“Reading the Cantos : a study of meaning in Ezra Pound” (Publication, 1967)
Year
1967
Text
Stock, Noel. Reading the Cantos : a study of meaning in Ezra Pound. (London : Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1967). (Pou68)
Type
Publication
Mentioned People (1)
Pound, Ezra
(Hailey, Idaho 1885-Venedig 1972) : Dichter, Schriftsteller
[In der Sekundärliteratur wurden Analysen einzelner Strophen der Gedichte nicht berücksichtigt]
[In der Sekundärliteratur wurden Analysen einzelner Strophen der Gedichte nicht berücksichtigt]
Subjects
Literature : Occident : United States of America
/
References / Sources
Chronology Entries (1)
| # | Year | Text | Linked Data |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1925-1969 |
Pound, Ezra. The cantos. Sekundärliteratur allgemein 1972 David Happell Hsin-fu Wand : The role of Chinese mythology in Ezra Pound's Cantos : 1) It provides him with some of the major symbols of his Pisan Cantos and subsequent cantos. 2) It provides a further means of his emerging from his Purgatorio into his Paradiso. 3) It lends him a proper guide and a vision of heaven. 4) It makes the Cantos cohere. Furthermore, it makes him forget his prejudice against Taoists and Buddhists, to whom he is indepted for the Chinese myths and symbols in The Cantos. 1976 Monika Motsch : Die organische, kosmische ('ideogrammatische') Denkweise, die Pound im Konfuzianismus bewunderte, wird weiter entwickelt und ist die Philosophie der Cantos. Der konfuzianische Kosmos – so wie ihn Pound auffasste – bildet den weitern Rahmen, in dem sich die Gestalten der Cantos bewegen, Odysseus und Konfuzius, die griechischen Götter und die Kaiser des chinesischen Altertums. Das Gegenthema von Kund und Eleusis ist Usura. Im Laufe der Cantos sammeln sie immer mehr Assoziationen um sich, die aus den verschiedensten Geschichtsepochen und Kulturen stammen : 'Kung' bezieht sich auch auf die Naturlyrik, die Yin- und Yang-Lehre und die frühe amerikanische Geschichte, 'Eleusis' auf die Hadesfahrt des Odysseus und die Götter Aphrodite und Dionysos. In den 'Pisan Cantos' formt sich aus den vieldeutigen gegensätzlichen Komponenten von 'Kung und Eleusis' für Augenblicke das visionäre Bild einer neuen Gesellschaft und Kultur. Die Philosophie der 'Cantos' ist viel stärker an China als am Western orientiert. Die Natur ist das Grundelement. 1988 Chang Yao-hsin : Pound saw no effective cure in Christianity for the disease of his times. He even lost faith in the value of Greek literature and philosophy. When he turned East, he found a messiah in Confucius, who enunciated 'the principle of the good' and the medicine for the disease of the West in his Ta hio. Confucius, Pound believed, could enlighten and civilize the barbarous Occident. The wisdom of the Confucian classic Da xue was, as he saw it, not yet exhausted and indeed inexhaustible. Order and tranquility come from enlightened rule, and two salient features of Confucian enlightened rule are equitable distribution of wealth and light taxation. These ideals constitute the thematic concerns of the Chinese cantos. A major thematic concern in The cantos is the treatment of usury, which takes up an enormous amount of space. 1997 Mary Paterson Cheadle : Pound's adaptation of the ideogrammic method for poetic use in The cantos stems as much from his attention to the essentialness of verbal motion and the priority of concrete particulars as from his care for the forceful juxtaposition of words and lines. A respect for individuality is what Pound found most essential to Confucianism initially. The cantos are an enormous tapestry, a 'Guernica' of the compendious fields of study that Pound entered, with little apparent trepidation, over the fifty years or more of his career : not only China and Confucianism, but Ovidian and Homeric polytheism ; Renaissance Italy, medieval Provence, and Neoplatonic light philosophy ; nineteenth- and twentieth-century America and modern Europe. The Pisan cantos are the work of a poet who is watching his life pass before his eyes because he sees the life of the vision he hoped for suddenly draining away. After 1945, the West for Pound was barren of paradise or it was content with mockeries and imitations. The cantos are a record of this movement through hell and purgatory, toward and away from paradise. But in respect to Pound's Confucianism they are an incomplete record. The greatest influence of Confucianism in The cantos begins in the Pisan cantos, because they were written at the same time, in fact in the same notebooks, as Pound's translations into English of his original Italian versions of The great diegest and The unwobbling pivot. By the time of Rock-drill and Thrones, Pound had completed The analects and The classic anthology defined by Confucius. There are therefore many more Confucian references in these later cantos than in the earlier cantos. The Confucian elements of the China cantos derive not from the Book of history or any of the other Confucian classics but from De Mailla's Histoire générale de la Chine. Rock-drill cantos are written on the basis of the Shu jing, Thrones are gleaned from an eighteenth-century Confucian document. Mengzi is an important source for cantos LXXVII, LXXXVII, LXXXIII, LXXXVIII and XCIV. Many Confucian concepts are presented in the form of Chinese words or phrases. Especially when they are printed large, these words are visually striking and contribute dramatically to the sculptural effect of Pound's free verse. Too much attention to the visual, often spectacular nature of The cantos' characters can obscure their most important property : the specific, concrete nature of their definitions according to Pound, and the profound relevance, he was convinced, of those significations to the West. What is more important for Pound in the China cantos than the attaching of any generalizable significance to women in Chinese history is the establishing of the centrality of sound economics in the great Confucian periods of Chinese history. Many of the emperors are portrayed as having been great not only because of their sound economic policies but because of the reverence for 'heaven' and the spirits of ancestors that they show through proper observance of ritual. Like the importance of study, the importance of teaching is implied everywhere in The cantos, the central purpose of which is not only to record modern history but even more, to lead the West toward 'a paradiso terrestre'. 