Ezra Pound's Chinese Friends Stories in Letters

by Qian, Zhaoming

• ISBN13: 9780199238606
• ISBN10: 019923860X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-04-15
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

No literary figure of the past century - in America or perhaps in any other Western country - is comparable to Ezra Pound in the scope and depth of his exchange with China. To this day, scholars and students still find it puzzling that this influential poet spent a lifetime incorporatingChinese language, literature, history, and philosophy into Anglo-American modernism. How well did Pound know Chinese? Was he guided exclusively by eighteenth to nineteenth-century orientalists in his various Chinese projects? Did he seek guidance from Chinese peers? Those who have written aboutPound and China have failed to address this fundamental question. No one could do so just a few years ago when the letters Pound wrote to his Chinese friends were sealed or had not been found. This book brings together 162 revealing letters between Pound and nine Chinese intellectuals, eighty-fiveof them newly opened up and none previously printed. Accompanied by editorial introductions and notes, these selected letters make available for the first time the forgotten stories of Pound and his Chinese friends. They illuminate a dimension in Pound's career that has been neglected: his dynamicinteraction with people from China over a span of forty-five years from 1914 until 1959. This selection will also be a documentary record of a leading modernist's unparalleled efforts to pursue what he saw as the best of China, including both his stumbles and his triumphs.

Author Biography

As University Research Professor of English at the University of New Orleans, Zhaoming Qian's teaching and research areas focus on East/West comparative poetics, Orientalism, transpacific interculturality, and interdisciplinary Modernism. Qian's books include Orientalism and Modernism: The Legacy of China in Pound and Williams (1995), The Modernist Response to Chinese Art: Pound, Moore, Stevens (2003), and Ezra Pound and China (2003). His research has been supported by fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Philosophical Society, and Yale University.

Table of Contents

List of Abbreviations	p. ix
List of Figures	p. xi
Introduction	p. xiii
Notes on the Text	p. xxiii
F. T. Sung's China Plan for Pound: "China is interesting, VERY"	p. 1
Miss Tseng and the Seven Lakes Canto: "Descendant of Kung and Thseng-Tsu"	p. 9
Yang as Pound's Opponent and Collaborator: "To sacrifice to a spirit not one's own is flattery"	p. 18
Achilles Fang and Pound's Bilingual Confucius: "All answers are in the FOUR BOOKS"	p. 40
Pound as Miss Jung's Dissertation Adviser: "One's opinions change"	p. 88
Pound and Carsun Chang: "Confucianism as Confucius had it"	p. 96
William McNaughton's Memoir: "What Pound and Carsun Chang Talked About at St Elizabeths"	p. 105
Achilles Fang and Pound's Classic Anthology: "The barbarians need the ODES"	p. 107
Pound's Discovery of an Ancient Economist: "Chao ought not to be wasted"	p. 161
From Poetry to Politics: "Wang's middle name not in Mathews"	p. 172
P.H. Fang and the Naxi Rites in The Cantos: "I have found your Muen Bpo & KA MA gyu"	p. 196
Ezra Pound's Typescript for "Preliminary Survey" (1951)	p. 207
Glossary	p. 229
Index	p. 235
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