Referring
to the T'ang anthol/ to my mind the K'ung anthol/ and almost ANY chinese verse I have looked at ''sings''/ AND gives a measure (musical bar)
BUT I have not the slightest idea whether there is ANY similarity between the noise I make when ''singing'' the syllables.
BUT I have not the slightest idea whether there is ANY similarity between the noise I make when ''singing'' the syllables.
Ezra-Pounds-Chinese-Friends-Stories-in-Letters
Hughes, M.
A.
(Wrst class FOOL) published by Bollingen.
My translation is, as I hope, quite accurate and not unreadable (MacLeish has gone through it).
Then, there's a 24-page review of ex-
missionary H[ughes]'s fool book. Both of these I shall send to you.
Yours respectfully [signed] Achilles Fang
Ch'u ? Yu ? an: see Glossary on Qu Yuan.
SONG OF THE BOWMEN OF SHU: Cathay opening poem, ''Song of the Bowmen of Shu,'' a variant
on Ode 167.
So ? -Gioku . . . Sung Yu ? : EP alludes to ''The Wind'' by Song Yu (So ? -Gyoku in Japanese, 3rd century bc)
in Canto 4.
HIGHTOWER's Topics: James Robert Hightower, Topics in Chinese Literature: Outlines and Bibliog-
raphies (Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1950).
Liu Hsiang: Liu Xiang (c. 77-6 bc). His ''Nine Laments'' is collected in Southern Anthology.
? ? : Cihai dictionary. See Letter 38 n.
German grammar in Chinese: Te-wen chin-liang or Gesprochenes Deutsch (1941).
translation of Wen-fu: ''Rhymeprose on Literature: The We^n-fu of Lu Chi (A. D. 261-303) ? ? :
? ,'' Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 14/3 & 4 (1951).
The Art of Letters: see Fang, ''Review: E. Hughes, The Art of Letters, Lu Chi's 'Wen Fu,' A. D. 302,''
Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 14/3 & 4 (1951).
? 54 EP to Fang (TL-2; Beinecke)
FANG fuss
isn't yu ? 2 ? [I, me] rather like the dative? ? seems to Wt a number of examples.
[St Elizabeths Hospital] [Washington, DC] 25 Jan [1952]
e
e
a. fang and pound's bilingual confucius 75
Erinnerung deutsches GrammatiKKKK [memory of German grammar]
(NO I am NOT going to look up hun spellink) if not why Mat/ 7606 [7605] AND 7601
go to/out got
Gornoze wotthe choinilists [sinologists] do with 'em NOW.
enclose exercise/got to Wnd some means of Wxing approx sound in remains of
disjecta mente [scattered mind].
Any arguments for Hawley, who seems to think ideograms are mere hiero-
glyphics/i. e. just pictures without concepts tied into 'em? (this prob/an exag- geration de ma parte <but I dont believe they just procede [proceed] on mere basis of melting diVerences down into sames. >
When F/ has nothing better to do/cd/he spare a few words re/the trans- formation from old seal to modern forms? when done, by whom? how long it took to do it?
F/seen a poor rag called ''Philosophy of East and West. '' Hawaii Univ/ unreadable save for grain of sense from Santayana.
? ? ? ?
? ? ? ?
? ? ? ?
? ? ? ?
1. does this make sense
2. does it scan, according to an accepted chinese ear?
3. wd/ 4th line be considered bad taste, stunt merely changing tone? nacherly SOURCE of diVerent sounds, and prob/ earlier diVerences in total FOG. grampaw Wnd berry dif 'kult merember noise appertaining pixchoor abbrev/ if F/objects to Wnal character we can change it/cant fall into Foe and Lao
''Philosophy of East and West'': Essays in East-West Philosophy: An Attempt at World Philosophical Synthesis, ed. Charles A. Moore (1951).
Santayana: see Glossary on Santayana, George.
? ? ? ? . . . ? ? ? ? : a poem of EP's own composition. See also Letters 55 and 66. Lao: see Glossary on Laozi.
55 Fang to EP (TLS-1; Lilly)
[Cambridge, Mass. ] Feb. 5 [1952]
Dear Mr Pound,
Excuse me this delay; have been a bit unwell, weather. ? 1/4 ? ling. ? 1/4 ?
huang.