2003 Sun Hong : The Cantos is a manifesto in which Pound proclaims Confucianism as a 'medicine' for the ills of Western civilization. What the poet discovers in Confucianism is not merely a few abstruse philosophical formulas. For him truth exists in harmony and order, in the concrete beauty of this world, an elegance revealed by Confucian canons, particularly those in the Confucian classics. In the Cantos Pound endeavors to present his discovery of this cosmos of truth and beauty. By calling the Cantos 'a long poem', Pound made clear that he was not interested in the rules of an epic. He was aware of the lack of epic quality. Critics have called the Cantos a 'colossal failure', a 'gigantic mess', without any 'major form'. For Pound, order is synonymous with beauty. In his effort to forge this beauty out of chaos, he is unlike other poets who go back only to Homer, trying to evolve and order out of this mythological tradition. Pound pushes his frontier far beyond that point, both in time and space. For him, the frontier is on the other hemisphere, in China, whose civilization of greater antiquity. This nation has shown unusual power of survival, absorbing all foreign influences without losing its own identity. In this ancient culture Pound sees Confucianism. Pound aptly uses ancient Chinese mythology and history as illustrations. His adoption of the Confucian standpoint of history also coincides with his turning away from his early idea of the epic as a 'beautiful story' to his later definition of it as 'a poem including history'. This shift reflects his commitment to what he previously referred to as 'the modern world'. The scope of a traditional epic should be altered and extended to suit modernism. Pound's aim is to create a new model for the new world. 2003 Britton Gildersleeve : Scholars have dealt with elements of the mystic within The cantos. Almost all seem to privilege Western mythologies even when treating Eastern materials. This is especially evident in their analyses of Kuanon [Guanyin], who figures in a number of the Cantos. For Pound, Kuanon – in addition to her traditional functions within the Buddhist pantheon – is a female figure who eludes easy delineation, one who draws upon a legacy of androgyny and Orientalist perspectives to become daughter, mother, wife, and lover in a feminine ideogram that ultimately partakes of both Eleusinian and Eastern mysticism. Juxtaposing various elements of the feminine, Kuanon is the enigma at the heart of Pound's flawed journey-quest toward mystic union with the divine. In general Pound is no fan of Buddhism. When he mentions it in the Cantos, it is almost always with negative inflection. It is not the ultimate spiritual objectives of Buddhism that Pound satirizes, it is both the abuses of power to which no systematized religion is immune, and perhaps more critically, Buddhism's goal of nonattachment to everyday affairs. Given Pound's 'constant concern for good government', Buddhism's emphasis on the transience and unimportance of the temporal and worldly – in contrast to Confucianism's focus on the sociopolitical matrix – is, for him, unacceptable. He couples Buddhism with maternity and infantilism, with decadence and corruption, with emasculation in both the literal and figurative senses of the term. This negative feminization of Buddhism differs from his handling of the Buddha himself. The inference is that the Buddha does have the power to awaken, that his name is deserved. Pound sees parallels between Buddhism and Christianity that are incompatible with his own political agenda. Unlike his views of either Buddhism or Christianity, Pound sees Confucianism as predicated on right behavior in social context, in contrast to Buddhism's major element of nonattachment. He view Confucianism as more logical and useful for his own project : to critique the spiritual excesses he sees in Christianity and Christian states. 'The ethic of Confucius and Mencius', Pound notes, may be used 'to better advantage' with 'Occidentals than may Buddhism', while Confucianism better 'serves as a road map through the forests of Christian theology'. Canto XIII (1930) Kung walked by the dynastic temple and into the cedar grove, and then out by the lower river. And with him Khieu, Tchi and Tian the low speaking And "we are unknown", said Kung, "You will take up charioteering ? Then you will become known, "Or perhaps I should take up charioteering, or archery ? "Or the practice of public speaking ?" And Tseu-lou said, "I would put the defences in order", And Khieu said, "If I were lord of a province I would put it in better order than this is". And Tchi said, "I would prefer a small mountain temple, "With order in the observances, with a suitable performance of the ritual", And Tian said, with his hand on the strings of his lute The low sounds continuing after his hand left the strings, And the sound went up like smoke, under the leaves, And he looked after the sound : "The old swimming hole, "And the boys flopping off the planks, "Or sitting in the underbrush playing mandolins". And Kung smiled upon all of them equally. 