitasono ALS-4 Siena. [13 August 1936]
Dear Mr Katue
Continuing yesterday's letter.
you will not think me unappreciative of Zen if you see my edition of Noh plays & Tami Koume in 1922 was already dreaming of the in- cidence of Zen in abstract art.
But neither Zen nor Christianity can serve toward international understanding in practical action in the way the Ta Hio of Kung fu Tseu can.
I mean that gives us a basis of ethics & of national action, (patriotic) which does not produce international discord.
Do you know anything of a new international confucianist associa- tion? (I have not the Japanese addresses with me here in Siena. )
To save time I am asking this question (in ink, without waiting to get to a typewriter) to the eleven poets of Tokio. Also note the new phase of Italian fascism (not the externals).
The first fascists consecrated themselves to the regeneration of Italy. The latest developments are
1. Bank reform, (money controlled by the nation not by financial
bandits. )
--
? Cordially. EZRA Pound
? 32
SECTIONII: 1936-66
2. 3.
Wheat law. (just price of wheat. )
This week the raise in wages for several million workers.
The reasons for Italo-Japanese understanding lie deep, (notice even the postage stamp which commemorates the 2000th anniversary of the ro- man poet Horace. )--(Orazio). The span to America may be longer. But Italy can serve as middle.
This I tried to indicate in my Jefferson and/or Mussolini. I will try to keep from writing any more until I get to Venice and a means of being more legible.
Yours
Ezra Pound
37: Katue Kitasono to Ezra Pound
TLS-3 1649 Nishi 1-chome, Magomemachi, Omori, Tokio, Japan. 7 November 1936
Dear Mr. E. Pound,
Excuse me for my long silence since I received your two letters from Siena. 1 have never forgotten you, but it was from two reasons, first that I was too busy in my business at the library of the Nippon Dental College, and secondly that I wanted to introduce you in the best way to the Japanese legation in Rome.
The other day I called Mr. Ken Yanagisawa who is a powerful official of the Department of Foreign Affairs, and he himself an intellectual good poet. He willingly promised me that he would immediately arrange to introduce you to the Japanese legation in Rome. Therefore, the letter of introduction will reach Italy almost at the same time with this letter, and I hope this will come to be an opportunity to you and us Japanese to come nearer with each other.
Has our magazine VOU 13 arrived at you? Following your advice I added certain lines in English, and I want to print some news in English or French hereafter.
It is our sorrow that, as you mentioned in your letter, we have not any foreign poet of first rank in Tokio, and therefore we desire eagerly to communicate with European and American poets, and if possible, to ex- change magazines. Though our ideography and idiom is a great obstruc-
? SECTIONII: 1936-66 33
tion, we will try hard for their appreciating us. Will you please let us know some good magazines of poems?
Very interested, I translated your "Mediaevalism," and published it in our magazine. We shall be very much pleased, if we can have your latest poetical work or some writings for our magazine.
Have you returned from your travel already? What a charm! a painted ceiling, a pine tree, and the cornice of a renaissance church.
Now it is fall in Tokio. The sky is crystalline, blue. The cold wind makes a mosaic of yellow leaves and Ford on the pavement of Ginza.
I am trying to write a poem of steel-like strength by combinating bombard UNKER no. 17 and pendant of Bopoto.
Yours sincerely, Katue Kitasono
38: Ezra Pound to Katue Kitasono
TLS-2 On stationery imprinted: Anno XV 1936, Via Marsala 12-5, Rapallo. with Gaudier-Brzeska profile head. 24 November 1936
Dear Mr Katue
New Directions.
In haste//
I am asking Laughlin to send you his anthology
You might send him the VOU containing "Mediaevalism" marking the page/
also send it to Alberto Carocci, La Riforma Letteraria
via XX Settembre 28
Firenze, Italy
marking the page in red/ and
the cover "vide Cavalcanti"
so that his Italian eye will be awakened to what it is about.
Could you send me a short article in English, giving a paragraph to each of the poets who signed that group letter to me. Saying plainly who they are, one by one, and whether they have common aim, or have signed any very brief manifesto, {also paragraph or so about chief writers not in VOU group)
? 34 SECTIONII: 1936-66
And then the individual differences.
