Published
articles in A.
Ezra-Pound-Japan-Letters-essays
.
'relax.
'" And he recounted how he had gone backstage to converse with Spanish dancers who had just given a spectacu- lar performance.
"And you know," he told me.
"they had absolutely noth- ing to say.
" The moral of the tale being, I suppose, that art is doing, not talking about it.
Perhaps, indeed, he had found out.
"Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive"--I suppose. W^ell, paradise comes, as Pound observed in the Cantos, "spezzato"--in bits and pieces. My memory is of an Ezraic generosity wide as the oceans--at least spanning oceans--and a keen curiosity that swept Japan into its vast net. Light would come from the East. Pound believed: the particularity of its perceptions reflecting the physical immediacy of the ideogrammatic characters. He abhorredabstractthoughtand likeBertoltBrecht--believed"thetruthis concrete" (the phrase is Brecht's). The concreteness of truth--this is what Pound found in the Far East. He never traveled to the Orient but for a while it so happened that I saw Japan as his surrogate. Being "Reck at Lake Biwa" has left a lot to live up to.
? 214 POSTSCRIPT
POSTSCRIPT: In Place of a Note to Letter 71
U SEFUL BOOKS need no explanation; they speak for themselves as this one does. But there may be some justification in underlining a new facet of Pound in his role of Father and Teacher and to add a touch of humor to an otherwise very serious text.
Pound must have been pleased when Katue Kitasono, alias "Kit Kat," assured him that young readers in Tokyo liked the description of life and customs in the Tyrol. The fact that neither Pound nor I could read Japanese made my rudimentary drawings of haystacks and rakes all the more valu- able as pictographs.
To Mary Moore of Trenton, on January 17, 1938, Pound wrote: "My own daughter has just made her literary debut in Japan. " Such explicit state- ments are rare in his correspondence. A day earlier he had fired off a typically cagey long letter "to the Rt/ Rev the possum and Omnibosphorous WHALE the one to hand to tother in ConSybbletashun. "
Everyone knows that the Possum is T. S. Eliot and that after his conver- sion to the Anglican Church, Pound playfully addressed him as the Right Reverend. The "Whale" was Frank Morley, a fellow editor at Faber & Faber who worked in close consultation with Eliot. He was sailing for New York, hence the "Omnibosphorous"; in a subsequent letter, "a wallowink on the Adlandik. " Morley, sometimes honored with the title of "Son of Narwahl," vied with his two friends in inventing a language for their private zoo filled with panthers, elephants, rabbits and cats, bats and lesser animals. Their letters can not be paraphrased, though more often than not, they need explaining. We can only hope to read them soon in their entirety.
Pound's promoting of unknown young authors is legendary. Modesty ought to forbid my transcribing parts of the letters concerning me, but it is to his credit:
. . . interesting to translate. Child of twelve/ stylistic influence if any. Miss Martineau's Norway (Italian translation of that to explain where a Norwegian child came from). And with all the fake naive stuff, a little real is a comfort/ to say nought of the perfectly good bits that Frazer hasn't got into the Golden Bough. If a child wrote it it must be compre- hensible to other infants? I don't think there can be any more cause the child has been uprooted and sent to a place to get kulchur. . . .
I have simplified the spelling. The "Norwegian child" is Henny Bull
? POSTSCRIPT
215
Simonsen, and the effect of Miss Martineau's book was such that our friendship endures to this day.
WhileI wasgettingkulchurinFlorence,Poundwassuggestingpossible illustrators for The Beauties of the Tyrol. Edmund Dulac was one of them. He made it quite clear I was not a young prodigy; Mozart and Shirley Temple notwithstanding, he had a real horror of young prodigies. He asked the gentlemen at Fabers that the contract be made with the "authoress to whomlcheerfully deed over translation fees as encouragement. . . . "There seemed to have been no doubt in his mind that the booklet would make Fabers' fortune! But Mr. Eliot, after due consideration, answered, yes, it was a nice little book, well written and life well portrayed, but there was just one objection: "it couldn't sell. "
"I takes my possum as he cooks it" (EP to TSE, 25 Nov. 1937) was not always the case. Not when the Possum was not possum enough to hide his tracks and betrayed careless reading of his friend's letters. He had some- what ironically wondered if Pound had become proficient in Swedish, or whether he had translated from an Italian translation from the Swedish.