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". And Kung raised his cane against Yuan Jang, Yuan Jang being his elder, For Yuan Jang sat by the roadside pretending to be receiving wisdom. And Kung said ` "You old fool, come out of it, Get up and do something useful.'' And Kung said "Respect a child's faculties "From the moment it inhales the clear air, "But a man of fifty who knows nothing Is worthy of no respect.'' And "When the prince has gathered about him "All the savants and artists, his riches will be fully employed.'' And Kung said, and wrote on the bo leaves: If a man have not order within him He can not spread order about him; And if a man have not order within him His family will not act with due order; And if the prince have not order within him He can not put order in his dominions. And Kung gave the words "order'' and "brotherly deference'' And said nothing of the "life after death.'' And he said "Anyone can run to excesses, "It is easy to shoot past the mark, "It is hard to stand firm in the middle.'' And they said : If a man commit murder Should his father protect him, and hide him? And Kung said : He should hide him. And Kung gave his daughter to Kong-Tchang Although Kong-Tchang was in prison. And he gave his niece to Nan-Young although Nan-Young was out of office. And Kung said "Wan ruled with moderation, "In his day the State was well kept, And even I can remember A day when the historians left blanks in their writings, I mean, for things they didn't know, But that time seems to be passing." A day when the historians left blanks in their writings, But that time seems to be passing.'' And Kung said, "Without character you will be unable to play on that instrument Or to execute the music fit for the Odes. The blossoms of the apricot blow from the east to the west, And I have tried to keep them from falling." Sekundärliteratur zu Canto XIII 1976 Monika Motsch : Canto XIII richtet zum ersten Mal den Blick voll auf Konfuzius. Dieser Canto besteht fast vollständig aus Zitaten des Lun yu, Zhong yong, Da xue und Mengzi. Der Satzbau ist klar und einfach und besteht meist aus aneinandergereihten, häufig parallelen Hauptsätzen. Niemals werden die Sätze elliptisch verkürzt und die Verben weggelassen, wie dies in den ersten Cantos häufig geschah. Die vielen Wiederholungen schaffen eine Analogie zu der im Grunde einfachen und unkomplizierten Lehre des Konfuzius. Der häufigste Zeilenbeginn ist die reihende Partikel 'and'. Sie verbindet die isoliert dastehenden Aphorismen und schafft zwischen ihnen sozusagen 'gleichzeitige' Zusammenhänge. Das Bild, das Pound von der konfuzianischen Lehre entwirft, ist stellenweise zu sehr von der Aufklärung beeinflusst. Vor allem aber wird das Prinzip 'Ordnung' überbetont, ein Begriff, der bei Konfuzius niemals vorkommt, währen in Wirklichkeit 'Humanität' die Leitidee von Konfuzius ist. 1988 Chang Yao-hsin : Canto 13 shines with the light of Confucius. Confucianism undergoes a rigorous process of 'telegraphic abbreviation', so much so that, to those who know little about and share none of his faith in Confucianism, Pound is indeed offering platitudes for profound verities. But he manages to keep the quintessence of Confucianism intact. The canto begins with a lyric representation of Confucius, chatting at leisure with his disciples, which is a way of presenting Confucius's ideal of harmony. Pound also touched in this canto upon Confucius's doctrine of the mean and upon his call for moderation, radical and extreme to a fault. Pound felt that humanity deserves better than it gets, and it deserves the best. He saw a chaotic world that needed setting to rights and a humanity, suffering from spiritual dearth and cosmic injustice, who needed to be saved. 1997 Mary Paterson Cheadle : Pound's translation of Canto XIII based on Pauthier's La grand etude, L’invariabilité dans le milieu et Les entretiens philosophiques. A distrust of elders and rulers and a respect for individuality is not all Canto XIII offers in its presentation of Confucianism, what became increasingly important to Pound was Confucianism's social and political orientation and its concern for 'order'. 2003 Qian Zhaoming : Pound's infatuation with China is infatuation with both Chinese art and Chinese poetry. In inventing his Confucius in Canto 13, he cannot but open and close in a fashion that recalls at one Chinese painting and Cathay. Confucian maxims in translation tend to be disturbingly elusive. Working his way through Pauthier's Confucius, Pound is bound to represent only what he can appreciate. There are a number of factors contributing to his selection decisions. Of these, the Chinese pictures stand out in his memory. It is inappropriate to overemphasize their impact, and it is also inappropriate to underestimate it. Just as Chinese poets and artists can alternate between Confucianism and Daoism, so Pound, influenced by them, can take advantage of both philosophies. In The cantos, Pound does return again and again to a Confucian theme. Nonetheless, the aesthetic sensibility that threads through the poem is in accord with Daoist ideals. Canto XLV (1937) http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/241052. Sekundärliteratur 1976 Monika Motsch : Die drei Leitmotive Kung, Eleusis und Usura treten in den Vordergrund. Jedoch haben sie sich verwandelt und weiterentwickelt. Usura vernichtet nicht nur alle konfuzianischen Werte, sondern auch die Kraft von Eleusis. Canto XLIX (1937) For the seven lakes. http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoem.do?poemId=7168. Sekundärliteratur 1928 Qian Zhaoming : Pound got a fourteen-fold screen book with Chinese and Japanese ideograms from his aunt. It consists 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. Pound was not able to decipher the eight Chinese poems drawn in three calligraphic styles. Zeng Baosun offered Pound a translation of eight Chinese poems that contributed to Canto XLIX. A transcript of Zeng's oral translation has been found in an unmailed letter Pound worte to his father. From Zeng, Pound have learned everything about China's tradition of 'making pictures and poems on that set of scenes'. Pound's sourcebook represents a Far Eastern tradition of making pictures and poems side by side on a theme of great masters. Pound inserts a version of the eight views in the middle of his modernist epic. The subject is a monument of Chinese culture, and example of how poets and artists in China have continuously made an old theme new. All remarkable copies of the views have been accepted as such because of their originality. For Pound modernism also demands originality, originality allowing him to interweave texts and make statements about history and politics. 