On Sun, 24 May 1998 20:15:57 +0900 wrote...
>
 
Yes--seems to me Pound gives more lipservice to Khayamm/Fitsgerald's work than
used it as a direct reference--it was an innovative translation or imitation
for the period--but the archaisms you mention could be found in many 19th
century sources--Swinburne was full of them, for just one example, as well as
being a feature of many attempts of translators to find that middle ground
between past and present. Pound followed Rossetti early, and as a good sense of
how R and P operated as translators, you might read Rossetti's intro to his
trans of Dantes La Vita Nuova.  Unless you have some strong specific sense in
which Fitzgerald's work (true, Khayamm was a Poundian polumetis intellectual,
as were some of the stronger and more obvious models for Pound, such as
Callimachus, and Fitz a moderate innovator) really influenced Pound, I don't
buy it.
 
 
Didn't anyone receive my Thursday post  about Omar Khayyam? FitzGerald's
>translation, a favorite of ep's early and late, seems a much more evident
>source
>for this orientalist imagery.
>
>wp
>
>Booth, Christopher wrote:
>
>> That Pound might not have had the Eastern background yet to significantly
>> weave in a Buddhist or Confucian conceit may be so, but the fact remains
>> that a "prayer wheel" is a term dating from 1814 (according to my Webster's
>> 10th here at work), and it is a term that would have been familiar to
>> missionaries, students of philosophy, theology, Asia, geography, readers of
>> National Geographic, travel literature, etc., etc. Pound had not yet hit on
>> his Asian vein, but lets give him credit for having a decent vocabulary and
>> the general knowledge that an educated young man with a curiosity about the
>> world would have had in his day.
>>
>> It is a not uncommon fallacy to assume that a writer's knowledge about a
>> subject was tabula rasa before a certain period in the writer's development.
>> It seems absurd to me that Pound could not have used a common phrase that
>> would have been as in the realm of general knowledge in his day as it is
>> now, only because we would like to catagorize its use under "E.P.: Asian
>> Reference". It doesn't have to be a mature Eastern reference, but an
>> appropriate phrase for an image.
>>
>> I don't have a copy of the poem here, but if the line does indeed run as
>>
>>    Th' alternate prayer wheel of the night and light
>>
>> then it is a prayer wheel. A prayer wheel is a prayer wheel, and was so in
>> his day.
>>
>> What is the liklihood that Pound would have coined a phrase already in use?
>>
>> !!!!!!!!!!
>>
>> Although I am still quite comfortable with what I said above, a trip to the
>> OED fished up this treasure under _prayer wheel_:
>>
>>    2. A wheel set with bells and fastened to the ceiling of a chapel,
>>        formerly used for divination in connexion with masses or
>>        other devotional services.
>>
>>        1897 _Daily News_ 26 July 5/1   Even now in Brittany
>>        a kind of prayer wheels are kept in churches and set
>>        spinning by the devout.
>>
>> Hmmm. Perhaps Brittany is located somewhere between Lhasa and Kathmandu? [_A
>> Lume_ and _Cathay_?]  ;-)
>>
>> > ----------
>> > From:         Robert E. Kibler
>> > Reply To:     Robert E Kibler
>> > Sent:         Tuesday, May 19, 1998 6:30 PM
>> > To:   [log in to unmask]
>> > Subject:      Re: re grace before song lines 1-3
>> >
>> > >
>> > I would be surprised if the "prayer wheel" refers to anything
>> > Buddhist/Tibetan
>> > so early in pound's career.  there are other possibilities--I know D. H.
>> > lawrence, for example, writes about the 'cry of the peewit and the wheel
>> > of the
>> > stars."  May have been a common expression in first two decades of 20th.
>> > Pound
>> > had touched upon Eastern poetry before Fenollosa--he had read Gile's book
>> > on
>> > Chinese poetry, and Judith Gautier's Book of Jade, among other precious
>> > 19th
>> > century translations. There had also been a general Eastern influence in
>> > art,
>> > from Van Goh to Whistler, the effect is registered on canvass. Further,
>> > one of Pound's first friends in london, Lawrence binyon, was curator of
>> > the
>> > Eastern arts collection at the British Museum.  So Eastern culture was
>> > again in
>> > the air in the last decades of 19th, and early 20th, and Pound was aware
>> > of it.
>> > But if an image such as this early prayer wheel were to have its origins
>> > in the
>> > East, it would probably have been accompanied by other tell-tale Eastern
>> > images. Pound's early poems follow the years during which he had carefully
>> > imitated styles of poets whom he thought to be great. Good recent sources
>> > for
>> > early Asian influence on him is Zhaoming Qian's book to that effect, as
>> > well as
>> > Mary Patterson Cheadle's book on Pound's Confucian Translations.
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > HTEN=3DCONDENSARE) and the latin origins of the word, _dictare_, to com=
>> > pose
>> > >(create) or dictate, in conjunction with the word _light_ on the next
>> > >line--an important word in Pound--and its Genesis resonances. Dight also
>> > >meant to ordain or equip, and a "dighter" was a poet. Etc. Hmmm....]
>> >
>> > Being a student of German, I pretty much smack my forehead in shame at
>> > this point.....Yikes!  But thank you for pointing it out!  Dichter =3D
>> > dighter.  So essentially on the basis of etymology and rhyme Pound brings
>> > together the notion of poetic/theologic creation with the notions of
>> > night and light as antagonistic life-animating aesthetic forces etc. =8B
>> > there's more here than I even thought of before.  Still, I would ask what
>> > the connection is with the rest of the poem, and the imagery of offering
>> > oneself into a sort of oblivion.  Maybe the eternal spiralling exchange
>> > of "Night and light" can be read as a foil to the once-and-done-with
>> > disappearance of rain into sea, word into silence, art into indifference,
>> > etc.  But I'm only conjecturing.
>> >
>> > Also I would still quibble over the third line, in getting down to the
>> > basic roots of grammar: the meaning up to the end of line 2 is clear, and
>> > I read "that with mercy dight" etc. as a relative clause, but what's the
>> > connection with "Eternal hath to thee"?  What's the object of "hath"; why
>> > is it eternal (or possibly clipped "eternally")?  What is going on,
>> > grammtically speaking, in this line?
>> >
>> > Thank you, Mr. Booth, for your very helpful suggestions.
>> >
>> > Cheers, Michael Kicey
>> >
>> > _________________________________________________
>> >
>> > "you love in spite of, not because of"
>> >                       -Lucas Klein
>> >
>> > _________________________________________________
>> > Michael Kicey
>> > F&M #836
>> > Franklin and Marshall College
>> > PO Box 3220
>> > Lancaster PA  17604-3220
>> >
>> > email: [log in to unmask]
>> > net: http://acad.fandm.edu/~M_Kicey/
>> > phone: 717.399.6747
>> > _________________________________________________
>> >
>> >
>> > 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.
>> >
>
>
 
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.