The bamboo grove and so on/cant eggspect the young to eschew all
dalliance
or rise presto presto to senile calm.
Ezra-Pounds-Chinese-Friends-Stories-in-Letters
but wot ov it?
In present rage to destroy considerable chink Kulch Hu or anyUVum likely to
be available to funnel in a little of occidental-NOT-rot?
Mild diversion of Hnbl/FANG might be found in Wyndham's Rotting Hill,
and in bits of Writer and Absolute, tho latter not partic[ularly] necess/if have not wasted time on lower frog and brit/babblers.
Gawd bless Wyndham, chief delouser of dying Britain AND so on.
Hu [Shi], Amy [Lowell] etc: Fang, ''Imagism & Chinese Renaissance. '' See Letter 86. EP and fellow American poet Amy Lowell (1874-1925) had not been on friendly terms ever since 1914, when, in his view, she reduced the Imagist movement he had started to ''Amygism. ''
Hu: see Glossary on Hu Shi.
Rotting Hill . . . Writer and Absolute: Wyndham Lewis (see Glossary), Rotting Hill (London: Methuen,
1951); The Writer and the Absolute (London: Methuen, 1952).
78 Fang to EP (TLS-1; Lilly)
Dear Mr Pound,
HU SHIH is now at Princeton. He appears in Boylston Hall now & then;
I have somehow managed to miss him.
Your [Guide to] Kulchur will be read in China--in thirty years. The crowd in
Formosa will never cast a glance at the book. (I have a pretty low opinion of
[St Elizabeths Hospital] [Washington, DC] [22 August 1952]
[Cambridge, Mass. ] September 1, 1952
118 a. fang and pound's classic anthology
them, not that I have any higher esteem of those on the mainland--at this moment. )
Someone gave me a book containing La Prima Decade dei Cantos di E. P. But who is Ennio Contini?
I am asked to write a review of PIVOT for New Mexico Quarterly. As it is not for me to mete out ? [pros] or ? [cons] I intend to write a compact essay on PIVOT's position in E. P. 's universe. I shall be grateful if you care to give me some hints--what points you would like to see emphasized, etc.
Hope to write that essay after my Colorado trip. The Sub-Committee on Chinese thought (subsidized by Ford Foundation) is holding a meeting at Aspen, Sept. 7-14. All expenses paid to the participants (about a dozen). Have sent them a paper on the diYculty of translating from the Chinese--some sixty pages, mainly about how one should become a good sinologist. I believe it is sheer waste. (Shall leave Cambridge on 4 and return on 17 Sept. )
Yours respectfully [signed] Achilles Fang
HU SHIH: see Glossary on Hu Shi.
La Prima Decade dei Cantos di E. P. . . . Ennio Contini: L'Alleluja (1952) with ten poems by Ennio
Contini and Mary de Rachewiltz's Italian versions of Cantos 1-9 and lines 1-55 of Canto 10
(Gallup D56).
on the diYculty of translating: Fang, ''Some ReXections on the DiYculty of Translation,'' in Studies in
Chinese Thought, ed. Arthur Wright (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953).
79 EP to Fang (TL-2; Beinecke)
[St Elizabeths Hospital] [Washington, DC] [5 September 1952]
THIRTY years, O Fang, my phoenix! ! !
what celerity, what almost indecent celerity/
it took Seymour 37 years to get Patria Mia into press.
it has taken 40 for Harriet's snot-rag to print a french poets, bilingual issue/ and now nacherly, as they tell me, it represents about the wust possbl
SElection to illustrate whatever mental life is left in froggery.
WHY shd/the heathen chinese git thaaar sooner than the goddam BARbarian? ? pien3 [? ]/given by mathews/
wot I spose means praise dont SEEM to be in Mr Mathews
PAO1 [? ]/I spose/rad[ical] 145 (yes, Mat has it)
KEEP on, you'll drive me into eggspandin my VOcabulary.
PIVOT position: CHUNG [? ], I spose, plumb in deh MIDDLE whaar it
ought to be.
a. fang and pound's classic anthology 119
Contini, young wop [Italian] with nerve enough to annoy the woptalian Bloomsbury by printing what his connazionali do NOT want printed.
Pivot? emphasis? perhaps that it is better to be a Confucian than a sinologist/ not that the two categories are necessarily in opposition. Many of yr/race must have (at any rate are said to have) come to understand that the ANSWERS are ALL in the four books/at 25 one sees this re/some of them/and Wnds the rest of them later. Just read McNair Wilson's ''Gipsy Queen. '' McN W/is a nice Xtian. Kung wd/have saved him several non sequiturs/
book worth Fang's attention. (1934 . . . I dont know why I hadn't seen it, as I cite McNW in Intro Tx Bk.
I take it F/g has already followed up lines Agassiz/Del Mar, Brooks Ad/ Blackstone/
Cant rember names of chineeee given in small wop/vol/generation after the ''ten remnants'' but most brilliant already dead in 1937.
Small trans/of Tuan Szetsun (very simple) Wu Yung/a couple of vols/in english seen in hell-hole/Catharine Karl//information re <contemporary> Celestial ex-Empire NOT very abundant.
IN FACT, (as printed), doubt if more than 80 people in Perikles' Athens. tsai chien (WHY did that bitch pronounce it: chen? )
Patria Mia: in 1950 Ralph Fletcher Seymour issued EP's Patria Mia (SP, 99-141), which Seymour, Daughaday, and Co. (Chicago) failed to publish in 1913.
Harriet's snot-rag. . . bilingual issue: the Poetry magazine (Chicago) founded by Harriet Monroe (1860-1936) in 1912 presents ten contemporary French poets in its September 1952 issue.
pien3 . . . PAO1: ? . . . ? . See Letter 78.
McNair Wilson's ''Gipsy Queen'': EP owned a copy of The Gipsy-Queen of Paris by Robert McNair
Wilson (1934).
Agassiz . . . Blackstone: see Glossary on Agassiz, Louis; Del Mar, Alexander; Adams, Brooks; and
Blackstone, William.
Tuan Szetsun . . . Wu Yung: EP owned copies of Exposition of Confucian Cosmopolitanism by Tuan
Szetsun (1936) and The Flight of an Empress by Wu Yung (1937). Catharine Karl: unidentiWed.
tsai chien: see Letter 84.