1976 Monika Motsch : Es entsteht das Bild einer harmonisch geordneten Gesellschaft und die konfzianische Lehre wird Teil einer grossen Kosmologie. Der Canto beginnt mit fragmentarischen, chinesischen Gedichten, die von Daniel D. Pearlman in The barb of time identifiziert wurden. Nicht der Mensch und seine Gefühle stehen im Vordergrund, sondern der Kreislauf der Natur, Himmel, Wolken, Bäume und Wasser. Die Naturbilder sind einfach und genau und deuten einen Abschied an, bei dem individuelle Gefühle völlig unausgesprochen bleiben. The Chinese history cantos LII-LXI (1940) Notebooks of Ezra Pound 32 LIII-LIV, 282, 31 Earliest times to the Chin dynasty, 399 AD 33 LIV, 282, 32-LVI, 306, 18 Early fifth century AD to mid-Mongol era, 1347 AD 34 LVI, 306, 19-LX, 331, 22 Mid-Mongol era to mid-Ch'ing dynasty, 1717 AD 35 LX, 331, 23-LXI to end Mid-Ch'ing, 1717, to mid-reign of Ch'ien-lung, 1780 AD Sekundärliteratur 1970 Akiko Miyake : The whole of Cantos LII-LXXI can be interpreted either as actual Chinese history and the life and works of John Adams or as some intricate patterns formed by Chinese and Greek-American paideuma, or as some lovely images which the interactions of the divine light and accidental shadows produce. The Chinese people attempt to return to the golden age of the legendary emperors, Yao and Shun, by destroying the corrupt ruler and thus resurrecting the national paideuma, so that one can call this war paidumatically a revival of national life. One of Pound's aims was to liberate the Platonic essence of beauty and knowledge from the poet's own psyche, from its time-bound situation in the poet's historical memory, in order to realize man's eternal state of mind, a paradise. He associated social order in the Chinese state with the divine order which Erigena's heavenly light formed in its own self-division. Canto LII describes the official calendar of the Chinese empire, established in the reign of Yao (B.C. 2356) or Shun (B.C. 2255). Canto LIII : on my interpret the canto as Pound's description the division of the heavenly light, passing from the age of rituals to the age of ideals. The rest of the Chinese history cantos can be interpreted as the cyclic repetitions of the renewal of the established culture at more or less regular intervals. Pound's study of Mencius probably helped him much to understand how the Chinese people attributed such renewal of the national life to good rulers' observance of Confucian philosophy. In Canto LIV one finds the cycling and reappearing of the heaven-begotten light, the Canto can be regarded as the description of the light returning to its origin and bringing the people to a more original form of Metamorphosis. Destructive and constructive elements form intricate patterns of history through minor dynasties, between the fall of Tang the and rise of Song. Canto LVI makes a recapitulation of the cycling patterns of history. In Canto LVII Pound suggests that Ming turned out to be a very dubious phoenix in Chinese history. In Canto LIX Pound shows how the Manchurian emperors were serious in their following of the Confucian paideuma of China, so that their force marched on 'spreading light on proceeding'. Canto LX celebrates the golden age Kang Hi brought back to China. The frontier land in the West was pacified by the expedition of the emperor, who observed the sun as Yao did. Canto LXI can be read as showing the final return of the light to its original forms 1976 Monika Motsch : Die Verbindung von 'Kung und Eleusis' taucht nicht nur in den konfuzianischen Übersetzungen häufig auf, sondern bestimmt auch die Struktur der Cantos. Zwischen dem Mythos von Eleusis und der altchinesischen Idealfigur des Königs Wen entdeckt Pound gemeinsame Berührungspunkte. Im Gegensatz zu James Legge erweitert Pound den Text und stellt die Humanität des Königs durch einzelne Handlungen und präzise Umschreibungen lebendig dar. Pound versucht die konfuzianische Lehre an geschichtlichen Beispielen darzustellen. Dies gelingt ihm jedoch nur sehr unvollkommen ; die gleichen Ideen werden in ständiger Wiederholung vorgetragen, vor allem die Abneigung der konfuzianischen Herrscher, die sich auf Kosten des Volkes bereichern. Alle Nichtkonfuzianer, schlechte Kaiser, Taoisten und Buddhisten werden attackiert. Die Konfuzianer dagegen werden gepriesen und über ihre Fehler, Pedanterie, starres Festhalten an Traditionen, wird geschweigt. Man bekommt den Eindruck, dass die Konfuzianer in China eine glückliche Harmonie des ganzen Volkes bewirken, und es nur den üblen Machenschaften der Taoisten und Buddhisten zu verdanken war, dass dieses Paradies immer wieder zerstört wurde. Pound hat das Vorurteil von Mailla, Joseph-Anne-Marie de Moyriac de. Histoire générale de la Chine ziemlich kritiklos übernommen. Die chinesischen Cantos setzen ein mit Zitaten aus dem 4. Kapitel des Li ji. Noch stärker als die Szenen haben die im Text verstreuten chinesischen Schriftzeichen eine übergreifende Funktion. Sie beginnen mit dem Zeichen 'Licht, Glanz'. Das Zeichen 'Ruhe' gibt ein Gefühl der Harmonie. Die folgenden Ideogramme machen vor allem die Kraft der konfuzianischen Tradition deutlich, indem sie die Kaiser Yao, Shun und Yu, die Xia und die Zhou-Dynastie und Konfuzius selbst mehrfach hervorheben. 