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Ezra Pound, Confucius and the .4rt of Interpretation

b y

Hui Luo

Department of Modern Languages and Litrratures

Graduate Program in Compararik0t. Literriture

Submitted in panial ful fiilment

Of the requirements for the deger: of

Master of Arts

Facuity of Graduate Studies

The University of Western Ontario

London. Ontario, Canada

December 1999

O Hui Luo 2000

Thi 5 rhesis investigates Ezra Pound's creative translation of the Conhcian

niüstcrpitxt.. T h GI-L"II Digest. in an anrmpt to sudu the problematic oprned up by his

"ideogrrimrnic rnethod" of interpretation. Bring îïrst and foremost poet. Pound-s translation is

pur into thc contest as more a study of his pursuit in poçtics. rathrr than one of interlingual

intcrprcwtiun. rhr. connection ben\ een language. translation and portry. and the

transformation of Chinrsr idçograms iiom narural. matenal images to poetical ideas are the

tu.0 main threads of the following discussion. Tracing Pound's earlier studies of Chinrsr an

in London and his edi t in~ of Emcst Fenollosa's notes of Chinese characters. shows the

dewloprnent of the carly. yet fundamental idras upon which Pound conducted his later

srudies and ironslntions. U'ith the example of Pound's Conhician translation The Great

Diyc~st. 1 intend to compare his "idrogrammic method" to other major discourses and

praciiccs in Chinesc translation. The "Elementary Leaming" tradition that I introduce

elucidates the traditional "Six Methods" of foming ideograms. a source from which Pound

has drawn important nutriment.

Key Words: Ezra Pound. Confùcius. Ernest FenoIlosa. Lawrence Binyon. Raiph Waldo Emerson. George WiIhelrn Hegel. Noam Chomsky, The Great Digest. Chinese, creative translation. translation theory. language. interpretation. poetics. idrogrammic. metaphor.

.-. III

TABLE OF CONTENTS

III

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE.

1. Law~ence Binyon and the Early London Penod II. Pound. Ernest Fsnoliosa and The Chirzese Charcrcrrrs as a .Cftxiium

for PoC!r~- I I I . Ideograms and Poetical Power 1 Idcogrnms as Satura1 Images . C hinsss Characters ris Medium for the Transtrencti of Pwver VI. Rcfusol of r\cknowlcdgêrnrnt VU. Ideograms as Metaphors VIII. Conclusion

CHAPTER TWO: EZRA POUND AND THE GREAT DIGEST

I . The Challenge of Confucian Translation I I . "Cheng" and its Imagism III . De fining Ideograms IV. Creative Translation C'. Rectification of N m e s VI. Conclusion

CHAPTER THREE: CREATIVE TRANSLATION AND TRWSLATING CREATIVITY

I , Introduction II. U'estern Aspects III. Innovarive Perspectives in Translation IV. The Six Methods V. Phonetic Radicals and Pictograms VI. Polemics and the "Unsound Interpretation" VII. The "Elemrntary Learning" Tradition and Pound's "Ideogamrnic

hlethod" VIII. Conclusion

CoIVCLuSIOIV BIBLIOGRAPHY APPENDICES VTTA

Introduction

This thesis deals with translation. More precisely it investigates Ezra Pound's

Chinesr translation of Confucius' The Grerir Digrsr. 1i.i t h ernphasis on the

"ideogramniic method" he rsplorrd. 1 do not intend. howe~sr . eithcr to defend or

dismiss Pound's methodological exploration. In this study of his translation. 1 q u e

that Ezra Pound's translation has to be regarded lrss as an inclusive study of

ideop-ams in the discourse of linguistics than as a study of poetics. and should be

v icwd as a creat ive translation engineered with the sensibility and creativity of a

poct-transistor.

In the translation studies of the literary an. the question then. is what is

translatable and t\.hat is not. It is ofien rnaintained, for instance. that a work of

literature c m never be reall\v translated into another. This is true up to a point; a

litsrature is fashioned not oniy of words that embody universal human rxpenences.

but also out of the form and substance of a panicular language. Although an author

ma- be relatively unconscious of the peculiarities of his medium of expression. the

so-called "genius of language" is nevertheless constrained by the medium. This

peculiar genius makes itself felt as a form of resistance only with the greatest

difficultp. camed over in translation.

To develop the point funher, it is useful to inrroduce the distinctions made by

philosophers of languase such as Edward Sapir or Karl Vossler. Vossler. for instance,

asscns that language has two "layers of meanings" - the "innsi' and the "outer". The

outer tom. as he defines it. is the latent content of langage - our intuitive record of

csperience; the inner is the unique non-transferablc form. the panicular conformation

of a. panicular language. This inner form determines what Vossler calls "the specific

hoa of our record of espenence" (Vossler: 18s).

Vossler illustrates his discussion of the two layers of meaning bp rnking tu-o

nards for the samr object from the two languages. English and Italian

The being that in the extemal language form is called cuidlo by an Italian and hone by an Enrl ishan. in the intemal sphere is an actual horse to the Englishman and an actual cavallo io the Italian. These names in the extemal languages are by no rneans identical with the percept. the image or even the concept of hone. The translation of cavallo into horse may bring up al1 these - there is a common reference in both cases - but just that part which is not identical is non-transiatable or transferable. Translation as an end, as an art. rests then upon the relation behveen the inner and outer speech forms. ( Yossler: 1 89)

Intnguingly enough. Ezra Pound' had also used the example of "horse" in his

rssay on The C h e s e CVrimn Characrer as Mediilnt for Poete.. What Vossler

maintains then. is that even behveen hvo European toneues. "the inner speech fom".

the "specific hou. of the record of experience". is untranslatable. The challenge that

Pound faced. then. seems to be g e a i in spite of the possible linguistic affinities

between Chinese and English. (More of this in Chapter One.)

Eventually. the creative direction Pound took to translate Chinese was to work

on the untranslatable inner, foreign form of this tongue - the characters. 1 share bis

I Ser Chapter 1. the discussion on Ren Jian ,Ma - Man sees hone.

\.ici\. that the solution for the translation of these alien forms into farniliar forms in

English is to rrnder them as poetic phrases or evrn as images.

Ir is mu hope rhat this thesis. a comparative study of Confucius and Ezra

Pound with concentration on the latter's creative translation of the Confucian

masterpicce The Greu! Digesr. can be used as an excellent tool to probe the theorirs

and practices of litcrary translation. By departing from the cultural and linguistic

conventions circumscribing the original. Ezra Pound's interpretive practice is

escmplan; - his translation of nie Grenr Digesr proves that only creativity in

translation can overcome the untranslatable historical. cultural barriers in cross-

cultural studies.

1 r r d l brgin ai th a Chinese ideogram from Ziio Zlrllniz'. In the first century

B.C.. the King of the Chu State' was victorious in a [var against the then powrful

Statc of Qin'. One of his generals. Tang, suggested that the King build a terrace on

the corpses of the enemies as a special form of crlebration. The Kin2 replied: "The

word Tor military means to put away weapons as soon as a uVar is over. Don't y u sre

thai thc ideogam for military. Wu. consists of tuo pictogams for 'stoppine' and a

' lance "'9

During the centuries that followed. this quasi-iegendary definition of this

ideogram [vas entered into officially edited and published dictionanes and testbooks.

Xobody seems to have questioned the authenticity of the etynological source O I this

panicuiar ideogarn. nor of many other ideogams defined in a similar manner.

Howe~er . archaeologists found at the beginning of the twentieth cenrury that the

orizinal ideogam for Wu. carved on oracle bones. actually shows a foot under a

lance. whereby casting doubt on the King's definition: the "walking lance" means

niore likely a "military action" rather than goodwill of peace.

M y point in introducing this tale is that the interpreiation of ideogams in

Chinese lirerature cannot be understood in a purely linguistic or etymological fashion.

Ir has to be put into an erymorhetorical context in which e tpo logy is largely

- Zuo Zhuan (in Wade-Gilles System Tso Chuan), by Zuo Qiurning, is transiated as Ztto S Cunintenran. -the .-innais uf rhe Spring attd ..lutumn Period. The " S p ~ g and Auîumn Penod" is around 550 B.C.

' Sow the Hunan and Hubei Provinces in centra1 C h a . along the Yangze Rwer. Now approximtely the areas surroundin- Shanxi Province: in Sorthwest C h a .

cniploycd to dscoratc and denote speech for rhetorical purposss. Ln othrr words. it is

an cfticient ivay to anal-we the etymology of the characters and to intrrpret them in a

rlietorical fashion. since many characters can be understood according to tales in

various wriys.

The hieroglyphic nature of the Chinese ideogams. as opposed to alphabetic

w r d Iormation. has alaays been an insurrnountable obsiacle for LVsstem translators.

In the past. translators. From the epoch of Marco Polo to the eighternth and

nineteenth-century missionaries. relied largely on literal word-for-word translations

or on second-hand translations from the Japanese or Korean. in fact. this increased

misunderstanding and a sense of the mystery of Chinese culture.

Ln 19 19 and 1947. Ezra Pound published nvo works he had edited and

translatrd: The Clii>lese Wrirtetl Chamcrer us a Mediunrfor Poern. and The Great

Digest by Confucius. in these nvo imponant works. Pound introduced and shaped his

"ideogammic method of interpreting the Chinese characters. Ln the essay IVririrten

Cliumcter. Pound developed Emest Fenollosa's interpretation by decomposing and

anal>zin= the ideograms and attributed to them fresh meanings according to his own

understanding of Chinese poetics. The Greur Digest. his first Chinese translation of a

philosophical masterpiece. is an example of the Poundian "ideograrnmic method" at

work. These two publications inirially drew little attention as studies of the Chinese

writtcn language. but they have subsequently never ceased to be the focus of criticism

in translation theones and in the study of poetics. In this thesis. therefore. 1 will

rirternpt to locus on the "ideogrammic method" mainly from the perspective of

poetics. and. to a lesser degree. from the perspective of linguistics.

1 use the lvord "translation" not only to indicate an interlingual process but to

desi-ate an entire problematic which includes questions such as "what is translation"

and W i a t is the relationship between translation and language. language and poet y".

T~-~itrsl~rrio (Latin) and nzetapliereit~ (Greek) suggest at once movement. displacement

and disruption. So does Ubersecrozg in German. The French word tradztcttotl rsists

betwen itrrerpreter and rniclzenzetlr. an intriguing of the need to fashion a translative

practicr between interpretation and reading. The first character in the Chinese word

for translation. Fatz. literally means "ro turn around", whiie the second fi means "to

intrrpret". In one word. translation suggests movernent. innovation and the d-mamics

o f interpretation.

In this study. translation refers to (a) the problematic of translation that

authorizes and is authorized by certain classical notions, such as interlingual or

intralingual translations5; (b) the problematic opened up by recent theoretical

discourses of conventional interlingual translation - in rems of this thesis of

' Discussions on transIation traditions in the West and in China is fiuther developed in

Poundian studies. the relationship between language and poety. and brtween ivords

i Cliincsc idcograms) and actions (the "idrogarnrnic method").

Pound obsen-es that although his subject of study is poetry. -et the foundation

ofpostry is still language. The root of translation is languages. and the root of

Ilinguagcs is the port's language - the 'Pfirst Ici>igz«l,oe". to use Ernerson's tenn. In his

discussion of nature. Emerson concludes that the very "first l a n y a g " of humanit? is

poetry and that the poet is the "first man"

The poets made al1 the words. and thercfore. lanyage is the archives of history. and. if ure must say it. a son of tomb of the muses. For. though the origin of rnost of our words is forzotten. each word was at first a stroke of cenius. and obtained currency. because for the moment it symbolized the C

worid to the first speaker and to the hearer. The etpologis t tinds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture. Language is fossil poetry. As the lirnestons of the continent consists of infinite masses of the shells of animalcules. so language is made up of images. of tropes. which now. in their seconda- use. have long ceased to remind us of their poetic origin. But the poet names the thing because he sees it. or cornes one step nearer to it than a n other. (Emerson: Nature. p: 137)

For Emerson. language is the very special @fi of man. It is the juncture where the

iuiisihle spirit is c o ~ e c t e d to visible natureo: language is the embodiment of the

"emblerns" or "sigs" of nature. In this regard. Emerson believes that material things

and spirit are inseparably linked. Words which express Our intellectual and moral

facts - abstract facts - are rooted directly in rnatenal appearance

Chapter III. In Clrinesr Charocter as a Meriitim for Poeo. . Pound qualifies language. and paniculariy

Chinese idsognms- as the connection beween seen nature and unseen spuitual thoughts.

Right oriyinally means straight: wrong means tuisted. Spirit primarily means wind: transgression. the crossing of a line; supercilious. the raisins of the eye- brow. K e sa). the hean to express emotion and head to denote thought: and thought and rmotion are. in their tum. words borrowed from sensible things. and now appropriated to spintual nature. Most of the process by which this transformation is made. is hidden from us in the remote time when languaee \vas franird: but the samr tendency may be daily observed in children. Cliildrcn and savayes use only nouns or names of things. ahich they continually conven into verbs. and apply to analogous mental acts. (Sature. .Addresses, and Lectures : 1 S)

Pound cornes to a similar view. that Chinese ideogarns conven "material images"

into "irnmaterial relations". Ln this sense, every ideogram is a metaphor whose

function is absolutcl- indispensable to poetry and poetic imagination. Eventually.

whot Emerson saw in hieroelyphics is what Pound saw in Chinese ideogarns.

-4 second dimension. centrai to this thesis is that "words are also actions. and

actions a kind of aords-". to use Emerson's formulation. Thus. the poet is one who

can articulate the world in terrns of "nouns" and "verbs". In the same vein. as i fiirther

elaborais in Chapter 1. Pound descnbes ideogams as "vivid shorthand pictures of

sc rions and processes in nature.'" Chinese ideograms are "concrete pictures" of things

in nature. As the ideogam is an idea in action. there is no separation behveen thing

and action. Poetry. as Pound States. is not concemed with "the general" and "the

abstract" but with "the concrete of nature." In this respect. poetry agrees with science.

not with losic. since science is something "concrete" whereas logic is something

"abstract". Poetry brings langage close to things, whereas Iogic considers thoughts

Emerson. Essei;: 10.

as "bricks" which are in a process of building a "pyramid". until it reaches an apex

callcd "being". For Pound. "garnmar" is the loric of language: hourever "nature

knows no gammar" ( Chimse Ili-itrerr Clinilclcrer.: I i ).

The connection between langage. translation and poetry. and the

trrtnsformation of Chinese ideogams from natural. material images to portical ideas

arc the two main rhreads of the following discussion. Chapter 1. tracinq Pound's

carlier studies of Chinese an in London and his editing of Emest Fcnollosa's notes of

Chinese characters. shows the development of the early. yet fundamental ideas upon

which Pound conducted his later studies and translations. In Chapter II. with the

csamplc of Pound's Confucian translation The Greaf Digest . 1 intend to compare his

"idrogamrnic method" to other major discourses and practices in Chinese translation.

The "Elementary Leaming" tradition that I inrroduce in Chapter III elucidatrs the

tradi tional "Sis Methods" of forming ideogams. a source from which Pound has

drawn important nutriment.

These discussions emphasize that. as translaror-poet. Ezra Pound's ultimate

pursuit is poetical interpretation ofdifferent aspects of life. His "ideopmmic

mrthod". therefore, has to be taken as what Northrop Frye termed as a "poetic

etymology" of the ideograms. The whole Poundian Chinese translation

- - - - - - -

Fcnollosa and Pound. The Chinese FVritren Characrer as a Mediurnfir P e . : 7 1.

ssperience. accordin: to Frye. is full of "poetic ambiguity". because "the poet does

not de fine his words but establishes their power by placing them in a great variety of

contests."" One of the purposes of rhis thesis is to render these contests visible. to

duc idiite the influences and traditions upon which Pound based his studies: through

an analysis ofhis translated Confucian tests and his discounes on translation. 1 also

intcnd to show how Pound's ingenuity in poetry enabled him to initiate a revolution

in litrrliry translation theories.

" Northrop Frye. .-ina~omy qf Criricism: 334.

Chapter One

Colik4.s E~rqrlopcredio provides a clear surnrnary of Ezra Pound's intelIsctual

l i Ce:

.-\niencan poet. translator. critic. and editor. a controversial figure of profound importance in the development of twentieth centun English and .her ican literature. ( 19: 3020

Although hc is recognized pnrnarily as modemist poet and literary critic. I would

argue that. in fact. each of the aforementioned aspects of Pound's Iiterary achirvçrnent

Ieads to interactions with translation - especially during his London penod. and the

period following the publication of the early Canros. during which he was studying

and translating Confucius.

Ezra Pound's interests in early phases of European culture were demonstrated

in his translations of Italian and Provençal poetry into English and in his version of

the .-\nglo-Saxon Seafarer ( 1908). After editing the notes of the Arnerican Onentalist

Emest Fenollosa. he issued a series of brilliant Chinese poems in Catlzuy ( 19 1 5 ) . It

a-as his study of Fenollosa that inspired him to study Chinese history. poetry and

culture. Editing and publishing the late Professor Emest Fenoilosa's notes on The

Chiriese Cl~aructer as a Medium for Poernv also provided him. for the first time. with

a substantial theory on i d e o g m s which eventually enabled his later translation of

The Greai Digest in 1947. Pound's translation of the Confûcian masterpiece 77ze

Great Digesr was an attempt to apply the "ideogammic method", a creative

translation nirthod Ezra Pound developed in his analysis of Emest Fenollosa's work.

In this chaptsr. 1 wil l document Pound's first sncounter with Chinese an and

language. Initiated by the English poet and art historian Laurence Binyon in 1909.