76
a. fang and pound's bilingual confucius
The four lines
? ? ? ? ? kan ? z ? ? ? a ? ng ? si k ? ? Ong ? ? ? ? ? ? a? ien ^ts ? i ? ? ^ts ? ? ? u ? a? wa ? ? ? ? ? sien ? ^ts ? i ? tsa^: i ? ^t ? ? ung ? ? ? ? ? s ? ? a ? n dz'a^i ? ? mjie aien ?
(1/4 ? , to appear)
kien ? (to look at)
cannot mean what you intend (granted that I do understand you). As for the
sounds, there are too many gutturals and too many of what the vorchristlicher Christ called snake sounds; one labial does not seem to relieve the overwrought alliteration. And rhyme? The fourth line sounds like a jeu d'esprit. Sorry to disappoint you.
Yes I saw Philosophy of East and West; the people in Hawaii seem to be a strange lot, I am sure.
Of course I have time to write on the transformation from great seal to little seal (which is the script conventionalised from the reform script of Li Ssu, Li-sse ? in Canto LIV; cf. ? ? ? . . . ? ? ? <Some critics think this sentence to be an interpolation. > in Pivot 28), but I should like to know what you exactly want me to write: history? comparison of the two? (The so-called great seal scripts are not all too numerous, whereas the Shuo-wen is entirely based on the lesser seal. )
Yours respectfully [signed] Achilles Fang
Li Ssu: Li Si (c. 280-208 bc). , prime minister to the First Emperor of Qin (r. 246-210 bc), made the ''lesser seal'' a standard Chinese script.
Shuo-wen: see Glossary on Xu Shen.
56 EP to Fang (TL-3; Beinecke)
[St Elizabeths Hospital] [Washington, DC] [February 1952]
O Fang
Mat/ 1848 fei4/? I take it variants alle sameee
? intensiWcation of ?
much more interesting kai ts'o ? ? /I take it coin? METATHEMENON [currency fraud] even if the knife ? isn't in text.
e
a. fang and pound's bilingual confucius 77
bit dull, if it ain't. <may be author was just dumb. >
----------
Certain points shd/ be deferred until possible to talk/ what I am after re/
shift from seal/is the cutting down from the 500 or whatever radicals to 214/ How much actual reorganization of the whole system of concepts occurred.
So far hv/ seen no printed emphasis on great diVerence between a mere abbreviated picture/ hieroglyph, and that graph/ coupled with a more general concept/such as change or magic/
one hwa [? ] being mere picture/what Mat/ calls LATER hwa [? ] man / spoon/ under the growing leaves.
Total impossibility to form any idea of REAL sound of any language save by HEARING it spoken/ eRRRe eRRRe AOOW (spanish in Madrid streets)
I suspected four of Mat's hsin in a row was overdoing it.
Gloria says: but it dont sing.
Referring to the T'ang anthol/ to my mind the K'ung anthol/ and almost ANY chinese verse I have looked at ''sings''/ AND gives a measure (musical bar)
BUT I have not the slightest idea whether there is ANY similarity between the noise I make when ''singing'' the syllables.
(EVEN supposing I had some faint concept of what the diVerence between tones 1, 2, 3, 4 are. ) <re the chinese sounds. >
Which I have NOT. and am unlikely to obtain from ANY printed statement about it. unless illustrated by musical notes
For years I never made ANY attempt to hitch ANY sound to the ideograms/ content with the meaning and the visual form.
Whomever I have got to in South anth/ 13/15 seems to be linking up a lot of horse radicals/and (now) bow radicals/
? ? as voulu as the four hsin
kan/ Xien, sien. acc/ A. F.
and as to what the Hnbl/ F/ means by gutturals ? ? ? dunno. snakes/ sibilants. 40
years ago a hen on the North Am/ Rev told me Mr Tennyson objected to 'em. (quite irrelevant to case before her/ which was consonants in ang/ sax/
alliteration . . . but still schnakes/ schnakes/ no bon.