W. C. Williams' story that my mother was a Swede curiously rankled andPound may have detected a lingering echo. So the final comment was: "Waaal naow Protopherious . . . the error was I didn't send it to Larry [Pollinger, the literary agent] who would have saved you the error of thinking it wouldn't sell. " And he bets that when it does get printed, it will sell TWO copies for every copy Faber has sold of his (E. P. 's) own work, with the exception perhaps of Selected Poems to which Eliot had written the preface. In closing, the seemingly nonchalant riposte: "Oh yes, en passant/ the Tyrol has never been Swedish/ perhaps you mix Gustavus Adolphus with the late Frangois whiskers Giuseppe. " That ended the matter, and Pound has taught us not to overestimate juvenilia, be it his own or anyone else's.
What we get in this collection of letters to Japan is the persistent effort of an adult and responsible artist to create a better understanding between distant nations and the establishment of culture as a concrete value, a measure of exchange. If the possession of a small island threatens blood- shed, let the contendants trade off land for such a commodity as a tradition- al and highly refined form of art. An island like Guam in exchange for one hundred films of No plays, for instance. Men paid to talk peace might examine such simple solutions?
--Mary de Rachewiltz
? 216
NOTES
NOTES TO LETTERS
1
YoneNoguchi:YonejiroNoguchi ^tZ ^^^j>[1875-1947]. Inanundated
(
letter of 1914 to his mother, Pound wrote: "Yone Noguchi dined with me on Tuesday; interesting litterateur of the second order. Dont like him so well as Sung, or Coomaraswami. Still you neednt repeat this, as the acquaintance may grow and there's no telling when one will want to go to Japan. "
The Pilgrimage: a book of verse by Yonejiro Noguchi, illustrated with wood-block prints by Utamaro, published by Elkin Mathews in 1909.
Mathews: Elkin Mathews had published Pound's A Quinzaine/or This YuJe (1908) [A2], Personae (1909) [A3], Exultations (1909) [A4], and Canzoni (1911) [A7].
The Spirit of Romance: was published by J. M. Dent & Sons (1910) [A5]. Yeats: W. B. Yeats
Mary FenoIJosa: wife of Ernest Francis Fenollosa (1853-1908), American scholar and Orientalist who taught philosophy and economics at Tokyo Imperial Uni- versity (1878-86) and other universities in Japan, while he studied Japanese and Chinese art, religion and literature.
Along with fellow Americans in Japan--Edward Morse, Percival Lowell, Wil- liam Sturgis Bigelow, Lafcadio Hearn and John La Farge--Fenollosa and his circle greatly contributed to the rediscovery of the value of Japan's classical artistic heritage at a time when it was being neglectfully cast aside in favor of Westernization and modernization. See Van Wyck Brooks, Fenollosa and His Circle (N. Y. : E. P. Button, 1962).
Sarojini: Sarojini Naidu (1879-1949), a Bengali poet. Educated in England, she is the author of The Golden Threshold (1905) and other poems written in English. Mary Fenollosa had met Pound at Naidu's home in London on September 29, 1913. See Omar Pound and A. Walton Litz, eds. , Ezra Pound and Dorothy Shakespear: Their Letters 1909-1914, pp. 264-70; and D. G. Bridson, "An Inter- view with Ezra Pound," New Directions 17, ed. James Laughlin, p. 177.
"My City, My beloved . . . ":i. e. New York City. Quoted from the first line of Pound's poem, "N. Y. ," included in Ripostes (1912).