1. Laurence Binyon and the Early London Period

T h luhors qfXe si>ioiogisrs are too abstruse to reucli u iinirle pirhlic: I r 1s riri-oiigli her ürr ulorre Cliirlu irdl uwuke~i n resporrse j?o~>r fisteni criinire. -

Luurerrce Bir!\*ori

There is little evidence to suggest that Ezra Pound had been exposed to Chinese

anefacts. history. poetry or philosophy before he eventually moved to London.

England in 1908. Most Poundian scholan. such as John Nolde. agee that during his

collegs and university years when he was studying Romance languages. he knew no

more of China than "the typical Amencan intellectual who thought in terms of the

mystenous and exotic Far East" (1983: 13). Nevertheless, .Angela Palandn argues that

some nineteenth-century French w i t e n whom Pound admired pnor to his settline in

Europe - Gustave Flaubert'' and Théophile Gauthier for instance - influenced his

pursuit of Chinese art and literature at an early stage (Qian: 17).

1 am inclined to believe that, even if Pound had some knowledge through

I f 1 Gustave Flaubert was interested in Oriental art colIections and made it the theme of some of his tvorks such as Bouvard er Pècuchet and Correspondunce.

Flaubert or Gauthirr. i t uas trivial and lacking depth. As is shown in Pound's sssays

and unpublislied rnanuscripts. it !vas only when Pound was introducrd to Laurence

Binyon by his London publisher E h klathrws ( 185 1 - 192 1 ) in sarly Frbruary 1909.

and attendsd Binyon's senes of lectures on Oriental and European An. which he

Sound " intrnsei y interesting". that he becarne actively engaged in the study of Chiness

and Japanese literatures.

Laurence Binyon's influence on Ezra Pound \vas two-fold: he initiated the

young poet's interests in Eastern .\sian art in general and Chinese painting in

panicular. which led to his later engagement with Chinese translation. Binyon. and

latrr Fenollosa. changed Pound's perception of language and philosophy with which

he laboured in the Ca~itos. Being himself an English port and dramatist

( Etr c~clopclediri Bvirunnica: Vol. 2 ) . Laurence Binyon very likel y derived some of his

advocacy of and cornmitment to modem poetics from his familianty with Chinese

and Japanese art . Some of his beliefs. such as the tenets of clarity. concrete language

and k mur jiistel'. were Iater adopted and developed by Ezra Pound.

The main characteristic of Binyon's work on Chinese art. as he articulated it in

Clifirese .-fw il1 E~~glish Collections. is the firmness of his beiief in the ingenuity of

authentic Chinese art. as opposed to the then fashionable "Chinoiserie, produced by

the artisans in Canton as souvenirs for foreigners" (Binyon. 1927: 9). Binyon

formulated his arguments based on the facts he discovered in his research on Dr.

- --

i l To be discussed hrther in Chapter II in the section Recrrficarzon of iVame5. "Le mot juste"

Wlliam .bdersonts collections of Chinese paintings. documentrd by the British

Muscuni in 1 SSO. To most "well-inforrned Europeans". obscnres Binyon. "it was a

xneriill y receivcd opinion that. whatecer Japan miglit have borrowed from China. &

shc had imrncnsely improved her teacher." -4s more and more Wcstem scholars.

includiny B inyn and Emrst Fenollosa. discovered Japan. then a gradually opening

society. the? gainrd a greater understanding of China. However. Binyon's account is

sonicwhat confusing; on the one hand. he cultivatrs a second-hand cornprehension.

via lapan. of the Chinrse collections in the British Museum through the aallpaper-

likc an collrctions brought back by British merchants. and on the other hand hr is

attracted to the immense abundance of ancient Chinese art that has yet to be explored.

What \vas at stake for Binyon. as for Ezra Pound. was whether to be seduced by the

"charm of adventure" (Binyon. 1927: 12) and venture into that abundance.

Obviousi y. both of them accepted the greater challenge. Binyon's

aforementioned book. along with his magnzinr opics. Pui~iiitrg i ~ i the Far East (1908).

fonnrd the substance of his 1908 lectures. which immenseiy interested Ezra Pound.

Pound's bride-to-be. Dorothy Shakespeare. herself a well-established watercolorisr.

shared the new interest with him. Pound walked through Binyon's Oriental Gallery

li ke a literary rebel searching for ammunition for a crusade, while his wife painted

after Chinese models. It only seems natural. then, that when Pound was introduced to

Mary Fenollosa. the young poet was eager to get acquainted with the laie Professor

h m means using the exact word.

Fcnollosû's research on Chinese and Japanese ans.

I I . Pound, Ernest Fenollosa and Chiirese Wrineri Cliaracter as ;Cfedirrni for Poetv

I t is an understatement to say that Ezra Pound's encounter with Emest

Fenollosa's works resulted simply in an interest in Chinese literature - it vas a life-

chanpine event that led. arnong other thines. to the impulse to attempt Chinese

translation. By cditing. or as I would put it. CO-authoring Ernest Fenollosa's notes on

tiic poetics of the Chinese characters. Pound found a juncture between his earlier

convictions about poetry and the poeric elements in the Chinese characters:

Pound imagined the words of the poem as fonning a pattern the way dust and iron filings do with a rnagnetic field; or. according to an earlier metaphor he used. words are large. steel cones whose vonices corne together. when the words are optimally placed, in such a way that their diversely charged forces combine and mulriply, radiating a very high potentiality of energy inside the cones. (Yip: 78)

Pound's encounter with Fenollosa's papers made this combination possible. inasrnuch

as it led to his realisation that the Chinese character represents the faculty of words

which enable them to better fit into verses.

Beyond this sudden revelation. the encounter faciiitated an accumulative

quantitaii~e change in his poetics. Ezra Pound's tons term punuit for a perfeci poetics

is fused with the search for a better juxtaposition Cjuncture) of language and poetry.

As Pound States: "mu subject is poetry. not language. y t the roots of poetry are in

Imgurige". (Pound. 1936: 6 ) With his study of Romance languages and poetry. the

Young poet did not lack for a solid foundation in his nrw subjrct ofstudy. At this

early stage. however. wliat he was searching for was rnostly how to derive nutriment

from thosr universal rlements of f o m which constitute poetics. As his horizons

widened through his involvement with London's cultural circlcs. Pound's serirch for

somcthing neu. innovarive. and capable of coping with the changinp face of

rnodrmisrn Ird to his departure from the Westem tradition and to his discovery of a

morc powerful medium for poetry. The editing of The Chinese Cliaructer us ci

.\letlito?zjor Poe tc provided him with the basis for his n e a poetics.

Most Pound scholars agree that Fenollosa furnished Pound with the conviction

that. to find an alternative to naditionai Westem poetics. the West should commit

itsclf to learning more from the East. For Pound, the West had much to learn From the

East. and could ignore Chinese history and culture only at its peril:

We have misconceived the Chinese for a materialistic people, for a debased and worn out race. We have belittled the Japanese as a nation of copyists. We have stupidly assumed that Chinese history affords (no glimpse of change) in social rvolution. a salient epoch of moral and spintual crisis. We have denied the essential humanity of these peoples; and we have toyed with ideals as if the- were no better than comic songs in "opéra bouffe". (Fenollosa and Pound. 1936: 4)

This belief guided Pound in his editing as well as in his later translation, and he

inwstsd i t with an etynological dimension:

The Chinese shows its advantage. Its etymology is constantly visible. I t

retains the creative impulse and procsss. visible and at work. After thousands of 3 3 r s the lines of metaphoncal advancr are still shown. and in man! cases clsarly rerained in the meaning. (P-25 P: 60)

Pound observes that it is just this metaphorical visibility. fused in the Chinesc

characters u t m e its originality is rooted. that provides this language and culture its

wer-revitalising power. Pound's later translarions of the Confucian works. therefore.

can be regarded as his challenge to conternporary cornmonplaces about the Orient

III. Chinese Characters and Poetical Power

For Pound, the secret of the Chinese characters as an effective, innovative

medium for poetry is not in their exotic form, stylistics. or lexicon. in fact. most

translators share the belief that the likeness of foms behveen Chinese and English

sentences renders translation fiom one to another exceptionally easy. As a non-

in flected languaee which sees neither conjugation. nor distinction of transitive and

non-transitive verbs, the genius of the two is very similar. Bearing in mind "what is

abstractly meant and what is acnially said" (Fenollosa and Pound: 2 1 ), Pound

discovered that " frequently it is possible by omitting English parricles to rnake a

liicrnr) a-ord-for-word translation which will be not only intellijible in English. but

w e n the strongest and most poetical English" (Fenollosa and Pound: 16).

To g i n a clearer sense of what Pound regarded as "strongest" and "most

puetic" language. it is wonhwhile to point to Pound's conviction in the power of the

natural image and the natural transference of power between language and image".

The earliest instance of Pound's involvement in imagisrn is documented in 1909.

ahen he uas introduced to the "Eiffel Tour" group. in Soho. London. Members of

this group. such as F. S Flint and T. E. Hulme. already started experimenring with

imayist port- as early as 1908. Pound becxne an active member of the group and he

sliared Hulme's view that 'poetic ideas are best expressed by the rendering of

cuncretr objects" (Peter Jones: 17).

In 19 13. as a loyal contributor to and reader of Poetn*. which amved from

Chicago periodically. Pound introduced a sequence of poems witten by his &end

Allen Upward ( 1863- 1976). entitled Scemed Leaves /rom a Chinese Jar. The

opening piece. "The Bitter Purple Willows" reads:

hleditating on the glory olilIustrious lineage I lified my eyes and beheld the bitter purple willows round the tombs of the exalted Mings. (Boni: 5 1 )

This could be one of Pound's earliest discoveries of a presentation of a state of mind

side by side with an irnase in verse form. The poetical power of this iorm is

" 1 introduce a concrete example of this similari'y between English and Chinese prnrnar the phrase Ren Jim Ma in section IV.

srrniingly derived from the power of nature - the willow leaves. purple and thus

about to 1311. being transferred from the image. seen by the eye. to a juxtaposed. but

ottienvisr disconnrcted concept. the historical. esalted Ming tombs.

Pound's analysis in The Cltiriese CCTirre>i Churucrer us u Mcditmfor Poeril.

only intensifisd his conviction that imase enriches poetry:

. . . thc Chinese sentences chiefly [cm be regarded] as vivid shonhand pictures of actions and processes in nature. These embody tnie poetry as far as the' go. Sucti actions are seen. but Chinese would be a poor language. and Chinesci poet- but a narrow art. would they not go on to represent also what is irrrseerr. The best poetry deals not only with natural images but also with lofty tlioughts. spiritual suggestions and obscure relations. The greater part of natural truth is hidden in processes too minute for vision and in harmonies too large. in vibrations. cohesion and in affinities. The Chinese compass these also. and with gea t power and beauty. (Fenollosa and Pound: 22)

Pound renounces abstract meaning, which "gives little vividness" (Fenollosa

and Pound: 2 1 ). "while fullness of imagination zives all". From this point onuard we

can sec Pound becoming gradually more intrigued by the liaison between language

and image. cspecially by the connection between a picto-ideogammic language such

as Chinrse and images and their application in poetry.

IV. Chinese Characters and Natural Image

Pound analysed the poetics of the Chinese charactes from three perspectives.

First of all. the Chinese language is a highly iconic language of gesture, combining

the vividness of painting and the rnobility ofsounds (as funher elaborated by the

concretr cases in Chapter II) . Secondly. there is a firm temporal logic in Chinese

s'ntas and a Ceat dq ree of flexibiiity in t ems of its lexicon. As aforementioned.

Chincse. especially hncient Chinese. also has a high degree of flexibility in tems of

criimmrir. For instance. thrre is a high degree of interchangeability between nouns b

and vcrbs. nouns and adverbs and adverbs and adjectives. and so forth''. Thirdly. and

niost trnponantly. it incorporates basic peculiarities of nature as verbal actions rather

than designating thern as static States. and emphasises concrete particulars rather than

abstract reneralities.

To emphasise this third point. Pound's offen the following example. in which

threc characters are used to describe a man obsewing a horse:

Ren Jian ,Ma - ?vlan sees (a) horse.

Pound uses a first-person perspective (a hidden "1" obsewing the actions) to

contcmp late a picture seemingly veiled in these three c haracters. and argues that

"becnuse the operations of nature are successive. the transference of force from agent

to object. which constitute natural phenornena. occupy time"; logically For Pound. a

reproduction of the scene in imagination requires the same temporal order:

Suppose that we look out of a window and watch a man. Suddenly he turns his head and activeiy fixes his attention upon something. We look ounelves and see that his vision ha been focused upon a horse. We saw. fint. the man before he acted; second, while he acted; third, the object toward which his

- - - - - - - - - -

1; Whar gmnmatically dismguishes the ancient Chinese From i t s contemponry form are its lexical tle'r~bility and interchgeabiiiry. which are nrely found nowadrtys. Foot (Zu). for mtance. merint "to go". "ro walk". whle at present, it onIy senfes as a noun carrying almost the same me an in^ 3s in English.

action \vas directed. In speech we split up the npid continuity of this action and of its picture into its three essential parts or joints in the ripht order. and sa).: Man sees horse. (Fenollosa and Pound: 8 )

In non-pictorial languages such as English or French. three phonetic symbols stand

for the thres ternis of a natural process. In other words. there is no natural (or less

traccable) connrction betwern thing and si- in the words. Con~.crsely. Chinese

cliaractcrs stand out as images in the poetical sense bccause. according to Pound. their

pictorial written side follows a natural logic:

First stand the man on his two legs - Ren. Second his eye (Mu) rnoves through space: a bold figure represented by mnning legs under an eye. a modified picture of an rye. a rnodified picture of running legs, but unforgettable once you have seen it. Third stands the horse on his four legs Ma. (Fenollosa and Pound: 8)

Thc idsograms trace a man's movement: reading thern in a pictonal fashion renders

the natural elements visible. Moreover. Pound susgests that. in cornparison to

alphabetic languages. the thought-picture can thus not only be induced by

pronouncine these characters. as they normally function in alphabets, but c m also be

callrd up more vividly and concretely by these signs. Put another way. the poetics of

Ancient Chinese is largely reinforced by these visible metaphors. The presence of the

image of a leg in a11 the three characters renders al1 of thern integrally alive: they

share "something of the quality of a continuous moving picture" (Fenollosa and

Pound: 9) The image thus produced is supenor to a paintins or a photogaph. Pound

argues . brcause "despite their [the characters'] concreteness, it [the image produced

bp characten] does not drop the element of natural succession" such as mobility and

1.. Chinese Characters as Medium of the Transference of Power

Pound's point about natural succession also thematises his discussion of

Chiiicse s'ntas and the lesicon. Pound indicates that unIike Latin, German. or

Japanese. English and Chinese rely largely on the order in wbich the words are placed

to disringuish their functions as agent-act-object. while inflected languages depend

largcly on indicative tags. word-endings. and labels.

The question here is. rhen. if a sentence expresses nature's temporal order of

causation. should the sentence be structured in an analogous mariner"? Pound's

throry touches upon the fundamentals of languages as he retrieves the "basis of

nature" (Fenollosa and Pound: 13) which he ternis as the rra>tsfere>ice ofpower. in

othrr words. natural phenornena such as light. heat. gravity, chernical affinity. and

even human will. have the cornrnon capacity to redistribute power via the a, ~ent-act-

object structure. For Pound. sentence structure should refiect the operations of nature.

The theory of syntactic structure that Pound puts foward is that a sentence. as

a natural part of langage. is not an artificial invention - it is as natural as a "flash of

lightnin_o." (Fenollosa and Pound: 14) He draws a parallel between the rra~tsference of

1.1 In English and Chinese. for instance. the sentence "1 am a student" is expressed in the same

p o w r from cloud to eanh to the conveyin_~ truth frorn languagc to the individual

subject - a major hnction camed by the sentence. .\ sentence espresses what Pound

terms the universal f o m of action in nature through threr elements. "the first

dcnoting the agent or the subject from which act Stans. the second embodying the

wry stroke of the act. the third poiniing to the object. the receiver of the impaci

(: Fenoliosri and Pound: i 3 1.'' Xature itsel f knows no abstractions. .As a reflection O t'

oiir naturai esistence. the structure of a Chinese sentence îi-ees itself frorn artificial

formalism. such as tags and inflected sentence tails. by following the structure of

nature. u-hile being as "flexible as possible and as full of sap of nature." (Fenollosa

2nd Pound: 17) Pound's observations on the transference of power correspond to

Chinesc s y t a s in which the subject-verb-object structure is almost always present:

sven the smallest elements of this structure. the chancters. tend to get as close to

nature as they can.

