No More Learning

This six-year project was completed in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Thanks should go to Wendy Stallard Flory, Christine Froula, David Quint, Yulin and Haun Saussy, Ronald Schuchard, and Patricia Willis, who supported me in various ways when I was displaced by the Storm. With library privileges at Emory and a Visiting Fellowship at Yale I was able to continue my research and writing in the fall of 2005.
xxvi notes on the text
I owe a debt of gratitude to Ronald Bush, David Moody, and Haun Saussy, who read the entire manuscript in draft form and offered valuable scholarly suggestions. Marjorie Perloff read an early version of the general introduction. Massimo Bacigalupo read a chapter. Special thanks are due to them as well as to George Bornstein and Claude Rawson for their wise counsel.
The preparation of this book was also aided by a University of New Orleans Research Professorship and a Franklin Research Grant from the American Philosophical Society. I am thankful to Daniel Albright, Linda Blanton, George Bornstein, Robert Cashner, John Cooke, Wendy Stallard Flory, Susan Krantz, Cristanne Miller, Ira Nadel, Marjorie Perloff, Peter Schmidt, Peter Schock, and Patricia Willis for their incredible friendship and support.
Finally, I wish to thank my editor Andrew McNeillie for his enthusiasm. Thanks are also due to my research assistant Daniel McBride, who helped with indexing, and to Jacqueline Baker, Fiona Smith, and Rowena Anketell, who saw this volume through the press.
1
F. T. Sung's China Plan for Pound ''China is interesting, VERY''
In 1968, during an interview for an Italian documentary, Ezra Pound expressed his regret at not having been to China. When asked, ''Is this a disappointment for you, not to have seen China, which inspired you so much? '' he replied, ''Yes, I have always wanted to see China'' (Poetry and Prose, x. 317). In this exchange, Pound was no doubt sadly reminded of his unfulfilled 1914 plan to travel from London to Beijing to be reunited with his parents.
The man who invited Ezra Pound and his father to visit China was Far-san T. Sung (Song Faxiang ? ? ? , 1883-1940). With BS and MS degrees from Ohio Wesleyan University (1903, 1906) and the University of Chicago (1907), Sung had taught chemistry and mineralogy at Beijing University (1908-12). After the Sun Yat-sen Revolution that overthrew China's last emperor in 1911, Sung joined the government of the Republic of China (see Fig. 1. 1). In late December 1913, as Inspector General of Mints under the Chinese Ministry of Finance, he visited the Philadelphia branch of the US Mint, where he met deputy assayer Homer Pound and offered to find him a job in China. To this Ezra Pound responded on 4 January 1914: ''China is interesting, VERY'' (Beinecke). Two weeks later Sung traveled to London and made the same offer to Ezra, enabling him to write cheerfully to his father: ''We may yet be a united family'' (ibid). Ezra Pound's enthusiasm for China is no surprise. That winter he had gotten wise to Confucianism from Guillaume Pauthier's French translation of the Confucian Four Books (Les quatre livres, 1846; rpt. 1910) and he had been exposed to Chinese poetry through Herbert A. Giles' A History of Chinese Literature (1901). Moreover, he had received from Mary Fenollosa her late husband's notes on Chinese classic poetry and Japanese Noh drama in order to edit two anthologies--Cathay (1915) and ''Noh'' or Accomplishment (1917).
Upon his return to Beijing, Sung began corresponding with Pound: ''I have already sent two inquiries for a position for you in China and have seen a few men and [will] see if I can make them give you a good position'' (Letter 1). In his next letter, however, he admitted that finding a suitable job for Pound was not as easy as he had thought. Pound certainly would not want to be a translator.
2 f. t. sung's china plan for pound
Besides, he and Dorothy Shakespear were getting married. The China plan would have to be called off.