I should also like a couple of poems from each with an english transla- tion, but sending also the ideograms of the original, with a comment on the important ones, so that I could emend or intensify the translation if I saw a way of doing so.
I think I could print such an article and that Laughlin could probably reprint it in his next year's collection.
We could call it Tokio 1937
but the Japanese date should be given first.
Tokio in the . . . . year of . . . . 1937.
as I give the Italian Era Fascista XV and the old style 1936 on my stationery.
This would at least help us (over here) to get better acquainted with VOUtai and who sings or paints.
I am asking W. C. Williams and Laughlin to sign a group greeting from America.
Is an UNKER a junker airplane? {or different kind?
)
from
Ez" Po"
(debased form of Rihaku) Con espressioni di alta stima
39: Ezra Pound to Japanese Ambassador in Rome
TLS-1 Hotel Italia, via Quattro Fontane, Roma. 26 December 1936
His Excellency the Japanese Ambassador, Roma Eccellenza
If a letter from Mr. Ken Yanagisawa has reached Your Ex- cellency, or one of yr/ staff I need only say that I am in Rome and at Your service.
If no such letter has arrived, I should, nevertheless be very glad to meet any member of the Embassy who recollects Umewaka MinoruorErnestFenollosa(whosepapersandstudiesoftheNoh,I have
? SECTIONII: 1936-66 35
done my best to edit) or anyone who is interested in improving the understanding of Japanese cuhure in Europe and America and arranging better methods for mutual cuUural comprehension.
con espressioni di alta stima Ezra Pound
I shall be in Rome at above address until Wednesday the 30th of this month.
40: Ezra Pound to Katue Kitasono
TLS-1 On stationery imprinted: 1937 Anno XV, Via Marsala 12-5, Rapallo, with quotes: "A tax is not a share" and "A nation need not and should not pay rent for its own credit," and griffon design. 1 January 1937
Dear Mr. Kitasono K/ Happy New Year
Thank you for yr/ Xmas greeting.
Please thank Mr. Yanagisawa for his letter to Rome. I came back here yesterday. InRome1 hadathreehourtalkwithMr. HajimeMatsumiya, Councillor of the Embassy. He has done book in English on Japanese poetry, which 1 shall try to have published in England.
I think we got as far as two strangers could get in one interview. Naturally we had too many things to discuss to do anything very thor- oughly. I shall send him my ABC and perhaps he will approve of it as a text book to introduce Japanese students to western literature.
Or perhaps we shd/ work out a bilingual edition? or at least have a Japanese introduction to emphasize certain omissions.
The ABC takes Shakespeare for granted but anyone starting free frompresentWesternschooltrainingmightnotknowthat1 havene- glected certain authors in the ABC because they are already over empha- sized, or obscure other elements.
Will you please call Mr. Yanagisawa's attention to A New American History
by W. E. Woodward,
pub/ Farrar and Rinehart. New York.
This is the first general history {of the U. S. A. ) with the new historic con- sciousness. It wd. be a great joke if you started using it in your schools and giving a better teaching of U. S. history than is given in American schools.
? 36 SECTIONII: 1936-66
The book is just out [not perfect, but contains a great deal of truth not easily available elsewhere in so short a compass).
Cordially Ez Pound
41: Ezra Pound to Katue Kitasono
TLS-1 On stationery imprinted: 1937 Anno XV, Via Marsala 12-5, Rapallo, with quotes: "A tax is not a share" and "A nation need not and should not pay rent for its own credit," and griffon design. 29 January 1937
Dear Mr. Katue
Here is the description of the first television transmission of Suma Genji, from my version based on Fenollosa's notes and study.
You v^ill see that the Dancer enjoyed the play, how^ever
transmuted,
and that at any rate some of the Beauty has been brought over to the Occident.
ever yours Ezra Pound
42: Katue Kitasono to Ezra Pound
TLS-2 1649 Nishi 1-Chome, Magomemachi, Tokio, Japan. 30 January [1937]
Dear Mr. Ezra POUND,
I am very much obliged to you for your two letters of 24 Nov. 1936, 1 Jan. 1937, and sending me your brilliant four books.
