China and the West

Fenollosa, Ernest. The Chinese written character as a medium for poetry. Ed. by Ezra Pound. [ID D22141]. (2)
Plates
月耀如晴雪 [yue yao ru qing xue]
梅花似照晃 [mei hua si zhao huang]
可憐金鏡轉 [ke lian jin jing zhuan]
庭上玉芳馨 [ting shang yu fang xin]
[Fenollosa left the notes unfinished ; I am proceeding in ignorance and by conjecture. The primitive pictures were 'squared' at a certain time. E.P.]
MOON : sun disc with the moon's horns.
RAYS : bright + feathers flying. Bright, vide note on p. 42. Upper right, abbreviated picture of wings ; lower, bird = to fly. Both F. and Morrison note that it is short tailed bird.
LIKE : woman mouth.
PURE : sun + azure sky. Sky possibly containing tent idea. Author has dodged a 'pure' containing sun + broom.
SNOW : rain + broom ; cloud roof or cloth over falling drops. Sweeping motion of snow ; broom-like appearance of snow.
PLUM : Tree + crooked female breat.
FLOWERS : man + spoon under plants abbreviation, probably actual representation of blossoms. Flowers at height of man's head. Two forms of character in F. 's two copies.
RESEMBLE : man + try = does what it can toward.
BRIGHT : sun +knife mouth fire.
STARS : sun bright. Bright here going to origin : fire over moving legs of a man.
CAN : mouth hook. I suppose it might even be fish-pole or sheltered corner.
ADMIRE : (be in love with fire) ; heart + girl + descending through two.
GOLD : Present from resembles king and gem ; but archaic might be balance and melting-pots.
DISC : to erect ; gold + sun, legs (running).
TURN : carriage + carriage, tenth of cubit (?). Bent knuckle or bent object revolving round pivot.
GARDEN : to blend + pace, in midst of court.
HIGH ABOVE
JEWEL : king and dot. Note : Plain man + dot = dog.
WEEDS : plants cover knife. I.E. growing things that must be destroyed.
FRAGRANT : Specifically given in Morrison as fragrance from a distance. M. and F. seem to differ as to significance of sun under growing tree (cause of fragrance).

NOTE ON PLATE 1
The component 'bright' in the second ideogram is resolvable into fire above a man (walking). The picture is abbreviated to the light and the moving legs. I should say it might have started as the sun god moving below the horizon, at any rate it is the upper part of the fire sign. This also applies in line 2, fifth ideogram, where the legs are clearer. The rain sign (developed in snow sign) might suggest the cloths of heaven, tent roof.
The large base of the last composite sign (Fragrant) Morrison considers as merely a buried sun.
Starting at top left, we have scholar over something like a corpse (a sign I find only in compounds : (?) a wounded corpse). This pair alone form 'a vulgar form of sign', or an abbreviation of the full sign for 'voice, notes of music, sound, any noise', also abbreviation for noise of a blow; to the right of it 'weapons like spears or flails' ; this compound = enemy; and our total, sun under tree under enemy.
PARAPHRASE
"The moon's snow falls on the plum tree;
Its boughs are full of bright stars.
We can admire the bright turning disc;
The garden high above there, casts its pearls to our weeds."
Loss in interaction being apparent on study of the ideograms, their inter-relation, and the repetition or echo of components, not only those used but those suggested or avoided.
A poem of moonlight; the sun element is contained five times: once in three lines, and twice in the second.
You have not understood the poem until you have seen the tremendous antithesis from the first line to the last; from the first character, diagonal, to the last tremendous affirmative, sun under tree under enemies.
Ideograms Line 1, No. 2; Line 2, No. 2; and Line 4, No. 5 — almost every alternate sign — are such compendiums as should make clear to us the estimate courtiers put upon single characters written by the old Empress Dowager, after the age-old custom. Line 3, No. 2, Fenollosa had translated admire, then changed to love; I have taken back to admire, for the sake of Latin admiror and to absorb some of Morrison's 'implement used to reflect', though I do not imagine this will reach many readers.
When you have comprehended the visual significance, you will not have finished. There is still the other dimension. We will remain bestially ignorant of Chinese poetry so long as we insist on reading and speaking their short words instead of taking time to sing them with observance of the sequence of vowels.
If Chinese 'tone ' is a forbidden district, an incomprehensible mystery, vowel leadings exist for anyone who can listen.
If our universities had been worth half a peck of horse-dung, something would have been done during the last quarter of a century to carry on Fenollosa's work. Millions have been spent in stultifying education. There is no reason, apart from usury and the hatred of letters, for keeping at least a few hundred poems and the Ta Hio out of bilingual edition, such as I am here giving for this quatrain. The infamy of the present monetary system does not stop with the mal¬nutrition of the masses; it extends upward into every cranny of the intellectual life, even where cowards think themselves safest, and though men of low vitality feel sure boredom can never kill.
The state of Chinese studies in the Occident is revoltingly squalid, and one has to read Frobenius in his own language? Because English and American professors are moles.
Confucius 'statement', 'A man's character is apparent in every brushstroke': the high value set by the Chinese on calligraphy is appreciable when you think that if the writer does not do his ideogram well, the suggestion of the picture does not carry. If he does not know the meaning of the elements, his ignorance leaks through every ink-mark.

