Responding to the message of         Tue, 14 Jul 1998 10:17:55 +0800
from Jeff Twitchell-Waas <[log in to unmask]>:
>
 
Cheadle's book is solid scholarship, and surely needs to be on a Pound and
Oriental booklist (I will be finishing a review of Cheadle for Paideuma in
the nexct few weeks). Zhaoming Qian's work is also important, and though he
sees the same Taoism at work in Pound that earlier scholars had already
perceived, he is the first one to see it developing early in Pound's work,
and in a way other than as simply a nature motif.  Qian's presents this
Taoist impulse as he finds it in some of Pound's shorter poems, such as
Meditatio (I just cannot remember any of the others right now), which do
not so much deliver a Taoist sensibility as they do a sort of naieve
Western attempt to be 'deep' in an Asian way, ie, comparing the curious
habits of men and dogs.  This really hurts his argument, however right he
is, and however much of an advance his understanding of Pound's Taoism is
over those who had seen it before him.
 
 
> It's been quite a few years since I read Yip on Cathay, but certainly it
> is
> not dismissive of Pound's translations. Yip was somewhat handicapped by
> not
> having access to the Fenollosa notebooks which evidently were tied up in
> legal wrangling for decades. Zhaoming Qian's fairly recent Orientalism
> and
> Modernism vigorously defends the quality and uncanny accuracy of Pound's
> translations as translations (not merely "versions"), arguing that Pound
> was able to intuit a deeper level of the poems missed by many scholars
> and
> more authoritative translators (e.g. Waley). For Qian this deeper level
> essentially means the underlying Taoism of the poems.
>
> Although my impression too is that most older Chinese scholars have
> tended
> to take a somewhat condescending view of Pound's translations, I believe
> this has altered considerably in recent years. When I was in mainland
> China
> there was tremendous interest and enthusiasm for Pound among both
> scholars
> and poets. Inevitably, this is no doubt also bound up with the radical
> social/cultural changes that have been taking place there over the past
> two
> decades. Those of us able to attend the Pound conference in Beijing next
> summer ought to be able to get a better idea about all this.
>
> The first complete translation into Chinese of the Pisan Cantos was just
> published earlier this year, edited by my good friend and former
> colleague
> at Nanjing Univeristy Zhang Ziqing and translated by Huang Yuete now
> studying at Buffalo. The original plan was to bring out a complete
> translation, but I'm not clear whether that's still on track. When this
> project was initially proposed, I didn't have the impression the
> publisher
> fuller realized the size of what they wanted to take on.
>
> To Alexander Schmitz's list ought to added at least two other recent
> books.
> Mary Paterson Cheadle's Ezra Pound's Confucian Translations (1997) which
> I
> haven't read yet. And highly recommended, Robert Kern's Orientalism,
> Modernism and the American Poem (1996) which takes a larger view of teh
> discourse of Orientalism in relation to American poetry, but Fenollosa
> and
> Pound are at the center of his study. Although Kern, unlike Qian, is very
> much interested in pursuing Said's critique of Orientalism as a Western
> discourse, he too finds it difficult to seriously fault Pound's
> translations.
>
> Jeff Twitchell-Waas
>
>
>
> ----------
> From: Lucas Klein <[log in to unmask]>
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Wai-Lim Yip
> Date: Monday, July 13, 1998 6:38 AM
>
> Pounders:
>
>
> Has anyone read Wai-lim Yip's book <italic>Ezra Pound's Cathay</italic>?
> Most Chinese scholars I'm aware of seem pretty dismissive of Pound as a
> translator from Chinese, calling him an inventor of Chinese poetry in
> English--I think maybe Eliot said this and Kenner picked up on it--and
> not an effective translator, but I can't imagine Yip writing an entire
> book aimed at dismissing the subject.  And in other writings I've read
> Yip has at least been very aware of the poetic advances in English
> attributable to Pound, and I wonder if <italic>Ezra Pound's
> Cathay</italic> is something known, respected, recommended, etc.
>
>
> Thank you.
>
>
> Lucas
>
>
>
> <underline>.                                                        .
>
> </underline>Lucas Klein
>
> [log in to unmask]
>
>
> <color><param>8080,8080,0000</param>A young Muse with young loves
> clustered about her
>
>                 ascends with me into the Jther, . . .
>
> And there is no high-road to the Muses.
>
> </color>
>
>                 <color><param>0000,8080,0000</param>    Ezra Pound,
> <italic>Homage to
> Sextus Propertius</italic></color>
> ----------
>