1983 John Driscoll : There are many occasions in the China cantos where Pound used his sources extensively, but expressed them in ways which better fitted his aims than could be achieved by using gallicisms. Canto LII is unique in the China cantos in as much as it contains no material taken from Mailla's Histoire générale de la Chine, and in the case of the first page and a half, is not composed from any particular source. As such, the canto merits an individual chapter since its material is quite unlike that of the other cantos in the sequence and functions as a preface to the chronological history of China that follows in Cantos 53 to 61. The narrative techniques that Pound employs in Canto 52 are ones that he also employs when presenting the history sequence in subsequent cantos. There is more on usury, this time linked to Catholicism. This predominating ideology, a European equivalent to Confucianism, is a suitable contrast to the Chinese success story that is to follow in Cantos 53-61. The symbols of our prevailing ideology from medieval Europe are empty. The contrast between Canto 52 and 53 to 61 shows evidence of Pound exploiting contemporary ideas on the difference between 'primitive' and 'historical' consciousness. Thus the Li Ki of Canto 52, stripped of some of its distracting imperial or hierarchical ritual, becomes more accessible to us and allows us to establish a synchronic base in Chinese culture for ourselves, before proceeding to the more diachronic material of 53-61. The narrative eases us into a relationship with the text so that when the fuller picture emerges of how unified ideas and actions were in Confucian China, we are brought up short by our awareness that this is lacking in our own culture. Another mediation of Couvreur's Li Ki is the change from a descriptive to a more prescriptive style. The first few pages of Canto 53, on the early emperors, show the development of a 'textbook' style narrative. The archetypal or mythological aspects to the material in this narrative are foreign to Western readers, but this unexpected context helps us to reach the Chinese cultural unity that is represented in the pre-dynastic stage of Confucian historiography through the use of tonal irony. This draws readers into a Chinese modality for history writing where the past is always an object of meditation, followed by imitation or rejection. In this way, the narrative in Canto 53 has a basically 'Chinese' function for readers, despite its occasional Western frame of reference. One of the most important conclusions to be drawn from the study of Canto 53 is the acknowledgement of how flexible Pound's narrative techniques are, and how much this contributes to the success of the poem. There are clearly times when the narrative is on 'our' side looking at China, and other times when it faces the other way. We are led to accept a Chinese frame of reference including lyricism, unity, clarity of purpose, continuity and solidity – especially in cultural forms. A more objective narrative weaves in and out of Chinese symbolic patterns, never fully explaining them nor expressing them as it might if it were totally Chinese. Like other types of material presented in the poem, the selection of ritual has an accumulative effect. We 'pass through' the rituals as we read the poem, and they help us to frame later actions in a Confucian perspective. In Canto 55 Pound devotes the most space to developing it in relation to the wider themes of Confucian order, harmony with nature and justice, continually recurring over the enormous time-span of Chinese dynastic history. Nearly all of the detail used to cover the period of this canto (805-1231 A.D.), is as usual taken from Histoire. That Pound chose to emphasize economic over moral or cultural aspects shows a sensitivity to the particular conflicts and interests of this period. The most important passage in the canto deals with the attempts by Ouang-ngan-ché to reform land ownership and taxation systems in the empire, which were the most significant events of this period outside the rise and fall of dynasties. Pound's presentation of the reforms is significantly different from Histoire's. The fragmentary application of Confucian practicality over Taoist or Buddhist decadence represented at court by the eunuchs, is typical of this period as depicted in Histoire. An important part of Pound's technique for using material from Histoire was the selection of detail, often of relatively minor importance in the context of the chronicle as a whole. The selected details were to function in the poem in a variety of ways, by no means always paralleling a similar function in Histoire. An important principle of selection was whether particular events or characters in history were interesting in the sensational or sentimental way of popular newspaper items, the so-called 'human interest' principle. That this should be felt in Pound's poetry from 1938-40 is hardly surprising, since for many years he had engaged in a cultural, political and economic journalism to crusade for the truth as he saw it. The cyclical Confucianism which runs through the whole sequence might satisfy those readers who look for ideological elements in historical poetry. Others might approach the same conclusions through a more popularistic or journalistic mode, responding to the vernacular 'gut' reactions of the poem's narrative or historical figures. Both Histoire and Pound could occasionally use human interest stories to develop more political themes. The way Pound selected and presented detail for the decline of the Ming is a significant achievement in the China cantos. It is typical of the best descriptive passages in the whole sequence : selected vivid images shorn of their discursive context allowing wider movements in the poetry to be felt by the reader. The human interest principle, even when it exploits sentimentalism, is important in this context. Pound actively enlivened his source Histoire by omitting irrelevant and largely repetitive and boring details of warfare and diplomacy. Within the limited space available, Pound took the right decision in exaggerating the Confucian qualities of his model emperors since the hierarchy he found of emperors who were perfect down to those who were worthless. The issue of whether Pond should or should not have included more material on non-Confucian forces in China such as popular revolts is not so much a question of his omitting material from Histoire. It is his projection of what he considered the Confucian approach to history onto the poem, which in turn reflects Histoire's general perspective. He clearly wanted to present Confucianism to the modern world stripped of some of its more unacceptable elements, such as the sacrificial or religious, yet with its base in Chinese mythology preserved. 