Confucius (4): Classic Anthology Defined by Confucius (1954)

The Chinese book of Odes, the Shih-ching, was thought by ancient Chinese scholars to embody the essential rules governing the stars, the planets, and, thus, the minds of men. For this reason, Confucius (551-479 B. C.) thought them a necessary object of study. The “Classic Anthology,” as Ezra Pound called it, contains 305 ancient poems that promote good government and virtuous behavior. They come mostly from the dynastic periods of the ancient Shang (1766-1122 B.C.) And Chou (1122-255 B.C.) periods of Chinese history, and collectively they suggest a simpler time–a golden age of recognizable human truths. So prized were the Odes that they survived the famous Tsin dynasty (255-206 B.C.) burning of the books that took place in 213 B.C.

The Odes survived the flames because they were deeply inscribed in the memories of so many Chinese scholars that the work was impossible to eliminate. All of the other great Classics of Chinese antiquity underwent radical alterations after the famous book-burning of 213 B.C., but when the Tsin fell, and the restoring Han rose, the Shih-ching immediately reappeared, complete, in three versions, resurrected from three different parts of the realm. Soon a forth version appeared, the text of Mao. It divided the Odes into four sections: folk songs, lesser odes, greater odes, and odes for the temple and altar. This version was presented to the Han court in 129 B.C. and, by virtue of superb organization and clarity, became the canonical text.

Like most translators, Ezra Pound followed the four-division pattern set by the Mao version when he undertook his own translation of the Shih-ching, first published in 1954. Since Pound did not know Chinese, however, he needed more than a good pattern to help him deliver the Odes to a twentieth-century audience. He thus consulted the works of the great nineteenth-century translators Pauthier, Legge, and Lacharme, among others. But Pounds version of the Odes is no monkey to the work of others. He took poetic control of the material and freely altered it when he saw fit to do so. In this way he is in good company. Even the most learned translators of ancient Chinese script are sometimes charged with largely shifting for themselves. Indeed, doing so is often necessary.

Few languages allow as broad a range of interpretations as does ancient Chinese and few translators assumed so wide an interpretive range as did Pound. Many Chinese characters, for example, have widely varying meanings, depending on their syntactical and sense relationships to other characters. As a result, Pound’s free ranging interpretations of widely interpretable material often results in remarkable eccentricities of sense and phrase, and thus presents the same mix of weaknesses and strengths attributed to so much of his other poetry. At times, Pound is capable of delivering his subject with elegance and understanding. Yet often an informed reader begins to wonder if Pound should ever have undertaken the task of recreating this greatest of anthologies at all. In his attempts to bring the ancient material to a twentieth-century audience, he often quite simply misses te mark.

Even if Pounds intention was to re-situate the Odes for a western, popular audience, his light and comical usage of the ballad form sometimes misses the tone appropriate to an ode’s subject. In ode 167, for example, sung by soldiers tired of war and desperate for food and home, Pound begins with “pick a fern, pick a fern, ferns are high.” This is not the way to introduce a sense of human desperation; Pound’s tone is too light and carefree for his received subject. He had translated this same poem as the “Song of the Bowmen of Shu,” years earlier, as the opening poem in Cathay, his 1915 volume of translations from the Chinese. A comparison of the two versions readily suggests what may at times be lost as a result of Pounds interpretative methods. Yet in other ways he is powerfully successful. For example, he is able to present the inner life of the ancient Chinese in a way hat few others have proved capable of doing.

Whether we can attribute what westerners consider to be an inner life to Shang and Chou Dynasty China is still very much the subject of scholarly debate. Nevertheless, Pounds handling of the Odes often produces stunning and believable results. In Ode 1, for example, his repetition of the phrase “dark and clear” is richly applied to the natural images of fishhawks, tree boughs, water reeds, and moving streams; yet at the same time, the phrase nimbly underwrites the conclusion that all of those observances are “darkened” by the unfulfilled sexual passion of a prince who dreams of and seeks the woman who will be his bride. By drawing this connection out of the ode Pound suggests the link between nature and humanity, perception and desire, individual and cosmic truth. The Odes have suggested such linked truths as these for thousands of years, and continue to presume that the very movement of the stars confirms them.

Robert Kibler

Bibliography

Cheadle, Mary Paterson. Ezra Pound’s Confucian Translations. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1997.

Dembo, L.S. The Confucian Odes of Ezra Pound: A Critical Appraisal. London: Faber, 1963.

Nolde, John. Blossoms from the East: The China Cantos of Ezra Pound. Orono: National Poetry Foundation, 1983.

Sarra, Edith. "Whistling in the Bughouse: Notes on the Process of Pound's Confucian Odes."Paideuma 16.1 (1987): 7-32.

Schwartz, Benjamin. The World of Thought in Ancient China. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1985.