After readinging En Lin Wei's interesting essay on the emergence of Buddhist "quietism" in Pound's thought, I have a few questions and even a couple of suggestions for elaboration of the essay.  

First, some minor points: I am not sure what was meant by the phrase "the sanctity" of the text.  Is "textual integrity" or "holiness" intended here? Regarding the use of the word "salvation" in the essay : is one speaking of the safe continuance of the peoples -- avoidance of annihilation in a nuclear age-- or of the spiritual salvation of the individual soul, in a religious sense?

The essay quotes Pound, wondering whether, in light of the atomic bomb, he should be writing an apocalypse instead of a paradiso. Is there a place in confucian philosophy for the eschatological and the apocalyptic?  An excursion into the history of the confucian response to apocalpyse would be great. 

If, near the end of his life, the poet comes to understand, from contemporary events, that history itself might come to an explosive end,  there are two basic responses, it would seem: a redoubling of statecraft-poetry efforts (lifetime and poet's human energy permitting) or renunciation and surrender.  Right?   Or could it be that Pound saw a poetry of tranquility as a continuation of statecraft, a mode that might do something to ameliorate international "tensions"?  Perhaps in this final phase of his poetry and his life Pound achieved a *synthesis* of confucian and buddhist thought? Contemplative poetry as political action.

Tim Romano