'Western decay' as myth is challenged by the China cantos through Pound's attempt at raising our level of consciousness about world history and thus break out of the restrictions that living in the history of Western society has left with us. 1983 John J. Nolde : The basic themes appear over and over in Pound's lines : the ancient legends of the invention of agriculture and of writing ; the channeling of the floods ; the defense of the frontier ; the evils of pernicious doctrines, especially Buddhism and Taoism ; earthquakes, eclipses, comets and the appearance of fabulous animals ; the beat-like, repetitive recounting of the rise and fall of dynasties. Above all there was the constant concern for good government. For millennia the Confucian view held that unless a ruler and his officials were concerned with virtuous rule and the welfare of their people, they and their dynasty were doomed, the 'Mandate of Heaven' would be withdrawn, and the mantle of leadership passed to more vigorous, and virtuous, leaders. The nexus of the problem was usually economic, and the neo-Confucianists made much of the need for equitable taxes, effective public works, and high agricultural productivity. 2008 Li Qingjun : Cantos LII-LXI emphasize that Chinese history, because it was firmly rooted in Confucian morality yet in spite of periodic set-backs, always kept alive a tradition of what it meant to have responsible government and healthy human relationships. For Pound, these ordering norms were to be found in Confucianism, as expressed in the Da yue and the Lun yu. Pound's Cantos is a morality tale. In canto after canto, Pound holds up the mirror in which Western readers can see both the frailty and potential of their civilization. In the 'China cantos', Pound shows how China's past proves the adage that history is ideas put into action. It is the nobility of Confucian ideals that Pound admires and recommends. From Pound's point of view, politicians and statesmen had not made a difference in the stability of Western culture through reason and government machinations. Pound thought that perhaps a poet could hold up a mirror that would reveal the answers that lay in Confucianism and reflect to the readers of his era the moral truths he found in Chinese history. For Pound, China, by means of its Confucian-based ideology, should shed light and enlightenment on the rest of the world. The Chinese written character as a medium for poetry not only influenced Pound to his ideogrammic method but also led him to the firm conviction that the West could not ignore Chinese history and culture because there was much to learn from it. In Canto XIII Pound embedded Confucius' action in Asian culture ; in the numerous temples that have edified people's minds, generation after generation ; in the forest that connects people to nature, and in the river that washes away the dirt from people's minds and then nurtures and nourishes the healthy growth of the good seed in their hearts. In contrast to his expression of the disorder and twisted desires that have led to war in the West and caused its disillusionment and deterioration, Pound's view of Confucius was filled with compliments and admiration. From the Analects Pound used the episode of Confucius asking his disciples what they will do, since no officials seemed to be asking them for advice. He rewrote the passage to have Confucius encourage each of his disciples to follow his own nature. He offered Confucius's reminder that only the ruler who knows how to control himself and practice internal stillness of desires can bring order to his country. Pound's use of Chinese characters in The cantos is an illustration of his skill as an imagist who used visual poetry to mirror history. The characters are not merely the replication of Chinese characters ; instead, they are pictures shown in the poetic mirror, layering the meanings in the linguistic text itself, and becoming a part of the poems' references and allusions. Pound turned Chinese characters into pictures and used them to represent concrete ideas. Most characters he chose are not pictograms – they do not actually portray concrete objects, but they are ideograms communicating more than a word, often an entire sentiment or philosophical truth. He used a visual image as his imprimatur of Confucian authenticity to indicate what constitutes good leadership and a society in which individuals could flourish. He noticed as well that leaders in Chinese history who did not find ways to make Confucius's teachings new invariably implemented changes that brought destruction. Pound held up a mirror to China's long history to show how Confucian values, when appropriated for each new age, may stabilize the political system and allow the individual to flourish. He never tried to write a strictly objective history of China. Instead, he offered Confucian values as a model for society and human relationships. 