Timothy,
 
Thanks to you along with Cameron. This Pound connection to Voltaire is
useful to me at least in following the thread toward the Physiocrats
which will find expression in poetry since it involves to much
speculation for scholarship. Victor Ferkiss' book Nature, Technology,
and Society: Cultural Roots of the Current Environmental Crisis has
reignited my interest in the connection between Confucious/Mencius and
the Enlightenment. Though I can't recall exactly where (possibly in a
study of the Eloges), I believe an author claimed that the Physiocrats
actually translated Confucious and Mencius. At any rate, going to
Voltaire with a sound connection to Pound is useful. 
You are correct. Pound did feel an affinity with Enlightenment thought.
His attitudes toward science and technology reflect this. And afterall
Thomas Jefferson was a essentially a physiocrat and Pound would have
assimilated this in his reading. Carlo Parcelli
 
Timothy P Redman wrote:
> 
> My recollection is that Dorothy owned a set of the complete works or
> Voltaire, and Pound of course used De Mailla's Histoire Generale de
> la Chine as the principal source for the Chinese Cantos.  Yeats, I
> believe, once remarked that Pound's Confucius resembled an 18th
> century intellectual, powdered wig and all.  My own sense is that he
> was very much drawn to 18th-century political thought.
> 
> Cheers!
> 
> Tim Redman
> 
> On Mon, 24 Jan 2000 17:20:40 -0500 "R.Gancie/C.Parcelli"
> <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 
> > Does anybody know if Pound got any of his Confucious/Mencius through the
> > French Physiocrats? The Physiocrats are said to have introduced
> > Confucian thought to the Enlightenment. Under Quesnay they also
> > constituted an economic school of thought. Though the material I have
> > read has been somewhat contradictory, it appears that they stressed the
> > importance of the agrarian over the trade aspects of an economy. Some
> > commentators somewhat contradictorily point out that the Physiocrats
> > also stressed a laissez faire, anti-governmental approach to
> > mercantilism.
> > I'm familiar with Pound's connections to Fenollosa, Upward and his
> > possible reading of Pauthier (Stock) who probably reprises Quesnay and
> > the Physiocrats in his works, but does anyone know of a more direct
> > route from the Physiocrats to Pound?
> > The fact that they comprised an economic school would have appealed to
> > Pound. Their texts and translations would have been readily availble to
> > Pound. Their anti-government interference stance would have appealed to
> > the rightist, libertarian dimension of Pound's nature. The Physiocrats
> > thought was influential (along with Locke) as regards the American
> > founding fathers e.g. Adams and Jefferson. They've got everything going
> > for them yet I can't find any connection.  Carlo Parcelli
> > --
> > ÐÏࡱ
> 
> Tim Redman
> School of Arts and Humanities, JO 31
> University of Texas at Dallas
> P.O. Box 830688
> Richardson, TX  75083-0688
> 
> (972) 883-2775 (o)
> (972) 883-2989 (fax)
 
-- 
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