Year

1971

Text

Type

Publication

Contributors (2)

Subjects

Chronology Entries (5)

#	Year	Text	Linked Data
1	1915	Letter from Ezra Pound to Felix E. Schelling ; June (1915). "As for the Chinese translations, they have been approved by one or two people who know some of the originals. They are, I should say, closer than the 'Rubaiyat', but then the ideographs leave one wholly free as to phrasing. I mean, instead of 'hortus inclusus' you have a little picture of an enclosure with two or three stalks of grass and a flower (very much abbreviated) inside. Or for 'to visit, or ramble' you have a king and a dog sitting on the stern of a boat. (No, I don't make them nicely, I haven't a brush. The two top dabs are ripples or drops for the water.) This charming sign does not occur in Cathay. It is merely an exquisite example of the way the Chinese mind works. Of course, all the ideographs are not as amusing. Fenollosa has left a most enlightening essay on the written character (a whole basis of aesthetic, in reality), but the adamantine stupidity of all magazine editors delays its appearance."	Person: Pound, Ezra
2	1917	Letter from Ezra Pound to John Quinn ; Jan. 10, 1917. "The Dec. number of Seven Arts has just arrived. I don't know whether I owe it to you or to the editor. I have just sealed up Fenollosa's Essay on the Chinese written character, to send to them. It is one of the most important essays of our time. But they will probably reject it on the ground of its being exotic. Fenollosa saw and anticipated a good deal of what has happened in art (painting and poetry) during the last ten years, and his essay is basic for all aesthetics, but I doubt if that will cut much ice… I want the Fenollosa essay published… China is fundamental, Japan is not… I don't mean to say there aren't interesting things in Fenollosa's Japanese stuff (or fine things, like the end of Kagekiyo, which is, I think, 'Homeric'). But China is solid. One can't go back of the Exile's letter, or the Song of the bowmen, or the North Gate."	Person: Fenollosa, Ernest Person: Pound, Ezra
3	1918	Letter from Ezra Pound to Margaret Anderson ; 20 Febr. (1918). [Classic anthology]. "I am, for the time being, bored to death with being any kind of an editor. I desire to go on with my long poem ; and like the Duke of Chang, I desire to hear the music of a lost dynasty."
4	1928	Letter from Ezra Pound to René Taupin ; May (1928). "Je viens de donner un nouveau version du Ta Hio [Da xue] de Confucius, parce que j'y trouve des formulations d'idées qui me paraissent utile pour civilizer l'Amérique."	Person: Pound, Ezra
5	1940	Letter from Ezra Pound to George Santayana ; Rapallo, 16 January (1940). Chinese saying 'a man's character apparent in every one of his brush storkes'. Early characters were pictures, squared for aesthetic reasons. But I think in a sell-brushed ideogram the sun is seen to be rising. The east is a convention ; the west ideogram hasn't the sun in it. Not sure whether it may be sheepfold (this guess). One ideogramic current is from picture often of process, then it is tied to, associated with one of a dozen meanings by convention. Whole process of primitive association, but quite arbitrary, as : two men, city, night = theft. Not the picturesque element I was trying to emphasize so much as the pt. re western man 'defining' by receding : red, color, vibration, mode of being, etc. ; Chinese by putting together concrete objects as in F's [Fenollosa] example : red – cherry ; iron rust – flamingo.	Person: Pound, Ezra

Cited by (1)

#	Year	Bibliographical Data	Type / Abbreviation	Linked Data
1	2007-	Worldcat/OCLC	Web / WC