By the Active Anthology I can know accurately about the contemporary poets of an activity and further development. I find them also writing actively in the New Directions which Mr. James Laughlin iv sent me by your request.
The critical essays Make it New promise to make me aware of the essential values of European literature.
It is delightful to us Orientals that such splendid books like The Chinese Written Character and Ta Hio were brought out to the world. I am going to write an introductory essay on these books.
? SECTIONII: 1936-66 37
A great excitement and encouragement to us that the English transla- tionofourpoemsmaybeprintedbyyourkindness. I don'tknowhowfarwe can succeed, but we do our best. They will be soon sent to you.
The other day I received from Mr. D. C. Fox Das L/rbiJd, Die Umschau and a pamphlet on Frobenius' Paideuma, the last of them, one of the members of our club is now very interested translating to print in VOU no. 16.
Bopoto is the name of natives living in west Africa. I wrote it without a deep meaning.
Please excuse the misprint of Junker.
I am pleasant to hear of the interview of you and Mr. Hajime Matsumiya in Rome. I don't know Mr. H. Matsumiya at all but I wish his book will be published in England.
Mr. Yanagisawa has gone to Belgique for his new post in the Embassy. I hope you will meet him someday.
As soon as I find a proper person, I will introduce him [to] A New American History.
I think in Japan those who read the ABC oj Reading have already got the outline of the Western literature, and they cannot misunderstand the om- issions in the ABC.
I enjoyed your beautiful letter paper. The white Q ^5- in the white paper.
Please send my good wishes to Mr. D. C. Fox, Mr. J. Laughlin iv, and Mr. H. Matsumiya at your convenience.
43: Katue Kitasono to Ezra Pound TLS-2 [n. p. ] 26 February 1937
Dear Mr. Ezra POUND,
Thank you for your letter and the description of Suma Genji. By Miss Margaret Lenoa's detailed letter I could imagine, very well, the stage of it. I think the elegant and mysterious atmosphere of that play was brought abouttotolerableextent,and1 expressmysincererespectforyoureager- ness and effort to do such a hard task as to reproduce the beauty of the symbolical Noh play. It is a great regret that I cannot see the stills of that fascinating play, Europeanized and modernized.
. ^.
^\
Yours very sincerely, Katue Kiiasono
38 SECTIONII: 1936-66
I am going to print Miss M. Lenoa's interesting report in VOU no. 17. fear tliat you may need her letter, so I return it to you.
I have sent you the translation of our poems and my brief note.
We are eagerly looking forward to your views about them.
I am also sending you my first anthology. You will see my portrait about
ten years ago. The velvet cap is the same as the uniform cap of MeierhoJd Theater at that time.
Appendix 1
MARCH 13th, 1936
In the night least expected, it sleets
Among pasonia-trees, and
As if to say "You are, prepared like primrose in
the garden-frame,
Yearning for the green field? "
Such a gentle wind refreshing is born there.
Appendix 2
THE WILD LILY
When your awakening spakening sparkles pearly with the morning dew for necklace,
When like a whiff of Houbigant
Smells your youthful breathing,
I can bear your speckled face.
When you open the curtains green
With the ancient pride slightly betrayed
In your lips obliquely turned, and
Look down the Century for Solomon's glory In the shady hill-side from your window,
I could knock off your head.
Haruki Sou
Yours sincerely, Katue Kitasono
Tuneo Osada
1
? ? SECTIONII: 1936-66 39
44: Ezra Pound to Katue Kitasono
TLS-2 On stationery imprinted: 1937 Anno XV, Via Marsala 12-5, Rapallo, with quotes: "A tax is not a share" and "A nation need not and should not pay rent for its own credit," and grifion design. 2 March 1937
Dear Mr. Katue
The most galling part of my ignorance at the moment is that I haven't the original text of the Odes.
Pauthier was a magnificent scholar, and I have his French to guide me in Kung, Ta Hio, The Standing Fast in the Middle and The Analects. I have (also) an excellent english crib with notes for these works. But the English version of the Odes is intolerable and an old latin one un- satisfactory.
Can you find me a cheap edition? I say cheap, I mean good, and clear but not fancy. If it has a translation into some European language that wd. help, and one wd. need to use the dictionary only for the inter- esting words.