Beyond analysing the syntactical structure. Pound Zoes back to work on

smaller grammatical elements. He finds that verbs and especially the transitive verbs

become the major medium of distribtrtingpower in a Chinese sentence. Although

Pound draws similarities between Chinese and English sentence structures, he was

particularly intrigued by the transitiveness of the verb in Chinese: 'The beauty of

Chinese verbs is that they are ail transitive or intransitive at pleasure" (Fenollosa and

Pound: 14). Pound notes that it would be extraordinary for one to Say in English. as

~ a y . In lapanese, it is expressed as "Wadashiwzt Kakusai Desi" - "1. smdent. am".

ons ma); in Chinesr. that "the ires greens itszlf'. But like Fenollosa. Pound regards

this as optirnising the meaning of nature since "there is no such thing as a naturally

intransitive verb." (Fenollosa and Pound: 11). Pound pursues the discussion of the

interchangrability in Chinese between verbs and nouns to show what they regard as

simply a fact of nature:

In the primitive transitive sentence. such as "Famer pounds nce". the agent and the object are nouns only in so far as the- limit a unit of action. "Famer" and "rice" are mere hard terms which define the extremes of the poundiny. But in themselves. apart from this sentence- function. they are naturally w-bs. The farmer is the one who tills the gound. and the rice is a plant which gows in a special way. This is indicated in Chinese characters. (Fenollosa and Pound: 19)

In Ancirnt Chinese. as we have already noted. the boundary between verbs and nouns

is vrry ombiguous. This is only the most noticeable case of interchangeable

gammatical elements in the h c i e n t form of Chinese. before the L i t e r a ~ Reforms in *

To a lesser degee. pronouns and prepositions in Chinese al1 retain a

substratum of verbal action. and tend to bring the readership closer to actions in

nature. According to Pound, there are five ways of writing "I", though with different

connotations. in classic Chinese:

Take. for example. the five forms of "1". There is the sign of a "spear in the hand" = a very emphatic 1; five and a mouth = a weak and defensive 1 . 15 The Litenry Revolution. led by farnous witers and scholars such as Hu Shi and Lu Xun.

ridvocated a plain. vernacuiar Chmese, instead of the cornples, rhymed Ancient Chinese. in t e m of content. they sought to introduce new ideas fiom the West in writing as well as in education. as opposed to the limtted rieid content E-orn Confùcian works. One of the most unportant work of the Literary Revolution is Lu Xun's Diap of a Mad Man.

holding off a crowd by speaking; to conceal = a selfish and private 1: self (the cocoon s i p ) and a mouth = egoistic 1. one who takes pleasure in his own speaking. (Fenollosa and Pound: 2 1 )

To makc a cornparison with English at a fuller scais. Pound areucs that even

preposi tions in Chinese denote a certain sense:

Thus in Chinese. by = to cause (You). to = to fa11 fonvard (Cu); in = to remain (Zai). to dwell; from = to follow (Cong); and so on.

Thesr lsss important syntactic rlcments are theoretically problematical in alphabetic

languages since they are unanalyzablr expressions of preposi tion or conj uncr ion: in

Chinese. on the other hand. they al1 retain active elements which ennble readers to

trace them back to the ideograms' literal roots.

VI. The Refusa1 of Acknowledgement

The arguments presented in l7le Chinese Wrttten Cliaracter us MedirrnzJor

Poetyr laid the groundwork for Ezra Pound's later "ideogammic" theory and his

translation of Tlte Grear Digest. The following discussion will focus on two closely

related questions:

1. 1s Fenollosa's theory of cornpounding, which emphasises only the

"ideogammic" aspect of the Chinese characten, unfounded and faulty?

7. in strict sinology. is his method of interpreting an ideograrn in relation to

the a (i! i t \ v a s fomed an etymological misinterpretation ?

The nature of the Chinese language. according to Pound. relies largely on the

fact that ~ I S characters are al1 pictorial. and distinct from the alphûbetic s i y s of

\Vcstrrn lanyages. He concludes that almost al1 Chinese characters are bnsed on

pictographic roots uhich can be iraced to ancient scripts. This point has become the

subjsc~ of considerable debate and the ten or so characters esplaincd in the Clliiicse

Clz<it~rcrer- ~ i s S l r d i ~ m i ~ r Poetn. become less convincing when they are cornparcd to

those offercd by other etymological dictionaries or in the sorks of other

lcsicographers. because it is not difficult to find contradictory explanations for the

origins of any panicular ideogramfe.

S ince thrir discussion was centred on considenng the idrogams as a medium

for poetry. wr may speculate that Pound either ignored the element of phonetic

conipounding in ideogarns; or, he delibentely refused to acknowledge the phonetic

componrnt of the characters.

.As has been show. Pound argued that the ideogams. whether compounded.

cornplex ones such as Ma. or simpler auxiliary characters like the prepositions. are al1

pictorial. and therefore full of "natural suggestions1'. Based on this belief. they move

on to infer that although some basic radicals (strokes) still contain "phonetic

values" - they must have been derived from a pictorial unit, as they daim for phrase

' O In die 1 s t decade of the last cenmq (1899). archaeologists in Chma unemhed the "oncle bones" whch initiated the modem study of ancient scripts. Tang Lan, one of the founders of the nlrw rtpptoach. uied to retrieve the fashion of formation of ancient chancters in his book .-l Guide ro .-fncittnr Scrrprx Stildit!~. Cornparisons between Tang's theory and Pound's will be further discussed in Chapter

"Rsn Jian Ma" (Man sees horse). discussed in the first section. But in the character

for \fa I niotlirr). for instance. only the left part. "woman". is strictly ideogrammic:

the riglit pan (Ma - the character for horse ) determines the pronunciation. in tems of

nimning. "mother" definitely has nothing to do with a horse. What Pound argues hcre

is rhat the phonetic pan of Ma (the character for horse) is still a pictogam. although i t

has only the phonctic significance in Ma (the character for mothrr)'*. To this stage.

his point of view is not controversial.

U'hat stans to become debatable is the analysis that touches upon the

ei-O l ut ionary development of the cornpound characters:

In the process of compounding. two thing added together do not produce a third thing but suggest some fundamental relation between them. (Fenollosa and Pound: 10)

To dernonstrate this point Pound uses three examples:

Huo (Messmate): Man and a fire.

Chun (Spnng): The sun underlying the bursting fonh of plants.

Dong (East): The sun tangled in the branches of the trees.

This lieu. would not have been so controversial had Pound rmphasised that their

interpretation is based on the methods of one school of Chinese etymo10gy'~~ and

rnight be challenged by many other schools of thought, a possibility Pound

--

III. ! - Ma ( first tone) means mother. Ma (third tone) desi_enates horse. Tiie chrtracter for rnother

uses .Lia (horse) as its phonetic element. '90 be discussed m the section on the "Sir E&rnologlcal Methods of Chinese i deopm

formation" in Chtipter III.

xknowIt.ciges but seems to dismiss:

Pictonal clues of many Chinese ideogaphs cannot n o a be traced. and rven Chinese lesicographers admit that combinations frequently contribute only a phoireric i d u e . But 1 found it incr-edible that any such minute subdivision of the idea could have ever esisted alonri as abstract sound without concrete character. tt contradicts the law of evolution. Comples ideas anse only wdually. as the pouer of holding them together arises. (Fenollosa and - Pound: 30. rmphasis added)

Pound was aware thar Chinese lexieopphers believe that. in some instances.

more coniples ideogams represented only difierent phonetic parts. and the rneaning

of the ideogram dilfers greatly From any of the compounding parts. But Pound seems

io insist that this was only because "the metaphor [of the jiven ideogram] once

csisted in many cases where we cannot now trace it." (Fenollosa and Pound: 30). and.

then focuses on formulating the argument that in a gradua1 evolution. etymologically

spcaking. a language's formation cannot be based merely upon abstract sounds.

'Lloreovrr. if Chinese were formed on the basis of phonetic eiements. it should

express individual sounds in a clearer, more straightfonvard fishion than it does. as

opposed to the sometimes ambiguous system in which the pronunciation of dozens of

different idsogams are governed by merely four tonal distinctions. Here Pound's

argument anticipates the careful development of his view "against" the "phoneric

value".

It is interesting to note that the discussion of phonetic-ideogrammic values has

a placc in the Western tradition of scholarship'". Hegel's view of Oriental philolog). is

Tlicy [Chinese] have. as is well knonn besides a Spoken Language. a ICHrrefi Lmgirclge: which does not express. as ours does. individual sounds - does not present the spoken ~vords to the rye. but represents the idras thernselves by s i g s . ( Hegel. 1900: 135)

Pound obviously shared Hegel's view'" at this point. Both affirmed that although

iibstract plionetic signs aere fomulated ai a certain stage of the etymolo~ical

dswlopment of the Chinese language. they are still derived from originally visual

ideogrrims. Comespondingly. Hegel expressed a similar view with this cornparison:

For our Spoken Language is matured to distinctness chiefly through the nrccssity of finding signs for each sinsle sound. which later. by reiiding. we lcarn to express distinctly. The Chinese. to whom such a means of onhoepic development is wanting, do not mature the modification in their lansuage to distinct aniculations capable of being represented by letters and syllables. Their Spoken Language consists of an inconsiderable number of monosyllabic ~vords. which are used with more than one signification. The method of denoting distinctions of meaning is the connection. the accent. and the pronunciation - quicker or slower, softer or louder. The ear of the Chinese has become very sensible to such distinctions. (Hegel: 135)

.\lthough some of Hegel's discourse falls into subjective speculation". and he regards

the Chinese ideogramrnic system as inferior to the Western phonetic systerns. his

basic view that there is some phonetic value in the Chinese language was shared by

I " Such as Leibnttz. see Hegel 1900: 135. '" When Fenollosa was teachmg as the Chair of the Philosophy Depamnent at the Imperia1

Cniversity of Tokyo. he had been exposed to rnany of Hegel's works on history and philosophy. Hegel's influence was then inherited by Pound \la Fenoiiosa.

" Such as usine the long or short. soft or loud pronunciations to produce different me-S. ivhich is not the case in Chmese. The four-tonal system in Chinese. (even the nine-tonal system in the

Poiind.

It is clsar that Pound \vas neither unaware nor ignorant of the phonetic values

n-ithin the ideogams. Under the influence of Hegel. Fenollosa. himsel f a philosopher.

acquired a clear sensc of the phonetic quality of the compounded ideogams. What

Pound chose to do. however. was to refuse to acknowledge this side of the ideogam

i'omiulation thsory in order to draw attention to the poetic values of interpretation

provoked bu the rnetaphorical wlue of an ideogam". U'hat Pound defends is that. in

the crirly stages of linguistic evolution of the Chinese languqe. the parts of the

ideo-ams identified as sound can always be regarded as pictogams per se: the

reason thry are often regarded as abstract sounds is that i t has become difficult or

impossible to trace their ongins.

\'II. Ideograms as Metaphors

Ezra Pound's refusal to acknowledge the phonetic elements in The Chinese

IFi.itteil Cliaracfer as a Medium of Poeyv provides the grounds for claiming that

Fenollosa's analysis of the poetics of Chinese characten - as well as the later

"ideogammic method" Pound employed in his translations - should be considered

-

Crintanese dialect) has strict rutes on the pronunciation of the toned syllables.

l a s a strict e t)molog of language than a discussion of the application and estension

of the acsthetic aspects of language.

.ii this stage. we c m see that Pound's discussion of the compounding of

ideogranis serves as a prelude to Pound's view how metaphors are derived from

compound-ideogams.

Pound de fines metaphor as "the use of material images to suggest irnmaterial

rclritions". (Fenollosa and Pound: 20) To put i t in another nay. rnetaphor signifies a

transformation From the sem to the totsee>t. Following from this definition. his theory

of the relation between ideograms and rnetaphors bas two implications. Fint. the

"niatsrial images" designate the p i c togms since they represent "a vivid shorthand

picture of the operations of nature." (Ibid. p: 04) Similarly. metaphor is fomrd by

ver). concrete and physical images; therefore. we c m say pictogams corne from

metaphors. As 1. .4. Richards observes, "we can find no word of description for any

of the intellectuai opentions which. if its history is known, is not seen to have bren

taken. by metaphor. h m a description of some physical happening". (Richards: 90).

The second implication is that idrogams were originally composed from pictogams

representing very physical things; the process of composing - or compounding - is

the process of juxtaposing several different matenal images: thus i d e o - m s can be

taken as metaphors with more poetical sense'.

As already noted. Pound States that the juxtaposition of hvo things will not

.1, - I wiI1 develop my arcment on t h s subject in the next section.

produce a third thing. but brings about a transformation that he terms "the

hndamsntal relation" between the justaposed material things.

To put it differently. the argument that Pound presents is that the ideogams

can be broken down into concise. concrete metaphors or mini-narratives that depict

an action apparent in nature. and that the metaphors and ideogams are inseparable:

the methodolo~y of fonning (in reality "interpreting") ideogams. then. seems to be

pi\-oral for the throry of metaphor. Pound insists that the insrparable relationship

bstween the ideogam and metaphor is dictated by the order of nature. as the

metaphor and the ideogam both follow natural processes:'. He moves on to observe

that at the earlirst stages of development language imitates nature: "language is

forced on the primitive man by nature." and "our anceston built the accumulations of

metaphor into structures of language and into the system of thought." (Fenollosa and

Pound: 19) Thus lansuage. at Ieast in its early stages. always contained a

metaphxical relation to nature.

In Lmgzruge and Retz-*. G. W. Urban traces the primary hnctions of

language. and conciudes that. as Ianpage evolves fiom a mere copying of the object

or happening. it inevitably establishes an analogy between the word and its object:

On the first view it appears to be determined wholly by the principles of imitation: the reduplication of the sound or syllable appean to involve merely the copying of the object or happening. Actually, however. it marks the b e @ ~ i n g of analoge representation which. as we shall later see, is the

1:

-- In Chapter III, 1 elriborate the discussion of metaphors. "litenl rnetaphors" and "poetic metaphors".

" As Fcnollosa and Pound note. "Mewphor. the revealer of nature. is the very substance of p o e p " ( Fenollosa and Pound: 23)

fundamental principal of natural speech construction. The symbol is then. in the first instance. imitative and sen-es to conjure up the thing itself. Gradually. however. the Gestolt is detached from its prima- material and becomes the means of intuitive representation of plurality and repetition and final1 y. in man) cases. becomes the f o m of representation or expression of the fundamental intuitions. space. time. force. etc. (Urban: 1-45)

The pictogram can be taken. then. as a symbolic representation of its referent when

rhc language reachrs its mature stage. Therefore. pictograms are metaphoncal

reprrsrntations of nature: ro a certain rxtent. in the case of the Chinrse characten.

according to Pound. pictogarns themseives per se can be taken as physical

Even so. Pound's emphasis is on the compounding nature of formine the

idsograms? He believes that a metaphor becomes alive. showing the "real. striking

poctics" (Fenellosa and Pound: 26). only when things are presented as occumng

bcfore our eyes. In this, he echoes Aristotle who believes that one of the most

imponant qualities of metaphor is "actuality". which he defines as "using expression

to show things in a state of activity." (Aristotle: 21 1) His definition is con_ment with

the compounding process of the ideogarns as they roo suggest directly a kind of

action and make lifeless thinss alive. A compound sets things vitally before the eye

because it "combines several pictonal elements in a single character." (Fenollosa and

Pound: 30).

Saturally, this process requires two steps: the jutaposition of

existing basic p i c t o g m i c elements into one single character, forming a physical.

scnsuous meaning: then. a releik to use Demda's tem. literally an clevation beyond

tlic purely physical image to forrn a spintual meaning. This meaning is largely

defined. according to Pound. by the relations between the different components of the

idsogram. In reaiity. Pound's theory is centred on this cornpounding. or the wrii oj'

rciutiomliip. to use Northrop Frye's rem:

So h r ive have bsen dealin3 with synbols as isolatrd units. but clearly the unit ofrelationship between two synbols. corresponding to the phrase in music. is of equal importance.. .This unit of relationship is metaphor. I F r y : 122)

Fry's funhcr rlnboration of the stateniem of idenri- echoes the view put fonvard by

Pound:

The metaphor. in its radical f o n . is a statement of identity of the "A" is "B" form. or rather. putting it into its proper hypothetical form. of the "let S be Y" t g e . Thus the metaphor tums its back on ordinary descriptive meaning. and presents a stmcture which literally is ironic and paradoxical. in ordinary descriptive meaning, if A is B then B is A. and a11 we have really said is that .A is itself. in the metaphor two thing are identified while each rerains its own fom. Thus if we say "the hero was a lion" we identiQ the hero ii*idr the lion. while at the same time both the hero and the lion are identified as themselves. i\ ivork of literary art owes its unity to the process of identification iititli. and its variety, clarity. and intensity to identification as. (Frye: 123)

hdmittedly. in Pound's perspective. both the lion(s) and the herols, are the

pictogams representing themselves which are juxtaposed in one new ideogram.

These two or more compounds retain their identities while forming a new idei ir i~ of

stnrcttrre in the process of transformation, as discussed earlier. Nevertheless it should

- c -- To be discussed in Chapter 3 in the Six Method of fomirng the ideoprims section.

bt: n o t d that tu-O pre-conditions are necessary for this transformation: the similarity

and coniiguity of the compound-ideograrns. The similanty shows the seen. whilc

contiguity the unseen. relationship between the cornpounds. This criterion for forming

the Chinese characters enables the transformation from the seen physical images to

thc spiritual sphcre. as Pound shows:

The. best poetry deals not only with natural imases but with lofty thoughts. spiritual suggestions and obscure relations. The l ea t e r pan of natural truth is hidden in processes too minute for vision and in harmonies too large. in L-ibrations. cohesion and in affinities. The Chinese compass these also. and wi th geat power and brauty. ( Fenollosa and Pound: 2 1 )

\ 'III. Conclusion

The discussion in this chapter has attempted to reveal some of Ezra Pound's

fundamental assumptions in his studies of the Chinese characters. Chinese ideogams.

though different in form and grammar fiom Western phonrtic alphabets. share a gea t

number of commonalties in terms of syntax and lexicon with languages such as

Enylish. -4s a means of conveyine the poetics of langage. the Chinese p i c t o p m

shows its superionty in terms of its compounditig nature. and the relevé. derived From

se\.t.ral conipounded radicals? Pound sees the pictorial nature of the ideogarns as a

pouwful aid to translate thern because. by tracing the original pictorial components

of a givrn idrogam. - the translator can usualiy corne up with a vi\.id metaphor or even

a spiritual expression. This can be taken as a v r ry effective rool in literary translation.

.An understanding of Ezra Pound's Chinrsr studies has important nmifications

for the study of his literary career as a whole. A s Walter Pater obsen-ed. the most

effective criticism is that "which is itself a kind of construction. or creation. as it

penetratcs. through the given literary or anistic product. into the mental and inner

construction of the producer. shaping his work." (Ess+.ji-uni [lie Gt«ircfia~i. Ilbrkr.