Have managed to remember six sounds in a row in one line which Mat/
represents as K'ung fan chi erh kan hui
By which alphabetic etc/ he conveys NOTHING whatsoDAM to grampaw.
the sense is O. K. but no real idea of the sound. What I (egomet ipse [myself alone]) was after, as to meaning in Wrst eVort was to intensify sense of respect or vegetable intelligence (vide Agassiz) and to blast all Mesopotamian Xabbiness and going oV into the indeWnite. Focus damn well gittin down and taking hold of ROOT/ grabbing terram Wrmam. /
? ? ? ? ? ? 78 a. fang and pound's bilingual confucius
whoosis' comment of Guido's Donna mi prega/ kussing them as ''prende occhio per la mente [take the eye for the mind]. '' visual faculty augmented by attentive examination of Xoral (or any vegetative) metamorphoses.
How MANY words of modern chinese wd/ be required?
////
judging by F's consonants/ there was an awful slurring and same-ing of
earlier diVerent sounds/ such is as now obliterating english, in murkn polyglot am unconvinced that whoever changed a spirit swirl into a bent elbow THOUGHT he was merely making a copy of the wiggle even in an attempt to
improve its plastic (shape)
? ? ?
as to representation that ANY beholder can understand, the Egyptians ''lay it
open to the meanest capacity. ''
and SO forth/ dont hurry to reply if you are ill or busy.
? . . . ? . . . ? ? : see Letter 57.
METATHEMENON [currency fraud]: the term from Aristotle, Politics 1275b16, occurs in Cantos 53, 74,
77, and 97.
Tennyson objected to 'em: EP states in ''Patria Mia'': ''I sent them a real poem, a modern poem,
containing the word 'uxorious', and they wrote back that I used the letter 'r' three times in the Wrst line . . . and that I might not remember that Tennyson had once condemned the use of four 's's' in a certain line of a diVerent metre'' (SP, 113-14).
Agassiz: see Glossary on Agassiz, Louis.
Guido's Donna mi prega: ''Donna mi prega'' (''Because a Lady Asks Me'') by the Florentine poet
Guido Cavalcanti (c. 1255-1300). See EP's version in Dial, 85/1 (1928); rpt. LE, 155-7.
? : cf. Confucius 23: ''? This ideogram for a spirit contains two elements to be watched. ''
57 Fang to EP (TLS-2; Lilly)
[Cambridge, Mass. ] Feb. 11 [1952]
Dear Mr Pound,
? is the standard form; the one with ? in place of ? is calligraphic
aVectation. The ideogram is composed of ? (hill-slope, on which (cave-)dwell- ings were dug out) and ? fa, which also gives the sound to the composite form. ? ? kan was the original form. (There are a number of triplets, e. g. ? 1/4 ? fen, ? 1/4 ? ts'u). It seems that some clever and oYcious fellow wanted to help the tyro (possibly his own son) pronounce the 3-women ideogram [? ]; he eliminated one female and put ? ? ka^n in her place. ? Eventually people got lazy and liquidated one more woman, and we have ? as a variant of ? . Originally ? meant the same thing as ? in the sense of ''to come into contact with some one with the intention of getting something out of him'', i. e. ''to touch someone''. As for ? ? , it has nothing to do with monetary reform. ? ? was a kind of coin put into circulation by Wang Mang ? ? , who once usurped the Han throne. (By the way, Canto LIV: '' . . . HAN PING/ simple at table, gave tael to
? ? ? ? a. fang and pound's bilingual confucius 79
? the poor'' refers to Wang Mang, i. e. ''HAN PING'' (P'ing-ti ? of Han) is to be read ''WANG MANG. '') This line
? ? ? ? ? ? ? , ? ? ? ? ? ?
in your Southern Anthology 13 <by Tung-fang Suo ? ? ? , 2nd cent. B. C. >, and
? //////, ? ? ? ///
in 8 are both imitated from Ch'u ? Yu ? an's (roll 1)
? //////, ? ? ? ? ? ?
inwhich? 1/4 ? ,? (1/4? ) 1/4 ? . Thatis? ? means''toalter,tochangefor the worse. '' I think Ch'u ? Yu ? an's whining merely means:
Truly the world is clever & smart; they depart from the norm path to bring about chaos.
By the way, in the current language ? ? has a classroom vocable: to correct mistakes in composition, taking ? in the sense of ? ? [mistake].