Sung turned out to be a caustic critic of Confucius. Interestingly, his criticism of Confucianism appears in an article Pound arranged to have published in the London Egoist, 1/6 (16 March 1914), 1/7 (1 April 1914), 1/10 (15 May 1914). In the article (''The Causes and Remedy of the Poverty of China'') Sung compared China negatively with America, admiring American economists' adherence to the principle of production and consumption and denouncing the Confucian admonition against material ''desires'' and ''appetites. '' The Chinese had been taught to be ''satisfied in poverty,'' he contended, ''hence the present poverty. ''
There is little doubt that Pound did not agree with Sung. His disapproval is evident in his introductory note to the article:
The following MSS. was left with me by a Chinese official. I might have treated it in various ways. He suggested that I should rewrite it. I might excerpt the passages whereof I disapprove but I prefer to let it alone. At a time when China has replaced Greece in the intellectual life of so many occidentals, it is interesting to see in what way the occidental ideas are percolating into the orient. We have here the notes of a practical and technical Chinaman. There are also some corrections, I do not know by whom, but I leave them as they are. (Poetry and Prose, i. 229)
By stating that ''I might excerpt the passages whereof I disapprove,'' Pound articulated his skepticism about Sung's analysis of the causes of China's poverty. And by referring to China as a nation that had in the new century ''replaced Greece in the intellectual life of so many occidentals,'' he squarely challenged Sung's negative assessment of China's place in the modern world.
Sung's anti-Confucian article led Pound inevitably back to a scrutiny of Pauthier's Confucian Four Books. Confucius' admonition against material appetites, he would find out, was not for the general public but for future government administrators. After reading William Loftus Hare's ''Chinese Egoism'' in Egoist, 1/23 (1 December 1914), Pound got a chance to respond implicitly to Sung. In his article Hare contrasted Confucius unfavorably with the third-century bc hedonist philosopher Yang Zhu. For Yang Zhu, Hare reported, a person's joy was in the world's materials. Confucius, with an everlasting reputation, never had a day's gaiety, whereas King Jie and King Zhou ''had the joy of gratifying their desires,'' which ''no infamy can take away. '' Sung was astute enough not to associate his anti-Confucianism with Yang Zhu. Never- theless, like Yang he aimed his assault at the sage's indifference to material gratifications. In ''The Words of Ming Mao 'Least among the Disciples of Kung- Fu-Tse' '' (Egoist, 1/24 (15 December 1914); rpt. Poetry and Prose, i: 320), Pound derided the denigrators' dependence on ''all things save [the human mind],'' whose thirst for knowledge and aesthetic pleasures Confucius held to be vital to the fulfillment of life. Overtly a critique of Hare's tribute to Yang Zhu's
f. t. sung's china plan for pound 3
self-indulgent egoism, Pound's first essay on Confucius also served as a rejoinder to Sung's overemphasis on material appetites at the cost of Confucian teachings. Like his fellow American expatriate Henry James, Pound hated despotism and believed the importance of ''recognition of differences, of the right of differences to exist'' (LE, 298). In Pauthier's Confucius he seems to have found a philosopher, a cultural hero, who shared their modernist values. While affirming social responsibility the Chinese sage also stressed the relevance of individual dignity. To Pound such a philosopher could serve as an antidote against evils in the West. In ''Imaginary Letter VII,'' which would appear in the March 1918 issue of the Little Review, he would condemn Christianity as having been reduced to one principle, '' 'Thou shalt attend to thy neighbour's business in preference to thine own,' '' thus hampering individuality and freedom of speech. Backing up this criticism would be an English version of an excerpt from the Confucian Analects. In it Confucius would be shown to value four of his disciples' diametrically different responses to his question, ''What would you do'' if recognized? His translation based on Pauthier would in 1924 be turned
into verse, forming a pivotal part of Canto 13, the Confucian Canto.
Without any knowledge of the degree to which Confucianism had been cor- rupted, Pound unavoidably wondered how China could remedy its problems-- what Sung described as ''the corruption of the internal administration, the weak- ness of our army, the deplorable condition of our finance, and the misery of the people''--by abandoning its Confucian tradition. To Pound nothing seemed wrong with Confucian teachings. Sung and his fellow Chinese modernists just had to
distinguish Confucianism from the political system of old China.