Franz Hals: Frans Hals (15817-1666), Dutch portrait painter.
banshee: a supernatural being in Irish and Scottish folklore, supposed to give
warnings by its wails of an approaching death in the family.
Mr. Hirata: Kiichiro Hirata (1873-1943), translator, essayist, and scholar of English literature. After studying at Oxford University, he taught at Tokyo Koto Shihan
]
? NOTES
217
Gakko and other universities. Author of Studies of Recent English Literature,
and Essays of Tokuboku ("Tokuboku" is his pen name).
Romaji: Roman letters.
"Kinuta": a No play included in Fenollosa and Pound, tr. , The Classical Noh
Theatre of Japan; so are "Nishikigi" and "Hagoromo. "
"Voroboshi": "Yoroboshi," a No play. A blind child beggar at Tennoji in Naniwa
turns out to be the son of the man in the seventeen-day Buddhist practice at the same temple. The son, having been enlightened, is led by his father's prayers to describe the beautiful scenes of Naniwa as he envisions them in his mind, and dances. The two return home.
"Sumidagawa": In search of her son, the mother comes from Kyoto to the bank of the Sumida River, only to find his tomb; there at night she tries to embrace his ghost in vain.
Verdun: a city on the Meuse River, in the north-eastern part of France; site of significant battle of World War I.
8
Itow: Michio Ito (f f P^J^^p) [1893-1961], a Japanese dancer; played the part of the Hawk at the performance of Yeats' At the Hawk's Well in Lady Cunard's drawing room on April 2, 1916, for which Edmund Dulac designed and made the costumes and masks. In writing this play, Yeats had been inspired by the Japanese No plays in English translation in Ernest Fenollosa's notebooks.
the "cloud-bridge": Hashigakari, the bridge between the stage and the retiring room in the No theatre.
11
Lustra: was published by Elkin Mathews (1916) [All].
Certain NobJe PJays o/ Japan: with an introduction by W. B. Yeats, was published
by The Cuala Press (1916) [A12).
Miss Bisland: Elizabeth Bisland (1861-1929), later Mrs. Elizabeth B. Wetmore, who
edited the letters of Lafcadio Hearn; a friend of Mary Fenollosa's.
Tagore: Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), Bengali poet, dramatist and mystic; acquaintance of Pound and Yeats. His "hiding, incognito, somewhere in South-
ern California" is spurious. Awarded Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913.
13
book on poor Gaudier Brzeska: Gaudier Brzeska, published by John Lane (1916) [AlO].
Egoist: edited by Harriet Weaver and Dora Marsden.
? 218 NOTES
Quest: edited by G. R. S. Mead.
Poetry Review: edited by Harold Monro.
15
play . . . about Fox: Michio Ito had performed "Fox Dance" in 1915.
18
Coburn: Alvin Langdon Coburn (1882-1966), American photographer who resided at the time in London; see his Autobiography, ed. Helmut and Alison Gern- sheim. A photograph of Pound by Coburn was reproduced as frontispiece for Lustra (1916). Pound had listed him as a faculty member in the "Preliminary Announcement of the College of Arts" (1914).
22
East Stroudsburg: a town on the upper Delaware River which Pound had been acquainted with in his youth.
DaJcroze: Emile Jaques-Dalcroze (1865-1950), Swiss composer and music teacher; inventor of eurhythmies, a system whereby music is coordinated with body movements. He founded the various Instituts Jaques-Dalcroze throughout Eu- rope.
Kyogen: Japanese traditional comedy which developed with the No, and is often performed with No plays on the No stage.
"Shojo," "Kagekiyo," "Hagoromo": No plays, included in Fenollosa-Pound transla- tions, Certain NobJe PJays of Japan [ Al 2] . "Your book" refers to 'Noh ' or Accom- plishment [A13].
"Busu": a piece of Kyogen. During the master's absence, his two servants find out that the "busu," which they have been told to be poison, is actually black sugar. They eat it up, and break their master's favorite hanging scroll and a bowl as well.