19 10. 1029) By tracing Pound's own transformations from cxperiments with oriental

elemcnts in his poems. to his interests in the imagism in the Chinese characters. up to

Iiis sct ive invo lvement in the translation of Confucianism. we g i n an appreciation

not only of the significant influence of the "ideogrammic method" on his translation

of The Great Digesr. but of his the theory of translation in genenl.

'' .hocher way of saying ths is that the meaning conveyed by a cornpound Chinese chancter is ofien one that is summarised From the meaning of iis different pan - a relevt; of difkreni images of irs cornponents. In addition. it is visual. Although lexical rooÿ of alphabetic languaees c m also be rraced by analysmg different se-ments of a spelted word they are much iess visible. and thus less

Chapter Two

Ezra Pound and The Great Digest

From the time of Pound's first Chinese translations in C d z q ( 19 15). his

Chincsr translations have become the center of controversy. On the one hand. somr

Chinesr scholars credited his translation as being innovative. maintaining that his

employin- of the "ideogamrnic method" has had the signi ficant effect of bringins the

author doser to the readers2*. A s Brian M. Reed notes. "Pound's theory that

ideogrnms c m be broken down into concise. concrets meraphors or mini-narratives

thnt depict an action renders the characters capable of optically conveying something

i-iscrral and imrnediate that a cornmonplace word would not."" Even critics of

Pound's Curtros agree on this point. Ln his discussion of Chinese characters in the

Cm~lpmiori ta the Cariros. Carrol F.Terel12" shows how the Chinese characters behave

according ro Pound's theory in the latter's Canios.

On the other hand, Pound's Chinese translations are dismissed by some

sinolo_oists because his knowledge of the langage, especially of h c i e n t Chinese -

usrd by scholars in the Confucian Era (fifth-century B.C.) - remained at the

superficial level of merely interpreting the pictographic characten with the aid of

dictionaries and his poetic imagination. although Pound had been studyïng Chinese.

portlc in rt sense. . - - See Chapter [II for a fuller discussion on the relationshp between Reader-Translater-

.\utfior. '' Brirn M. Reed. Ezra Pound's Utopia of the Eye. Peideuma 22. p: 1 16. -'a - Carrol F. Terrell. Cornpanion to The Cantos, UC Berkeley Press. 1980.

niostl!. by himself. for eighteen y a r s betore his first translation w s publishsd. Chang

Yao-sin. from the Chinese Acadrmy. openly contradicts Pound's interpretation of the

Chinestl charac ters:

In most cases characters no longer cal1 fonh any pictures. and ~enerally people could not care less about them.. .ianguage has brcome every bit 3s

abstract as any phonetic langage ever invented on this planet. S - i b o l s are no longer tokens for concrete objects or 'processes of actions in nature'. They stand today for nothing more than an abstract idea. The Chinese lang~age bas become "juggling counters of a kind". (Paideuma 17. p: 1 16)

It is obvious that the debates amongst Pound scholars are far from resolved. In this

chapter. through a discussion of Ezra Pound's translation of Confucius' classics. The

Grait Digest (Tu Hio": Da .Ytw-". La Grajtde Étude''). an attempt will be made to

vieu- his creuriipe tr<i?tslariod3 from the perspective of a Chinese studrnt of

Confucius. Four extant translations of The Great Digest constitute the starting point

O f this stud y: Guillaume Pauthier's nineteenth-century French translation. and James

Lrgge's 1593 English translation". which provided Pound with his initial inspiration

'" The \Vade-Gilles systern translation used by Powid.

'' hl1 Romanization of Chmese words in diis study is based on the official Pin Yin systern as opposed to the \Vade system histoncally used by the Sinologists before the late 1970s. But because Pound had no access to the Pin Yin system a Wade version wiIl also be provided for reierence. An esample wouid be the phonetic translation of Beijing (Pin Yin). ris it is pronounced in Chmese, venus the translation of Peking (Wade). whch seems less accurate. and has acquired the taint of colonial arbitramess.

- '- In Guillaume Pauthier's Dncsrine de Confucius ou Les Quanes Livres de Philosophie.

.\lorale. et Politique.

. - " The t em "crearive translation" was introduced in J. P. Sullivan's work, Ezra Pound and

Scxnrs Propmiirs .- a Stuc&. in Crean'vr Translation. Untvenity of Texas Press. Austin. 1964. " Lepge. James. The Clrinese Classics. Vo1.l and 4. Hongkone University Press. Hongkong.

ro commence his studies into the Chinese language and poetry in the early 19 1 Os;

Pound's first indirect translation. in 1928, from Pauthier's French version. entitled ï i c

Hio. Thc Greut Lem-~iittg of ~o~flrc i i rs '~ . when his knowledge of Chinese w s grearly

dsepened by his studies on the picto-ideogarns. notably by his edition of Erntst

Fenol1os;i's famous work; and his most controversial 1947 version of The Greilr

~ g e s t " . a direct and at the same time. creative translation froni the Stone-Classics

tests cancd on the ancient steles.

Ezra Pound's Confucian translations. from the formative London penod in the

19 1 0s. to the tumultuous decade of 1935- 194. are a useful index to the development

of his poetics. Without undentanding his Confucian transiations. i t is impossible to

amve at a clear and comprehensive understanding o l Pound's life-long pursuit of

poetics before the Cuntos. his major achievement in modernist poetry. and testament

io his deep-rooted muliiculturalism.

1. The Challenge of Confucian Translation

The garnmar of h c i e n t Chinese has never been defined according to a strict

teminolog; this is especially tnie of the Confucian works which were written when

LS93. ; C - - Tu Hio. The Grear Leaming of Confucius. University of Washington Bookstore. Seattle.

192s.

'" Coqircius: The Great Digesr. The Unwobbling Pivor. The .-Ineclets. Yew Directions. Sew

the language n.as siill in the process of evolution. The high interchangeability of

nouns and verbs. meaning that most nouns in Ancient Chinese serve also as verbs and

W-SLI \-lce'-. along with very concise and rhymed sentences. form the basic traits of its

lesicon and s y n t a ~ It is therefore necessary even for presrnt day Chinese to rely on

dictionaries or crib notes to interpret the highiy charged texts of Confucius. For

b.estrrnrrs. understanding. and even the willingness to understand. this culture and

its roots. have been complicated by the foreign form of the pictorial characters and

the four-toned pronunciation. and by the isolation of modem China during the past

t uo centuries fiom the Western world. The styiistic traits of the original also add to

tlir challenge of translating Confucius. Texts such as The Great Digest. for instance.

are witten in a very poetic prose. Because each semantic element conveys several

rich rnranings and implications as opposed to the much narrower lexical definition in

modem vernacular Chinese. a translation from an already-second-hand contemporary

\-ersion of i t will seem to be distoned and. sometimes. ridiculous. Consequently. it is

not sufficient for the translater to be merely armed with a willingness to understand

Confucius and a rich knowledge of the Chinese characters - he has to possess a

rcfined talent in poetry.

Confucianism is a humanist philosophy with its roots stretchin; back 2400-

2500 years. mainly to the teachine of Confucius relating the integity or comptness

- - -

York. 1963. j- For instance. the word qr.r could bc used to designate to see. so are words like ex. to hear

and hmd to give. etc.

of individual csperience to the vitality of the state and culture (his concrete esample

is his home state. a Principality named L11 in Eastern China)". The historical and

geographicai specificity of The Grecif Digest requires that the modernist translator

follou a path which leads fonvard to sublime creativity. rather than back to the loyal.

but rigid literal translation of seventeenth and eighteenth-century missionaries'" like

L e ~ g s and Pauthier.

Ezra Pound possessed the qualities needed to translate the fifth-century BC

Chinese masterpiece into twentieth-century ..\mericm Engiish. His drawback of

Iiavi ny commrnced studyinz Chinese at a relatively advanced age. and wi thout

propcr academic training in sinology. compelled him to study the very root of the

language - the ideograms. This study led to the development of the "ideogrammic

method". which rnabled him to translate characters into single metaphors. His

niastery of poetics then allowed him to interpret Confucian metaphors vividly into his

mvn "Imagism" and. later. the free verse of the Cmlros.

Pound's philosophical interests also coincided with the question of how

people should carry themselves individually and in relation to others. within the

hrnily and within the polis.

This chapter will begin with an examination of Pound's translation method: an

r l f o n uill br made thereafter to esarnine instances of Pound's poetically creative

'' To be discussed m e r in ths study. '' Eariy translations of Chmese worh were done mostly by eiehteenth and nineteenth-cen-

Chrictnn mssionaries Iike Legge. Pauthier. Morrison, to name a few..

inierpretation of The Gi-errr Digesr. with refsrence to the ideas developed in T/le

CIIIIICSP Writrm Cliurucrer us cr ~Ifeditmi for Puet,?: His interpretation of the

Confician concept "rectification of names" is introduced to distinguish Pound's

translation of the Confucian philosophy as n whole from other more conventional

oiics. and to sho~r- how he applied his "ideogrammic" theory to translate more abstract

concepts. This chapter will conclude with a discussion of the accuracy of Pound's

Cliincse translation. and the linguistic and translational controversies sui~ounding it.

II . "Cheng" and Its Imagism

Although the quaiity of Pound's many essays on translation n n e s greatly. the

bcst of them olfer a set of assumptions about translation which initiated a modem

renaissance in this subject. particularly in the fresh assumptions about the nature and

intcnt of literary translation. Apart from his emphasis on a closer scnitiny of the

source test and an in-depth mastery of the depamire language, the three most

important Poundian propositions are as follows:

a. Givsn the archaic nature of Ancient Chinese. it is crucial for the transistor to

choose appropriate diction in the arriva1 language. Since archaic English diction

would seem not only clurnsy but also obsolete, it should be replaced by a

contemporary diction. or a mixture of both.

b. .A niodern

obscures the

bs Lin "espsr

litrrary translator"' should not endravor to produce n "philology"" that

vividness and contemporary relevance of the original. Translation should

iment':" that leads the reader to overcome the historic. yrographical and

cultural barriers so as to a m w at a "relation to the present analogous to the relation

\tehich past the mastenvork had to the life to its tims"".

c. The process of translation has to fuse the translators' vision. understanding.

sspefience. knowledge. and sometirnes even with his own cnticism into a new

version of the original.

Older schoois of translation rither condemn such assumptions. discarding

theni entirely or only panially agreeing with them. even advocating some of them in a

verv b l u y marner. Y an Fu" believes that a translater's achieving " laith fulness.

sensibility and elegance" is the prerequisite to good translation. His vie\\.. exernplary

amongst numerous others. does not however. displace the earlier Elizabethan theory

that a translator should interpret "Homer. Pliny [as if they were] moralists. historians

and story-teilers whose climate of thought as well as xorld picture did not greatly

differ from their ow."" As a translator at the histoncal juncture between the

decayns China and the birth of a New Culture'". Yan Fu's diction resembles that of

JI I Here. obviously Pound tned to emphasis the creative side of trrinslrition, as opposed to the alrnost literal. rigid translations in the past.

4 I Ezra Pound. Selecred Lerrers. p. 3 1 . .A philology here suggests a translation like that of James Leege whch is full of cribs and explmations and Ioses the basic traits of the original texts.

" ibid. 'j ibid. U One of the major Chuiese mnslators who, at the turn of the centut-y. mnslated eighteenth

and ninethteeth-cennuy works of Western phdosophen such as J.J Rousseau. Fourier. etc. 4 5 Cohen. hl.. English Translarors and Translurions. Lon-pan. London. 1962. p. 29.

liis Yictorian counterparts in its hall-archaic half-vemacular lutignge. reflecting the

v i e n thar "distance and time were the p n m q reality of which the readrr must be

constmtly remindsd."" The contradiction here rests on the question of whrther or not

a rranslator should espress al1 the literal content and qualities of the ûriginal.

Conventional English translators before the middle of the nineteenth-century. the

Seo-classic Chinese traiislators. and even some shoddy contemporary translators. dl

insist that. although i t is impossible to conven al1 the qualities from the departurc

language to the amval. it is still the translator's duty to try".

Ezra Pound was well aware of these obstacles. In practice. he accepted these

principlrs at leasr in part maintaining that the "ideogammic method" made it possible

to recuprrate most of the qualities of the Chinese texts to the English translations. At

the same time. he departed at many crucial junctures from the onhodox translations

10 The modern movement striving for democracy and science which took place on Ma): 4 19 19. is generally regarded as initiation of the rnodern Chmese cultural movement. Ln the Iiteray field. 3 Vernriculrir Litenture movement (The Litenry Revolution) _madually repiaced the so-called archrtic "eight-legged" articles. required by the then powerfbl Civit Service Exam. The h e n r y trend of using plain. contemponry tan-gage had a profound impact on the laquage used by tt~iters and trmslators.

4- Cohen. ibid. 4 l'an Fu's tnnslation of leanJacques Rousseau's "Le contrat sociar' . for instance. as

perceived from a contemponry Chmese transtator's point of hlew, crimes more significance in introducing modem Western phlosophy into Chinese, rather than its value in nansiation itself: the mxed diction of archaic and vemcular patterns and ternis, entanzled with phonetic translation to m k e up die lack of modern ternis in the target Impage. rnakes it dificult to be undentood by a modem reader of Chinese.

( b y Legge. for instance) he was using as a guide: unlike the Roman translators"'. he

never "invents" an entirely n e a test based on some essential points: his translated

tests srem. rather to be versions of the conventional ones augmented bu research and

reflection. Pound uras very concemed with rendering the relationship that the original

or the source tests had to its culture aiive in modem. Amsrican terms. This is one of

the reasons why many critics were unanimously in hvor of his attempt to capture the

"spirit" of the Chinese works'". In order to express this historical perspective. Pound

esperinirnted with various levels of diction. ranging from the archaic to the

completely contemporay in some cases blendin; the two. But it is his use of

contemporary diction that has been most influentid.

A Chinese-English biiingual publication of The Great Digest reveals that.

~isuallp. Pound's English text is twenty per cent more economical than his Chinese

source. whereas in most other cases the situation is reversed. One key sentence of

Pound's The Great Digest reads:

. . . wanting good government in their States. they first established order in their own families, wanting order in the home. they fint disciplined themselves. desiring sell-discipline. they rectified their own hearts; and wanting to rectify their own hearts. they sought precise verbal definitions of their inarticulate thoughts (the tones given off by the heart). (771e Greai Digest : p.? 1 )

Although the quoted translation. in the main. does not differ greatly from the other

esisting translations, Pound's interpretation of the phrase "the tones given off by

4') See Chapter III. "' On the phdological meriü and shoncomings of Pound's Chmese translations. see Yip's

Ezra Pound's Cathay and Eoyang's "the Cocfucian Odes". who. amongst many others. represent the frivountisrn accorded to Poundian translation from the standpoint of the American sinoIogists in the

the hsan". and more precisely. his rendering of the character "Cheng" for sincerity as

the "sun's lance corning to rest on the precise spot""" are a clear statement to the

rssearch d f o n behind the condensed yet plain Poundian version. Most English-

Chinese Dictionarirs. as well as the Moniso)i's that Pound used. define "Cheng"

sirnply as "sincrrity. honesty. and in deed". The quoted phrase would thrn br

trrinslated accordingly into "make his rneaning sincere". with lengthy crib notes or

Footnotes. as in Chinese high school textbooks of -4ncient Chinese. James Leggc's

version follows this routine while adding long explanations in an attempt to decode

the proverbs and metaphors5'.

Pound "de-composed" the character "Cheng" in an attempt to find a less

abstract. more meaningful and dom-to-eanh definition. The left component of the

compound "Yan" is simply the character for "words". with the lower left corner

"Kou" carrying the meaning of "opening" or "mouth". The right-hand half. "Cheng"

renders Pound's pictographc analysis more significant: the central component of this

half is the radical "Ge" with the literary rneaning of batile-axes. spears. or lances.

.Anothcr character with great orthographical similarity to "Ge" is "Shu". s ip i f ~ n s

"sword" as well as "to guard the kontier or the govemrnent quarters," which may in

debate on t h ~ s subject.

tuni have led to Pound's digging into its possible Latin equivalents of t a i w r i " or

f i ) t es". and precise ilefitirio~l".

Braring in mind the aforementioned significance of the right-hand part. Pound

interprets "Cheng" as the spear. or lance. guarding the frontiers and govemment

quarters'" He then combines it with the left half of the character "word". to amve at

the concepts of precise verbal de finition" and "the sun's lance coming to rest on the

precise spot verbally."" in both the "Terminology" and the translation sections of

test. Pound's rendering of these characters may have been influenced by his

knowledge of Oriental paintings in the Bntish Museum in the 19 1 Os". since a spear is

a frequent l y painted accessory in the emperor's ponraits. T hr rnetonym here lies in

the imagistic relevance of amving at a definition as precise as the shadow of the sun's

ray markin5 time on a sundiai. In the LJmvohbling Piior". Pound notes that Chenr. as

"sincenty. cornes from the ideogarn: to plant a lance where the sun's lance rests. to

" The Great Digest. P . ?O. " In this case. Leçge simply defmed Cheng as sincerity. as it usually is in the dictionaries. '' Latin word for "boundanes". " . - Latin for "Iimits". ?' E. Pound. "Xote by a Very Ignorant Man". Correspondence 1885-19f2. Sew Directions.

Se\v J'ork. p.37. ' O IVhen this chancter 1s put mro a certain contest in h c i e n t Chinese. not to mention Pound's

thoughts on its relevance to the Latm words. a possible logical derivation wouId be "to keep the important boundanes or conventions".

5- -4 hller eiaboration in t e m of content on the meaningfùlness of the key ternis role in Confirciarusm \\il1 follow in the nelit section section.

'"ce Ezra Pound's "A Reaospect" (p: 32) in HomnvL Michael and Murphphy. Pnmck ( rditors ). Critical Essa>*s on ..irnerican Modernisnt. G.K. Hall&Co.. New York. 1992.