It is ironic that at a moment when the Chinese modernists were breaking from Confucianism in their search for a modern nation, Pound as their Anglo-American counterpart was moving in a contrary direction, reclaiming the humanist values of the Confucian tradition. From his initial engagement with China, Pound took a stance that was dramatically different from his predecessors and peers. Whereas other Westerners, as Edward Said has asserted, explored the Orient ''for domin- ating, restructuring, and having authority over [it]'' (Orientalism (New York: Random House, 1978), 3), Pound looked to China for an alternative to modern- ity. This attitude would puzzle--even shock--Sung and his contemporaries in
their attempt to replace Confucianism with a Western model.
In the next few years, as Pound journeyed toward an imaginary China (see Fig. 1. 2), inventing Li Bo in Cathay, Confucius in ''Imaginary Letter VII,'' and Song Yu (So ? -Gyoku) in ur-Canto 4 (1919), his interest in F. T. Sung waned. On 23 January 1919, for some unknown reason, he wrote Sung perhaps his last letter, which is acknowledged in the latter's reply of 16 March 1919. In that reply, Sung, then appointed political adviser to the Chinese president's office, once more spoke of his China plan for Ezra Pound: ''Do you still think of coming to China?
If so, I would like to make arrangements for your coming'' (Letter 4).
? Fig. 1. 1. F. T. Sung, 1914. From Who's Who in China (Shanghai: China Weekly Review, 1931). (Yale University Library)
? Fig. 1. 2. EP in London, 1916. (Beinecke)
6
f. t. sung's china plan for pound
1
Sung to EP (TLS-1; Beinecke)
My dear Mr Pound:
I am writing you a line to tell you that I have received the package which you
kindly forwarded to me. Enclosed please find a cheque for one shilling, which I hope will cover yours that you had advanced for me in Registration fee and stamps. I returned to Peking on the 31st Ult. I expected to go to [the] South immediately upon my return, but I found it is not possible for me to do so until later. So I am
settled in Peking for a few months.
My present address is 31 Hsin Kai Lu, Peking.
I will send you a copy of [an] English book dealing with Chinese affairs as soon as
my baggages [baggage] come which have been sent by freight from New York City. I have already sent two inquiries for a position for you in China and have seen a few men and [will] see if I can make them give you a good position. They ask me to get your academic records, etc. So if you will be kind enough to send it [them] to me, it will be a great advantage. I think I can get a fairly good position
for you. We will see what can be done.
Hoping to hear from you and with best wishes,
I am, Faithfully yours, [signed] Far T. Sung
[Longhand postscript:] If there is any mail for me, please forward it to me at the above address. S.
2 Sung to EP (TLS-1; Beinecke)
E 31 Hsin Kai Lu Peking Via Siberia. April 14. 1914.
My dear Mr Pound:
I have sent you a copy of [a] book on ''Passing the Manchu'' by parcel post
some few days ago. I hope you will soon receive it. When you get through with it, please return it to me.
31 Hsin Kai Lu Peking China Via Siberia Feb. the 8th [1914]
f. t. sung's china plan for pound 7
Now in regard to your coming out to Peking, I have been trying very hard to get a suitable position for you but so far I have not been able. I have found a position about 200. 00 1/4 ? 20 per month as a translator. If you feel like it, please let me know. It might be all right for you for the beginning, but I am rather afraid that you do not like it. I am looking for a good position for you.
Have you finished the papers that I handed over to you while in London? If so, please send it to my sister. Her address is Miss Mildred Y. Sung, 50 Nevins Street, The Harriet Judson, Brooklyn, N. Y. , USA. I am sure she will appreciate what you have done for her.
Do you know any Chinese in London? My brother-in-law is now in London. I think he lives in 42 Hillfield Road, West Hampstead, London, N. W. His name is Dr. W. C. Chen who is working also in the newspaper work, I think. I have no letters from him yet. I hope you will call on him mentioning my name. I am sure he will be very much interested in you and your work. He used to be the chief Editor of Peking Daily News which I have shown you while in London or your father has sent it to you, I think.
If I can be of any other service to you, please let me know. I have been hoping to hear from you and do hope to have your letter soon.
With best wishes, I am,
Faithfully Yours, [signed] Far T. Sung
3 Sung to EP (TLS-1; Beinecke)
My dear Mr Pound:
Accept my congratulations for your happy union and newly married life.
I wish you great success.
