China and the West

Letter from Amy Lowell to Harriet Monroe, 19 June, 1918.
"I have made a discovery which I have never before seen mentioned in any Occidental book on Chinese poetry, but which, I think must be well known in Chinese literature ; namely, that the roots of the characters are the things which give the poetry its overtones, taking the place of adjectives and imaginary writing with us. One cannot translate a poem into anything like the proper spirit, taking the character meaning alone. It is necessary in every case to go to the root of a character, and that will give the key to why that particular word is used and not some other which means the same thing when exactly translated. Mrs. Ayscough quite agrees with me in this. This is the key to the situation, and it is the hunting of these roots that she is now doing."
Letter from Florence Ayscough to Amy Lowell, 24 July, 1918.
"My reason for suggesting that you put in the little hint of our discovery about the roots is simply and solely to knock a hole in Ezra Pound's translations ; he having got his things entirely from Professor Fenelosa [sic], they were not Chinese in the first place, and Heaven knows how many hands they went through between the original Chinese and Professor Fenelosa's [sic] Japanese original. In the second place, Ezra has elaborated on these until, although they are excellent poems, they are not translations of the Chinese poets."