55 Confucius. (Pound. Ezra. nanshtor). The UnwobbZing Piwr and rhe Great Digerr. Square Dollar Series. Washington D.C.. 1937.

regis~er the precision. to perfectm'. to adjust !mark on the sundialiprecise indication."

(p : 7 7 )

Criticism of this kind of definition cornes rnostly from gaphophonrtic

sinolo~ists like B. Karlgren." He charges that Pound's translation lacks of credibility

in as rnuch as rnost sinologists apee that the right-hand half of "Cheng" functions

merel' phonrtically and cames nest to no pictographic signiticance. Whiir it is trur

that. in the early stages of Chinese education. teachers spend a lot of tirne csplaining

the pictorial sigificance of the basic radicals (the basic strokes which cannot be

divided funher). this seems to be mainly a method to attract little children's attention

in leaming characters. However. From the senior years of primary school onward.

niost characters are learnt simply as phonetic value without specifically decomposing

thcim. or tracing them back to their lexicological roots.

III. Defining Characters

Pound's unorthodox definition of "Cheng" does not spring from his inventive

irnarination or From wild speculation; it is manifestly grounded in his studies of

00 The radical Cheng means to accornplish in contemporary Chrnese. b l Krirlgren is the sinologist who indocûiaated the theory now widely accepred chat a Chinese

charxter usually conmins a phonetical part can-ying its main semntic weight and another part

.MN-i-isoi~ 's Dictionar).; in manipulation of his previouslp acquainted anistic

ssnsibility (such as in the Chinese and Japanese visuai ans): in his study of the

c haracters: and most imponantly in his g a s p of the essence of Confucianism and

tlising his understanding into his translation.

It should be noted that the ternis "Cheng". "Ren". "Zheng Mine"": - have long

brsn usrd as abbreviations in the Confucian philosophy of education. with a variet?

of conflicting interpretations. sometimes causing debates amonr contradictory

schools of thourht. Pound's translation encompasses the innovative value of using a

modrst. concise diction which is loyal to that of Confucius. and providinr the reader

with a sound rxplanation of the pictorial composition of the characters ahich

consequently brings out the metonyny and metaphor (the spears. aues and sundial)

smbeddrd in them. The value of Pound's translation of The Grecir Digest is that it

presents the intrrested modem Western reader with some sense of the considerable

cultural achievement of the departure language. At the sarne time. by choosing key

t e m s and offenng criticism based on his philosophical undentanding of them, he

econornizes and transmits the untranslatable essence of the ancient thinlier in a

semantically rich yet loyal amval languaee. to a target audience who would othenvise

have little understanding of him. It is astonishing even to Chinese readers that Ezra

Pound could have mastered the essence of Confùcianism and translated it into a

revived twentieth century Confucian-Humanism without gaining fluency in the

rndicrites the character's pronunciation.

source Innguage. The Poundian translation cames sigificant d u e s which would

srcm to be invisible or very ambiguous to a contemporary Chinese intellectual who

has studied his language in an abstract. phonetic-emphasized manner that does not

differ rnucli from the tvay that an Amencan learns English"'. Should Pound's version

of Ti l~> Grcrrl Digcsl be re-translated back into Chinese as crib nores for the Confucian

works. i t ivould bs taken as a vcry ~ o o d esamplr of a Neo-Confucian school.

I V . Creative Translation

Confucianism is fused into every aspect of the politic al. military. soc ta1 and

inri-itably. the intellectual life in China. Ln hper ia l China before 1910. the Civil

Stmicr Esam" system was principally based on the so-called Fotrr Book" of

Confucius and Fi1.e Books of Mencius. ,411 the examinees were asked to write a

'' Discussed Funher in this smdy. '' A movement was launched in the 50s to sinipli. the Traditional Characten in Chinese as

an st'fort to reducr the nurnber of strokes to be used when witine. For example the character "door" 51 1s s~mplilied as MES. Whde the m m objective of facilitrithg writing was acheved, some scholan claimed that the unique aesthetics and pictographic value of h s p i c t o p p h c system had been reduced.

rl-a The synificant impact of the Civil Service Exarn systern on the schotars at that tirne (before the 19 1 O Revolution whch dernolished this system) is that their studies laid emphasis on recitation. and repention of Confucius and Mencius works so to p a s a very rigid exam as opposed ro a creative interpretarion of thouzhts from different schools.

O' The Four Booh are ne Great Digest. The L;m<obbling Pivot. The ;lnelects and The Book

lengthy essa' basrd on a phrase or a trrm quoted from the classical works. Lisually

the understanding of some of the key terms was vital to success. Confucius and his

studrnt Mencius drfined some of these terms in their discussions of philosophy with

thrir studrnts. but many of them remain open for interpretation.

Although Ezra Pound starts from the basic content of the Confucian

philosophy. his further study brings him back to the crucial significance of thcsr

ternis. and ultimately back to the characters forming them. His mcthod of anal>zing

the ideol~ams forms one of Pound's main unonhodoxies distinguishins him from

sorl irr interpreten of Confucius works.

In contrast to Pound's version. David Collie's ( 182s) and James Legge's

( 1 S70) \.ersions of The Greur Digest are mostly word-by-word translations of the

source tests. While Collie's version uses lengthy crib no tes designed most l y for

scadrmics. Legge's language is plainly (in a numerated fashion) intended for

probably a less intellectual audience. Both of these translations have very obvious

shoncornings. For example. despite the fact that the original is in prose. Legge

numbers each paragraph of his translation in an effort to make the structure of the

tests clear. Collie's references sometimes ounveigh the texts themseives; rather than

sening as an aid to the reader, it makes the average reader lose interest. Pound's

version is thoroughly fiee of crib notes and quotations. except for the "Terminology

Section" olhis version, in which Pound uses his ideogmmic analysis to define

fi ftsrn key terms.

As has already been shown with regard to "Cheng". one of fifteen key

idsograrns drfined. Pound attached a geat deal of significrincc to orciriive ri-tr~ufcrriori.

Creativt. interpretcition also estends to Pound's translation of the philosophical content

of Con fucianism. To Pound. many of the tenns translated by his predecessors.

Pauthier. Lcggc and Collie. are superficial and lofty. For instance. both Legse and

Collie translate the term "De" as "virtue". while Pauthier put it in French as "le

pnncipe lumineux de la raison que nous avons reçu du ciel." When contexualized.

Pauthier's translation seems closer to Confucius' intended meaning but it is so

anibiguous that one c m attribute it to many other characten and termsm";similar

problrms exist wi thin the L e s g and Collie versions. Readers of these translations

would find i t difficult to gain a sense of the archaism with which Confucius

advocated his belief, although that is one of the objectives these three translators tried

hard to achicve. iMoreover. their translations failed to demonstrate the possible

relrvance the Confucian texts have to a nineteenth-century readenhip.

h the 1947 version of 77re Great Digest, Ezra Pound follows the principles set

fonh in The Chinese Wriiitren Character as a Mediuni for Poern: that most of the

witten characters have down-to-earth. concrete roots in their pictognphic origins. As

bb Both Legge's and Pauthier's translations of the characters with very similar meanings to

hc already possesses a good mastery of the basic radicals. Pound interprets "De" in

the "Terminology" section as "the action resultant from this straight gaze into the

hran." His pictographic analysis is stnci. while creative. with close reference to his

dictionan.: the elements of the character. "Sing" (to move. to pace: a step. pacr).

"Zhi" (straight. upright). and the lower pan "Sin" (hean. min#-). form rather a

logical as well as concrete definition of "to be morally upright through the gaze into

one's hem - through introspection". The relevance of Confucian self-discipline to thc

perfectin of one's self. managing the household and goveming the state is thus

prrsented. Pound pushes this interpretation in the 1947 version of The Great Digest

by defining "De" as "looking straight into one's own hem and actine on the results."

Even literally the cornparison behveen the abstract trmscendental concept of

Pauthier's "le principe de la raison" and Pound's self-discipline and self-rectification

demonstrate clearly the genuine Poundian creativity. not to mention that at a deeper

lcvel of comprehension. Ezra Pound's definition is more significant philosophically.

htrospection. namely the attempt to know one's o w penon. one's family.

and one's state. before acting on conscience and morality for the betterment of the

humanit?. stays as one of the fundamentals of Confucianisrn. This introspection

differs h m religious meditation. such as that in Buddhism, in its emphasis on the

principle of reciprocity. This principle. that persons should to act in relation to others

- -- - - - - - -- - - - -

Dt.. such as Tuo (from whch the word Taoisrn is derîved) are confiising. Pauthier's "le principe lumineux de la nison" even seems to be quite irrelevant to the meankg of the word in Chmese.

07 Like a feu. other civilisations, the Chmese believe the mind and sou1 rest in one's h e m instead of the bnin. The Iegacy of this belief can still be found in the contemporary Chmese Imgua~e.

as others act in relation to them. is the exemplification of the Confucian belisf in

constructive human interaction. The consequent betterment of the society bejins with

onc's genuine espenence"'. regulated by the ethical principies inherent in "De"

(1.inut.. mordit-) and "Cheng" (sincerity). as an example stared in the L h ~ o b i i ~ t g

P i i m that:

t Confucius says): The nature of a nise man includes four achievements. none of which 1 have attained: to appreciate rny father as 1 wisti my son to appreciate me.. . to serve rny supenor officers as 1 desire my subordinate

officinls to sen7e me.. .to treat my younger brother in the sarne way 1 would expect rny younzer brother to treat me ... to be as considerate of friends ;is 1 would like to have my fkiends be considente of me. (James Legge. The L'uiidddi~tg Pii-or: SIII.)

I t is hard to find any tangible relationship between Confucius' advocacy of the

probing into one's own hem in search of a genuine human belief such as the

egalitarian treatment of another. and that of the common self-seeking assertion of

obedicnce which some Western philosophers advocated. For instance. Fichte's "self-

serkinz""" + even opposes in a sense the Confucian ideals of a thorough introspection

before moving on for the betterment in a wider scale:

At some point. self-seeking has destroyed itself by its complete development. because thereby i t has lost its self and the power of fixing its aims independently. (Fichte. p. S)

for rnstance. ro itar.e a heurt means to be attentive. to do somethmg conscientiously. on The Heart of Confucius. Introduction. b9 In Fichte. J . G.. =Iddresses to rhe German lar ri on. The Open Court Publishing Company.

London and Chicago. 1 1596) 1922. p.8. His theory on "self-seeking" was later adopted in the Sazi

Fichte-' regards this self-seeking as destructiw brcause it l a d s the person to set

voluniarily no other aims but the self, until another aim is irnposed by alien power. Ln

one word. Fichte's stereotype cannot achieve his goals if his ego was not denied. This

is just the oppositr of Pound's assertion that an introspection cornes before a self-

realization. The purpose of Confucius' introspection is to uneanh and cultivate human

nature - man's vinue and rnorality. as the metaphor derived from "De" signifies.

Obviously Ezra Pound's "ideogammic method" renders Confucius' assenion

more tangible. since "Chen_gt' itself is analyzed and presented as the basis of

translation. If u-e refer to Legge's translation. we would have the sense tliat the

content that Lrgge interpreted. in a colourless diction. does not differ much from

Fichte's discourse.

Y. Rectification of Names

One of the most important of the ConFucian principles conceming self-

aclaowledgement is - as Pound supenmposes it at the middle of The Great Digesl

and interprets it in the translation of the concept "Zheng Ming" - "rectification of

rno\.ernrnt to cultivate the "perfect mn." -0 Similarities benveen what Pound advocated and Fichte's theory are their belief in self-

discipline through introspection. What differs Pound's thought. expressed through his Confucian transiat~ons, is that his introspection emphasises seif-cultivation. having the individual's own hean. f'arniIy. and state as points depère: Fichte's introspection results fiom an rmposed obligation from outside powers - the nation for instance, to form the "perfect citizens". 1 do not intend to M e r elaborate on the political aspect of the concept of introspection here. since it deviates from the theme of the thesis.

riames". This terni is introduced when Pound translates the tenns "Rectification of the

If the hran have not stable root. eager for justice. one looks and sees not: listens and hears not [listens interna11 y and does not hear objectively]: eats and know not the flavours. That is what ufe mean by saying: self-discipline is rooted in rectifying the h e m (The Great Digest: 5 3 )

llost of the scholars studying Confucianism aryue that the tem. rectification of

nanies. penains to the proper behavior of princes and ministers. and. by extension to

thcir subjects: officiais of the govemment are to act in a way to benefit the

covernnient. kings bcnefit kings. fathers fathers. brothers brothers. subjects subjects. - and so on throuyhout hierarchies. According to the interpretations pnor to Pound's.

rect~ficrttio~r ofmmes penains merely to vague rthics and morality.

Pound perceives this notion in a fuller sense. not only as a direct relationship

brtween the societal order and the proper behavior of the individual. but also as the

interaction between word and thing. If Confucianism is a philosophy of the self in

relation to various social institutions. one crucial aspect of it. according to Pound. is

an individual's use of and respect for language. For Pound. utterance. the rectrficatiorr

of~lanres. reflects the Conhician view that language not only represents the order and

disorder of the society, but also has the faculty to affect that order or disorder: as

Fugarette States. the utterance of words in Confucian rituals is "a crucial act.

cousriritrive of effective action as gesture is.""

Confucius smphasized the conpence of the "l'an" with "Sing". and the r r q s

in \\.hich precisr and clear definitions are communicated within the realms of the

hni i ly . the socirty. and the state. This is also the crucial problem Pound finds with

the West: a lack o f precise terminology (rlre numes rlerectifietl) prevents people from

communicatiny clearly with each other and from rstablishing orders o f an' kind - the

individual wrsus the familial. the political and the social. Pound takes a position hrre

against the dominance of the mass media. Western propagandist methods. and an

education that rmphasizes not knowledge itself but its representations. In othrr

words. langage is itself but a distoned empty image of a groundless. modemisr

socirry. The point is that for Pound. the more developed the societ);. the more human

communication brcomes represrntational.

Both Confucius and Pound believe in the creative, rather than the rigid method

of interpretation of languages. For them. language is a part o f nature. and is

therefore full of nature's traits. such as vividness and creativity. From a positive.

linguistic-philosophical perspective. Noam Chomsky interrelates language acquisition

nith amvins at a clear understanding of the sense of the word and the creative nature

of the language, a view that complements Pound's frustration with the modem

mal function and rnisuse of language:

Having mastered a language, one is able to undentand a definite number of expressions that are new to one's experience. that bear no physical resemblance and are in no simple way analooous to the expressions that constitute one's linguistic experience; and one is able. with p a t e r or less lacility. to produce such expressions on an appropriate occasion. despite their novelty and independently of detectable stimulus configurations, and to be

tindsrstood by others who share this still mysterious ability. (Form and 4lrlining in Katural L a n y a ~ r . Xoam Chomsky in hlodenr Philosoplzj. oj' Llr~rgir(ige)

For Pound. the "mysterious ability" is merely the nomal and creative use of language

lis Chomsky himsslf then. further elaborates i t in his work". What the Confucian

r~m$nrrioii of)ici~ues advocates. then. is the proprr mastery of expressions so as to

iiniculatc "one's hean tones"": only by the precision brought about by conscientious

introspection c m the farnily. society. and the state reach a state of order.

Pound's translation of the rect~ficatioti of nantes. then. is a double-edgrd

sword. On the one hand. i t rectifies the Poundian belief in the experience of creati~e

translation which conveys accurately both the concept's philosophical signi ticance.

Wr can safely say that Pound used his translation as an instrument of free thought and

expression". and his poetic translation freed him From traditional patterns of thought

- a zoal he rnight have adopted from his experience as a poet. On the other hand.

Pound's interpretation corresponds to his intention to make the rele\*ance of

Confucian thoughts clear for modem times. Confucianism provides the antidote to the

"Western Disease" of his contemporary. literary western audiences who were

accusromed by Saussure into thinking of the relationship between language and thing,

as well as the relationship between language and imaje. as problematic. Pound

reshapes, sven reinvents, Confucianism for his time.

-.. - fbid. p. 294.

V I . Conclusion

I t must be admitted that despite his in-depth research into numerous

dictionririès and rekrence works, there are translation-related "faults" in Pound's

in terpretation. In many instances. "scholar:prince" for exarnple. Pound's translation is

too loft?. too abstract. But the fidelity of Ezra Pound's translation is not based on a

"litersl loyalty" to transmitting one word from one language to another. It is

predicntcd. rather. on Pound's intuition of the "Universal Grammar"". to use Noam

Chomsky's tsm. According to the latter. it is a "human sjft" that an individual c m

niaster the essence of any given language through the course of "interna1 language" at

a \ .ep early age. Chomsky funhers his theory in the following intriguing discussion

Schlegel. for exarnple. argues that poetry has a unique position arnong the arts. a fact illustrated, he claims. by the use of the terrn poetical to refer to the element of creative imagnation in any artistic effort ... he observes that every mode of anistic espression rnakes use of a certain medium. the medium of poetry - language - is unique in that language, as a product of human mind rather than a product of nature, is boundless in scope and is constnicted on the basis of recursive principle that permits each creation to serve as the basis for a neu. creative act. (Chomsky: p. 296)

Ezra Pound's gifi in both languages and p o e p made it possible for him. by

mastering mainly the two hundred and ninety-five basic radicais. to translate the

onmrnar correctly and the content properly of a ianguage from a different C

-- Pound Immediare Need for Co~fucius, P76.

-4 Chomsky, p.297.

language family; 1 would rven argue that Ezra Pound's case exemplifies Chomsky's

theory that. with an imperlect. even preliminary. command of the basic gammar and

lesical niles of a language. a mentally sound person is able to "decode: interpret-""

indehite patterns and expressions in the depanure language. Obviously. Pound's

poctic rndoament contributed greatly to his success 3s a literary translater. This.

among othrr facts. contradicts some of the accusations concerning the inaccuracy of

the Poundian translations by those who would dismiss them as shoddy speculations.