---------
Hope to send you musical notation for the tones soon. Meanwhile a super- Wcial note on radicals:
Shuo-wen ? ? (end of Han) 540 radicals. Yu ? -p'ien ? ? (Liang dy. ) 542 ? ? ? ? ? (T'ang) 160 ?
? (Sung) 89 ? ? ? ? ? (Ming) 360 ?
by ? ? [Xu Shen]
by ? ? ? [Gu Yewang]
? ? ? ? ?
missionary H[ughes]'s fool book. Both of these I shall send to you.
Yours respectfully [signed] Achilles Fang
Ch'u ? Yu ? an: see Glossary on Qu Yuan.
SONG OF THE BOWMEN OF SHU: Cathay opening poem, ''Song of the Bowmen of Shu,'' a variant
on Ode 167.
So ? -Gioku . . . Sung Yu ? : EP alludes to ''The Wind'' by Song Yu (So ? -Gyoku in Japanese, 3rd century bc)
in Canto 4.
HIGHTOWER's Topics: James Robert Hightower, Topics in Chinese Literature: Outlines and Bibliog-
raphies (Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1950).
Liu Hsiang: Liu Xiang (c. 77-6 bc). His ''Nine Laments'' is collected in Southern Anthology.
? ? : Cihai dictionary. See Letter 38 n.
German grammar in Chinese: Te-wen chin-liang or Gesprochenes Deutsch (1941).
translation of Wen-fu: ''Rhymeprose on Literature: The We^n-fu of Lu Chi (A. D. 261-303) ? ? :
? ,'' Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 14/3 & 4 (1951).
The Art of Letters: see Fang, ''Review: E. Hughes, The Art of Letters, Lu Chi's 'Wen Fu,' A. D. 302,''
Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 14/3 & 4 (1951).
? 54 EP to Fang (TL-2; Beinecke)
FANG fuss
isn't yu ? 2 ? [I, me] rather like the dative? ? seems to Wt a number of examples.
[St Elizabeths Hospital] [Washington, DC] 25 Jan [1952]
e
e
a. fang and pound's bilingual confucius 75
Erinnerung deutsches GrammatiKKKK [memory of German grammar]
(NO I am NOT going to look up hun spellink) if not why Mat/ 7606 [7605] AND 7601
go to/out got
Gornoze wotthe choinilists [sinologists] do with 'em NOW.
enclose exercise/got to Wnd some means of Wxing approx sound in remains of
disjecta mente [scattered mind].
Any arguments for Hawley, who seems to think ideograms are mere hiero-
glyphics/i. e. just pictures without concepts tied into 'em? (this prob/an exag- geration de ma parte <but I dont believe they just procede [proceed] on mere basis of melting diVerences down into sames. >
When F/ has nothing better to do/cd/he spare a few words re/the trans- formation from old seal to modern forms? when done, by whom? how long it took to do it?
F/seen a poor rag called ''Philosophy of East and West. '' Hawaii Univ/ unreadable save for grain of sense from Santayana.
? ? ? ?
? ? ? ?
? ? ? ?
? ? ? ?
1. does this make sense
2. does it scan, according to an accepted chinese ear?
3. wd/ 4th line be considered bad taste, stunt merely changing tone? nacherly SOURCE of diVerent sounds, and prob/ earlier diVerences in total FOG. grampaw Wnd berry dif 'kult merember noise appertaining pixchoor abbrev/ if F/objects to Wnal character we can change it/cant fall into Foe and Lao
''Philosophy of East and West'': Essays in East-West Philosophy: An Attempt at World Philosophical Synthesis, ed. Charles A. Moore (1951).
Santayana: see Glossary on Santayana, George.
? ? ? ? . . . ? ? ? ? : a poem of EP's own composition. See also Letters 55 and 66. Lao: see Glossary on Laozi.
55 Fang to EP (TLS-1; Lilly)
[Cambridge, Mass. ] Feb. 5 [1952]
Dear Mr Pound,
Excuse me this delay; have been a bit unwell, weather. ? 1/4 ? ling. ? 1/4 ?
huang.
76
a. fang and pound's bilingual confucius
The four lines
? ? ? ? ? kan ? z ? ? ? a ? ng ? si k ? ? Ong ? ? ? ? ? ? a? ien ^ts ? i ? ? ^ts ? ? ? u ? a? wa ? ? ? ? ? sien ? ^ts ? i ? tsa^: i ? ^t ? ? ung ? ? ? ? ? s ? ? a ? n dz'a^i ? ? mjie aien ?