2010 Roslyn Joy Ricci : In Cantos LII-LXI Pound uses forty-eight Chinese characters to further promote his ideogrammic method. These sections demonstrate Pound's first serious use of Chinese characters as signifiers ; provide examples of his ideogrammic method in alphabet poetry ; and offer a unique opportunity to observe his approach to recording Chinese myths, legends, and history. The cantos are a synopsis of Chinese history from 2837 BCE to 1735 CE. They illustrate how he uses characters to sculpt, balance, and situate meaning in time and space. Acting as visual aesthetics they 'break down syntax and interrupt the linearity of traditional reading. Analysis reveals Pound's ability to juxtapose elements of different languages as 'collage-text', utilizing their unique properties so that each contributes to a poetic communication of maximum efficiency, creating a new poetic method within Western literary discourse. Pound does not use Chinese characters as mere enhancers. He carefully chooses where and how his poetry can deliver compounding images for readers of European languages along with Chinese characters for the same purpose. Pound's search for poetic expression – inspired by the idea of ideogrammic communication but constrained by phonocentric language – results in an idiosyncratic synthesis of Chinese poetic style with twentieth century Imagist poetry. Adams cantos LXII-LXXI (1940) Sekundärliteratur 1967 Noel Stock : The Chinese history demonstrate how things run smoothly when rulers and people obey the Confucian 'law', and fall apart when they neglect it. John Adams depict a wise, Confucian-type ruler in action in the American colonies and early United States. An assertion or denial of the connexion between China Adams can hardly be proved, in any strict sense ; unless we go into the matter much more fully than Pound as. Even if it could be proved historically or philosophically, which Pound does not begin to do, either in the Cantos or elsewhere in his writings, there is still the question of poetry : is the connexion conveyed poetically ? Here we are force to say definitely not. These cantos contain references to some of Pound's main economic ideas and continue to develop earlier themes. If we take Pound seriously, it may be argued, we must take seriously his history, even if only to whose sometimes how bad it is. But this presupposes a set of condition which does not exist. To take Pound seriously as an historian, to look up his sources, discuss them, is tantamount to giving nineteenth-century answers to a nineteenth-century question. This is justified when it is a case of exploring his own meaning, but we mut not confuse it with history. It would be different if Pound had shown himself a scholar. The China cantos are not very useful as history, except if we want to get an idea of the sequence of dynasties. Pound's source de Mailla's Histoire générale, is a great work which holds an important place in the annals of western awareness of China. But, through de Mailla's fault, or his own, Pound's cantos do not even begein to register the feel of Chinese history – the rise and fall, the depths, the long periods of chaos, or the extent of monetary depreciation and counterfeiting. For the fact that in giving what he imagined to be an account of events and motives he was driven to formulate the monetary perceptions examined earlier. The Adams section is a 'portrait' of John Adams in action in the flux of events. There is never any doubt where we are, or what we are doing, even when we may be ignorant of what Adams is talking about or the situation in which he is involved. The main fault of the section is that it is much too long. Another is that Pound mixes two methods, which is always dangerous. One moment he uses straight reporting, the next a system of artificial chops and changes. Sometimes in his zeal for monetary reform Pound may be inclined to misread Adam's mood or tone. Not that Adams's ideas on money are likely to meet with approval exactly from a present-day banker, or be welcomed altogether by Americans of conservative tehdency for whom he is one of their greatest thinkers. Pound is conscious of Adams's refusal to get het up unnecessarily about things he was powerless to alter, and this knowledge is embodied in his handling of the other's writings. There are many Chinese signs and repetitions, but they are not of any real importance. Pound tries in the Adam cantos to establish John Adams as a guardian of culture and fertility in America as Confucius was in China. He seems to argue that the only difference between Confucius and Adams is that the former, blessed with a more unified paideuma, transmitted the heavenly ray from the tradition, whereas the latter had to find the inherent virtù within his own mind. Pound's paralleling of Confucius and Adams is based on the poet's reading of Da xue that one can find the heavenly light when one looks straight into one's heart, so that Adams could inherit the light and certain Confucian concepts such as the importance of standing in the middle without ever reading Confucian classics. 1970 Akiko Miyake : In Canto LXIII Pound traced the early training of John Adams, seeking to understand how he grasped the 'luminous principle of reason' so firmly as to appeal to the unwritten power. As an apprentice lawyer, he started using correct terms for his law study, just as Confucius advised in the Analects. 1976 Monika Motsch : In den Adams cantos sind ebenfalls chinesische Schriftzeichen eingestreut. Adams kommt auf seiner Suche nach einer guten Gesellschaftsordnung zu ganz ähnlichen Ergebnissen wie Konfuzius. Auch bei Adams soll die Regierung den Bedürfnissen des Volkes Rechnung tragen, dem Wunsch nach Frieden, nach ausgeglichenen sozialen Verhältnissen und freier Ausübung der Künste. The Pisan cantos LXXIV-LXXXIV (1948) Sekundärliteratur 1976 Monika Motsch : Das Schlüsselwort der Pisan cantos ist 'Tao', das Pound wie in seinen konfuzianischen Übersetzungen durch 'Process' wiedergibt und mit seiner Lichtmetaphorik verbindet. Dieser 'Prozess' ist der Rhythmus der Erde, des Himmels und auch der wahre Weg der Menschen. 