Hμ pκΜ] Ezra Pound and China (ed. Zhaoming Qian, U of Michigan P, 2003. x + 297 pp.) ²BoΝ Studies in English Literature English Number 46 (2005) iϊ{pΆwοjB
Excerpts from Eiichi Hishikawa's book review of Ezra Pound and China (ed. Zhaoming Qian, U of Michigan P, 2003. x + 297 pp.), which first appeard in Studies in English Literature English Number 46 (2005) (The English Literary Society of Japan).
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The volume under review is a collection of ten papers originally prepared for the Eighteenth International Ezra Pound Conference held in Beijing, China, July 16-19, 1999. It was the first occasion for an international colloquium on Pound to take place outside Europe and America. With "Ezra Pound and the Orient" as its theme, the conference gathered ninety participants from fifteen countries including Japan.
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In the present volume, two studies stand out as truly eye-opening for Pound scholars: Barry Ahearn's "Cathay: What Sort of Translation?" (31-48) which focuses on the hitherto overlooked issue of Pound's stance toward translation and Emily Mitchell Wallace's "'Why Not Spirits?' - 'The Universe Is Alive': Ezra Pound, Joseph Rock, the Na Khi, and Plotinus" (213-277) which cultivates the virtual terra incognita in Pound scholarship.
Barry Ahearn's study explores the hidden dichotomy in Pound's attitude toward translation. In certain cases, Pound pretends that translation process is simple because the Chinese originals are similar to Western literature. In others, he uses idiosyncratic idioms and images in translation because Chinese poetry is different and alien from Western ideas. Ahearn's concern is centered on Pound's intention, whether or not he consciously employed these tactics to avoid being pilloried in the press by the Chinese experts. Ahearn's aim is to attribute some features of Cathay "to Pound's intention to defuse the issue of his qualifications" as a translator, thereby ultimately assessing the question of whether and to what degree the poems in Cathay as "translations" may be found worthy of the name.
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"Readers tend to think," Zhaoming Qian points out, "that the Naxi were an ethereal fiction and Lijiang a fantasy place on another planet," yet a "recent visit to the area, with a Naxi man as guide and a Naxi woman as driver, taught" Wallace otherwise (9). Her study, accompanied by photographs taken in Lijiang, eloquently shows that the paradisal atmosphere depicted by Pound is real: "The green spur, the white meadow" (Canto 101), "Wind over snow-slope" (Canto 104), "The purifications / are snow, rain, artemisia" (Canto 110), and "the pomegranate water, / in the clean air / over Li Chiang" (Canto 112) surround beautiful people living in peace.
"Pound did not exaggerate," Qian states, "which means that his source, Joseph Rock, did not misrepresent the place and the people" (9). The Old Town of Lijiang was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1997, and a sign at the entrance to the Old Town "confirms the exceptional and universal value of a cultural and natural site, which requires protection for the benefit of all humanity." This "honor occurred mainly because of Joseph Rock's persistent and arduous efforts to record the world of the Naxi" (9), as Pound says: "And over Li Chiang, the snow range is turquoise / Rock's world that he saved us for memory / a thin trace in high air" (Canto 113). Reviewing the reasons why Pound admired the unparalleled genius of Rock as well as the ways Pound used the material that Rock collected and translated, Wallace makes evident, Qian lauds, "that the spirit of the Naxi religion [. . .] chimes with Pound's youthful interest in Plotinus, an ancient mentor he returned to in his old age because of his belief that 'the universe is alive'" (9).
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