(1/4 ? , to appear)
kien ? (to look at)
cannot mean what you intend (granted that I do understand you). As for the
sounds, there are too many gutturals and too many of what the vorchristlicher Christ called snake sounds; one labial does not seem to relieve the overwrought alliteration. And rhyme? The fourth line sounds like a jeu d'esprit. Sorry to disappoint you.
Yes I saw Philosophy of East and West; the people in Hawaii seem to be a strange lot, I am sure.
Of course I have time to write on the transformation from great seal to little seal (which is the script conventionalised from the reform script of Li Ssu, Li-sse ? in Canto LIV; cf. ? ? ? . . . ? ? ? <Some critics think this sentence to be an interpolation. > in Pivot 28), but I should like to know what you exactly want me to write: history? comparison of the two? (The so-called great seal scripts are not all too numerous, whereas the Shuo-wen is entirely based on the lesser seal. )
Yours respectfully [signed] Achilles Fang
Li Ssu: Li Si (c. 280-208 bc). , prime minister to the First Emperor of Qin (r. 246-210 bc), made the ''lesser seal'' a standard Chinese script.
Shuo-wen: see Glossary on Xu Shen.
56 EP to Fang (TL-3; Beinecke)
[St Elizabeths Hospital] [Washington, DC] [February 1952]
O Fang
Mat/ 1848 fei4/? I take it variants alle sameee
? intensiWcation of ?
much more interesting kai ts'o ? ? /I take it coin? METATHEMENON [currency fraud] even if the knife ? isn't in text.
e
a. fang and pound's bilingual confucius 77
bit dull, if it ain't. <may be author was just dumb. >
----------
Certain points shd/ be deferred until possible to talk/ what I am after re/
shift from seal/is the cutting down from the 500 or whatever radicals to 214/ How much actual reorganization of the whole system of concepts occurred.
So far hv/ seen no printed emphasis on great diVerence between a mere abbreviated picture/ hieroglyph, and that graph/ coupled with a more general concept/such as change or magic/
one hwa [? ] being mere picture/what Mat/ calls LATER hwa [? ] man / spoon/ under the growing leaves.
Total impossibility to form any idea of REAL sound of any language save by HEARING it spoken/ eRRRe eRRRe AOOW (spanish in Madrid streets)
I suspected four of Mat's hsin in a row was overdoing it.
Gloria says: but it dont sing.
Referring to the T'ang anthol/ to my mind the K'ung anthol/ and almost ANY chinese verse I have looked at ''sings''/ AND gives a measure (musical bar)
BUT I have not the slightest idea whether there is ANY similarity between the noise I make when ''singing'' the syllables.
(EVEN supposing I had some faint concept of what the diVerence between tones 1, 2, 3, 4 are. ) <re the chinese sounds. >
Which I have NOT. and am unlikely to obtain from ANY printed statement about it. unless illustrated by musical notes
For years I never made ANY attempt to hitch ANY sound to the ideograms/ content with the meaning and the visual form.
Whomever I have got to in South anth/ 13/15 seems to be linking up a lot of horse radicals/and (now) bow radicals/
? ? as voulu as the four hsin
kan/ Xien, sien. acc/ A. F.
and as to what the Hnbl/ F/ means by gutturals ? ? ? dunno. snakes/ sibilants. 40
years ago a hen on the North Am/ Rev told me Mr Tennyson objected to 'em. (quite irrelevant to case before her/ which was consonants in ang/ sax/
alliteration . . . but still schnakes/ schnakes/ no bon.
Have managed to remember six sounds in a row in one line which Mat/
represents as K'ung fan chi erh kan hui
By which alphabetic etc/ he conveys NOTHING whatsoDAM to grampaw.
the sense is O. K. but no real idea of the sound. What I (egomet ipse [myself alone]) was after, as to meaning in Wrst eVort was to intensify sense of respect or vegetable intelligence (vide Agassiz) and to blast all Mesopotamian Xabbiness and going oV into the indeWnite. Focus damn well gittin down and taking hold of ROOT/ grabbing terram Wrmam. /
? ? ? ? ? ? 78 a. fang and pound's bilingual confucius
whoosis' comment of Guido's Donna mi prega/ kussing them as ''prende occhio per la mente [take the eye for the mind]. '' visual faculty augmented by attentive examination of Xoral (or any vegetative) metamorphoses.
