"The Unwobbling Pivot" is Pound's translation of *Chung Yung*, one of the
four books in the classic canon of Confucian teaching.  One encyclopedia I
checked translated Chung Yung as "The Doctrine of the Mean"; Pound
translated it into Italian as "L'asse che non vacilla".  Pound argued that
Chung Yung was the book that provided a metaphysical perspective to
Confucianism.  It is interesting how Frye picks up on the importance Pound
gives to the word - Pound felt that the essence of Confucianism was
"precise verbal definition", from which order and equilibrium would flow to
all things.  The importance of precise verbal definition is discussed in
Pound's translation of Confucius' *Ta Hio* (The Great Digest, a.k.a. The
Great Learning).
 
Regards,
Ben.Harper
 
At 11:48 18/06/98 -0400, you wrote:
>Thanks to those of you who helped me find the source of a reference to
>Pound by Northrop Frye.  I have another.  In his essay "Religion and
>Poetry" (1959), Frye writes:
>
>        Some poets feel that man is walled off from a higher destiny by
>superconscious powers that he can never reach and that are indifferent to
>him....  Others, such as Robinson Jeffers, see nothing in front of man
>except his gradual disappearance as a natural species.  Ezra Pound finds
>the source of his vision of the human world in Confucius and the
>"unwobbling pivot" of the Word--the human word, not a divine word made
>flesh.
>
>If anyone can point me to the source for the phrase "unwobbling pivot,"
>I'd be grateful.
>
>        Jeffery Donaldson
>
>
>
>Jeffery Donaldson                               905-525-9140
>Department of English                           x 24132
>McMaster University                             fax 777-8316
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>L8S 3Y8
>
>