No More Learning

Baller: F. W. Baller, An Analytical Chinese-English Dictionary (1900); Sacred Edict (1907); A Mandarin
Primer (1933).
a. fang and pound's bilingual confucius 83
Babbitt: Irving Babbitt (1865-1933), Harvard professor and author of Democracy and Leadership (Boston: Houghton MiZin, 1924).
Chu Hsi: see Glossary on Zhu Xi.
60 Fang to EP (TLS-1; Lilly)
Dear Mr Pound,
Your DUTY does not exist in Chinese. Modern dix. renders it as pen-fen ?
? , which usually means ''one's lot'' (as in to be content with one's lot) and i-wu ? ? , which must have been coined by japs (gimu they say) and couldn't be intelligible to KUNG or MENG.
(As function, d[uty]. may be rendered with ? or its combinations ? ? ,/ ? ,/? ,/? , etc).
The nearest I can think of for DUTY is ? , but then it means a quite diVerent thing, as I wrote in my last.
-----------
As far as I can see, the Ch. have never thought of DUTY in abstracto. They have been plenty dutiful, without ever bothering about Categorical Imperative. Don't you think DUTY is a modern catchword in Indo-European thinking?
Thinking always in concreto and never bothering themselves with divine sanction, they must have acted as dutifully as any duty-conscious human beings.
The jewish-Xtian moralist teaches: honor thy parents if you will prosper (or something like that). The Ch. Wnd this very cheap and revoltingly utilitar- ian.
I wonder if there isn't some organic relationship between JUSTICE and DUTY. The TIT-for-TAT obsession is primitive, and must have been shared by early Chinese. But already in Chou times justice is relegated to decorum, etiquette, good manners: Chou-li ? ? [Rites of Zhou] supposedly formulated by Duke of Chou, is a treatise on the institutional life of the homo politicus sinensis. The section on justice or jurisprudence is in the fourth book, while the 5th & last is on handicrafts and art.
Why then does the Ch. act loyally, Wlially, etc. ? Tentative answer: only because it is sensible to act in those manners, as KUNG and MENG proved convincingly. I believe, Ch. have lived without the abstract concepts of JUSTICE and
DUTY. (God was thrown away by KUNG once for all. )
[Cambridge, Mass. ] March 13, 1952
84 a. fang and pound's bilingual confucius
Yours respectfully [signed] Achilles Fang
61 EP to Fang (TL-2; Beinecke)
[St Elizabeths Hospital] [Washington, DC] [18 March 1952]
Fang/ad interim/
will look up passages later/
duty/doveri dell'uomo/[man's duties] vs/Tom Paine's rights/
china not corrupted by greek glossing over <seldom acknowledged> slavery
under Aristotelian Anschauung. duty/serve/serve prince/serve parents/seems to me all Kung has implicit sense of duty/
ceremonies being the HOW the duty arising from human aVections, the insides of the ceremony/
this not what am writing about in hurry. will go seriously into A. F. 's last, at grtr/leisure. this started to say my son-in-row's kid bro. Igor
de Rachewiltz
Kleingemeinergasse 21, Salzburg, Austria
thanks me for A. F. 's pamphlets/and if I hv/any more will I please send them. ergo a Wt recipient for your new ones.
also the young Ig/in worrying how he can pay his rent and study chinese simultaneously/
he OUGHT to do an italian trans/of Mencius or the Analects/knows a great deal more of the language than I do/
Fang got any idea where Igor cd/hook onto any of these wasteful foundations that are blowing millions on useless etc?
I believe Tucci, head (or was) Inst. Orient. Stud/Roma interested only in geography or something. ANYhow any practical suggestion might be useful (no need to tie it to grampaw. . .
more re/serve/and duty and yr/pamphlets as soon AZ I ketch my breath.
duty, or whatever I am driving at/the measure UP TO WHICH, the propor- tion of what if Wtting, acc/the diVerent degrees of respect or aVection/and the beyond which NOT.
A. F. 's last: Fang's insight would be Wtted into Canto 99/731:
But the four TUAN
are from nature
jen, i, li, chih
a. fang and pound's bilingual confucius 85
Not from descriptions in the school house; They are the scholar's job,
The gentleman's and the oYcer's.
Igor: see Glossary on De Rachewiltz, Igor. Tucci: see Glossary on Tucci, Giuseppe.