80 EP to Fang (TL-2; Beinecke)
[St Elizabeths Hospital] [Washington, DC] [13 October 1952]
Achilles
[Fang's notation: ''EP's reaction to my Aspen paper. '']
I HOPE that'll set 'em down on their WUMPZ and keep 'em down.
as to heresy/there wd/seem to be basic agreement at least to eVect that some
emphasis is placed on the idea POLitica of ''gittin it over''/
? ? 120 a. fang and pound's classic anthology
as to what Kung WD/have said had he had 2500 MORE years of human imbecility in consideration/gorNOZE
I suspect about FOUR of them ejaculatory arrow signs.
human imbecility (qui donne une idee de/l inWni'' etc. 2500 of LaoZe aestheticism/and horrible translations from ** into waleeze [Waley] ***
As doctrinaire propagandist/might hold that WHEN K/said it it wasn't a cliche ? /
and therefore shd NOT be represented by the drool that passes fer langqitch in the Slimes whether of Limeyburg or Jork/
**
now when yu git to grammar/there I retain curiosity/but having suggested something like agglutinative element in Aeschylus/re/whose lingo I know even less than that of the dark-haired children of the fatherland///
wotterELL do I kare/
and if/poisoned by low grade western inWltrations the WRTTEN symbols of Chink thought have become no better that [than] those of Sulzberger and Matthiessen **
what has that to do with WAN/with kulch/ellegunce or whatsodam/whatso JEN [humanity] or other occupations of the ChunTz' [Zhuangzi]
I wish I did know a bit more about how much a bunch of IDS/CAN interact/ backword forward/as do radicals when conjuncted in one ID/
as from mere hieroglyph in hwa [? ] the representation and ? hwa/with whole poesia of metamorphoses conjuncted/an IDEA-gram tho/or whole poem on paper phonetikly incomplete
nice guy in this P. M. who really likes his Li Po (as beWts his tender years) and does NOT swallow bloomsbury bugwash/
do yu do any teaching at haaaVud? or merely talk to half-masted profs/in hours of idleness/I mean where were yu to ram a li'l sense into Locke?
I can't tell these kids much till yr/abysmal employer prints out them INcor- rect, but possibly useful graphs of the SHIH [Odes] sound/not that they LOOK much like any grunts and wheezes any celestial, darkhaired etc/has ever made in my presence/
what did I hear the other day, when I said: Mei jin pu hao [Beautiful people not good]. something sounding like: Mei kuo rin pu hao [Americans not good]. Very hard for senile ignoramus to attain vocal Xuidity. what does Ni hao ma? [How are you? ] sound like in the North Kepertl [Beijing]? A rose of Shanghai
pronounces: ''manchu,'' in way almost impos/disting/fr/''damn yankee. '' ANYhow/without centuries of damXristers/no freud possible/doubt if even Lao
Tse is as obscene as the english alledged version by wa-lee ? or ? ? [Waley].
Sulzberger: Arthur Hays Sulzberger (1891-1968), publisher of New York Times (1935-61). Matthiessen: Francis Otto Matthiessen (1902-50), Harvard professor of literature and history. Li Po: see Glossary on Li Bo.
a. fang and pound's classic anthology 121
Locke: Fred Locke. See Letter 81.
A rose of Shanghai: Veronica Huilan Sun (see Glossary).
version by wa-lee: Arthur Waley (1889-1966), The Way and Its Power: A Study of the Tao Te Ching and
Its Place in Chinese Thought (1949; rpt. New York: Grove, 1958).
81 Fang to EP (TLS-1; Beinecke)
[Cambridge, Mass. ]
Oct. 27, 1952
Dear Mr Pound,
Completely knocked out for three full weeks--Xu. The heavy shoulders
wouldn't allow the Wngers touch the typewriter keys. Hence this delay in writing.
I am not teaching, nor do I care to play the slave who leads on idiot boys-- pedagogue. Sorry Fred Locke was such a disappointment to you. He was not known for his brilliance while he was here. Essentially a philologist or gram- marian, and Catholic at that.
Met J. Hawkes a few days ago; the printing project going Wne. Mei jin pu hao is too literary, mei jin usually standing for a beauty. Hence Mei-kuo-jin pu hao [Americans not good]. More idiomatically, Mei kuo [? ] ? [America] pu hao [not good]. (Traditionally Chinese did not distinguish the native of a land from the land itself. ) Jin ? is pronounced ren around the northern capital, but elsewhere yin. Ni hao ma sounds really melodious in the mould of a northern girl. The intonation is more or less similar to the phrase Muss es sein? in Beethoven's last string quartet, in F. But the voice is not raised in the last syllable. You know, there is not stress in Chinese. When a word is to be emphasized, it is pronounced in full TONE. The enclitic ma being practically atonal, the whole phrase sounds rather like es and sein transposed: Muss seine es? (One reason why the jap. language sounds so horrible is that the important word--verb--ends a sentence and stress is put on the SUFFIX to the verb and not on the root of the verb itself. Me no savee: wakarimaSENG [I don't know].
I have already made it clear that Waley is too obsessed with sex (v. Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, p. 558, note to ? 122). I am inclined to think that Ta[o]- te-ching can be used as a metaphysical foundation for JeVersonian democracy. It is the later Taozers who misinterpreted him. Lao-tzu was no more Taoistic than you are.
Thank you very much for your comment on NMQ Lu Ki. I still think you should do MONG.
If Guggenheim is willing to be useful, I shall try to translate Wen-hsin tiao- lung next year.
? ? 122 a. fang and pound's classic anthology
? ? ? ? is from the Stone-Classic (we have also T'ang stone-classics here): Analects VI xvi. (Lash should not have put ? ? at the beginning. I gave him choice, but he took both. ) The second ideogram is 5257 Mathews.
Respectfully [signed] Achilles Fang
Wen-hsin tiao-lung: Liu Xie (c. 465-c. 532), Wenxin diaolong (Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons). See Fang, review of V. Y. Shih's translation of the book in Times Literary Supplement, 4 December 1959.
? ? ? : EP renders the phrase as ''accomplishment and solidity as two trees growing side by side and together with leafage'' (Confucius, 216).
Lash: Kenneth Lush, editor of New Mexico Quarterly.
82 EP to Fang (TL-1; Beinecke)
[St Elizabeths Hospital] [Washington, DC] [4 November 1952]
and az to strange doctrines
ACHILLES
Mr W[aley]'s alledged translation of Lao/being OF the most obscene bks/
printed even in the PerWdious Isle the question of the alledged source might be reduced to enquiry
Does Lao contain ANYTHING useful that is NOT in the Four Books (and their preludes, the Shih [Book of Odes] and the Shu [Book of History]) [? ]
an nif not why bother wiV deh superXuous.
The bamboo grove and so on/cant eggspect the young to eschew all dalliance or rise presto presto to senile calm. we grant THAT.
83 Fang to EP (TLS-1; Lilly)
[Cambridge, Mass. ] Nov 14, 1952
Dear Mr Pound,
Your latest, on Lao and the bamboo grove boys, was forwarded to me in
Mass. General Hospital. Lao certainly is ambiguous to have much value for sensible beings--at any rate he cannot be rendered sexually. BUT Chuang Chou, generally misunderstood to be a Taoist (but he is more Confucian than Taoist), should be of great importance to sensible Confucians.