How MANY words of modern chinese wd/ be required?
////
judging by F's consonants/ there was an awful slurring and same-ing of
earlier diVerent sounds/ such is as now obliterating english, in murkn polyglot am unconvinced that whoever changed a spirit swirl into a bent elbow THOUGHT he was merely making a copy of the wiggle even in an attempt to
improve its plastic (shape)
? ? ?
as to representation that ANY beholder can understand, the Egyptians ''lay it
open to the meanest capacity. ''
and SO forth/ dont hurry to reply if you are ill or busy.
? . . . ? . . . ? ? : see Letter 57.
METATHEMENON [currency fraud]: the term from Aristotle, Politics 1275b16, occurs in Cantos 53, 74,
77, and 97.
Tennyson objected to 'em: EP states in ''Patria Mia'': ''I sent them a real poem, a modern poem,
containing the word 'uxorious', and they wrote back that I used the letter 'r' three times in the Wrst line . . . and that I might not remember that Tennyson had once condemned the use of four 's's' in a certain line of a diVerent metre'' (SP, 113-14).
Agassiz: see Glossary on Agassiz, Louis.
Guido's Donna mi prega: ''Donna mi prega'' (''Because a Lady Asks Me'') by the Florentine poet
Guido Cavalcanti (c. 1255-1300). See EP's version in Dial, 85/1 (1928); rpt. LE, 155-7.
? : cf. Confucius 23: ''? This ideogram for a spirit contains two elements to be watched. ''
57 Fang to EP (TLS-2; Lilly)
[Cambridge, Mass. ] Feb. 11 [1952]
Dear Mr Pound,
? is the standard form; the one with ? in place of ? is calligraphic
aVectation. The ideogram is composed of ? (hill-slope, on which (cave-)dwell- ings were dug out) and ? fa, which also gives the sound to the composite form. ? ? kan was the original form. (There are a number of triplets, e. g. ? 1/4 ? fen, ? 1/4 ? ts'u). It seems that some clever and oYcious fellow wanted to help the tyro (possibly his own son) pronounce the 3-women ideogram [? ]; he eliminated one female and put ? ? ka^n in her place. ? Eventually people got lazy and liquidated one more woman, and we have ? as a variant of ? . Originally ? meant the same thing as ? in the sense of ''to come into contact with some one with the intention of getting something out of him'', i. e. ''to touch someone''. As for ? ? , it has nothing to do with monetary reform. ? ? was a kind of coin put into circulation by Wang Mang ? ? , who once usurped the Han throne. (By the way, Canto LIV: '' . . . HAN PING/ simple at table, gave tael to
? ? ? ? a. fang and pound's bilingual confucius 79
? the poor'' refers to Wang Mang, i. e. ''HAN PING'' (P'ing-ti ? of Han) is to be read ''WANG MANG. '') This line
? ? ? ? ? ? ? , ? ? ? ? ? ?
in your Southern Anthology 13 <by Tung-fang Suo ? ? ? , 2nd cent. B. C. >, and
? //////, ? ? ? ///
in 8 are both imitated from Ch'u ? Yu ? an's (roll 1)
? //////, ? ? ? ? ? ?
inwhich? 1/4 ? ,? (1/4? ) 1/4 ? . Thatis? ? means''toalter,tochangefor the worse. '' I think Ch'u ? Yu ? an's whining merely means:
Truly the world is clever & smart; they depart from the norm path to bring about chaos.
By the way, in the current language ? ? has a classroom vocable: to correct mistakes in composition, taking ? in the sense of ? ? [mistake].
---------
Hope to send you musical notation for the tones soon. Meanwhile a super- Wcial note on radicals:
Shuo-wen ? ? (end of Han) 540 radicals. Yu ? -p'ien ? ? (Liang dy. ) 542 ? ? ? ? ? (T'ang) 160 ?
? (Sung) 89 ? ? ? ? ? (Ming) 360 ?
by ? ? [Xu Shen]
by ? ? ? [Gu Yewang]
? ? ? ? ?