Although some sinologists have dismissed Pound's translations as shoddy

speculations. there are also those. like Kenner'-. who claims that for Pound. as a poet

uncertain of the Chinese language. "the i d e o p m s tend to become magic. and the

translation from the Chinese yields not l i t e r q artifacts but scripts of sacred

witings." (Kenner: 15) It is easy to prove with the many interpretations in The Gt-ear

Digcsl that. although Pound does translate terms like "Cheng" and "De"

metaphoncally, for him the syrnbols are mostly. in the highest sense. secular. as they

are derived from natural principles. the root of the natural and human world. He has

shown this trait throughout his translation. For Pound. as he very well understood.

there is nothing more appropriate than a natural and human translation of

Con fucianism.

- - - - - - - - - - -- -- - - - -

- 5 Chomsky. p. 29 1. -6 -- Chomsky. P: 29 1.

Kemer. Hu&. The P o e c ofEzra Pound. F:ber and Faber. London 195 1.

Pound ncwr let his endowment tum into wild sprculations of an autodidact

iwrking in complets isolation? Sometimes he acknowledges his honest uncertainty

in traiislating several essential passages and offers ïarious translations to drive the

rsadrrs hrther into the original. This demonstrates. among other things. Ezra Pound's

licride~nic seriousness in his Chinese translations.

Pound's direction as a translater was in sharp contrast to those wtio restricted

thcmsrlves to "a definite set of Iinyistic patterns. to a set of habitua1 responses-"":

ewn if their interpretations are not regarded by linguists as defective. their readability

and contemporaneity is doubtful in a modem context. Pound's ambitions were neither

phi1oio;ical nor objective. but highly subjective. observed from a poetic angle. In the

end. Ezra Pound sought for answers to his questions of poetics through his

trctnslations and poetry. His Chinese translations played a central role in his search for

humanist ideals and in the realization of his full powers as a poet. The translations

hslped him through the most traumatic period of his detention and in the years

following: in panicular. thry enabled him to regain his footing in the aftemath of the

war and to move his poetry in a more creative direction. This translation expenence

shows the essence of Ezra Pound, his Poundian works: eternal creativity, freshness.

and resistance to repetition and rigidity. Ezra Pound's translation is just "a normal use

'Y As he bases hrs study on three major sources of reference: the above-rnentioned previous versions of transiauon. comrnents from h s colleagues and other smologists. and lastly. his access to the cribs and dictionanes.

-9 Chomsky: 294.

of llinguiipc. rneanwhilc a creativc activity"'" - a way of being innovative. and

thcrsforc appropriate to new and ever-changing situations.

"' ~ h o m s i q . ibid.

Chapter Three

Creative Translation and Translating Creativity

The contemporary translater p lay a duai role: tirst and foremost. as a scholar

N I th literary qualities - a port in one sense - and at the same rime. bccause of the

naturc of translation. as a linguist. Translation is an act that continuously stretches the

linguistic boundaries of one's own language. Apan frorn fostering the creation of new

words in the amval languase. it also heips to influence the semantic and gammatical

structure of the translated tests. In other words, translation in the hventieth-century

srnse should be regarded as a form of linguistic and conceptual enrichment for the

philosophy of the target lmguage. in Ezra Pound's Confucius. for example. we may

note such instances as recttfirarion of rzantes. where a new concept has been brought

up into English from its Chinese original. On the other hand, and more imponantly.

translation senres not only as a tool for revitalizing the expressive possibilities of a

language. but also as a tool for research into the methods by which we study the art of

interpretation.

Translation is a lwys concerned with the reconstruction of processes. and thus

constiiutes a fom of creative activity rather than static interpretation.

.As discussions in the previous chapten have shown. for Pound. translation

functions as an organizing principle that refocuses intrrpretation from a content-

orientsd to a proccss-orientsd way of seeinz texts and situations. There are enormous

Iiistoric. geoyraphic. and disciplinan; differencrs tend to separate subjrct matters. for

instance. from a fi fth-century B.C. written Chinese philosophicai test to an audience

using twntirth-century American English. just as there are betwern the concept of

an interrelation between 3n individual's uprightness and the well-being of his lamily.

and the d l b r i n g of the society. as opposed to the modem Western concept of

"individual rights" - although these topics are intncately connected. The

reconstruction of the translation process. as the "ideogammic method" shows.

reaffirms this in terco~ectedness since the problern-solving nature of translation

forces the translater to go back to the source languase and its cultural and

philosophical backgrounds. and to interpret them into a new contest.

Ln this chapter. in order to better understand Pound's creative translation of the

Chinese tests. 1 will examine some aspects of the Western tradition of translation in

uhich Ezra Pound was educated. and compare them to the ancient Chinese characier-

forming methods. mainly of the "Elementary Learning" tradition from the ancient

book Slztio IVen Jie Zi. in order to demonstrate how Pound's "ideogammic method"

of translation came to be.

II . Western Aspects

A s in man' cultures. numerous writers of the past and prescnt have practiced

the an of translation in the West. and in turn. their practice prompted them to

articulate their insights into the translation process. A study of various translation

throrics can therefore provide entrance into the mechanism and bettsr position

Pound's contribution to the theories of our century.

In the first place. we can assume that the education in translation that Ezra

Pound recrived in the US as well as in Europe was rooted in the translation theories

tliat reach back to the Roman period. where literary translation was first initiated in

Europe.". in the Roman Empire. as surnmarized by Hu30 Friedrich. translation

played the role of assimilating foreign culture into the Roman's ownJ::

Translation shows how the literature and philosophy of the Romans gained strength from their Greek models. Ennius' attempts to transplant Greek texts into Latin were at that time still acts of submission that caused awkward lexical Graecism to enter into the translations. (Schulte and Biguenet: 12)

Obviously the function of translation expressed here. at this early stage of Western

civilization \vas as a "tool for borrowing" from a more ancient culture. The theoq

that the Roman translators used, however. emphasized almost esclusively the looting

3 1 The number of individual works thar EA Pound translated from Latin and Italian oumumbered his Chmese translations. although the book-1engt.h of hs Confucian Odes is considerably lonzer than most of hs Latin or italian m l a t i o n s .

of imponanl cultural eiements from Greek that would enhance the aesthetic

dimension of their own culture - the translator paid no particular attention to the

lexical and stylistic aspects of the depanure language:

The appropriation of the original [occurred] without any real concem for the stylistic and linguistic idiosyncrasies of the original; translation meant (for the Romans) transformation in order to rnould the foreign into the linguistic structure of one's own culture. ( ibid: 1 2 )

in this attitude. Cicero goes one step funher with respect to his own translation of

1 translate the ideas. their forms. or as one might sa'. their shapes; however. 1 translate them into a language that is in tune with our conventions of usage (verbis as rtostram co~wiietz~dirtesr aptis). Therefore. 1 did not have to make ri word-for-word translation but rather a translation that reflects the general stylistic features (gemcs) and the meaning (r is) of the foreig work. (Ibid: 12)

The undrrlying idea of translation here seems to be two-fold. Above all. translation in

the Roman Empire meant expropriating ideas and insights to enrich one's own

culture. as advocated by Cicero and Saint Jerome"'. On the other hand, the translator

also saa. himself in cornpetition with the original text. since Greek culture was a

continuous source of much Roman creation. In both processes, the role of the

translator is defined in bold terms by Saint Jerome: "the translator considers thou-t-

content a prisoner which transplants into his own lanpage with the prerogative of a

" Mthough 1 o d y intend to give a brief glance at the Western aspects here. 1 have ro pomt out that the author's point of view here is brief. and in somewhat speculative.

3 3 Saint Jerome is known for his translation of the Grerk Septuagint Bibie into Latin.

Conqueror." ( bid : 13) As a Roman impenalist's goal \vas to conquer foreign soil. a

Ronian Ags translater's goal was therefore to surpass the original and. in doing so. to

turn the departure trxts into sources of inspiration for the creation of new ideas. We

can sse some traits of the Pcundian process here. as he tries to master the Confucian

tests. introduces nru . ideas from them into En&h. and applirs thrm in his Cmros.

If ive cloirn that the Roman translators emphasized the appropriation of

content. translators dunng the Renaissance period esplored the possibilities of

enrichin- their lanpuages by absorbing lexicai and syntactic forms £Yom other

languages. Sonetheless. Renaissance translators shared wi th their Roman colleagues

thc v i r w that there was no necessity to move toward the original; rather they assessed

the grammatical forei_mess of the departure language for its e ~ c h i n g power for

thcir own languages. Although this opinion on transiation method differs from that of

the Renaissance translators, their point of view has its echo in Ezra Pound's emphasis

on digging into the treasures of the source-text in order to enhance the aesthetic and

linguistic dimensions of the target langage. For Renaissance translators. as Schulte

and Bigenet state. it was still acceptable for the meaning of the source text to be

slightly distorted; for Pound, obviously his emphasis is the literary accuracy of the

translated texts.

Translation theories saw a major tum at the middle of the eighteenth centuq.

Scholars like Diderot and ~i'~4lernben asserted that rather than merely exploiting the

foreign test - as his precedent translators believed - translators should vieu other

lanyuages as equals and not as inferior foms of expression to the translater's own.

This change of respect for the source lanyage emeges as a guiding principle in

Western rranslation theories. and with this change of perspective. translators were

cnablsd to makr more efforts to adapt the translations to the foreign in terms of

syntas and contenl. Obviously this sense of responsibilitp has been camed on by

translators in the nineteenth and hventieth centuries. and ive can see a clear trace of

thess traditions in Ezra Pound's insight in his Chinese translation. Two major points

are compatible with the methodology that Pound crystallized in his translation. They

arc :

1 . The relationship and interaction between the reader-translater-author.

7. The expansion of translation studies: it has become clear that

translational thinking - not merely translation itself - is fundamental to ail acts of

Iiurnan communications; it is only natural therefore to investigate the linguistic nature

of lmguage"' and apply it to translation studies.

One major statement on the refationship between reader-translater-author was

made by Friedrich Schleiennacher:

Either the translater leaves the writer alone as much as possible and rnoves the reader towards the writer. or he leaves the reader alone as much as possible and moves the writer towards the reader. (Shulte and Biguenet: 38)

Pound's choicr: was obviously the latter. because his method takes up the challenge

"to go beyond the appropriation of content to a releasing of thosr linguistic and

assthetic enrryirs tliat heretofore had existed only as pure possibility in one's own

lanpuags and had never been materialized brfore" (Shulte and Biguenet: 13).

Paradosically. Pound's "etynorhetorical"" studies of the ideograms would have been

t'cir less innovative than the Missionaries' versions had he decided to leave the writer

alone. and attcmpted merely to render the content of The Great Digest intelligible in

English. But by analying the formation process of the Chinese characters. Pound's

translations presented in full the "linguistic and aestheiic enersies" of the source texts.

In othcr \vords. Pound's method generates al1 its power from the original. This powr .

thcn. becomes the creative impulse of the translation. Hugo Friedrich describes this

kind of anter-translater-reader relationship as one in ahich "the creative potver of

the original has to become visible in the rranslation; it even has to generate itself as

the crraiive force of the style in the translation." (Shuite and Biguenet: 16)

Ezra Pound's Chinese translations exempli@ this concept. There are nvo ways

that h r presents the Chinese characters to his readers. On the one hand. visibly. he

uses the bnef cribs with "etyrnorhetorical" analysis. in the fonn of the introduction in

the Four Books. On the other hand, though invisibly. with the insight of analyzing the

3.1 Such as Y o m Chomsky's theory on the "universal bpmmd"' discussed in Chapter II. " In s u m m u y . the "e~orhetorical~' method referred to here is E n Pound's rnethod based

on the rnmology of Chinese characten. and his study of rhetoric. See discussions on the "Six Methods" in this chapter.

single characters. Pound's Ianguage tends to stay plain. modest and concise. as i t is in

Confucius' onginal. Both content-wise and in t ems of his luriguge . Pound showed a

stroiiy tçndcncy to mow the reader towards the original.

III. Innovative Perspectives In Translation

Like niost of Confucius' texts. The Grrut Digest is a collection. rven to n

certain cxtent an interpretation. of Confucian thought by his disciples. When Pound

s t a n d translating it. he must have had to translate the ancient Confucian texts into a

comprehensible form in the first place. such as non-rhymed plain tests. Then. he had

io m o w one step funher. to analyze the ideograrns. before the whole book was

translated. In the target laquage. Enslish. the act of translation is constanily at play.

For instance. Pound must render the parallelism of individual. family. and srate back

into a similar structure in his translation. Meanwhiie. the reader is referred back to the

idrogams. explained by crib notes in the introductionse - an integral and essential

pan o f the Poundian "etymorhetoric" method of translation at the beginning of the

test.

Based on these instances, 1 argue that since the turn of die twentieth century,

translation studies have begun emphasizing theoretically not only the study

3b Pound outIined his interpretations of the key characters and t e m that he analysed in the Introduction. Ir is efficient for readers to refer back to this section and gain a clearer meanmg of key

of translation Pei- se. that is to sa) merely horv to render the source lmguage more

coniprehsnsible in the target languags: in k t . the study of the pliilosophy of

languqe hns been playing a more and more important role in translation studies. The

sisni ficancs of investigating the very nature of language in translation anses from the

modem perception that translation not only takes place between languagrs. and

nithin the same language. but that the very medium of language is. to a certain cstrnt.

itsei f a translation.

My point liere is based on the belief that language. as one major means of

human societal intercourse. is universal. At the beginning of his very insightful r s s q

cntit lsd "Translation: Literature and Letters", Octavio Paz observes:

When we leam to speak. we are leaming to translate; the child rvho asks his mother the meaning of a word is really asking her to translate the unfamiliar t e m into the simple words he already knows. in this sense. translation within the same language is not essentially different from translation benveen two tongues. and histones of al1 peoples parallel the child's rxperience. (Shulte and Biguenet: 152)

In his book The Transparenf Eye: Rejlecrions o~z Trunslariott. Chinese Literatwe alrd

Conipararii.e Poetics, Eugene Eoyang's thematic argument complements Paz's view.

It is no longer sarisfactory. he argues. for the translator to view culture from just one

perspective: in order to study literanire more objectively, rather the translator must

adopt a panoptic view. Focusing hs discussion upon some Western interpretations of

sentences rn the text.

m-ious Chinese litrrary and philosophical works. such as The Great Digesr and The

Book oj'sorigs (Shi Jing). he compares Pound's and Waley's translations. showing

ho\\.. at somr point. the translators "diston" the original texts. This comparison of

"distortions" reveals some very interesting perspectives on the interpretation that

infliienced the transiating process. Evidently. as in the comparison made between

Lep-s's and Pound's translations. I agree with Eoyang's view that the question of the

brttsr translation is an issue which depends largely on the requirements of the

individual reader.

If we consider James Legge's and many other missionaries' translations from

the ninrternth century as loyal. strict. with an effort to reduce possible

misinterpretations to a minimum with close captioning in regard to historical and

cultural background - then I would assert that Ezra Pound's version belongs more to a

twentieth-century literary audience, who would perceive Confucius from a very

different perspective. in this chapter, therefore. I will put Ezra Pound's Chinese

translation into a Fuller context by introducing the six methods of compounding

idsogams from the ciassic work S h o ?C'en Jie Zi with which Pound's "ideogrammic

rnethod" has genuine affinity. These discussions will provide grounds for showing the

contrast in recent development in translation theory between a creative translation. as

esemplified by Ezra Pound's rite Great Digest. and a conventional translation. 1

a.ould drnw the conclusion that. in fact. Pound's crearive translation exploration is

rathrr a developmeni of a long tradition in the interpretation of ideogams - yet frorn

the angle of a Western poet-translator.

IL'. The Sis Methods

Translation always has at least two dimensions: it can be the translation from

a forci^ language to one's native language. or it c m be the interpretation of an

arcliaic form of one's native language to its conternporary standard form. For

instance. in suppon of Ezra Pound's "ideograrnmic rnethod". Christine Brooke-Rose

univeils the rtymological fossils hidden in English words:

A modem Chinese would not see or feel the juxtaposed elements in an ideogram as "alive" ... any more that we feel the original etyrnologies in most of Our words. I cannot vouch for the Chinese, but many of us are aware of the original meanings of Say, ps~clrosomatic or hyiroelectric. or that si@ once meant blessed (selig) or that KJ be came from bhir. to grow. even if we don't al1 "know" that. Say, inzbecile once meant "not supponed by a stick." .And writen tend. in their own dotty way, to be almost as interested in rhese rhings as their pet abominations the philolotjsts. Witness Joyce. (Brooke-Rose: 103)

Wany facts support Brooke-Rose's statement. We can easily find examples of

forgotten erymologies in the cornparisons between hc ien t French and Modem

French. or between Quebecois and French.

-4s another very good esample, Ezra Pound's Chinese translation is a dual

translation from .hcient Chinrse to its contemporary iorm. and thçn to modern

English. The significance of this translation. which differs greatly from previous ones.

is its frer creation using the "ideogmmmic method" during the process of translating

from .\ncient to contrmporary Chinese. This need of dkging into one language or

one culturc's treasures is cleariy not a phenornenon exclusive io ideograrns. but is

rather found in al1 languages as Ions as the' are a part of the universe of poetics.