? a. fang and pound's classic anthology 123
On Nov. 3 I lost balance and fell down 7 steps. Left foot sprained and the heelbone shattered. Went to the above mentioned hospital on the 6th, had the bone set aright, and the foot and ankle in cast. Came home on the 12th.
Yesterday was invited to Faculty Club: lunch with MacLeish, Hawkes, and Wilson (host).
The boss of the press showed me a sample sheet of your Odes. Both the Syndics (or is it Syndicate) and Wilson have come to decision: they will publish.
Only that they are Wguring out how to reduce the production cost.
Gathered that the press is toying with the idea of publishing a de-luxe ed. of text-cum-ideogram-cum-sound and another ed. of text solus simultaneously.
Wilson wants to communicate to you directly--I encouraged him. By the way, Wilson used to teach frog lit.
W is a nice chap: wants to have the Odes out as soon as possible. Old Mac joined in, of course.
(The preceding paragraph is strictly between us. You will hear from W soon, I think. )
This compulsory vacation is exasperating.
Oh yes, e. e. cummings asked me to come and see him. Wrote him that when I get a bit agile with the crutches I shall come. Thanks.
With respect [signed] Achilles Fang
Chuang Chou: see Glossary on Zhuang Zhou.
MacLeish: see Glossary on MacLeish, Archibald.
Wilson: see Glossary on Wilson, Thomas James.
e. e. cummings: see Glossary on Cummings, Edward Estlin.
84 EP to Fang (TL-1 + ALS-2; Beinecke)
[St Elizabeths Hospital] [Washington, DC] 19 Nv [1952]
yes, my Achilles
(doing it thoroughly) I got hit on the heel over 50 years ago by a base ball/and
there being v. litl circulation in that part of the corpus, I know it takes d/n/long time to git over soreness.
***
oVset is a printing METHOD, at low cost, once the kumperzishn is did. ***
O. K. re Chuang Chou/but I still want [to] know WHAT he ADDED.
124 a. fang and pound's classic anthology
It is my hypothesis, based on NO data (that is no extraneous data) whatso- dam, that every intelligent chinYman fer 1000 years has meditated the Four bks/ trying to see wot he cd/leave out, or add/result being dam little.
Before that they spent 1400 years deciding Mencius cd/be added to the THREE bks/
**puzzled by the one about wot he (K) ate and his night gown/of course quite simple. IF one consider that it had to get aYrmed that Kung was not a solar myth or the incarnation of hindoo djinn procreated by a Wsh swallowing the etc/(wot them hindoos wont think of ? /? ) ! ! !
as per Voltaire: the Wrst man who did NOT.
Regnery has reprinted Wyndham L[ewis]'s ''Revenge fer Luvv'' mebbe that wd/beguile yr enforced ex-deskness/
the kumrad kumminkz [Cummings] is abl/bodied/tell him to come to YU with my kumplimentZ.
---------
Condolences ye compleat Achilles.
a heel fer
a heel
Ez P
incidentally
young Chien recognized yr friends calligraphy on the wall. Thank
Kuanon arrows are out of date
or unobtainable in Boston
as per Voltaire: in Ancient and Modern History Voltaire (1694-1778) refers to Confucius as a philoso- pher who ''does not pretend to inspiration, or the gift of prophecy,'' one who ''places all his merit in a constant endeavor to gain the mastery over his passions, and . . . writes only as a philosopher'' (The Works of Voltaire, trans. William Fleming (New York: St Hubert Guild, 1901), xv/2. 173). Cf. Confucius, 191.
''Revenge fer Luvv'': Wyndham Lewis (see Glossary), The Revenge for Love (1937).
Chien: T'sai Chien. See Letter 79.
yr friends calligraphy: see Letter 36 n.
Kuanon: Kuanon (Guanyin), Goddess of Compassion, is honored in Cantos 74, 77, 81, 90, 97, 101,
and 110.
a. fang and pound's classic anthology 125
85 EP to Fang (TL-1; Beinecke)
[St Elizabeths Hospital] [Washington, DC] [November 1952]
No, my Fang
D. P. has just recd/a thoroughly DIRTY letter from yr/friend Wilson.
NO soap. letter from . . . Wilson: this letter is lost or discarded.
86 Fang to EP (TLS-1; Beinecke)
[Cambridge, Mass. ]
Nov. 25, 1952
Dear Mr Pound,
Thank you very much for the condolences. The damaged heel will be
repaired in 3 more weeks. Cast meanwhile.
Am sorry to hear that Wilson has disappointed you. I didn't expect him to do
so, for he was very willing to do whatever you wanted. I still think he can be made reasonable.
A few days ago John H. Randall, JR (Columbia), editor of Journal of the History of Ideas, wrote me a two-page insulting letter together with the MS (Imagism & Ch. Renaissance). I don't mind the rejection, but the letter was too much. It was so stinking, that I doubt if it could have been written by anyone but a Yankee or a Britisher. Well, I did not deem it worth even answering. <So, the MS lies in the drawer. >
What's matter with homo americanus academiensis? A chronic campus- follower that I am, I am sometimes nonplussed.
As for the Ode-Wilson mix-up, can I do anything for you?
Respectfully [signed] Achilles
87 EP to Fang (TL-1; Beinecke)
[St Elizabeths Hospital] [Washington, DC] 15 Jan 16 Jan [1953]
O FANG
moderation is the thief of time (perhaps).
anyhow have telegraphed Kasper to WAIT, bloody WAIT
126 a. fang and pound's classic anthology
But whether he will hv/left N. Pork [New York] and be howling at yr/door, having missed telegram, I dont know.
At any rate I shd/like clariWcation before chucking the Odes at some other publisher. AS Cairns whispered an incomprehensible message, re decent inten- tions at Haaavud/
AND I suppose it wd/be more convenient fer Fang to do his part of the Herculean, in Cambridge.
BUT no harm to know that the impulsive Kasp/has two other publishers interested.
The contrast between K[asper]/going oV half cocked/and C[airns]/thinking two weeks absence is NOT a delay. Oh yes, he was coming back with two holy doves of Picassian peace etc.
Any how Kasper's instructions are to WAIT, whether he has recd/'em in N. York or gets 'em from yu when he produces a tommy-gun.
anyhow the KasPER is NOT to have the ms/until I know quite a lot more about who, whom, wherefore etc.
Kasper: see Glossary on Kasper, John.
Cairns: see Glossary on Cairns, Huntington.
two other publishers: in letters to EP of 31 December 1952 and 14 January 1953 (Lilly) Kasper reports
Macmillan's and Twayne's interest in the Odes project.
88 Fang to EP (TLS-1; Lilly)
Jan. 19, Monday, 1953
Dear Mr Pound,
Your telegram at 5 Friday afternoon. Checked with Hawkes if impulsive
Kasper had appeared. Apparently he also got your wire in time: he did not turn up on Saturday morning, as he said he would, per his letter received Sat. morning.