2003 Ronald Bush : Almost all of the Pisan cantos' fifty-odd sets of missing or garbled characters are excerpts that Pound copied out from The four books he had been allowed to carry to Pisa. After Pound finished his typescript, the characters were orphaned not once but several times. In the course of his composition he sent four separate fragments of his typescript to Dorothy Shakespear Pound. Dorothy then was to draw the Chinese characters. She was forced to locate the ideograms in Morrison's schematic chart of radicals. She wrote : "I have enjoyed working on the Ch[inese] so much ! I have found all of them : thank goodness you marked the dictionary !" Dorothy's typescripts and carbons, sent to James Laughlin and T.S. Eliot in the expectation that they would be used in the New Directions and Faber and Faber editions, were abandoned and now rest in the Beinecke and other libraries. Though Pound was working without his original typescript. In many cases Pound's first typescript and its carbons differ slightly from the published English text. The Chinese characters that were omitted or altered are reproduced from the Confucian text by Legge. Canto LXXVII Contains quotations from Da xue, Zhong yong and Lun yu from Legge's Four books. Rock-drill de los cantares cantos LXXXV-XCV (1955). Sekundärliteratur 1970 Akiko Miyake : The themes in Canto XXXVII : The war of the people against the agents of the bankers, the urgent need to disclose the devastation power of usury, is exalted to its cosmic dimension and dramatically taken into the first theme, the active influence of American founders. 1979 William Tay : "An epic is a poem containing history". Obviously the definition was intended by Pound to encompass The cantos. Having repudiated in both theory and practice the traditional structural models of the long poem, Pound substituted the ideogrammic method as the central organizing principle. Due to its non-linearity and concrete juxtaposition, this method turns out to be complementary in form to Pound's view of 'historical contemporaneity'. The Poundian sources for the Chinese history that goes into The cantos can all be classified as remembered history. None of these sources - the Confucian classics, a Chinese chronicle in Manchurian and rendered into French, a compilation of vulgarized Confucian tenets circulated as the Sacred edict – can truly lay claims to objectivity and accuracy. In re-transmitting these materials, Pound never seems to be bothered by the authenticity, objectivity, and correctness of his sources. He is neither critical nor investigative about his materials. He simply accepts the validity of the printed words without questioning and further research. This unscrupulous use of remembered history is complemented by Pound's ideogrammic method. The method eschews linear development and simply juxtaposes concrete data without explanation. Shu jing is quite extensively used. While Shu jing is purported to contain more than seventeen centures of China's early documents, there are many gaps in the coverage and each of the five parts has to be read differently. Pound however, is capable of communicating historical 'knowledge'. Throughout The cantos, Taoists and Buddhists are often mentioned and described in a derogatory manner, as in the Chinese history cantos. Fortunately the invention of history appears to be rare in The cantos. Analogies to historical characters and past events, are very pervasive. The ideogrammic juxtaposition is based upon Pound's concept of historical contemporaneity. Pound's 'historical contemporaneity' does not make a distinction, and there is not attempt to construct even a self-contained system. Disregarding the difference in social and cultural background, he would isolate an endeared trait or idea, and with that juxtapose any number of historical characters supposed to share it. For Pound the origin, context, and motivation of a certain statement or incident are not important. He does not treat a historical statement as a living thought, but as a dead one, a finished product, cut loose from its roots. Pound's focus is continuously on the emperors and occasionally, the famous prime ministers. Canto XCVIII Sekundärliteratur 2005 Liu Haoming : The canto based on the vernacular Chinese text written in 1726, titled Sheng yu guang xun zhi jie by Wang Youpu, a writing in literary Chinese by emperor Yongzheng. Pound relied on a bilingual edition prepared by W.F. Baller. The first third of the canto interweaves ancient Egyptian myths with Greek allusions to and quotations from the Odyssey. Near the of that part, Wang Youpu is mentioned by name for the first time. From that point onward, the canto becomes a summary of Wang's text with occasional references to Dante and other old or modern Western events and texts. Pound pands his life-long contemplation on the nature of Chinese writing and its poetic implications by taking into consideration, for the first time in his writing career, the oral aspect of the Chinese language. Speech has hardly been considered in the study of Pound's view of the Chinese language. With the inclusion of Wang's vernacular text, the canto supplies this hitherto missing piece in Pound's theory of the Chinese language. An examination of Pound's view of the vernacular side reveals that he conceives the Chinese writing in a literary, philosophical and theological framework grander and more exquisite than most people had realized. The inclusion of speech in his theory of the Chinese writing testifies to the ultimate validity of this theory. By unfolding the dialectics of writing and speech in Pound's conception contained in this important late canto. In Wang's enterprise of rendering the Sacred edict in baihua, Pound recognizes a similarity between the linguistic, literary, and historical situations of late-medieval Italy and late-imperial China, because both Italy and China had long been dominated by a once illustrious but now dead 'locutio secondaria', namely, Latin in Italy and 'wenli' in China, and both Dante and Wang aimed at renovations by renewing a dynamic relationship to the origin. The canto ends with an indirect quotation from Shu jing. Canto CLXVII The Ode is retranslated from 'Song of the Bowmen' the first poem in Cathay. |
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Cited by (1)
| # | Year | Bibliographical Data | Type / Abbreviation | Linked Data |
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| 1 | Zentralbibliothek Zürich | Organisation / ZB |
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