Zweck: (Ger.) “Purpose, aim.”

The ideogramic method: A core component of Pound's poetics. It stems from the quasi-mystical epistemology that he derived from editing Fenollosa's essay, “The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry” (1913/1920). Confucius, Gourmont, and Swedenborg (cf. notes GK 88, 73) also influenced Pound's method. As Pound suggests, the ideogrammic method is associative and combinatory. The heuristic juxtapositions he outlines here enable him to assemble a mosaic of gists and piths, which he hopes will ultimately coalesce to form a coherent image in the reader's mind. Pound seeks to create a new stereoscopic consciousness capable of shoring up the scattered ruins of the past to build a new civilization. Once gathered, these bits and pieces are deployed as “luminous details.” Kenner has described this technique as “‘patterned integrities’ which [when] transferred out of their context of origin retain their power to enlighten us.” In ABC of Reading (1934), Pound explains that the

For Pound, a language thus inscribed is inherently poetic. Moreover, he sees his ideogrammic method as carrying on and systematizing Fenollosa's unfinished work, since the sinologist “died before getting round to publishing and proclaiming a ‘method.’” That the ideogram is paramount in Pound's mind as he was writing GK may be gleaned in a letter he wrote to the classicist W. H. D. Rouse on October 30, 1937 (cf. note GK 71).