I am really glad that you've changed your mind: I think the Odes should be printed here at Harvard. The people here are not so bad: Wilson gave me the impression that he has the best of all intentions toward the book. It takes time, of course, to handle the Syndics. I am sure everything will turn out as you wish.
Two weeks ago a fellow here in Boston announced (N. Y. Times Book Review) that he was about to write a biography of E. P. Authorized?
Again, some two weeks ago I read in the same paper that Aaron Copland's record (Vienna) of your Lustra poem, An Immorality, is in market.
Social Crediter is not in our storehouse. Re/Yale & Xtianity, I hope to get some information soon.
[Cambridge, Mass. ]
a. fang and pound's classic anthology 127
Poor old Lash (New Mexico Q. ) has sent me his last appeal: shall have to sit down and write a ''review'' of your Confucius this evening.
The foot, still limping. Carrying the cane.
Yours respectfully [signed] Achilles Fang
a fellow here: Charles Norman, whose Ezra Pound: A Biography was published in 1960 (New York: Macmillan).
Aaron Copland: American composer Aaron Copland's record of ''An Immorality'' was released in 1926 (Gallup E4j).
89 EP to Fang (TL-2; Beinecke)
[St Elizabeths Hospital] [Washington, DC] [24 January 1953]
O FANG
IF the hawk [John Hawkes] has wings, he might save a little time by doing a
sample page/UNLESS a Wnal sample by Kimball is with the ms/
I thought K[imball]/HAD solved the problem, but the sheets I still have do
NOT show the result.
It does NOT take a Copernicus to conceive a page I forget if it was 91/2 or 101/4
(but in either case, as page that wd take on left side the SEAL in present size and on the right side 24 lines english/i. e. maximum of TWO unbroken 12 line strophes AND 24 lines romanj, spaced out as might be musical bars (if no Kimball sample has this, I can send something to show how the romanj shd/go/ IF same is not laid open to the meanest capacity by MY typewritten pages.
This should save such idiocy as that shown by Wilson's letter the photos to be cut up AFTER the page proofs of the translation and romanj have been achieved/
PAGE proofs, not galleys/then the photos can be cut to correspond.
ALZO a sample page might serve to satisfy the Rev. Elephant [Eliot] who SAID Faber wd/take it on condition it shd/LOOK like a two guinea book.
Of course our eminent contemporary is a damn Xrister/and NOT keen on Oriental wisdom (or much else) BUT he is not wholly responsible for the goddam delay/the pusillanimous and blithering Bubblegum wasted a year/ apparently from sheer stincgking vigliaccherian What happened to Kimball, god knows, he was all enthusiasm and had measured out the pages. May be black mail, gorNOZE/
the egregio Sig. H. C[airns]. murmured something incomprehensible but seems incapable of measuring TIME. These people to whom a fortnight is as nothing //
128 a. fang and pound's classic anthology
in short UNtergang des goddam
Abendland/
mania for gathering last year's peaches
AND the unclean desire of most of my friends, pubrs/etc. that all further
edtns/shall be posthumous.
The impulsiFFFF kaspeRRRR had two pubrs/''lined up'' BUTT until Cairns
makes coherent communication either in writ/or verbattt/
let us remain in suspense.
All heal to the heel, and the quicker the sooner. BUT I dun tell yu that part of
the anaTOMY is slow to recover.
Kimball: see Glossary on Kimball, Dudley.
Wilson's letter: in a letter of 25 November 1952, Wilson proposed to hold oV the ''desire for
immediate publication of the Odes with complete apparatus'' (Beinecke).
two guinea book: T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) visited his career-long friend EP on every trip to Washington in 1946-58. Probably on one of those visits he agreed to print EP's Odes on the condition that it be like ''a two guinea book. '' During that period Eliot corresponded also with DP, Omar Pound, Olga Rudge, Archibald MacLeish, and others in eVorts to help EP. The EP/Eliot relation is treated in Robert Langbaum's ''Pound and Eliot'' in Ezra Pound among the Poets,
ed. George Bornstein (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985). kaspeRRRR had two pubrs/''lined up'': see Letter 87 n.
Cairns: see Glossary on Cairns, Huntington.
90 Fang to EP (TLS-1; Beinecke)
[Cambridge, Mass. ]
Jan. 31 1953
Dear Mr Pound,
Ignorant as I am of the profound thinking of American professors of litera-
ture, I like to believe that Leary is quite ? [sincere].
Obviously nothing much can be said in 40 minutes. But the discussion period,
participated by some hundred professors and sub-professors (so I was told by someone here), can be quite fruitful. Instead of wasting time by answering inane questions, I plan to give them a lecture on EP as Confucian (things which I have left unsaid in my ''review'' of your CONFUCIUS for New Mexico Quarterly)/or try to overwhelm them by making a line-after-line exegesis of Pisan Cantos (I shall write Leary that I wish all the participants to bring their copies of the Cantos or, at least, the Pisan volume--this will make Laughlin happy, I hope). Either way, their mouths will be shut.
As for Leary's postscriptum, it would be a Wne thing if you would (and could) meet his request. If ''message'' is abhorrent to you, I personally will be very grateful if you could read the Wrst 3 passages of Pisan (ending with the Wanjina passage), which I like to make an exegesis of. If even that is unfeasible, I wonder
a. fang and pound's classic anthology 129
if you would let me tape-record a poem (or a canto) from Harvard Library. Of course, any recording you make should be used for the nonce, if you so request. I am looking for a competent violinist to play the music of the second Pisan canto--a few dollars and a nice exhibit for my paper. I may also show round a picture of Cafe Dante and that of Isotta's tomb with tempus tacendi and tempus
loquendi, etc. etc.
At any rate I haven't answered Leary's second yet.
--------
I have not contacted Hawkes yet. I am trying to Wnd a way to <breaking>
the irrational mentality of Wilson and company. A bit of active interference would be in order.
I still have Kimball's sample page with me. Wilson showed me his sample page; I suppose you have seen it too.
Would it be advisable for me to tell Hawkes or Wilson that Faber & Faber would take the two guinea book to-be?
As it stands, someone with a bit of worldly prestige (Cairns or perhaps e. e. cummings) must preachify to Wilson before he gets over his pusillanimity. (May I speak to cummings on my own? )
Respectfully [signed] Achilles Fang
Leary: enclosed are copies of two letters from Lewis Leary, requesting a paper on EP for the English Institute meeting in September 1953.
Cafe Dante: Cafe ? Dante in Verona is referred to in Canto 78/501.
Isotta's tomb: EP's 1922 visit to Tempio Malatestiano with the tomb of Malatesta's third wife, Isotta
degli Atti, (c. 1433-74) inspired Cantos 8-11. Cairns: see Glossary on Cairns, Huntington.
