"The Great Digest of the Analects," for the Ezra Pound Encylopedia, Greenwood Press.
Robert E. Kibler, Asst Professor of English, Valley City State University, 10 April 1999
Scholars generally regard the Analects (LunYu)as the best source for the actual words and thoughts of the ancient Chinese philosopher, Confucius (551-479 B. C.). Ezra Pound made several translations of the Analects between 1924 and 1950. In 1938, he wrote "The Digest of the Analects" and used it as the first chapter in his Guide to Kulchur. This seven-page chapter is composed of brief excerpts from the Analects, Pound's commentary on those excerpts, and several Chinese written characters. The general tone of the "Digest," like that of the Guide to Kulchur, reflects Pound's heavy involvement in the Italian Fascist movement. Fascism was belligerent, elitist, and preoccupied with social order. Yet it would be incorrect to assume that Pound's Fascism alone influenced the character of his "Digest." The work is also the natural result of certain Fascistic tendencies inherent in Confucianism.
The Analects offers a practical approach to life and governing, and promotes the study of the past as the best means for achieving social harmony in the present. Primary to the achievement of this harmony is the Confucian assertion that individuals with the power to do so must ensure that society precisely define its terms. Otherwise, social disorder will prevail. However reasonable and practical seeming, this Confucian call for precise terminology is associated with social problems in China. Simply determining the precise terminology in a given situation, for example, grew into such a complicated process that a group of scholars became necessary to the Chinese State. It thus promoted the development of an elite learned class--a specifically Confucian class. In fact, from 1313 to 1905, Confucians controlled the content of the Chinese Civil Service examinations, and thus controlled who obtained government jobs, and what passed for knowledge. Furthermore, the Confucian emphasis on precise terminology sometimes tended to support an amoral administration of justice and social policy.
In the Analects, for example, Confucius implies that a name defines a thing according to its given set of functions and relations. If the relations and functions change, the names change. Hence, a man can be a minister in relation to his prince, but in relation to his son, he is a father. For Confucius and for many of his followers, a minister could never be a father at the same time. Because one name could only possess one set of essential functions and relations at a time, the complexity and humanity of an individual potentially became lost in the very act of naming. At its worst, the consequences of this act of naming placed greater emphasis on the efficiency and correctness of the act itself, and lesser emphasis on the moral or ethical problems resulting from it. The execution of a thief, for example, became more of an efficient than an ethical act because a thief, so named, could not at the same time be a man. Quite naturally then, the historical application of Confucian language theory sometimes supported despotism of a very high order in China.
Even when applied to aspects of daily living, Confucian language theory sought to regulate people in such small matters as the way they wore their clothing, painted their pictures, and buried their dead. When Pound translated the Analects for the last time in 1950, he noted whimsically that he was "puzzled" by the Confucian attempts to regulate the "length of the nightgown." Unfortunately, the dangerous social implications of such regulation seemingly escaped him in 1938. His "Digest" arrogantly promotes both Confucian intellectual elitism, and the draconian social attitudes potential in its primary language theory. Nor is it coincidence that at the same time, Pound links Confucian and Fascist social doctrines.
In the "Digest" Pound exhibits the intellectual elitism typical of the Confucian scholar class. In praise of learning, he offers a passage from the Analects suggesting that such character traits as benevolence and sincerity suffer when not combined with a love of learning. To underscore the Confucian assertion, Pound three times repeats the Chinese character for "sage," positioned over top the one for "man." In doing so he visually implies for his own popular audience the superiority of the learned to the unlearned man, while at the same time outlining the terms of membership for an insular club of sages in his own century. Their knowledge extends to such esoteric fields of study as that of ancient Chinese characters. Moreover, Pound comments upon Chapter XI of the Analects by suggesting that only those who have learned enough, generally, can see the wisdom in it. Those of his readers who do not understand the passage, or who disagree with it, are thus judged unwise by him.
Informing Pound's intellectual elitism is of course Confucian language theory. He had always promoted like theories of his own, but in the late 1920s embraced the Confucian one because it had made its mark on actual history, unlike his own. The very first Chinese characters appearing in the "Digest" present the Confucian belief in the need for a straight and clear use of language. The second characters translate as "right word" and served Pound for years as the visual emblem of the call for precise terminology. Immediately following the zheng ming in his text, Pound translates the famous passage from the Analects wherein Confucius suggests that government, business, ceremony, and justice will all fail "if terminology be not exact." Whatever inherent truth there is to this Confucian assertion is overshadowed, however, by the generally belligerent attitude with which Pound presents it.
Pound's 1938 Confucius replies curtly to disciples who ask him for advice in governance, and he actually insults the Duke of Ch'i, who does not understand why the first principle of a state must be the rectification of its terms. "You are a blank," says Pound's Confucius. No support for that comment can be found in the Analects. Furthermore, Pound's 1938 Confucius suggests that an "intelligent man" is one who gives instructions, orders, and commands--all terms more in keeping with militarist Fascism than with intellectual Confucianism. In his accompanying commentaries, Pound likewise takes an aggressive posture in relation to his audience. "May we not suppose," he writes repeatedly, that Confucius "teaches the folly of taxation," condemns the "futility" of irresponsible government stockpiling, or employs any other than the "right word?" Whether Pound's readers bother to suppose or not makes little difference to him. He does not even translate the passages to which he refers. He has read them, and presumably reached the proper conclusions on behalf of his readers. Such is the elitism, the belligerence, and the interest in control that in 1938 Confucianism, Fascism, and Pound all held in common.
In 1950, Pound's latest translation of the Analects suggested a softer, less precise Confucius, which leaves us to wonder how much time and circumstance determine the social course of ideas. After all, Pound shared more than elitism, belligerence, and an obsession for order with Confucianism and Fascism. Both social philosophies and the one poet who promoted them most intended to bring harmony and happiness to humankind.