I am sorry that you have changed your plan that you are coming to Peking to
join me. I hope sometime in the near future you can come to pay me a visit.
I may return to London this fall, if I can arrange it. Please do not plan to go to
Spain. If you want to have a trip, better come to China.
In regard to the article on ''China's poverty,'' I thank you for its having
published in that paper which is owned by you.
I would like to ask you to finish that speech for my sister as early as you can
and send it to her. Her address is Miss Mildred Y. Sung, 50 Nevins Street, Brooklyn, NY. Put in as much funny stories as you can for illustrations. I certainly appreciate your kindness and troubles in helping me so much and
31 Hsin Kai Lu Peking July 3rd, 1914.
8 f. t. sung's china plan for pound
if I can reciprocate in any way, kindly let me know at any time. Perhaps your Mrs. want[s] some thing from China and if so, please let me know.
I hope you have received my book which I sent you quite a long time ago. Hoping to hear from you occasionally and with best wishes, I am,
Faithfully Yours, [signed] Far T. Sung
your happy union: EP married DP (1886-1973) in London on 20 April 1914. See Ezra Pound and Dorothy Shakespear: Their Letters 1909-1914, ed. Omar Pound and A. Walton Litz (New York: New Directions, 1984).
that paper which is owned by you: The Egoist published in London from 1914 to 1919. It was founded by Dora Marsden (1882-1960) and edited by Harriet Shaw Weaver (1876-1961) with Richard Aldington (1892-1962), Hilda Doolittle (1886-1961), and T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) successively as subeditor.
4 Sung to EP (TLS-1; Beinecke)
1 Shih Chia Hutung Peking Mar 16, 19
Dear Mr Pound:
Your most welcome letter of 23/1/1919 was duly received with many thanks.
I am glad to learn that you are keeping well and happy in your work.
Did you ever meet Dr W C Chen in the Chinese Legation in London? He is my brother-in-law and I think is teaching in the University of London. I am sure
he will be very glad to meet you.
I may go abroad again some time next year. If so, I will write you in advance.
My wife talks of going to the States this summer and probably goes to London to see her brother. Nothing has been definite yet.
When you write to your father at Philadelphia, please remember me to him. I am still remembering what a nice time I had with him while in his city.
I have moved to 1 Shih Chia Hutung two years <ago> and now settled here definitely. I would like to have these articles of mine published in your magazine some years ago. I have never received them <before>.
Do you still think of coming to China? If so, I would like to make arrange- ments for your coming.
? ? With best wishes, I am,
Most sincerely yours, [signed] Fartsan T. Sung
2
Miss Tseng and the Seven Lakes Canto
''Descendant of Kung and Thseng-Tsu''
One day in early 1928, in the middle of reading the galleys of Ta Hio: The Great Learning of Confucius (1928), his retranslation of the Wrst of the Confucian Four Books, Pound remembered a picture book with Chinese and Japanese ideo- grams that he had seen at his Aunt Frank's Manhattan boarding-house. Had his parents retrieved the book? Yes, they had. By late February the old book traveled across the Atlantic to Rapallo, Italy, where Pound had moved in 1924. Decades later, in a discarded fragment for The Cantos, Pound would identify this volume as the source of the Seven Lakes Canto: ''and my gr aunt's third husband j received in ms j from a friend j the 49th canto'' (Beinecke).
Now in Pound's daughter Mary de Rachewiltz's collection, the relic is a fourteen-fold screen book made by a nineteenth-century Japanese artist. It con- sists of eight ink paintings, eight poems in Chinese, and eight poems in Japanese, mutually representing eight classic scenes about the shores of the Xiao and Xiang Rivers in Hunan, central China (see Figs. 2. 1 and 2. 2). While Pound was com- pletely comfortable with translating the visual details into verse, he was not able to decipher the eight Chinese poems drawn in three calligraphic styles, not even with the aid of Robert Morrison's multivolume Dictionary of the Chinese Language.