91 EP to Fang (TL-2; Beinecke)
[St Elizabeths Hospital] [Washington, DC] 4 Fb [1953]
OUAN SOUIIIIIIII [Cheers] O. K.
be available to funnel in a little of occidental-NOT-rot?
Mild diversion of Hnbl/FANG might be found in Wyndham's Rotting Hill,
and in bits of Writer and Absolute, tho latter not partic[ularly] necess/if have not wasted time on lower frog and brit/babblers.
Gawd bless Wyndham, chief delouser of dying Britain AND so on.
Hu [Shi], Amy [Lowell] etc: Fang, ''Imagism & Chinese Renaissance. '' See Letter 86. EP and fellow American poet Amy Lowell (1874-1925) had not been on friendly terms ever since 1914, when, in his view, she reduced the Imagist movement he had started to ''Amygism. ''
Hu: see Glossary on Hu Shi.
Rotting Hill . . . Writer and Absolute: Wyndham Lewis (see Glossary), Rotting Hill (London: Methuen,
1951); The Writer and the Absolute (London: Methuen, 1952).
78 Fang to EP (TLS-1; Lilly)
Dear Mr Pound,
HU SHIH is now at Princeton. He appears in Boylston Hall now & then;
I have somehow managed to miss him.
Your [Guide to] Kulchur will be read in China--in thirty years. The crowd in
Formosa will never cast a glance at the book. (I have a pretty low opinion of
[St Elizabeths Hospital] [Washington, DC] [22 August 1952]
[Cambridge, Mass. ] September 1, 1952
118 a. fang and pound's classic anthology
them, not that I have any higher esteem of those on the mainland--at this moment. )
Someone gave me a book containing La Prima Decade dei Cantos di E. P. But who is Ennio Contini?
I am asked to write a review of PIVOT for New Mexico Quarterly. As it is not for me to mete out ? [pros] or ? [cons] I intend to write a compact essay on PIVOT's position in E. P. 's universe. I shall be grateful if you care to give me some hints--what points you would like to see emphasized, etc.
Hope to write that essay after my Colorado trip. The Sub-Committee on Chinese thought (subsidized by Ford Foundation) is holding a meeting at Aspen, Sept. 7-14. All expenses paid to the participants (about a dozen). Have sent them a paper on the diYculty of translating from the Chinese--some sixty pages, mainly about how one should become a good sinologist. I believe it is sheer waste. (Shall leave Cambridge on 4 and return on 17 Sept. )
Yours respectfully [signed] Achilles Fang
HU SHIH: see Glossary on Hu Shi.
La Prima Decade dei Cantos di E. P. . . . Ennio Contini: L'Alleluja (1952) with ten poems by Ennio
Contini and Mary de Rachewiltz's Italian versions of Cantos 1-9 and lines 1-55 of Canto 10
(Gallup D56).
on the diYculty of translating: Fang, ''Some ReXections on the DiYculty of Translation,'' in Studies in
Chinese Thought, ed. Arthur Wright (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953).
79 EP to Fang (TL-2; Beinecke)
[St Elizabeths Hospital] [Washington, DC] [5 September 1952]
THIRTY years, O Fang, my phoenix! ! !
what celerity, what almost indecent celerity/
it took Seymour 37 years to get Patria Mia into press.
it has taken 40 for Harriet's snot-rag to print a french poets, bilingual issue/ and now nacherly, as they tell me, it represents about the wust possbl
SElection to illustrate whatever mental life is left in froggery.
WHY shd/the heathen chinese git thaaar sooner than the goddam BARbarian? ? pien3 [? ]/given by mathews/
wot I spose means praise dont SEEM to be in Mr Mathews
PAO1 [? ]/I spose/rad[ical] 145 (yes, Mat has it)
KEEP on, you'll drive me into eggspandin my VOcabulary.
PIVOT position: CHUNG [? ], I spose, plumb in deh MIDDLE whaar it
ought to be.
a. fang and pound's classic anthology 119
Contini, young wop [Italian] with nerve enough to annoy the woptalian Bloomsbury by printing what his connazionali do NOT want printed.
Pivot? emphasis? perhaps that it is better to be a Confucian than a sinologist/ not that the two categories are necessarily in opposition. Many of yr/race must have (at any rate are said to have) come to understand that the ANSWERS are ALL in the four books/at 25 one sees this re/some of them/and Wnds the rest of them later. Just read McNair Wilson's ''Gipsy Queen. '' McN W/is a nice Xtian. Kung wd/have saved him several non sequiturs/
book worth Fang's attention. (1934 . . . I dont know why I hadn't seen it, as I cite McNW in Intro Tx Bk.
I take it F/g has already followed up lines Agassiz/Del Mar, Brooks Ad/ Blackstone/
Cant rember names of chineeee given in small wop/vol/generation after the ''ten remnants'' but most brilliant already dead in 1937.
Small trans/of Tuan Szetsun (very simple) Wu Yung/a couple of vols/in english seen in hell-hole/Catharine Karl//information re <contemporary> Celestial ex-Empire NOT very abundant.
IN FACT, (as printed), doubt if more than 80 people in Perikles' Athens. tsai chien (WHY did that bitch pronounce it: chen? )
Patria Mia: in 1950 Ralph Fletcher Seymour issued EP's Patria Mia (SP, 99-141), which Seymour, Daughaday, and Co. (Chicago) failed to publish in 1913.
Harriet's snot-rag. . . bilingual issue: the Poetry magazine (Chicago) founded by Harriet Monroe (1860-1936) in 1912 presents ten contemporary French poets in its September 1952 issue.
pien3 . . . PAO1: ? . . . ? . See Letter 78.
McNair Wilson's ''Gipsy Queen'': EP owned a copy of The Gipsy-Queen of Paris by Robert McNair
Wilson (1934).
Agassiz . . . Blackstone: see Glossary on Agassiz, Louis; Del Mar, Alexander; Adams, Brooks; and
Blackstone, William.
Tuan Szetsun . . . Wu Yung: EP owned copies of Exposition of Confucian Cosmopolitanism by Tuan
Szetsun (1936) and The Flight of an Empress by Wu Yung (1937). Catharine Karl: unidentiWed.
tsai chien: see Letter 84.
