Ezra Pound and Chinese Poetry

doi:10.1017/9781108614719.011

Chapter 10 - Ezra Pound and Chinese Poetry

from Part II - Ezra Pound and Asia

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 October 2019

Jeffrey Twitchell-Waas

Edited by

Mark Byron

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Mark Byron: Affiliation:
University of Sydney

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Summary

On the publication of the Chinese translation of the Pisan Cantos, the poet Yang Lian observed that now, in the Chinese language, The Cantos had achieved its full realization. For those of us who can read The Cantos only in English and a smattering of Western tongues, this is a somewhat disheartening proposition, yet the very suggestion resonates with a whole cluster of issues bound up with the central role that China came to play in Pound’s work. One might think the topic of China in Pound’s writings had been exhaustively covered, especially discussions of Cathay and Ernest Fenollosa’s essay on written Chinese as a medium for poetry, yet there is no abatement in the seemingly inexhaustible re-treading of old ground along with new approaches.

Keywords

Chinese poetry Cathay translation poetic sensibility classical Chinese poetics Taoism Buddhism reclusive poetics phonetics pictograph root-seeking poetics Confucianism

Type: Chapter
Information: The New Ezra Pound Studies , pp. 157 - 178

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108614719.011 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2019

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