Tami Koume had a satisfactory edtn. of the Noh Plays. The kana I can notuse/ButI dorecognizemoreideogramsthanI did.
Impossible to write ideogram with a Waterman pen. I am doing a little essay, starting my next book with a note on
the first very clear, the latter interesting in its context.
Translations of the Odes are so bare one thinks the translator must have missed something, and very annoying not to be able to see what.
With Sordello the fusion of word, sound, movement is so simple one only understands his superiority to other troubadours after having stud- ied Provengal and half forgotten it, and come back to twenty years later.
When I did "Cathay" I had no inkling of the technique of sound which I am now convinced must exist or have existed in Chinese poetry.
Does VOU include a critique of Japanese past poetry as a whole? A position from which you look at Chinese poetry, Japanese poetry gra- dually freeing itself from (? or continuing) Chinese, as we continually sprout from or try to cut away from, or reabsorb, resynthesize, greek, latin?
There are here too many questions.
cordially yours Ezra Pound
? 40 SECTIONII: 1936-66
45: Ezra Pound to Katue Kitasono
TLS-4 On stationery imprinted: 1937 Anno XV, Via Marsala 12-5, Rapallo, with quotes: "A tax is not a share" and "A nation need not and should not pay rent for its own credit," and griffon design. 11 March 1937
Dear Katue KITASONO
All right! Kitasono is your family name. We occidentals are very ignorant. You must tell us, patiently, even these de-
tails.
The poems are splendid, and the first clear lighting for me of what is going on in Japan.
The NEW Japan. Surrealism without the half-baked ignorance of the
French young.
I shall try the poems on Giobe. It is not a literary magazine. T
They have printed me on Edward VIII's abdication, and announce that they will print my note on Roman Empire. Then they say my note on Geneva is "too serious for their readers. " That may be because I men- tioned George Tinkham, who kept the U. S. A. out of that sink of hypoc- risy the League of Nations.
"Uncle George" is crossing the Pacific next summer and I hope youwillbeabletomeethim. Heis theAmericaIwasbornin,andthat may have disappeared (almost) entirely by now.
My daughter was shocked at his lack of sartorial elegance, (age eleven) but she decided that "J'uomo pih educato"
had spent too much time on his face massage etc.
"J'uomo piu educato"is a S. American more or less millionaire fop.
Excuse this diffuseness . . .
I don't KNOW that the Globe will print poetry as poetry. It is made for the multitude and printed
55,000 copies.
Ronald (no relation of Isadora) Duncan is starting a literary magazine in London. If the Giobe won't print poems, he will.
AND the Giobe may very well be kept out of England because I have not put on GLOVES either of antelope skin, emerald or any other material in writing about the swine who are afflicting that country.
so THAT even if the Globe does print the poems, it may be possible and/ or necessary to print them in Townsman also.
:$-iT |
? SECTIONII: 1936-66 41
In any case the Townsman will want more news of VOU. {Which means plastic poetry singing, or what? )
You have not sent the Ideograms of the poems. And in any case I should not touch the translations. Though I would like to see the originals if they are written in ideogram. Perhaps I already have them in VOU? ?
I shall correct only a few typing errors, or what seem such, if the follow- ing errors have been wrongly corrected, will you please write direct to
J. T. Dunn Esq.
Globe, 157V2 West Fifth St. , St. Paul, Minn. U. S. A. and say that I have asked you to do so.
Dear old Satie lived at Arceuil (not Alceuil) In Sasajima's poem.
? vonarates . . . is this a botanical term or error for venerates
speady? ? steady or speedy
To save time I am sending the manuscript to Globe, and correcting the words to
venerates and steady
Nakamura/ glisling? ? I am correcting to glistening
this is pronounced glisning or glissening it means shining and shimmering.
KOIKE// 1 wonder whether he means Aiding or adding or aided. I am putting Aiding (last line Glassy hour).
Your own Second poem/ line 2. seorn =? scorn
Her head (the parrot's) replaced by a leaden one? ? ? (I don't see how
for will do here. )
The sailors put a lead head in place of the
parrot's own? ?
or what do you mean?
English is very ambiguous, the typewriter can mean either the machine d ^crire or the dactylo; the young lady who types.