80 EP to Fang (TL-2; Beinecke)
[St Elizabeths Hospital] [Washington, DC] [13 October 1952]
Achilles
[Fang's notation: ''EP's reaction to my Aspen paper. '']
I HOPE that'll set 'em down on their WUMPZ and keep 'em down.
as to heresy/there wd/seem to be basic agreement at least to eVect that some
emphasis is placed on the idea POLitica of ''gittin it over''/
? ? 120 a. fang and pound's classic anthology
as to what Kung WD/have said had he had 2500 MORE years of human imbecility in consideration/gorNOZE
I suspect about FOUR of them ejaculatory arrow signs.
human imbecility (qui donne une idee de/l inWni'' etc. 2500 of LaoZe aestheticism/and horrible translations from ** into waleeze [Waley] ***
As doctrinaire propagandist/might hold that WHEN K/said it it wasn't a cliche ? /
and therefore shd NOT be represented by the drool that passes fer langqitch in the Slimes whether of Limeyburg or Jork/
**
now when yu git to grammar/there I retain curiosity/but having suggested something like agglutinative element in Aeschylus/re/whose lingo I know even less than that of the dark-haired children of the fatherland///
wotterELL do I kare/
and if/poisoned by low grade western inWltrations the WRTTEN symbols of Chink thought have become no better that [than] those of Sulzberger and Matthiessen **
what has that to do with WAN/with kulch/ellegunce or whatsodam/whatso JEN [humanity] or other occupations of the ChunTz' [Zhuangzi]
I wish I did know a bit more about how much a bunch of IDS/CAN interact/ backword forward/as do radicals when conjuncted in one ID/
as from mere hieroglyph in hwa [? ] the representation and ? hwa/with whole poesia of metamorphoses conjuncted/an IDEA-gram tho/or whole poem on paper phonetikly incomplete
nice guy in this P. M. who really likes his Li Po (as beWts his tender years) and does NOT swallow bloomsbury bugwash/
do yu do any teaching at haaaVud? or merely talk to half-masted profs/in hours of idleness/I mean where were yu to ram a li'l sense into Locke?
I can't tell these kids much till yr/abysmal employer prints out them INcor- rect, but possibly useful graphs of the SHIH [Odes] sound/not that they LOOK much like any grunts and wheezes any celestial, darkhaired etc/has ever made in my presence/
what did I hear the other day, when I said: Mei jin pu hao [Beautiful people not good]. something sounding like: Mei kuo rin pu hao [Americans not good]. Very hard for senile ignoramus to attain vocal Xuidity. what does Ni hao ma? [How are you? ] sound like in the North Kepertl [Beijing]? A rose of Shanghai
pronounces: ''manchu,'' in way almost impos/disting/fr/''damn yankee. '' ANYhow/without centuries of damXristers/no freud possible/doubt if even Lao
Tse is as obscene as the english alledged version by wa-lee ? or ? ? [Waley].
Sulzberger: Arthur Hays Sulzberger (1891-1968), publisher of New York Times (1935-61). Matthiessen: Francis Otto Matthiessen (1902-50), Harvard professor of literature and history. Li Po: see Glossary on Li Bo.
a. fang and pound's classic anthology 121
Locke: Fred Locke. See Letter 81.
A rose of Shanghai: Veronica Huilan Sun (see Glossary).
version by wa-lee: Arthur Waley (1889-1966), The Way and Its Power: A Study of the Tao Te Ching and
Its Place in Chinese Thought (1949; rpt. New York: Grove, 1958).
81 Fang to EP (TLS-1; Beinecke)
[Cambridge, Mass. ]
Oct. 27, 1952
Dear Mr Pound,
Completely knocked out for three full weeks--Xu. The heavy shoulders
wouldn't allow the Wngers touch the typewriter keys. Hence this delay in writing.
I am not teaching, nor do I care to play the slave who leads on idiot boys-- pedagogue. Sorry Fred Locke was such a disappointment to you. He was not known for his brilliance while he was here. Essentially a philologist or gram- marian, and Catholic at that.
Met J. Hawkes a few days ago; the printing project going Wne. Mei jin pu hao is too literary, mei jin usually standing for a beauty. Hence Mei-kuo-jin pu hao [Americans not good]. More idiomatically, Mei kuo [? ] ? [America] pu hao [not good]. (Traditionally Chinese did not distinguish the native of a land from the land itself. ) Jin ? is pronounced ren around the northern capital, but elsewhere yin. Ni hao ma sounds really melodious in the mould of a northern girl. The intonation is more or less similar to the phrase Muss es sein? in Beethoven's last string quartet, in F. But the voice is not raised in the last syllable. You know, there is not stress in Chinese. When a word is to be emphasized, it is pronounced in full TONE. The enclitic ma being practically atonal, the whole phrase sounds rather like es and sein transposed: Muss seine es? (One reason why the jap. language sounds so horrible is that the important word--verb--ends a sentence and stress is put on the SUFFIX to the verb and not on the root of the verb itself. Me no savee: wakarimaSENG [I don't know].
I have already made it clear that Waley is too obsessed with sex (v. Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, p. 558, note to ? 122). I am inclined to think that Ta[o]- te-ching can be used as a metaphysical foundation for JeVersonian democracy. It is the later Taozers who misinterpreted him. Lao-tzu was no more Taoistic than you are.
Thank you very much for your comment on NMQ Lu Ki. I still think you should do MONG.
If Guggenheim is willing to be useful, I shall try to translate Wen-hsin tiao- lung next year.
? ? 122 a. fang and pound's classic anthology
? ? ? ? is from the Stone-Classic (we have also T'ang stone-classics here): Analects VI xvi. (Lash should not have put ? ? at the beginning. I gave him choice, but he took both. ) The second ideogram is 5257 Mathews.
Respectfully [signed] Achilles Fang
Wen-hsin tiao-lung: Liu Xie (c. 465-c. 532), Wenxin diaolong (Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons). See Fang, review of V. Y. Shih's translation of the book in Times Literary Supplement, 4 December 1959.
? ? ? : EP renders the phrase as ''accomplishment and solidity as two trees growing side by side and together with leafage'' (Confucius, 216).
Lash: Kenneth Lush, editor of New Mexico Quarterly.
82 EP to Fang (TL-1; Beinecke)
[St Elizabeths Hospital] [Washington, DC] [4 November 1952]
and az to strange doctrines
ACHILLES
Mr W[aley]'s alledged translation of Lao/being OF the most obscene bks/
printed even in the PerWdious Isle the question of the alledged source might be reduced to enquiry
Does Lao contain ANYTHING useful that is NOT in the Four Books (and their preludes, the Shih [Book of Odes] and the Shu [Book of History]) [? ]
an nif not why bother wiV deh superXuous.
The bamboo grove and so on/cant eggspect the young to eschew all dalliance or rise presto presto to senile calm. we grant THAT.
83 Fang to EP (TLS-1; Lilly)
[Cambridge, Mass. ] Nov 14, 1952
Dear Mr Pound,
Your latest, on Lao and the bamboo grove boys, was forwarded to me in
Mass. General Hospital. Lao certainly is ambiguous to have much value for sensible beings--at any rate he cannot be rendered sexually. BUT Chuang Chou, generally misunderstood to be a Taoist (but he is more Confucian than Taoist), should be of great importance to sensible Confucians.
? a. fang and pound's classic anthology 123
On Nov. 3 I lost balance and fell down 7 steps. Left foot sprained and the heelbone shattered. Went to the above mentioned hospital on the 6th, had the bone set aright, and the foot and ankle in cast. Came home on the 12th.