By curious coincidence, a friend of Dorothy's was hosting a visitor from China, ''a returned missionary'' on her way to an international missionary conference in Jerusalem. Dorothy promptly went up the hill to see her. Al- though the visitor was leaving the next day for Jerusalem, she said if Pound could wait until she stopped by Rapallo again on her way back to China, she would be happy to look at the eight untranslated Chinese poems. Ezra was struck by the visitor's ancestral background. She was a descendant of Confucius' disciple Zeng Xi (Thseng-sie or Tseng Hsi). In April, when Ta Hio was out, he would be able to show Miss Tseng his version of ''The Explanation of Thseng- Tseu [Zeng Xi]'' (in ten chapters) following the Testimony of Confucius. A few years earlier, he must have told her, he had re-created a dialogue between her ancestor and his master in Canto 13, the Confucian Canto:
10
miss tseng and the seven lakes canto
And Thseng-sie desired to know: ''Which had answered correctly? ''
And Kung said, ''They have all answered correctly, ''That is to say, each in his nature. ''
(Canto 13/58)
The visitor, Pao Swen Tseng (Zeng Baosun ? ? ? , 1893-1978), turned out to be the right person to interpret the eight Chinese poems for Pound (see Fig. 2. 3). She was from Xiangxiang, Hunan, the Seven Lakes region. From her Pound could have learned practically everything about China's tradition of ''mak[ing] pictures & poems on that set of scenes'' (Letter 6), a tradition carried on even as far as Korea and Japan. More interestingly, Miss Tseng was also a poet. Among her published poems in Chinese are ''Xiangxiang'' and ''Changsha,'' depicting the very scenes of the screen book. Educated at Mary Vaughan, a missionary school in Shanghai, and the University of London's WestWeld College, Miss Tseng spoke perfect English. Moreover, she was the founding president of a girls' college in Hunan called Yifang. She would remain in that capacity for twenty-three years from 1918 to 1938 and from 1946 to 1949.
We know of no correspondence between Pound and Miss Tseng. However, certain details of their encounter and the fruit it bore can be gleaned from other sources. On 17 May 1928 Pound told Glenn Hughes of the University of Washington that he had ''Conferred with descendant of Kung and Thseng- Tsu [Zeng Xi] just before leaving Rapallo'' (Beinecke). From this we can infer that the meeting between the two took place in mid-May 1928. A transcript of Miss Tseng's oral translation of the eight Chinese poems has been found in an unmailed letter Pound wrote to his father on 30 July 1928 (Letter 7).
The greater part of the Seven Lakes Canto, as I have argued in The Modernist Response to Chinese Art, is based on Pound's exchanges at once with the screen book's eight pictures and with Miss Tseng's oral translation of the eight poems. Nonetheless, the poet of The Cantos could never forget his Wrst collaboration with a Chinese poet and scholar:
For the seven lakes, and by no man these verses: Rain; empty rain; a voyage,
Fire from frozen cloud, heavy rain in the twilight Under the cabin roof was one lantern.
The reeds are heavy; bent;
and the bamboos speak as if weeping.
Autumn moon; hills rise about lakes against sunset
Evening is like a curtain of cloud,
a blurr above ripples; and through it sharp long spikes of the cinnamon, a cold tune amid reeds.
miss tseng and the seven lakes canto 11
Behind hill the monk's bell
borne on the wind.
Sail passed here in April; may return in October Boat fades in silver; slowly;
Sun blaze alone on the river.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . (Canto 49/244)
After moving to Taiwan in 1949, Miss Tseng assisted her brother Yueh-nung Tseng (Zeng Yuenong, 1893-1986) and others in founding the now prestigious Tunghai University (see Fig. 2. 4). In April 1957 Pound learned that Miss Tseng had traveled to the United States. He at once wrote to David Wang in New York City: ''Do get Miss Tseng's news while she is in N. Y. '' (Beinecke). Wang contacted Miss Tseng's delegation but she had already left (Letter 156 n. ).
The excerpts from EP's letters to his parents included here have been published before, 5, 6, and 8 in Angela Jung Palandri, ''The 'Seven Lakes Canto' Revisited'' (Paideuma, 3/1 (1974)), and 7 in Hugh Kenner, ''More on the Seven Lakes Canto'' (Paideuma, 2/1 (1973)) and Richard Taylor, ''Canto XLIX, Futurism, and the Fourth Dimension'' (Neohelicon (Budapest), 20/1 (1993)).