If we come back to the exarnples cited by Brooke-Rose in terms of the

e\.olution of the English words. it is not difficult to see that many English and

Chinrse aords are inseparable frorn metaphors at their earlier stage of evolution. If

"ivihecile" once meant "not supported by a stick". then one rnay speculate that as a

universal. it was only the order of nature that established the relationship between

word and its metaphor in languages - lanpages. like other human creations. are

direct reflections of nature. in other words. at earlier evolutionary stages. languages

imitatrd nature. and hence c m be considered as having a metaphorical relation to

nature: just as Pound claimed. "Our ancestors built the accumulations of metaphors

i nto stmc tures of language and into systems of thought." ( FFritten Charucier: 21)

Wilbur Marshall Urban gives a more precise definition to these earlier stages of

language evolution:

[The earlier stages are] a mimic or imitative stage. [In appearance, the referent is supposed to be perceived as identical to its object], it appears to involve merely the copying of the object or happening. Actually. however. it marks the beginning of analogka1 representation. (Language and R e a e : 115)

By Urban's definition. the relationship between word and object is an analog-.

In a lanyuags such as Chinese. which is apparently pictorial. the identity between the

pictogram and its object is incomplete until the contour of the pictogram. a symbolic

representation of its referent. comes into play. Here brban's terminology of the

"synbol" and "symbolic" share much the same as Pond's "metaphor" and

"meraphorical". We may safely infer. now. that for Pound. the relation between a

pictogram and its referent is rnetaphorical. and as Crban suggests. the p ic topms per

se are metaphors.

These assertions see its reflection in many studies of the formation of.4ncient

Chinese characters. especially the Slttro H'e~l Jie Zi - Iiirerprerurio~r of CITirte>z

Cltiriese Cllurc~c~ers and E.rpkumrio)is of IVur<ls3- - shere the so-called Ele~~tenrcz~.

Lem-liitlg tradition is elucidated. To have a global view of the so-called Elenremzn.

Leui-)iiil; tradition l.iiiao .üre). which constituted the main study in Sliuo Ke~z Jie Zi.

we will need to trace its precedent studies of the etymological developrnent of the

c haracters.

The earliest traceable forms of Chinese characters were unearthed in the

1880s. with picture-like characters carved on the so-called oracle bones. This

discovery u a s made public in 1899, by researchers like Wang Yijun. Luo Chenyu. to

name a few. These oracle-bone characters are believed to be more than five thousand

years old".

- Hsu Shen (\Vade) . (Pinyin: Su Shen). Shrro Wen Chie Tztr fPinyinr Shro N'en Jie Zi) [Inrerprerarion of Wztren Chinese Characters and Erplanations oj'Charactersj. 534 A. D.. rpt. 19 12. Peking: Commerce Publ ishg Houe.

98 More details of the oracle bone scripts can be found in T'ang Lan's (Wade). (Pinyin: Tans

.As far as the study of ancient script 1s concemed. brfore the second century

B.C.. the creation of ideogams was attributed to rn'hical figures like Canp Jie."'

Eventually. the ancient academic study of the ongin of Chinese characters. begun in

the latc second century B.C. as the "Sis Methods" (Liri Siiir,. \vas introduced as a

discipline in the Elenre~irur?. Lecinring tradition in Zliotr Lî". Two centuries iater. three

scliolars. Pan Gu. Chen Cheng. and Su Shen'" funher slaboratrd the content of The

"Sis Methods". Thess ancient scholars. especially Su Shen. and their contemporary

counterparts in the twentieth century. shared the vira that these six methods were

methods of fornine. characters - etymology rather than different styles of scripts. or

vaneties ol'calligaphy. It was Su Shen who finally edited and compiled the t'rst

etpoloyical dictionary entitled Shuo Iië~t Jie Zi in 171 AD. It outlined the sis main

methods by which Chinese characters were fomed. based on expianations of 9.353

characters. This research concentrated largely on the methodolog of deciphering

i d r o g m s with r e~a rd to form. meaninz, and sound. in strict sense. they are methods

of interpreting the characters rather than fomulating ideogams. since the intent of

this dictionary. as its title suggests, was to help students and scholars understand

characters.

Lani Glr I j i i r i Zi .lue Dao Lun. 1.4 G d e ro ..lncrent Scrrpts Srttdies), 1935. Pekins: Pekmg L'P. Tang Kas professor at the P e k q University and the founder of the modern schooi caIIed die .hcient Scripts Studies.

99 Tsang Chie (Wade). {Pinyin: Cang lie) is widely regarded ris the legendary tnventor of ideogrrims. For a glimpse of h s iegend, see the Preface of Shuo N'en Jie Zi 2.

9<1 The Rires of Dynmn. Zhoir, (author's m e untraceabte) is a book advocating Confician ntuals rstablished in the Dynasty Zhou (3" c e n w BC). a period of peace and prospenry.

0 l In the Wade system the three narnes are Pan Ku. Chen Chung and Hsu Shen.

There is a chronolo_~ical sequence to the six methods. a speculative order in

n-hich the' came into being. The sequence might suggest that one method may have

iiad a niorc significant formative power than another. For instance. if the "imitating of

sbape" method came into being earlier. then more characters would have been formed

by this method. rather than Say. the "understanding of meanings" method. f his

argument. dong with the classification of characters under the di fferent methods. has

b e n the ccntrr of scholarly debate for centuries. As rny intention here is only to

summarize the essence of the "Sis Methods" in relation to Pound's "ideogamrnic

rnethod ". 1 wiil not attempt to trace this incessant debate.

The first method is called Xiang Xing, or imitaring of Shape. Basically.

characters created by this method are pictorial. There are many examples that can

very well demonstrate this trait. such as M u (wood or tree). Huo (Tire). Ri (sun). They

c m clearly show how the pictonals imitated the shape of their natural referents. Ln

Pound's Cliiwse M-itten Clraracrer as a Mediim for Poe-*, the characters Ren

(man) and Ma (horse) that they observed. as we already discussed in Chapter I. are

tomed by this method.

The second method, Zhi Shi (Indicating of the Thing) differs little fiorn the

first. except that characters formed in this category tend to be more abstract. Bernhard

Karlgren. among many other sinolo~ists. regards these hvo methods as merely one. In

The Chinese Langnage, Karlgren simply places them into one category entitled

"simpie pictogaphs". h Shuo Wen , however. Su Shen tried to distinguish this

method fiom the fint by introducing the examples of Shang (up or above) and Xia

i d o w or belon-). In thesr two characters. the long line espresses a standard level.

ivhilc. the short linss pointing to up or down as vertical directions. Thus as s h o w . the

charactrrs of this category represent simple. pictonal. but non-physical concepts.

If most Chinese scholan. both past and present. agree that the îïrst two pnnciples

are the basis for interpreting those characters which fa11 in these categones. their

1-iew on the third and the founh methods diverge.

The third method is called Hui Yi or Cnderstanding of bleanings. In fact. the

first charactcr in this word. Hui. means literally "to meet". "to compound". Therefore.

when things meet. meanings emerge. The second character. Yi. rneans understanding

or intrrpreting. The literal meaning of this method c m be put into simpler terms:

"rneaning cmeges when different compounds mect. or when they juxtapose". This

method's definition is similar to Pound's concept of ideograms that contain a "verbal

idca of action." In Bernhard Karigren's classifications. this third method belongs to

the cate jory of "ideographic compounds". ui Shzio Chr Jie Zz. for example. the

character Xin'" is explained as "man", plus "speaking". which results in the meaning

"sincere". Now we can ciearly see that Pound did denve nourishment From this

method - in his explanation of Xin. he defines it as "man standing by his word." This

character can actually be considered as one of the best examples of Pound's process

of translatin j From Ancient Chinese to conternporary Chinese. then to Anerican

English. In Chinese. there are similar expressions like ivords and deeds. which imply

4: This character \vas discussed in Chapter II.

only ambi y uously a relationship between one's deeds and aords: it docs not.

Iiowwr. rnnke any sense in Chinese to Say. as in English. that "one comes back to

his word". Pound's native English cornes into play here: he p s p e d the essence of

tliis compoundin in Sin. translating it as "man standing by his word". a translation

that niakes perfect sense in English. This is much closer to the onsinal mcaning in

Chinesc than James Leyge's literal rsplanation. which map confuse Western readers

e \ m though it is very accurate in Chinese.

A s discussed in Chapter 1. Bernhard Karlgen was one of Pound's opponents

and strongly faulted Pound for his "ignorance" of the phonetic pan of characrers.

Pound was obviously aisrare of the phonetic part of the characters. but at the same

time hs believed that for his translation. the phonetic components would play only a

rninor role. This belief is based on that even though Pound had not had the

opponunity to collaborate closely with Chinese scholars when he struggled to leam

Chinese characters. he could not be totally unatvare of the fourth method, Ning Sheng

(Shaping of Sounds) which introduces the phonetic cornponents to the ideogarns.

Consequently. as 1 have already argued, Pound's choice was more a refusal of

acknowledgement than mere ignorance. The ideognms contained in this fourth

category can be divided into two parts9': a simple radical represents the character's

pronunciation. and a radical derived or modified from a simpler one indicates the

9' The F a t majoriry of characters can be divided into two parts. as discussed above. whde some can be divided into three or more p m . such as Cheng, a character discussed in Chapter II. 1 personally still remember the Iessons and disagreements that we h a d as junior hizh school students. about how to divide the chancten 15 years ago.

cliiiractcr's mcaning. in Shoo IIé)i Jie Zi. the rxarnples used are Jiang (river) and

Hai ( s a ) . The lefi part of thsse two characters are Shui . which is the radical

standin2 for "water". while the right parts represent sound.

The last t ~ o remaining methods are Chuan Chu (Cross-Defining) and Chai Jie

( Loans). These two methods are pronunciation-oriented schernes of phonetic loans:

they arc more concernrd with rstending the meaning of esisting charactrrs and less

ivith forming new onss. Karlgen sirnply includes them in a caregory of "phonetic

loans". The consensus in modem studies of the wirten characters usually does not

consider tliesr two rnethods as principles used to form idrogarns at the earlier stages

of evolution.

V. Phonetic Radicals and Pictograms

We can now better examine Pound's "ideogarnmic" interpretation in light of

the "Sis Methods " as background knowledge. It is clear that Pound was influenced

by the first three methods (Imitating of Shape. Indicating of the Thing and

Understanding of Meaning). while tailoring and transforrning them into his own in his

translation of nie Great Digest. He dissented From the view represented by scholars

like Karlgren on the fourth principle, the Shaping of' Sounds. Pound did not believe

that the phonetic elements were mere signs for fixed sounds. On the contrary. he

argued that the phonetic element in a compound ideogram was itself a borrowing

froni an ssisting pictogram which alrrady has a concrete meaning. Although lexical

fossils are still to be dug out in English or French. as Brooke-Rose suggested. a

phonrtic utterance or an alphabetic letter sen7cs as one sinsle fisrd sound. and does

noi I m e the hnction as "sound image" (Ferdinand Saussure's term) any more. This

differcnce causes confusion to non-sinologist scholars. such as Hegel. who

cornplains.

Thus I found the word Po (Bo ijr Pig-Nz) has rleven different meanings according to the tone: denoting "giass" - "to boil" - "to winnow wheat" - "to clsavr asunder" - "to water" - "to prepare" - "an old woman" - "a slave" - "a liberal man" - "a wise person" - "a little". (Hegel: 135)

In the first place. obviously even though Hegel studied Chinese. i t was through

available dictionaries. and his assumptions were based on very basic ideas of the

language'". Apan from the twelve meanings he lists. a greater number of radicals

could be borrowed to represent the pronunciation "Po ". In fact. every sound in

Chinese can be fixed to a large number of signs. My point here is that to choose a

phonetic cornponent is an optimizing process with regard to both sound and meaning.

This choosing process cannot be random. ui one word. the so-called phonetic element

necessarily cames a meaning.

We can infer then. that the relationship between the signiMng sound and the

signified meaning in the character is not arbitrary. In S h o Wen Jie Zi, there are

innumerable examples of characters belongng both to the categories of Meeting of

Y4 In fact. ir is not difficult to fmd at least another twelve phonetic e1ement.s which can be

'rlcanings and the Shaping of Sounds. That is why Pound produces the follo\ving

argument:

1 found i t incredible that an). such minute subdivision of the idea could have esisted alone as arbi trary sounds without the concrete c haracter. ( Fenol losa and Pound: 30)

Furthcrmorc. Pound asserts his belief in the meaningfulnrss of the radicals that serve

ris phonstic elrments:

Esamination shows that a large numbsr of the primitive Chinese charactcrs. sven the so-called radicals. are shonhand pictures of actions or processcs. (Ibid: 9)

If we ma). retum to our discussion in the txo previous chapters. it is now more

evident that Pound's attitude toward the phonetic part of the ideognrns is not to den-

the phonetic loans in later stages of the language evolution - what he concluded is

thar the "phonetic radicals" fused in ideogarns were themselves onginally

picto, urarns .

N l a t seems the weak point of Pound's "ideogrammic" theory is his emphasis

on the early stages of the ideogarn's formation; what he may have "overlooked" or

"ignored". as charged by some sinoiogists. is that at later steps of the ideogarns'

formation. the borrowing of sound elements (as descnbed in the last three mcthods)

became a more Frequent means to form new ideogamsY'. But on this very 'keak

pronounced as Po. with the four different tones in Mandarin. $ 5

As language evolves. to put a phonetic radical. whch is _pdua!ly losing its pictonal significance. in a chmcter done with a more ideogramrmc part can facilitate the l e r i m g and understanding of the new chancter. That is why more and more modem scholars counter-attacked Pound's rnethod. A major occurrence of ths b d of charmer fonning is the Simplification Movernent of the Chinese language. After 1949. in order to simpli- the too cornplicated traditional charricters. the

point". u.e could pose the question as to whether Pound's translation of 77ze Grecil

D i g ~ ~ t . or his essays on Chinese translation. wcrr rver intended to present a cornplete

c t y o l o y ~ ~ of ideogams? .And since Pound a a s a scholar more cornmitted to the

studl- of poetics. rnther than linguistics. was it rrasonabls for those

accusing sinologists to dernand that Pound's theory cover al1 the stages of the

i d e o ~ a m s ' rvolution*?

V I . Polemics and the "Unsound Interpretation"

Still. even though one mi@ q u e that. as a poet-translator. Pound should nor

bc responsible for al1 the linguistic aspects of the etymology of the ideogams. it ufas

absurd on his part to have employed the two methods of "Imitatin_e of Shape" and

"blcsting of Meanings" exclusively in his Chinese studies. In this respect. Pound's

translations deviate far fiom normative understanding.

As was pointed out in Chapter I and U, it would be rather easy if we wished ro

expose Pound's debatable "errors": but if we try to 'bcorrect" these erron according to

certain well-known traditional dictionaries, such as Shtto CVen Jie Zi ( 12 1 AD.). we

ail1 encounter as many "unsound" explanations as there are in Pound's translations.

Chinese government initiated a movement by usine s q l i f t e d chancters. usualIy a charmer tvith a phonrtic radical and a ideogarnrnic radical. The sunplifred characters are more and more used in Chinese speaking countries such as Singapore.

3s n m y later scholars have argurd. For instance. ths Song Dyasty poet Su Shi's

( 1037- 1 1 O 1 ) study of the ideogams challrnged the principles of Shtro ICkti Jie Zi".

Moreowr. rcsul ts from research on the uneartheci oracle bones and the bronze

scripts"' suggest that a great number of esplmations by these later scholars such as Su

Shi are ilnot faulty. at least debatable. Although research in Ancient Chinese durins

the past f c . ~ decades in China and the M'est has bern able to reach consensus on a

number of cliaractrrs. controversies over particular ideograms still continue.

In cornparison to these major studies of the past. Sliiro CVm Jie Zi. or Wang

Anshi and Dong Zhongshu's theories""0r instance. it is important to point out here

that as shoivn. the Elenreriran. Leunling tradition has been canonized over the

ccn turies and i t has influenced the studies of ideogarns; even Tang L a i s Ancient

Scripts Studies school is based on some of the relevant pnnciples of the "Elrmentary

Lcaming" tradition - though these two schools used very different discourses. The

"Elrmcntary Leaming" tradition. like Pound's "ideogrammic method". is within the

litrrary realm. while Tang Lm's school is. in its strict sense. a cross-discipline of

linguistics and archaeology. It is therefore surely futile <O dismiss this "literature" by

means of the scientific etymology used to study the ancient scripts carved on oracle

bones. But is it possible to support or dismiss Pound's theory by means of the

discourses From the "Elementary Learning" tradition?

'" 1 ivill compare Su Shi's study mth principles in Slmo Ken hirther in this section. '3 - Especirilly since the pubtication of Tang Lm's work of ancient scripts in 19 14. as cited

prrrviously in this Chapter. " Discussed later in ths Chapter.

The answer to this question seems to be undeterminable: controversies

Socussing mainly on which one among the "Sis blethods" cames more wsight than

the otlirrs in the discussion of the pictonal. cornpound and phonetic aspects of the

charactrrs lasted for almost eightcen centuries. It iç very easy to dismiss Pound's

interpretation of a panicular character or sentence from the point of view of one

scliool. but in turn. this dismissal can be ssriously questioned by the interpretation of

anothcr school.

Among a great number of instances. the debate between Wang Anshi'"' and Su

Shi in the tn-eifth century is very typical. One of CVang's rnost pre-eminent works on

thc idsograms. + Zi Sltt<o (Interpretation of Words). was at the very center of the debatr.

This twnty-four-volume study of ideogarns analyzed every compound chancter it

contained with the method of Meeting of Meanin~s. disregardins al1 the phonetic

components in the characters. Su Shi. a librral poet and Wang's political rival.

ridiculcd the latter's method in Zi Shiio. Su Shi questioned absurd exampies:

according to Wang's interpretation of Bo (wave) which is the character "water" plus

"skin". and Huo (messmate) is "man" plus "fire" - then c m one assert that Hua''''

i slipperv) is "water" plus "bones"?

in this debate. Wang Anshi. then Premier Minister, prevailed over the liberal

poet. Wang .Anshi's theories becarne so influentiai in the Song Dynasy that Zi Shtio

9Y li,*ang Anshi ( IO2 1-1086) was once the Premier >finister of the Song Dynasty and a v e p rntluential schoIar. He has left nurnerous works in politics. poetry and pôintmg.

