On Tue, 21 Jul 1998 16:18:00 +0900 wrote...
>
 
The problem of ascertaining Taoist elements in Pound has more to do with the
Western habit of discrimmination that was at the core of philosophical
discourse from the Greeks onward (and Pound's understanding of how language
must work to keep culture healthy), and the fact that Chinese
philosophy/life/culture/language sees itself more as a whole, as one big cosmic
mush, out of which tendencies grow.  Much of what goes for Confucian discourse,
for example, is found in Taoist and Mohist texts, and vice versa. As William
McNaughton notes, it is less accurate to refer to Chinese as Confucians or as
Taoists because "most Chinese are capable of holding one attitude one day and
the other attitude the next--or even of holdi9ng both attitudes at the same
time."  Taking "multiple approaches to problems is a cardinal principle of
virtually all Chinese philosophy and life," notes Wing tsit Chan, and as John
C. H. Wu notes, "every chinese wears a Confucian cap, a Taoist robe, and
Buddhist sandals."  The Chinese intellect is "polysensible," according to David
Wand, and it is not inconsistent for an individual to be "Confucian in public
life, a buddhist in private, and a Taoist in his observances of nature."
Virtually all of the Chinese schools of thought use the word "Tao," for
example--which simply means "path" or "way," to describe concepts central to
their own line of thought.  The Tao works as "a metaphysical reality, a kind of
natural law, a principle of human  life, or a system for describing moral
truth," as Chad Hansen notes--and yet it is always the same "Tao" ideogram at
work.  In divers texts, it always looks the same, and always sounds the same
when pronounced. So you can see (whoever doubted), there are clearly ways in
which Pound could be Taoist and not realize it, simply by reading the Chinese
Classics. Early scholars simply took Taoism in Pound to equate to a love of
nature, and perhaps a shift away from an ego-centric view of the universe in
the later Pound.  Zhaoming Qian saw Taoism in the early Pound, but pretty much
limited his understanding of it to identifying a "poetics of silence" writ
large as cosmic understanding.  That works too, but perhaps misses the most
powerful way in which Pound's work is Taoist--through his instistence on poetic
movement or fluency itself--a fluency temporarily locked in the detials of
material and conceptual form, yet existing simultaneously outside of material
form. There is alot of work in Pound and Taoism now (see Cai Zong-Qi's work on
"Poundian and Chinese Aesthetics of Dynamic Force," Comparative Literature 30,
no. 2 (1993), as my own point of departure) and alot of it touches on the
various Taoist strands in Pound--but this dialectic between fluency and form,
which governs his work, and his eventual shift in poetic and ideological
emphasis from a basis in stasis to a basis in movement, separate from his
various manifestos, which talk the plan before Pound is able to poetically
enact it, has everything to do with Pound's struggle against Western philosophy
from Plato onwards, his movement towards Eastern philosophy, and his eventual
creation of an earthly paradise among the Naxi peoples at the end of the
Cantos. At root, this struggle for form can be chronicled in Pound's changing
understanding of the word. The Confucians, like Plato, word use the word as a
trap, a case, within which meaning could be precisely preserved. Taoists, by
contrast, through that the word-case was always temporary and changing, and
that meaning was only to be found in the essence, temporarily housed in
word-case, and not in that case itself.  As Chuang Tzu (famous Taoist) put it:
         the fishing net is used to catch fish;
         let us have the fish and forget the net.
         The snare is used to catch rabbits;
         let us have the rabbit and forget the snare.
         Words are used to convey ideas;
         let us have the ideas and forget the words.
 
Pound had read Chuang Tzu early, and translates/mutes one of his poems.
Earliest source for Pound was Herbert Giles, A History of Chinese
Literature--as you can find out in Zhaoming Qian's work.  For an understanding
of Taoistic understandings to which pound gravitated in the pre-socratic West,
see Laszlo Gefin's "Ideogram."  For an understanding of how Pound came to a
Taoist perspective through Fenollosa/Emersonian organicism, see Beongcheon Yu,
"The Great Circle: American Writers and the Orient."  My own dissertation on
the subject should be out there somewhere. It is a bit sloppy and wordy (I
wrote it in three months, at the end of funding), but it contains an in-depth
look at the Taoist Pound, and shows Pound's fundamentally Taoist success in
creating his earthly paradise.  It has all of the pertinent scholarship in
it. You can make tracks from there, if you choose.
 
 
 
Dear Daniel Pearlman, Jeff Twitchell-Wass and friends,
>
>I have a couple of questions about your
>stimulating discussion on Taoism and E.P.
>
>Daniel,
>I am interested in your suggestion that E.P.'s latent
>Taoism is derived from American transcendentalism as his
>philosophical tendency. If you have already discussed
>it in a published work, would you please tell it to me?
>
>Jeff,
>Concerning your fundamental questions, "what is
>specifically Taoist in E.P.?" and so on, could you
>or anyone suggest me that  1)what was the most prevailing
>source (probably written in English) to know "Taoism"
>for "intellectual Westerners" including E.P. during
>the first half of this century?
>2) also at present?
>
>I am afraind that I'm not knowledgeable enough to conrtibute
>anything to your current discussion, however, any
>information would be greatly appreciated.
>
>Thank you,
>
>Yoshiko Kita
>(Ibaraki, Japan)
>
>
 
Robert E. Kibler
Department of English
University of Minnesota
[log in to unmask]
 
                fortunatus et ille, deos qui novit agrestis,
                Panaque Silvanumque senem Nymphasque sorores.