? Fig. 2. 1. ''Night Rain'' from EP's screen book. (Mary de Rachewiltz)
? Fig. 2. 2. ''Autumn Moon'' (right), ''Evening Bell'' (center), ''Sailboats Returning'' (left) from EP's screen book. (Mary de Rachewiltz)
? Fig. 2. 3. Pao Swen Tseng, 1928. (Tunghai University Library)
? Fig. 2. 4. Pao Swen Tseng and Yueh-nung Tseng, 1955. (Tunghai University Library)
5
Dear Mother: [. . . ]
EP to Isabel Pound (TLS-1; Beinecke)
Via Marsala, 12 Int. 5 Rapallo 1 March [1928]
[. . . ]
Dear Dad: [. . . ]
[signed] E
miss tseng and the seven lakes canto 15
D[orothy] is up a mountain with a returned missionary. Yes Chinese book arrived, berry interestin', returned missionary promises us a descendant of Confucius on a month or so, who will prob. be able to decipher it.
6 EP to Homer Pound (ALS-2; Beinecke)
30 May [1928]
Wien
They are poems on a set of scenes in Miss Thseng's part of the country. Sort of habit of people to make pictures & poems on that set of scenes.
Translation of chinese poems in picture book is at Rapallo.
[. . . ]
[signed] Ez
7 EP to Homer Pound (TL-3; Beinecke)
Dear Dad: [. . . ]
Chinese book reads as follows, rough trans. Rain, empty river,
Place for soul to travel
(or room to travel)
Frozen cloud, Wre, rain damp twilight.
One lantern inside boat cover (i. e. sort of shelter, not awning on small boat)
Via Marsala, 12 Int. 5 Rapallo 30 July. [1928]
16 miss tseng and the seven lakes canto
Throws reXection on bamboo branch, causes tears. ///////
AUTUMN MOON ON TON-Ting Lake
West side hills
screen oV evening clouds
Ten thousand ripples send mist over cinnamon Xowers. Fisherman's Xute disregards nostalgia
Blows cold music over cottony bullrush.
Monastery evening bell
/////
Cloud shuts oV the hill, hiding the temple
Bell audible only when wind moves toward one,
One can not tell whether the
summit, is near or far,
Sure only that one is in hollow of mountains.
//////////////
Autumn tide,
AUTUMN TIDE, RETURNING SAILS
Touching <green> sky at horizon, mists in suggestion of autumn Sheet of silver reXecting the all that one sees
Boats gradually fade, or are lost in turn of the hills,
Only evening sun, and its glory on the water remain.
//////////// Spring in hill valley
Small wine Xag waves in the evening sun
Few clustered houses sending up smoke
A few country people enjoying their evening drink In time of peace, every day is like spring.
SNOW ON RIVER
Cloud light, world covered with <milky> jade Small boat Xoats like a leaf
Tranquil water congeals it to stillness
In Sai Yin there dwell people of leisure.
The people of Sai Yin are unhurried.
//////
Wild geese stopping on sand
Just outside window, light against clouds
Light clouds show in sky just beyond window ledge A few lines of autumn geese on the marsh
at their Bullrishes have burst into snow-tops
? ? ? ? miss tseng and the seven lakes canto 17
The birds stop to preen their feathers. &&&&&&
EVENING IN SMALL FISHING VILLAGE. Fisherman's light blinks
Dawn begins, with light to the south and north Noise of children hawking their Wsh and crawWsh Fisherman calls his boy, and takes up his wine bottle, They drink, they lie on the sand
and point to marsh-grass, talking.
Chinese book reads as follows: EP's typescript consists of three leaves. According to Richard Taylor, ''Canto XLIX, Futurism, and the Fourth Dimension,'' at some point before March 1965, the last two leaves ''were accidentally transposed,'' leading Hugh Kenner to transcribe the text (March 1965) in the order of A-B/F-G-H/C-D-E in ''More on the Seven Lakes Canto. ''
8 EP to Homer Pound (TLS-2; Beinecke)
Sept. 1 [1928]
Dear Dad:
Given inWnite time I MIGHT be able to read a Chinese poem, thass to say I know
how the ideograph works, and can Wnd 'em in the dictionary or vocabulary, BUT I shd. scarcely attempt it unless there were some urgent reason. Also
some of the script in that book was fairly fancy.