Plate 2
舟 伙 石 [zhou huo shi]
洀 洄 男 [zhou hui nan]
舳 灰 古 [zhu hui gu]
訰 旦 伏 [zhun dan fu]
峯 担 東 [feng dan dong]

NOTE ON PLATE 2
COLUMN 1
1. A boat (? scow), probably people riding in the boat.
2. Water by boat = ripple.
3. Boat+, I should think, actual picture of the rudder. Morrison gives this second element as development of field sign, something just adjacent to, or coming out of, field. (The field supposed to repre¬sent grain in orderly rows.) With primitive sign, the shoot com¬ing from field would contain idea of causation. The element means 'by', 'from' ; the whole sign = rudder.
4. Speech + grass growing with difficulty (i.e. twisted root and obstacle above it) = appearance of speaking in a confused manner.
5. To follow, over branching horns (together meaning to fight like two bulls), above this a mountain = peak of a hill going perpendicular toward heaven and ending in a point.
6. Morrison gives an ideogram with the mountain sign a little lower, and says it is same as the preceding, but possibly misses the point. F. gives this ideogram with the mountain in odd position as = a peak that clashes with heaven.

COLUMN 2
1. Man + fire = messmate.
2. Water + revolve within a circle = eddy.
3. Hand + fire = fire that can be taken in the hand = cinder, ashes.
4. Sun above line of horizon = dawn.
5. Earth (sign not very well drawn — left lower stroke should be at bottom) + the foregoing — level plain, wide horizon.
6. One who binds three planes: heaven, earth and man = ruler, to rule.

COLUMN 3
1. A lump of matter under a cliff (in primitive sign the lump was further removed) = a detached stone.
2. Rice-field over struggle = MALE.
3. Ten over mouth = old, what has come down through ten genera¬tions, ten mouths of tradition.
4. Man + dog (dot beside man) = dog lying at man's feet or crawling to man's feet; hence, to lie down.
5. Sun rising, showing through tree's branches = the east.
6. Spring season, hilarity, wantonness. Looks like sun under man and tree, but the early forms all show sun under growing branches, profuse branches and grass.

去 [qu]
法 [fa]
信 [xin]
盍 [he]
闔 [he]

SECTION 1 SECTION 2
PLATE 3

NOTE ON PLATE 3
SECTION 1
Compare these last inventions to the twenty-two pages double
column of Morrison devoted to HORSE.
Self-effacement, to put away evil, earth over self (crooked elbow (?)).
Water + the foregoing, water level, universal usage, law (Buddhist term).
Self-effacement over sacrificial dish = many persons uniting eagerly together = to unite.
Idem, whom closed doors includes = family.
SECTION 2
Man and word, man standing by his word, man of his word, truth, sincere, unwavering.
The word sign is radical supposedly from combination of tongue and above: ? mouth with tongue coming out it.

ㄙ 主 凡
言 出 八
支 屯 丨

PLATE 4
NOTE ON PLATE 4
COLUMN 1
Self, crooked. Ancient form is loop-like, but the form now used sug¬gests bent elbow, mighty biceps idea familiar in Armstrong and Strongi'th'arm insignia. The use of this sign for emphasis is certainly not discordant with this suggestion, which can at any rate serve as mnemonic.
Mouth with 'two words and flame emerging' (acc. F.) = to speak, words. Branch, radical.
COLUMN 2
Flame in midst of lamp, extended to mean lord, master, to govern.
(?) Morrison's form slightly different, plant growing but not detached from earth; the radical is now bud.
Plant with twisted root=to grow with difficulty; note also obstacle top left.
COLUMN 3
Table, bench or stool with dot under it = every, common, vulgar. I suppose 'any old thing', what one throws under table.
To be divided.
To begin, to appear as one. The significance of these two rudimentary signs as given by F. is extremely important.
The student who hurries over the simple radicals or fundamentals will lose a great deal of time; he will also find much greater difficulty in remembering the combinations of such fundamentals which serve as radicals in the dictionary.

德人無累
大鈞播物

PLATE 5
NOTE ON PLATE 5
TOP LINE
1. VIRTUE or virtu, to pace (two men or man in two places; or seen near and at little distance) + heart under sacrificial dish under ten.
2. MAN (radical).
3. NOT POSSESSING. Morrison says: 'Etymology not clear. It is certainly fire under what looks like a fence, but primitive sign does not look like fire but like bird. At wild guess I should say primitive sign looks like 'birdie has flown' (off with the branch). F. gives it as 'lost in a forest'.
4. This sign is clearly a FIELD over SILK THREAD (though I can not find it in Morrison), indicating that the whole source of the man's existence is balanced on next to nothingness.
M. gives silk beside field = petty, trifling, attenuated, subtle.
SECOND LINE
1. GREAT (man with ample arms).
2. Gold + equally blended. (The gold sign = also metal, thence the metal.) (M. gives Keun, similar but not identical sign, weight of 90 catties. His dots are a little different.)
3. A measure + divide (radical 165, claws) over field.
4. A measure + banner (rally banner).
I have not found the last three characters in Morrison, but one can make sense from the radicals contained in them thus:
Virtue, man not possessing = a man without virtue; all his basis (his source of being and action) is balanced on a weak silk thread; the entire man has the even blending of metals (at his command) and knoweth measure in dividing and in bringing together. Knows how and when to divide a field with justice, and when (and in what degree) to unite (to rally men, concentrate them for action).