62
EP to Fang (TL-2; Beinecke)
[St Elizabeths Hospital] [Washington, DC] [9 May 1952]
Achilles/
Long time no noise.
? KAI1 (3188) seems to be idea boundary limit/3191/ought
Not sure what Achilles the hell thinks DUTY means/
admit/that limit and propriety might seem to make second and third TUAN
pretty much the same/but <NOT> absobloodylootly the same. //
O. K. very the spontaneity (hilaritas of the aarif) got to be there/but IS there in the Wrst TUAN anyhow and Purpose of law: to prevent coercion either by force or by fraud/
hence dislike of Blackstone among them as only interested in ''bunk, seeing what you can put over. ''
***
cultivation of ''person''/? ? self-discipline?
certainly NOT something deWned by someone else.
1. decent impulse
2. limits to which
3. modus in which
4. horse sense acquired by action.
As to how far diVerent ideograms WRITTEN (gorNoze what is now com-
prehensible by chinese noises when spoken)
how far ideogram can be ALL parts of speech simultaneously when taken in
groups?
how inclusive the sense can be
mid-heart? ? as verb?
**
''Wheatear'' [Jung] deplores degeneration in education in present China . . . and so on/
?
86 a. fang and pound's bilingual confucius KAI1 (3188) . . . 3191/ought: see Letter 63.
Blackstone: see Glossary on Blackstone, William.
Dear Mr Pound, YOUR
1. decent impulse
2. limits to which
3. modus in which
4. horse sense acquired by action
63 Fang to EP (TLS-1; Beinecke)
[Cambridge, Mass. ]
May 30, 1952
? ? is OK with me. Only that it is doubtful if Mong [Mencius] took 2 & 3 (& possibly 4 also) as aspects of 1. True, humanitas is a very important thing in Kung and possibly in Mong (a jap. has written a thick <book> on the study of jen), but Mong probably did not want to subordinate the three virtues to DECENT IMPULSE. I mean, he leaves the question ambiguous and there has been much polemic over the relationship of the four. I don't see anything objectionable to your schematisation, nor would Mong himself demur.
The trouble with Mong is that he is often carried away by his eloquence and mental juggling so that attentive readers often cannot help sighing. Take jen ? in ? ? ? ? ? IIA. 6 for instance: in earlier and subsequent usages it means TO PUT UP WITH or TO BEAR. In certain cases this jen is a virtue (patience, tolerance), in certain others its opposite (as with MONG) is a virtue. It all depends on whether the motivation is altruism or not.
Mong illustrates this jen-hood with the case of a baby falling into the well. I am sure he could have illustrated the sense of shame; but I wish he had given us some concrete instance of modesty and moral sanction (3 & 4). Are human being instinctively modest and discriminatory?
Your schematisation, then, seems to be a step forward; at least, the four points seem to be inter-related.
kai 3183 [3188? ], as far as I can Wnd out, is never used in any metaphorical sense. kai 3191 [? ] in the sense of ''ought to'' is only colloquial; in written language it means rather ''comprehensive, extensive. ''
This week's New Yorker has a short notice of your PIVOT; quite decent for N. Y. , I think.
Yours respectfully [signed] Achilles Fang
? ? ? ? ? ? ? a. fang and pound's bilingual confucius 87 ? ? ? ? ? :Mencius,2. 1. 6. 3:''? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? allmenhaveamindwhichcannot
bear to see the suVerings of others'' (Legge, ii. 202).
64 EP to Fang (TL-1; Beinecke)
[St Elizabeths Hospital] [Washington, DC] [16 June 1952]
Achilles
There is a bloke named W. Yandell Elliott, Haaavud Summer School, said to
be DIrecting Mr Kissinger to edit a Xabby mug'sgaZoon named ''ConXuence. '' Elliot a cheerful an' exuberant/BUT Achilles MIGHT get it into Yelliott'z head
that it is asinine to mention philosophy or ethics without mentioning KUNG. That the League of Nation[s], UN, unesco, etc. were fahrts in various bales of wind/BUT there is no use wasting time in going into that. Full bribes, fullB-
lights [Fulbright] etc /
There ought to be chairs of sinology/not diminution of oriental studies. AND
there ought to be METHOD, Kung, to Agassiz, and a drive against abstract blather, implied in any mention of Kung, Agassiz or Dante . . . kussing out . . .
quel che la cosa per nome
Apprende ben; ma la sua quiditate
Veder non puote,
BASIS/Kung
plus a revival of greek studies, Sophokles at the top.