1 [)O The chancter Hua is cornposed of the radical 'Water" on the left. and "bone" on the ri&

bccanic n must for al1 scholars. as well a requirernent of the Civil Service Esam at

thai tirne. Severtheless. LVans's influence did not put an end to the debate. From the

scwntrcnth crntury on. trends tumed to the orher estreme by prornoting mostly the

phonrric value. Some scholars went as far as to say that every ideogram aas

ewnt uall y borrowed from another homophonous ideognm. For instance. Dong ( east )

\vas denved from its homophonous character Dong (motion). I C h Zi Sh - .-1 Hisroi?.

of'C/~iit-trcrel-s"", in csplaining this phonetic theor). derivs the character Yu ( m i n )

from Y u ( kathsr). The rationale behind this derivation is that the noise of rain

reseniblcs the mstling whcn birds move their wings. Surptisingly. this phonetic

i nterpretation seerns not less poetic than Pound's.

\ I I . The "Elementary Learning" Tradition and the "Ideograrnmic Method"

The above examples provide us a broader background knowledge. \men we

corne back to elaborate our discussion of the "etymorhetoncal" nature of Ezra

Pound's "ideogammic method". this context cm help us better position Pound's

translation of the ideoprarns in The Grear Digesi.

To trace back the possible inspirational sources of the "ideogammic method".

101 ltén Zi Shi. 1939. Tianjin: Qing Cheng Publishing House.

wc l i a ~ e to ask where Pound's method misht have been drrived? Althouyh Pound's

knowledgs of the "Elementary Learning" tradition is not documentrd. i t is not far-

feiched to argus that he learnt it from Ernest Fenollosa. But hon. did Fenollosa

dewiop his theory'?

At the beginning of the essay The Clrirrcsc Iliirreir Clrtrnicrei ~rs ~i .Ilediimrjbr

Poerr?.. Fenollosa claims that his study "represents for the first time a Japancse school

of study in Chinese culture" and rhat this school is "roughly corresponding to that of

China undcr the Sung'"' Dyasty (967- 1279 AD.)" ( ibirren Cliarcicrer: 6). This

statsment unveils two points. First. when Fenollosa was professor of philosophy at

Tokyo University. he studied the Six Methods with Professor Kainan Mon. It is

known that at the beginning of the twentieth century. most Japanese scholars of

Chinrsr studies. including Professor Mon. leamt classical Chinese from the book

Jikair - the Iapanese title for S l m IVm Jie Zi - while in China scholars studied

w i o u s schools"'. The more important point concems "the Japanese school under the

Sung Dpasty". Japanese envoys came ro China as early as the third centurfu. Six

centuries later. large governent missions. including Buddhist monks and students.

arri ved to study in Chang An1". then capital for the Sui (58 1-6 18 A.D.)and Tang

( 6 10-907 A.D.) Dynasties. But the most cntical influence on the srudy of Chinese

"" Sung 1s the spelling in the Wade-Gilles system in Pinym it is Song. 10; The Iater-nineteenth-cenniry Refom Movement in Japan modemised its education.

indusma1 and rnilitary systems according to system in Western countries. Before this Reform. Japanese scholars e x c h g e d ttieir knowledge m a d y with scholan from neighbourinz counrries such as China and Korea. The m o i 1 in China since 1840 created a rupture for Chmese studies in Japan.

105 Bai. Shouyi. 1982. ..ln Ouriinti Hisron. of Chinu. Beijing: Foreign Lringuages Press. P:214.

characters was from the Sung Dynastp when Wang .Anshi's theory"" \vas dominant.

Wc thus find a ver)., obvious etporhetoncal "bias" in Pound's interpretation. which

is v e r y similar to that of Zi Shuo 's interpretation of the ideograms in which Wang

Xnshi used esclusively the method of Meeting of Mraning. This tradition had an

evident influence on Professor Mon, and then on Fenollosa and Pound.

At this point. then. we can salely conclude that Pound's "ideogammic

rnethod" of interpreting the Confucian works can be taken as a branch of the

"Elrmentary Leaming" tradition. This "ideogammic" throry is one of the tools

ivithin this tradition to re-create meanings in the frame of an ideornam. Such re-

crcation can cnliven embedded metaphors and interlocked meanings or even traces of

association. That is why we find a great number of hypothetical assumptions in

Pound's translations. That is why if we hold any works ofthis tradition. including

Pound's translation of The Great Digest. to be "pure scientific" studies of linguistics.

mors x i 1 1 definitely be discovered.

.As much discussed in Chapter 1 and II, it is needless to repeat the "errors" in

Pound's interpretations. Even in the oldest Chinese dictionary. Slzrro H4e1t Jie Zi. we

c m very easily find numerous instances of such "errors". For example. the

interpretation of the ideogram for "suri" (Ri) sounds like that for "fullness" (Shi) and

means. therefore. "the sun's energy will never be rxhausted"; the character for "east"

'O' Sou. Xi'an the provincial capital of Shan Xi province.

i Dong) sounds like "motion" (Dong). and therefore. "motion Stans from the rastW'"-.

Thrse ssplanations are obviously far-fetched phonetic associations dedicated to the

purpose of rhetoric. They seem completely baseless in terrns of modem linguistics.

iiltliou_jh the' w r e taken as correct and standard for several centuries. And again. as

more crcdible evidt-nce \vas unearthed such as the discoveries from the bronze and

oracle bones. M'mg Anshi's interpretation \vas again challenged by the Ancient Script

Studies school. In fact. the character for "sun" discovered on the oracle bones is

simply in the form of a circle. which cannot be associated with any sound. The

c haracter for "east" was witten as Dong, and therefore the long regarded "sun-si&

embedded in this ideogram could be something like a bag. The same happens if we

start questioning further Pound's method by means of modem etynology: it becomes

an endless process. To sum up. what we would claim here is that the

"rtynorhetorical" method is a literary and rhetoric approach paralle1 to modem

r t ~ m o l o ~ y . Yet the ernphasis of this method is on the rhetorical and aesthetic value of

the interpretation of characters. And Pound's "ideogrammic" theory is a traditional

treatmrnt of the "etymorhetorical" method combined with his own poetic talents.

Even if this method may sometimes appear faulty in a strict scientific discoune. it is

sti ll a part of a tradition in the poetic universe. Within this tradition. Pound's

translation finds firm gounds.

'lm The theory from Si Shuo. 3s we discussed earlier.

\ ' I I I . Conclusion

Ezra Pound's "ideogammic method". then. is not a study of the genuins

ct)moloyy of idrograms. It is more an "stymorhetorical" theory since Pound's major

concem is the extension and application of the aesthetic aspect of Ianpage to the

practice of translation. His endeavour is. in the first place. to conjure up metaphon

froni ideograms. This process. as he descibed in orhrr words. is "the use of matenal

images [ideogams] ro suggest immaterial relations [metaphors]"- a transformation,

in fact. "from the seen ro the unseen." (Wririrre~i Cliarucrer: 21) He emphasised that the

most important point of this transformation is the metaphoncal process that

cwntunlly played a central role in the formation of ail ancient languages. a role noa.

for= uotten.

This transformation is a process analogous to that of a painter. aho needs time

to realiss that in a painting "the peculiar effect of nature resides in the whole and not

in the parts." (Schulte and Biguenet: 6) Moreover. the beauty of a chef-d'œuvre

resides in the rendering of the unseen parts of nature visible. by the painter's viewing

nature from a new and unique angle. For the painter. the method mi& be a different

concept. a varied composition of colours. or a complete new medium. For Ezra

Pound. a poet-translater, the medium to realise this transformation - a creative

translation lrom a distant culiure and lanquage - 1s metaphor.

At the centre of Pound's theory of Chinese translation is the process through

a.hich metaphors of the idsogarns are unveiled and interpreted. WC may find

~iffinities betu-rrn Pound's theory and that of Northrop Fye. or in fact. rather somc

iniluence of the fomicr on the latter. Frye defines metaphor as "the unit of

relationship between two symbols." One such relation between two s y ~ ~ b o l s may be

simple juxtaposition as "Literal Metaphors" (Frye: 365). Elaborating this definition in

"Thcory of S yrnbols". F y e discusses speci ficall y Pound's "ideogammic method"

On the litrral level of meaning, metaphor appears in its literal shape. which is simple juxtaposition. Ezra Pound. in explaining this aspect of metaphor. uses the illustrative fisure of the Chinese ideogram. which expresses a cornples image by throwing a goup of elements together without predication.. . Prrdication belongs to assenion and descriptive meaning. not to the literal structure of poetry. (Frye: 123)

H m . Frye clearly refen to the Poundian ideograms as one class of metaphor. The

idrogams he discusses are certainly cornpounds. for he defines the Poundian

i d e o g m s as a cornples structure with juxtaposed elements. What is distinct in this

kind of metaphor is tnai ii has no predication. However. Frye's theory differs fkom

Pound's in that there are two main steps in Pound's interpretation of a metaphor:

j u s taposition and transformation.

This justaposition involves the sirnilarity and contiguity of the picto-

i deoprns to the natural images they represent. The contiguity here is in association

n.itli mcionymic images. A compound-ideogram can therefore be said to possess ar

Iecist tuo mrtaphorical functions. of similanty and of me tonyy . Similarity

shows the scrn. as is also the case in a painting; and contiguity the unseen or the inner

relations. simi lar in the case of many modem abstract paintings. Within the same

frame. the second step (the transformation) takes place - the seen is transfomed to

poetical or spi ri tual spheres. .As Pound observes in The C h e s e I17ritte~i Cli<imcrcr (1s

ri .Ilcdirri~~jor Poe[)?.. "The brst poetry deals not only ai th natural images but with

lof& thoughts. spiritual suggestions and obscure relations. The greater part of natural

tmth is Iiidden in processes too minute for vision and in harmonies too larze. in

vibrations. cohesion and in affinities. The Chinese compass these also. and with

m a t e r potver and beauty." (Fenollosa and Pound: 2 1 ) - In his "Lecrtires o>r the Scie/ices ofLu~tgiiuge ". Friedrich Ma,

classified meiaphors into nvo types with definition similar to Pound's. These two

types are "radical metaphors" and "poetical metaphors". Müller's definition of

"radical metaphors" anticipates Pound's view of the pictograrns and radicals in a

compound-ideograrn

1 cal1 it radical metaphor when a root which means to shine is applied to forrn the names. not only of the fire or the sun. but of the spring of the Far . the moming li&t. the brightness of thought. or the joyous outburst of hymns of praise. Ancient langages are brimful of such metaphors. and under the microscope of the etymologist every word almost discloses traces of its first metap hoical conception. (Müller: II-3 89)

10s Lectures on the Science of Language. p: 11-388.

Greatsr similarities ai th the Poundian theory can be discovered in blüller's

disciission of the "poetical metaphor" which occurs. he says. "when a noun or a verb.

ready made and assiged to one definite object or action. is transferred poetically to

motlier objrct or action." Saturally Müller's discussion has to be read in the contest

of nineteenth-csiitury Grrman thought. and he was talking about alphabcric

lanyucigcs. His definition of the "poetical metaphof' did not go as far as Pound's

rcwaling of the crucial compounding process. Nonetheless. Miller did delineate

another type of rnetaphor "in connection uith rarlp phases through which language

and thouglit must necrssarily pass": these radical metaphors. he obsen-ed. "had not

yct become what they are to us. mere conventional and traditional expressions. but

w r e felt and understood half in their original and half in their modified character"

( Miller: 11 390-39 1 ). Even if one claims that Müller's discourse is too general in

rems of the relationship between (alphabetic) language and metaphors. it is still an

approach analo=ous to the same vein of thought as Pound's theory of the third type of

metaphor. Müller's exarnple of the "radical metaphor" "to shine". coincidentally.

corresponds ro Pound and Fenollosa's definition of an ideogram in their essay. Here I

am refemng to "Ming", an ideogarn with the radical for "sun" on the iefi and that for

"moon" on the ri@. as discussed in Chapter II. Although this is a coincidence. it

does show that Pound's method is echoed by other theorists of language.

Ezra Pound's "ideogammic method eventually put much greater weight on

the rhetorical, or more precisely, the metaphoncal aspect of the ideogams. Yet this

theory is rooted in a long, evolving, and incessantly debatable tradition of the

epnmloçy of ideograms. On the one hand. Pound absorbed skills in the art of

intcrpretation from these etymological discussions. as ive11 as from the translation

training he had during his early y a r s in college and teaching on the other hand. it

was only his talent and sensibility as poet that enabled him to translate and interpret

from a language that he discovered highly poetical. to a language (or imguge) that is

full of' the "unique freedorn""" of a poet. a language in which he was able to rsprcss

Iiis own understanding of the translated works.

109 To use Geofiey S. Leech's term

Conclusion

In translation studies. there is alaays a division between literal and litrrary

translation. This division causes consequent differencrs in the characteristic language

of the translatsd works. Literal translation is largely used as a tool for practical

purposrs. as the case of social sciences. Thus literal translation usually uses plain or.

ordinary language. Literary translation. on the other hand. tends to use a more poctic

language. One aspect of poetic language. according to Geoffrey Leech"". is a "unique

frccdom" that the poet can enjoy to "range over al1 its communicative resources.

nithout respect to the social or histoncal contexts to which they belons. This means.

aniongst other things. that the poet c m draw on the language of past ages. or can

borroa- feiiturrs belonging to othrr. non-literary uses of language." Since. as Leech

points out. Eliot demonstraied this rule by using the English of banal. prosy

con\.ersation in some poems, why should not Pound or his followers creaie a poetic

language with "etymorhetorical" meaning instead of "ordinary" language with

bbscientifically" proven dictionary meaning?

The cornparison be~veen the two languages recalls the Jaina parable of the

five blind men. Literal translation seems to recount exactly the portion of an elephant

each of the blind men touched. Usually, however, it fails to overcome its blindness to

I O Geottrey Y . Leech. .-i Linguistic Guide to Engiisli Poem.. 1 969. London: Lon-pmns.

panicular slrments of the depanure language, like ideogams that function through a

kind of iconography. Literary translation is not an assembly of single words and

scntrncss put together. nor just a physiopphical or mirror-image of a thing. as in

rc.presentationa1 painting or choreography. .As Pound puts it. the verbal "idea" of

action converts maienal images iiito irnmaterial relations: in every ideogram. ahich is

also 3 metaphor. the pictonal becomes synbolic. Each particular i deogamspbo l .

then. has a doubie feature: extemal "indication" and meaningfui "ex. pression".

Rcndcrin~ invisible poetics of ideogams visible is the most crucial step to

comprehcnd the composite picture of Chinese iconography as a whole tapesty with a

mosaic of icons woven together. The "ideograrnmic method" should be taken as one

of the intrrpretation rncthods which were inhented frorn ancient traditions of

intcrpreting idrogams. Among these ancient traditions we find the greatest affinity

b e t w e n Pound's theory and the method of "Meeting of Meanings". Yet the Poundian

translation has obvious "exotic" qualities. His distinct bias as a Western scholar and

as an imagist poet somehow bridges the Sap - the gap behveen the ideoprams and the

metaphors they engendered, confirming the continuity of the Chinese people with

thrir ancestors - and a modem Amencan literary audience accustomed to alphabetic

languages that c a r q even less "etporhetorical" links to their roots than the Chinese.

As translators. Fenollosa. Pound. even myself, do not need to find out the

rtqmology of al1 ideograms, just as "we cannot and need not ftnd the ground of al1

Green and Co. Ltd. p: 102.

iiistliphors. .A metaphor ma- work admirably without Our being able with any

confidence to sa! hoa i t works or what is the ground of the shift." (Richards: 1 17)

From the esample of Ezra Pound's translation. we may concludr at this point that for

literary translation. it is our task to devote more to finding the "process" than to

finding a "ground". Even the definition of etymology itself. according to blüller. is "a

wish to End out."'"

Pound's "ideogamrnic method". like numerous other attempts in histop to

shape a theory of metaphor and poetics based on the tools for crearing ideogams. c m

be compared to cutting an axe handle - as told by the tale of Lu Zhil" (261-303):

whcn cuttinç an ase handle with an &Xe. surely the mode1 is at hand.

l ! Max Willer, The Science of Language II. p. 576. "' Songins Jin quoted this tale fiorn Lu Zh's Wen F u me Art of Içiiring), tram. Sam

Hamill. 1957. Portland. Oregon: Breitenbush Books. P. 9.

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LIST OF IDEOGRAMS ESPLAI3ED

fan yi

ren jian ma

mu

ma

1)' O

1VU

vu

\'OU

'lu

zai

cong

ma

nü

ma

huo

chun

military

to stop

lance

to translate

Man sees horse

eue

horse

I

I

1

to cause

to fa11 fa11 fonvard

to remain

to follow

mother

Woman

horse

messmate

spriog

dong

da xue

cheng

'an

kou

cheng

fF

shu

ren

zheng ming

de

zhi

xin

ring

east

The Great Digest

sin-xity (see Pound's definition)

word

to achieve

lance

to guird frontier or government headquarters

compassion, kindness

rectification of names

vitue (see Pound's definition)

straight, upright

heart

to move, to pacel behavior (n.)

Shuo Wen Jie Zi

mu

huo

ren

ma

shang

sia

sin

jiang

hai

shui

bo

shui

pi

hua

shui

gu

dong (1" tone)east

dong (4'h tone)

ri

shi

Shrro Weri Jie Zr' (book title) 75

wood or tree 77

fire

man

horse

"P

down

sincerity

river

sea

water

wave

water

skin

slippery

water

bone

to move

sun

fullness

ming

ri

yue

to shine

Sun

rnoon