For Cathay I had a crib made by Mori and Ariga, not translation or anything
shaped into sentences, but word for sign, and explanation with each character. For your book Miss Thseng, descendant of Kung read out the stuV to me. Am perfectly able to look up an ideograph and see what shade it can be given,
etc.
BUT it za matr of time. wd be no point in it.
No I am not a sinologue. Dont spread the idea that I read it a zeasy as a
yourapean langwidg. [. . . ]
E.
Mori and Ariga: see Glossary on Mori Kainan and Ariga Nagao respectively.
[Rapallo]
? 3
Yang as Pound's Opponent and Collaborator
''To sacriWce to a spirit not one's own is Xattery''
In 1937-8 Pound regularly spent four to Wve hours a day learning Chinese. From James Legge's bilingual Confucian Four Books he moved on to the Confucian Book of Odes, Shi jing, in the original. ''I MAY be able to read in time, at the rate of three lines a day,'' he told the Japanese poet Katue Kitasono, who sent him Shi jing in four volumes (Pound/Japan, 45). To write about China and to begin to translate the Confucian Four Books, Pound could not rely only on his own sets of Chinese-English dictionaries and Legge's bilingual Confucian Four Books. Starting from the late summer of 1939, almost every time he traveled to Rome, he would stop by the Italian Institute for the Middle and Far East (IsMEO) (see Fig. 3. 1) to look up some Chinese materials, and it was there that he met the Chinese instructor Fengchi Yang.
Fengchi Yang(Yang Fengqi ? ? ? , 1908-70) had been an assistant professor of modern history at Beijing's Qinghua University (see Fig. 3. 2). He came to Italy around 1935 to pursue a higher degree. When he and Pound Wrst met in September 1939, Yang had just earned a doctorate in letters from the University of Rome and was beginning to teach Chinese at the IsMEO. As an ''enemy alien,'' he would soon lose his job. It was not until the Italian fascist regime collapsed in 1944 that he was able to return to the IsMEO.
To continue a conversation at the IsMEO Library, Pound wrote to Yang on 2 October 1939. He was then seriously deluded about Japanese culpability for the war in China. His letters, like his 1941-3 radio broadcasts from Rome, are characterized by Italian fascism and anti-Semitism. In his Wrst letter he tried to convince Yang that China's worst enemy was not Japan but ''international usury'' (Letter 9). Not hearing from Yang for ten months, Pound wrote again on 22 August 1940, this time questioning the moral foundation of the Nationalist Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek: ''I hear that Chiang Kai-shek was converted to Christianity, which seems WRONG for a Chinese'' (Letter 10). While Pound's intention was to challenge Yang to a debate, he did not want to alienate him. So he quoted the Confucian epigram, ''? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? '' (see Fig. 3. 3).
yang as pound's opponent and collaborator 19
The phrase from Legge's bilingual Four Books would come back to his mind in mid-1945, and consequently it surfaces in Canto 77 with an English translation: ''To sacriWce to a spirit not one's own is Xattery. ''
In his reply Yang called Chiang ''the greatest and bravest statesman''; because he was trying to save China, Chiang ''always had the esteem of the Chinese people, and naturally also of our troops'' (Letter 11). As to Chiang's moral principles, Yang explained, they were modern and democratic as set forth by Sun Yat-sen, the founding father of the Republic of China.
In his next letter Pound was careful to acknowledge his ignorance about Chinese reality. However, he irritated Yang by stating that ''foreigners who have learned something from China have almost always had to INVADE it, later absorbing the culture'' (Letter 12). Yang's rebuttal of this simplistic assertion was blunt: ''It is not always true, as you said, that foreigners had to invade China to learn or take something from the country. For example, Korea and Indochina have absorbed Chinese culture without invading it'' (Letter 13).
Subsequently, Pound wrote in a more reserved manner, as if apologizing for his earlier impertinence. In one letter he conceded that China had a just claim to its sovereignty.