Those blokes got a mag/but NO writers whatsobloody ever. all slop at
Maritain-Matthiessen grade, or I dare say below if there is a lower.
Elliot COULD be useful/even to himself, if he wd/move ON not wait for more other kawlidges to insert Kung and Fenollosa BEFORE the Bastun
beanery starts.
IF you don't yet know Elliott (W. Y. ), you can say I asked you to save his soul,
mind, or central correlation <? ? > point, depending on which term you consider most likely to convey a meaning and/or impulse.
W. Yandell Elliott . . . Kissinger: William Yandell Elliott (1896-1979) founded Harvard Summer Insti- tute in 1952. Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (b. 1923), then a Ph. D. candidate, edited its journal ConXuence.
Agassiz: see Glossary on Agassiz, Louis.
quel che . . . Veder non puote: ''one who well understands the thing by its name, but cannot see its true
meaning (if no one points it out)'' (Dante, Paradiso, 20. 91-3).
Maritain-Matthiessen: the Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain (1882-1973) was then at Princeton.
The literary critic Francis Otto Matthiessen (1902-50) was a Harvard professor.
? ? 5
Pound as Miss Jung's Dissertation Adviser ''One's opinions change''
Arriving at the University of Washington with a BA from Beijing's Catholic University, Angela Chih-ying Jung (Rong Zhiying ? ? ? , b. 1926) had to determine what direction her professional future should take (see Fig. 5. 1). It didn't take her long to decide to pursue a Ph. D. in English and comparative literature. It was by coincidence, nevertheless, that she chose Ezra Pound as a subject. In a seminar she attended in spring 1952, she noticed a student drawing Chinese characters in a notebook. Before she was able to correct his mistakes, the young man showed her the book from which he was copying these characters, The Cantos of Ezra Pound. In the following weeks Jung immersed herself in The Cantos, ''attracted to Pound's profuse use of Chinese themes'' (Jung, ''Ezra Pound and China,'' University of Washington dissertation, 1955).
From The Cantos Jung moved on to Pound's Cathay ''For the most part from the Chinese of Rihaku [Li Po], from the notes of the late Ernest Fenollosa'' (1915; rpt. Personae, 130) and his Confucian translations--Ta Hio (1928), The Unwobbling Pivot (1947), and The Analects (1951). As a student from China she could not resist digging into Pound's Chinese borrowings. It was not difficult to identify the Chinese treasures that yielded Pound Cathay via Fenollosa and Mori. Nor was it difficult to account for the figures and events chronicled in his Chinese History Cantos (Cantos 52-61). But what source books in English or French or Chinese did Pound use for the composition of these cantos? How much Chinese did he understand? Already Jung had a topic for her dissertation: ''The Chinese Enigma of Ezra Pound'' (Jung, ''Ezra Pound and China'').
Unless she contacted Pound, these puzzles would remain puzzles. In late February Jung plucked up enough courage to write to the poet, who was still incarcerated in Washington, DC's St Elizabeths Hospital. In that letter she told Pound how much she admired his China-related poems and how curious she was about the origin of his interest in Chinese culture. Just when Jung was giving up hope of hearing from Pound, a reply from him arrived. He would answer her questions when she got to St Elizabeths.
pound as jung's dissertation adviser 89
It must have occurred to Pound that Miss Jung would provide a unique perspective. Between February and March he wrote her four more letters. In one letter he copied out a little Chinese poem he had composed and asked if it made sense to her at all. The attempt anticipated a single-line Chinese poem within Canto 110: ''yu ? eh4. 5 j ming2 j mo4. 5 j hsien1 j p'eng2'' (? ? ? ? ? or ''moon bright not appear friends''). Earlier, Achilles Fang had told him that these lines could not mean what he intended. In another letter he tried to find out what Miss Jung and her fellow Chinese students thought of American education: ''do they verbally object to the falsification of history (and of news)? do they object to having the husks and rubbish of the occident offered them in place of Dante (Paradiso) and Sophokles? '' (Letter 67). None of Jung's replies has survived. But from Pound's side of the correspondence we can assume that Jung tried to interpret his little Chinese poem, which only led him to echo his habitual remarks about the character: ''ideogram INCLUSIVE, sometime not the least ambiguous but ideogramic mind not always trying to split things into fragments'' (Letter 68).