Yesterday was invited to Faculty Club: lunch with MacLeish, Hawkes, and Wilson (host).
The boss of the press showed me a sample sheet of your Odes. Both the Syndics (or is it Syndicate) and Wilson have come to decision: they will publish.
Only that they are Wguring out how to reduce the production cost.
Gathered that the press is toying with the idea of publishing a de-luxe ed. of text-cum-ideogram-cum-sound and another ed. of text solus simultaneously.
Wilson wants to communicate to you directly--I encouraged him. By the way, Wilson used to teach frog lit.
W is a nice chap: wants to have the Odes out as soon as possible. Old Mac joined in, of course.
(The preceding paragraph is strictly between us. You will hear from W soon, I think. )
This compulsory vacation is exasperating.
Oh yes, e. e. cummings asked me to come and see him. Wrote him that when I get a bit agile with the crutches I shall come. Thanks.
With respect [signed] Achilles Fang
Chuang Chou: see Glossary on Zhuang Zhou.
MacLeish: see Glossary on MacLeish, Archibald.
Wilson: see Glossary on Wilson, Thomas James.
e. e. cummings: see Glossary on Cummings, Edward Estlin.
84 EP to Fang (TL-1 + ALS-2; Beinecke)
[St Elizabeths Hospital] [Washington, DC] 19 Nv [1952]
yes, my Achilles
(doing it thoroughly) I got hit on the heel over 50 years ago by a base ball/and
there being v. litl circulation in that part of the corpus, I know it takes d/n/long time to git over soreness.
***
oVset is a printing METHOD, at low cost, once the kumperzishn is did. ***
O. K. re Chuang Chou/but I still want [to] know WHAT he ADDED.
124 a. fang and pound's classic anthology
It is my hypothesis, based on NO data (that is no extraneous data) whatso- dam, that every intelligent chinYman fer 1000 years has meditated the Four bks/ trying to see wot he cd/leave out, or add/result being dam little.
Before that they spent 1400 years deciding Mencius cd/be added to the THREE bks/
**puzzled by the one about wot he (K) ate and his night gown/of course quite simple. IF one consider that it had to get aYrmed that Kung was not a solar myth or the incarnation of hindoo djinn procreated by a Wsh swallowing the etc/(wot them hindoos wont think of ? /? ) ! ! !
as per Voltaire: the Wrst man who did NOT.
Regnery has reprinted Wyndham L[ewis]'s ''Revenge fer Luvv'' mebbe that wd/beguile yr enforced ex-deskness/
the kumrad kumminkz [Cummings] is abl/bodied/tell him to come to YU with my kumplimentZ.
---------
Condolences ye compleat Achilles.
a heel fer
a heel
Ez P
incidentally
young Chien recognized yr friends calligraphy on the wall. Thank
Kuanon arrows are out of date
or unobtainable in Boston
as per Voltaire: in Ancient and Modern History Voltaire (1694-1778) refers to Confucius as a philoso- pher who ''does not pretend to inspiration, or the gift of prophecy,'' one who ''places all his merit in a constant endeavor to gain the mastery over his passions, and . . . writes only as a philosopher'' (The Works of Voltaire, trans. William Fleming (New York: St Hubert Guild, 1901), xv/2. 173). Cf. Confucius, 191.
''Revenge fer Luvv'': Wyndham Lewis (see Glossary), The Revenge for Love (1937).
Chien: T'sai Chien. See Letter 79.
yr friends calligraphy: see Letter 36 n.
Kuanon: Kuanon (Guanyin), Goddess of Compassion, is honored in Cantos 74, 77, 81, 90, 97, 101,
and 110.
a. fang and pound's classic anthology 125
85 EP to Fang (TL-1; Beinecke)
[St Elizabeths Hospital] [Washington, DC] [November 1952]
No, my Fang
D. P. has just recd/a thoroughly DIRTY letter from yr/friend Wilson.
NO soap. letter from . . . Wilson: this letter is lost or discarded.
86 Fang to EP (TLS-1; Beinecke)
[Cambridge, Mass. ]
Nov. 25, 1952
Dear Mr Pound,
Thank you very much for the condolences. The damaged heel will be
repaired in 3 more weeks. Cast meanwhile.
Am sorry to hear that Wilson has disappointed you. I didn't expect him to do
so, for he was very willing to do whatever you wanted. I still think he can be made reasonable.
A few days ago John H. Randall, JR (Columbia), editor of Journal of the History of Ideas, wrote me a two-page insulting letter together with the MS (Imagism & Ch. Renaissance). I don't mind the rejection, but the letter was too much. It was so stinking, that I doubt if it could have been written by anyone but a Yankee or a Britisher. Well, I did not deem it worth even answering. <So, the MS lies in the drawer. >
What's matter with homo americanus academiensis? A chronic campus- follower that I am, I am sometimes nonplussed.
As for the Ode-Wilson mix-up, can I do anything for you?
Respectfully [signed] Achilles
87 EP to Fang (TL-1; Beinecke)
[St Elizabeths Hospital] [Washington, DC] 15 Jan 16 Jan [1953]
O FANG
moderation is the thief of time (perhaps).
anyhow have telegraphed Kasper to WAIT, bloody WAIT
126 a. fang and pound's classic anthology
But whether he will hv/left N. Pork [New York] and be howling at yr/door, having missed telegram, I dont know.
At any rate I shd/like clariWcation before chucking the Odes at some other publisher. AS Cairns whispered an incomprehensible message, re decent inten- tions at Haaavud/
AND I suppose it wd/be more convenient fer Fang to do his part of the Herculean, in Cambridge.
BUT no harm to know that the impulsive Kasp/has two other publishers interested.
The contrast between K[asper]/going oV half cocked/and C[airns]/thinking two weeks absence is NOT a delay. Oh yes, he was coming back with two holy doves of Picassian peace etc.
Any how Kasper's instructions are to WAIT, whether he has recd/'em in N. York or gets 'em from yu when he produces a tommy-gun.
anyhow the KasPER is NOT to have the ms/until I know quite a lot more about who, whom, wherefore etc.
Kasper: see Glossary on Kasper, John.
Cairns: see Glossary on Cairns, Huntington.
two other publishers: in letters to EP of 31 December 1952 and 14 January 1953 (Lilly) Kasper reports
Macmillan's and Twayne's interest in the Odes project.
88 Fang to EP (TLS-1; Lilly)
Jan. 19, Monday, 1953
Dear Mr Pound,
Your telegram at 5 Friday afternoon. Checked with Hawkes if impulsive
Kasper had appeared. Apparently he also got your wire in time: he did not turn up on Saturday morning, as he said he would, per his letter received Sat. morning.
