China and the West

Confucius. Ta Hio : the great learning. Newly rendered into the American language by Ezra Pound. [Da xue]. [ID D29064].
http://www.ostasien.uzh.ch/sinologie/forschung/chinaundderwesten.html. Appendices].
Pound, Ezra. Typescript (1928) : "If Pauthier invented the sane and beautiful things in his translation, then Pauthier was a very great man, and we shd. perhaps reverence Pauthier in place of Confucius. But as Pauther [sic] has presented this matter as a translation of Kung, we may at least suppose that his ideas arose from the contemplation of the original, and are on that count not utterly alien to it."
Pound, Ezra. Kung [MS of Ta hio] : "The idea that anyone gains anything by turning the pp. of a dictionary, especilayy [sic] a Chinese dictionary is imbecile. The prejudice against interlinear and page to page translation bas been consitucted [sic] by ignorant teachers who were afraid their students wd. learn too fast for the teacher's convenience. What one wants is to understand the text."

Sekundärliteratur
1970
Akiko Miyake : Pound, the Confucian humanist tried to civilize America through translating Da xue and through writing cantos on American history. One can read Pound's translation as if it were a kind of Medieval contemplation whose aim is not to reach a vision of God but to reach knowledge of secular truth. For his translation, Pound depended entirely on Pauthier's French version and not on Legge or the original Chinese text. He tells in the opening passage that the aim of this Confucian classic is to renew mankind through manifestation of "the luminous principle of reason". That 'luminous reason' is somehow like the ultimate cause of all beings and actions which scholastic philosophers identified with the Christian God, because one can manifest it through 'a profound examination of actions and their motivations'. Pound must have believed to be the greatest difference between Christian philosophy and Confucianism was that Confucians never recommended asceticism. He finds with Ta Hio an ideal version of a poet's secular contemplation : the humanistic 'luminous principle of reason' as its destination to replace the Jewish God ; secular researches on human society and history as its means to replace the study of the absurd Bible ; the glorification of human senses as its special agent for discovering the sources of light instead of the denial of sensuous pleasure in asceticism. For Pound Ta Hio was a book of secular contemplation, in which one pursues the metaphysical knowledge of transcendental reason and thereby aims at the renovation of mankind through this metaphysical pursuit. He approached the Song School's metaphysical interpretation of Confucianism first through Fenollosa and then through Pauthier without ever knowing the fact. Pound takes the 5th chapter to be Confucius' assertion that man is capable of knowing the ultimate cause of human actions and knowing it through objects of senses.
Pound discovered in Pauthier many factors that he had already pursued through his poetry. First, he found therein man's fundamental aspiration to see the source of all being, which aspiration is symbolized in the Cantos in the Odyssean voyage homeward. Second, he believed that Ta Hio teaches the way to such a source of all being or 'the luminous principle of reason' through secular knowledge of the world ; and third, he thought that Ta Hio affirms the adequacy of human natural inclinations for leading man to an ultimate source of all being. Fourth, he even read in Ta Hio a confirmation of his ideogramic method. Fifth, Ta Hio includes some advice to princes and rulers on finance.

1976
Monika Motsch : Der 'Text von Konfuzius' zu Beginn des Da xue war die Passage in den konfuzianischen Schriften, die Pound am meisten bewunderte, liebt und über die er am längsten meditierte.
Wie die Ordnung in der Familie zur Ordnung im Staat führt, zeigt das IX. Kapitel : The K'ang Proclamation says : "As if taking care of an infant". If the heart sincerely wants to, although one may not hit the mark precisely in the center, one won't go far wrong. No girl ever yet studied suckling a baby in order to get married.
Pounds Version schliesst den Gedanken völlig aus, den Frieden in der Familie und in der Menschheit als eine mechanische Folge von Ursache und Wirkung zu verstehen, wie dies im chinesischen Text geschieht. Statt dessen zeit er die Möglichkeit auf, dass sich aus natürlichen, arterhaltenden Instinkten, wie z.B. der Liebe zwischen Mutter und Kind oder Mann und Frau, durch Metamorphose neue Verhaltensweisen entwickeln können, die eines Tages zum Frieden unter den Völkern führen würden.
1997
Mary Paterson Cheadle : Ta hio is not based on the Chinese text, it is a direct retranslation of the French translation by Guillaume Pauthier.
2003
Sun Hong : Pound regards Da xue as something to believe in, for it tells us of our duty of 'developing and restoring to its primitive clarity our reason. Like Confucius, Pound would trace from branches to roots to grasp the essence of matters. The root of social order, as Da xue indicates, lies in men themselves. In Da xue, he finds a system of perfection. He believes that peace and harmony can be maintained in the world so long as we adhere to the order provided by this text. Da xue's gradations is the harmony and smoothness in its proceeding, a quality in agreement with the orderly system that Pound believes in. Pound looks upon this gradations of order not as rigid dogmas but as profound philosophical principles.
Pound's adoption of both, Da xue's gradations of order and the Confucian outlook of history doesn't designate him as merely a transmitter, however. He is an inventor in poetry. His use of ideograms as an exemplar is perhaps the most significant invention he brought into poetry in English.
What Pound sees in the natural Chinese signs is the realization of an old Western dream of a universal language. If he said that he believed in Da xue, he also believed in the ideograms, which composed the book, and shared the Confucian concern and affection for the visible things in nature.
He sees in Da xue's system an unceasing spiral of movement upward toward a celestial perfection, starting from the basic order at the personal level. He sees in the succession of dynasties a cycle and bad rulers. And he sees in the ideograms bustling nature in motion.