Jung's goal was to get from Pound as much insight as possible for a disser- tation on his various Chinese projects. During her four-month stay in Washing- ton (April to August 1952), she visited Pound no less than fifteen times. Two of those interviews--the first, and another on 21 June when T. S. Eliot was present--are described in vivid detail in her memoir of 1974, ''Homage to a Confucian Poet'' (Paideuma, 3/3. 301-2). On her first visit, according to Jung, Pound brought from his room two armfuls of China-related books. Handing her his copy of James Legge's bilingual Four Books, he stated: ''This little book has been my bible for years, the only thing I could hang onto during those hellish days at Pisa . . . Had it not been for this book, from which I drew my strength, I would really have gone insane . . . so you see how I am indebted to Kung. '' Later, when Jung mentioned his little Chinese poem, Pound said: ''If I wrote it in English it would probably fill a book. That is why I used the ideogram; each of them could embody what one must say in a hundred lines. Besides I like the sound. '' Jung reminded Pound that he had written in 1940 that ''the great part of Chinese sound is (of) no use at all. '' To this he retorted: ''If I did, I don't remember. At any rate one's opinions change as one progresses . . . He should not be held responsible for what he said or wrote decades earlier. I have never heard how Chinese poetry should be read, but I like to play with it my own way. '' As to Jung's account of the other visit, Eliot rather than Pound is the focus of attention.
By the end of July Miss Jung got word from her adviser at the University of Washington that Harvard University Press had granted her permission to inspect Pound's Confucian Odes manuscript. Pound was vexed to learn this from Dorothy, who learned it from Jung herself. Neither Jung nor Harvard University Press had asked him for permission. In annoyance Pound let Dorothy
90 pound as jung's dissertation adviser
send a telegram to Achilles Fang: ''Odes not open for inspection of traveling students'' (Lilly). Jung was upset when a secretary at the press handed her this telegram instead of the manuscript she had expected to read.
Of course, Pound did not mean to embarrass Miss Jung. On her last visit to St Elizabeths, to her surprise, he handed her some notes he had prepared: ''China and E. P. '' as a title for her dissertation, followed by private information about his Chinese undertakings: ''the Fenollosa coincidence,'' ''Cathay,'' ''Canto XIII,'' ''49th canto from ms in family,'' ''The Chinese Cantos/sources LI KI, Histoire Generale de la Chine,'' and so on. They were of enormous help to Miss Jung's dissertation, ''Ezra Pound and China,'' which was completed in 1955.
Fifteen years later, in 1966-7, Jung, as professor of Chinese at the University of Oregon, took a nine-month sabbatical leave in Florence, Italy, to work on a Pound book (the result being Italian Images of Ezra Pound, ed. and trans. Angela Jung and Guido Palandri, 1979). Her visit to Italy would be incomplete without meeting Pound. From his Milan publisher, Vanni Scheiwiller, Jung got the phone number of his daughter Mary de Rachewiltz. De Rachewiltz suggested over the phone that she write to Pound at Sant'Ambrogio above Rapallo. In her letter Jung expressed her wish for another interview. To her joy, she received a reply from his companion Olga Rudge (1895-1996), writing on behalf of him: ''Mr. Pound thanks you for your letter and would be happy to see you again and meet your husband . . . . You could arrive here in time for lunch with us & get back to Florence the same day, leaving after tea'' (AJP). On 21 March 1967 Jung alone took a train to Rapallo. With Olga Rudge's direction, she did not have any difficulty finding Sant'Ambrogio. The eloquent poet had now become taciturn. Olga Rudge, whom Jung first met at St Elizabeths, did most of the talking. After lunch the three of them took a walk. When reaching a high point overlooking Gulf of Tigullio, Jung asked Pound, ''Can I take a picture of you? '' Without a word Pound posed for a picture (see Fig. 5. 2).
? Fig. 5. 1. Angela Jung, 1952. (Angela Jung Palandri)
? Fig. 5. 2. EP at Sant'Ambrogio, 1967. (Angela Jung Palandri)
pound as jung's dissertation adviser 93
65 EP to Jung (ALS-2; AJP)
Dear Miss Jung,
I will try to answer your questions when you get here in april.