I am really glad that you've changed your mind: I think the Odes should be printed here at Harvard. The people here are not so bad: Wilson gave me the impression that he has the best of all intentions toward the book. It takes time, of course, to handle the Syndics. I am sure everything will turn out as you wish.
Two weeks ago a fellow here in Boston announced (N. Y. Times Book Review) that he was about to write a biography of E. P. Authorized?
Again, some two weeks ago I read in the same paper that Aaron Copland's record (Vienna) of your Lustra poem, An Immorality, is in market.
Social Crediter is not in our storehouse. Re/Yale & Xtianity, I hope to get some information soon.
[Cambridge, Mass. ]
a. fang and pound's classic anthology 127
Poor old Lash (New Mexico Q. ) has sent me his last appeal: shall have to sit down and write a ''review'' of your Confucius this evening.
The foot, still limping. Carrying the cane.
Yours respectfully [signed] Achilles Fang
a fellow here: Charles Norman, whose Ezra Pound: A Biography was published in 1960 (New York: Macmillan).
Aaron Copland: American composer Aaron Copland's record of ''An Immorality'' was released in 1926 (Gallup E4j).
89 EP to Fang (TL-2; Beinecke)
[St Elizabeths Hospital] [Washington, DC] [24 January 1953]
O FANG
IF the hawk [John Hawkes] has wings, he might save a little time by doing a
sample page/UNLESS a Wnal sample by Kimball is with the ms/
I thought K[imball]/HAD solved the problem, but the sheets I still have do
NOT show the result.
It does NOT take a Copernicus to conceive a page I forget if it was 91/2 or 101/4
(but in either case, as page that wd take on left side the SEAL in present size and on the right side 24 lines english/i. e. maximum of TWO unbroken 12 line strophes AND 24 lines romanj, spaced out as might be musical bars (if no Kimball sample has this, I can send something to show how the romanj shd/go/ IF same is not laid open to the meanest capacity by MY typewritten pages.
This should save such idiocy as that shown by Wilson's letter the photos to be cut up AFTER the page proofs of the translation and romanj have been achieved/
PAGE proofs, not galleys/then the photos can be cut to correspond.
ALZO a sample page might serve to satisfy the Rev. Elephant [Eliot] who SAID Faber wd/take it on condition it shd/LOOK like a two guinea book.
Of course our eminent contemporary is a damn Xrister/and NOT keen on Oriental wisdom (or much else) BUT he is not wholly responsible for the goddam delay/the pusillanimous and blithering Bubblegum wasted a year/ apparently from sheer stincgking vigliaccherian What happened to Kimball, god knows, he was all enthusiasm and had measured out the pages. May be black mail, gorNOZE/
the egregio Sig. H. C[airns]. murmured something incomprehensible but seems incapable of measuring TIME. These people to whom a fortnight is as nothing //
128 a. fang and pound's classic anthology
in short UNtergang des goddam
Abendland/
mania for gathering last year's peaches
AND the unclean desire of most of my friends, pubrs/etc. that all further
edtns/shall be posthumous.
The impulsiFFFF kaspeRRRR had two pubrs/''lined up'' BUTT until Cairns
makes coherent communication either in writ/or verbattt/
let us remain in suspense.
All heal to the heel, and the quicker the sooner. BUT I dun tell yu that part of
the anaTOMY is slow to recover.
Kimball: see Glossary on Kimball, Dudley.
Wilson's letter: in a letter of 25 November 1952, Wilson proposed to hold oV the ''desire for
immediate publication of the Odes with complete apparatus'' (Beinecke).
two guinea book: T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) visited his career-long friend EP on every trip to Washington in 1946-58. Probably on one of those visits he agreed to print EP's Odes on the condition that it be like ''a two guinea book. '' During that period Eliot corresponded also with DP, Omar Pound, Olga Rudge, Archibald MacLeish, and others in eVorts to help EP. The EP/Eliot relation is treated in Robert Langbaum's ''Pound and Eliot'' in Ezra Pound among the Poets,
ed. George Bornstein (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985). kaspeRRRR had two pubrs/''lined up'': see Letter 87 n.
Cairns: see Glossary on Cairns, Huntington.
90 Fang to EP (TLS-1; Beinecke)
[Cambridge, Mass. ]
Jan. 31 1953
Dear Mr Pound,
Ignorant as I am of the profound thinking of American professors of litera-
ture, I like to believe that Leary is quite ? [sincere].
Obviously nothing much can be said in 40 minutes. But the discussion period,
participated by some hundred professors and sub-professors (so I was told by someone here), can be quite fruitful. Instead of wasting time by answering inane questions, I plan to give them a lecture on EP as Confucian (things which I have left unsaid in my ''review'' of your CONFUCIUS for New Mexico Quarterly)/or try to overwhelm them by making a line-after-line exegesis of Pisan Cantos (I shall write Leary that I wish all the participants to bring their copies of the Cantos or, at least, the Pisan volume--this will make Laughlin happy, I hope). Either way, their mouths will be shut.
As for Leary's postscriptum, it would be a Wne thing if you would (and could) meet his request. If ''message'' is abhorrent to you, I personally will be very grateful if you could read the Wrst 3 passages of Pisan (ending with the Wanjina passage), which I like to make an exegesis of. If even that is unfeasible, I wonder
a. fang and pound's classic anthology 129
if you would let me tape-record a poem (or a canto) from Harvard Library. Of course, any recording you make should be used for the nonce, if you so request. I am looking for a competent violinist to play the music of the second Pisan canto--a few dollars and a nice exhibit for my paper. I may also show round a picture of Cafe Dante and that of Isotta's tomb with tempus tacendi and tempus
loquendi, etc. etc.
At any rate I haven't answered Leary's second yet.
--------
I have not contacted Hawkes yet. I am trying to Wnd a way to <breaking>
the irrational mentality of Wilson and company. A bit of active interference would be in order.
I still have Kimball's sample page with me. Wilson showed me his sample page; I suppose you have seen it too.
Would it be advisable for me to tell Hawkes or Wilson that Faber & Faber would take the two guinea book to-be?
As it stands, someone with a bit of worldly prestige (Cairns or perhaps e. e. cummings) must preachify to Wilson before he gets over his pusillanimity. (May I speak to cummings on my own? )
Respectfully [signed] Achilles Fang
Leary: enclosed are copies of two letters from Lewis Leary, requesting a paper on EP for the English Institute meeting in September 1953.
Cafe Dante: Cafe ? Dante in Verona is referred to in Canto 78/501.
Isotta's tomb: EP's 1922 visit to Tempio Malatestiano with the tomb of Malatesta's third wife, Isotta
degli Atti, (c. 1433-74) inspired Cantos 8-11. Cairns: see Glossary on Cairns, Huntington.
91 EP to Fang (TL-2; Beinecke)
[St Elizabeths Hospital] [Washington, DC] 4 Fb [1953]
OUAN SOUIIIIIIII [Cheers] O. K.