I like to get letters, but can not do much in the way of reply.
if you have any spare texts, I mean chinese texts of good poetry--that you are
not using, I should be glad to borrow one or two--not a lot all @ once as I still read very slowly.
@ any rate I shall hope to see you in April. visiting hours 2-4 P. M. Cordially yours
[signed] Ezra Pound
66 EP to Jung (ALS-3; AJP)
Dear Miss Jung,
I have a friend who really knows, & who says my little poem <vide infra>
can't possibly mean what he thinks I want it to mean.
If you really want to help me you might tell me what you think it means, if it
makes sense @ all.
The 4th line is a trick line, that I did not expect a chinese to approve. but it
helps me remember the sound belonging to the ideograms--very difficult if one has begun to read by eye only & never been for more than an hour or so with anyone who speaks chinese.
--AND then: people who speak a language are often incapable of either reading or singing a poem.
The other problem would be: how many more ideograms would I have to add to make my meaning clear if it is possible to get @ it.
Cordially yours [signed] Ezra Pound
S. Elizabeths Hospl. Wash/ DC 29 Fb [1952]
St Elizabeths Hospl Washington DC 4 March '52 or better 4650
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 94 pound as jung's dissertation adviser
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
or better 4650: dating from the reign of ''Hoang Ti'' of Canto 53, c. 2698 bc.
67 EP to Jung (TL-1; AJP)
[St Elizabeths Hospital] [Washington, DC] [18 March 1952]
Further queries:
Do Miss J. c-y and her friends write down what they think (apart from writing
verses)?
do they verbally object to the falsification of history (and of news)?
do they object to having the husks and rubbish of the occident offered them
in place of Dante (Paradiso) and Sophokles?
Any of them want to translate the Seafarer into ideogram? Years ago one
compatriot of Miss J. got through 6 or 8 lines, but apparently with crushing endeavour. He worked at my little table in London for an hour and half, but NEVER returned.
68 EP to Jung (TL-2; AJP)
[St Elizabeths Hospital] [Washington, DC] [24 March 1952]
notes from an anonymous correspondent w[h]ose identity Miss Chih-ying Jung may guess at.
ideogram INCLUSIVE, sometime not the least ambiguous
but ideogramic mind not always trying to split things into fragments (syn- tacticly etc. )
sometimes VERY clear (at others impenetrable, at least to occidental and unskilled reader).
seems very important to distinguish the merely pictorial ideograms, such as old huah /, from the ''newer'' where the idea of flower (vegetation) is joined with idea of change/ metamorphoses continuing in nature/
pound as jung's dissertation adviser 95
meant in first line to drive in the ''respect for kind of intelligence that enables cherry-stone to make cherries'' as emphasized in big scrawl preceding translation of ''Analects. ''
I have the usual classics/finished a translation of the Shih [Odes] three years ago/but the powers of darkness and the enthusiastic but NON-functioning printers have, so far as I know, got no further than they were TWO years ago/ microscopic measurements of the format/to get the proportion of the page/keep the strophe divisions AND give the first seal text/that is to say to provide what we have not, a text in seal character for american students /
to go back to line one/ what I was trying to get across was respect for the changing power in florescence.
outside the classics available in Legge's series and those in Fenollosa's notes, I am very ignorant/ have been able to get two anthologies, one of which is lent to your more or less homophone Gloria French, Mrs. W[illiam]. French
1702 De Witt Ave. Alexandria. Va.
who hopes to meet you when you get to Washington. She is working hard, but of course none of us have the FAINTEST idea what chinese poetry really SOUNDS like.
and I will now try to get a more specific notion of the lines that say something about wind, horse and water.
anonymously yours, and hoping to see you next month.
old huah /, from the ''newer'': hua ? is archaic for ? , a character in EP's Chinese poem. For Jung's ''line by line prose interpretation'' of the poem, see Angela Jung Palandri, ''Homage to a Confucian Poet,'' Paideuma, 3/3 (Winter 1974), 303.
first line: first line of EP's Chinese poem: ? ? ? ? . big scrawl: ? in EP's hand in Confucius, 193.
69 EP to Jung (ALS-1; AJP)
[St Elizabeths Hospital] [Washington, DC] 24 march [1952]
Honbl glory produces wheat-ear?
No, I do not know the Shuo Wen C. T. & would be very grateful if you can
bring a borrowed copy with you.
Very truly yours [signed] Ezra Pound
glory produces wheat-ear: ? ? ? .