25
Kandinsky: Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944), Russian abstract painter and mystic; see his Concerning the Spiritual in Art [Uber das Geistige in der Kunst] (pub- lished in 1914 in English translation as The Art of Spiritual Harmony).
26
Picabia: Francis Picabia (1879-1953), French Dadaist and "sur-irrealist" painter; acquaintance of Pound's in Paris.
27
Capt. /. BrinkJey; John Brinkley (1887-1964), son of Francis Brinkley and uncle of Aya, wife of Gonkuro Koume (younger brother of Tami); worked for the League of Nations in Paris.
? NOTES 219
30
Gakushuin: ( |^ p P/C ). educational institution established in 1877 in Tokyo mainly for the children of Japanese nobility. It is now open to the public, and includes a co-ed university, high school and other levels.
Barney: Natalie Clifford Barney, who held the "Friday salon," was "I'Amazone" of Remy de Gourmont's Letters to an Amazon. See Charles Norman, Ezra Pound (New York: MacMillan, 1960), p. 269.
32
FenoJIosa: see note to letter 4.
Umewaka Minora: Minora Umewaka ( ^-^/p
) [1827-1909], a Japanese No player; gave lessons to Fenollosa. See letter 5; see aJso Fenollosa and Pound,
'Nob' or Accomplishment.
Dr. Mori: Kainan Mori ( y^^% ^ ) [1863-1911], a Japanese scholar of Chinese
language and literature; gave lessons to Fenollosa.
Dr. Ariga: Nagao Ariga ( ^ '^ h^'^%- ) [1860-1921] graduated from Tokyo Im-
perial University in 1882, where he was a student of Fenollosa. Doctor of jurisprudence in international law; taught at Tokyo Imperial University and Waseda University. Author of a number of books on literature, sociology, and pedagogy as well as international law; later became a member of the Privy Council. He was an assistant-interpreter for Fenollosa while the latter was in Japan, and the translator of Fenollosa's Epochs oj Chinese and Japanese Art after it was posthumously published in 1912.
that earth quake: "The Great Earthquake of Kanto" which struck Tokyo and Yoko- hama area on September 1, 1923. According to the statistics, the magnitude was 7. 8-8. 2; deaths totalled 99,331, with 43,476 missing.
C. H. Douglas: Major Clifford Hugh Douglas (1879-1952), British economist and originator of the theory of Social Credit, which holds that maldistribution of wealth due to insufficient purchasing power is the reason for economic de- pressions and World Wars.
Published articles in A. R. Orage's The New Age.
Gesell: Silvio Gesell (1862-1930), Minister of Finance of the second Munich Repub- lic (1919); monetary reformer and author of The Natural Economic Order.
Cavalcanti: Guido Cavalcanti Rime, published in 1932 [B27]. ABC of Reading: published in 1934 [A35]
33
Jean Cocteau: French poet and long-standing friend of Pound's from his years in Paris (1920-25).
35
Izzo and Camerino: Carlo Izzo, an Italian translator of Pound's poems, and his friend Aldo Camerino, sent out a group of letters in the fall of 1935, and launched
f:
? 220 NOTES
"a movement tending to establish a regular exchange of technical, mostly pro- sodic, information . . . between literary people of different countries"; see Charles Norman, Ezra Pound, p. 332.
Bunting: Basil Bunting, British poet.
LaughJin; James Laughlin, publisher of New Directions.
Zukofsky: Louis Zukofsky, American poet.
AngoJd; J. P. Angold, a British poet; author of an unpublished book on economics
called "Work and Privilege" which Pound tried to translate into Italian; see
David Heymann, The Last Rower (New York: Viking Press, 1976), p. 140. weJsh scholar: W. Moelwyn Merchant? ; Hugh Gordon Porteus?
36
]efferson and/or Mussolini: published in July 1935 [A41].
37
Ken Yanagisawa: { %^f '^'^ "j^ ) [1889-1953], Japanese diplomat and poet; author of Orchard, Journals of South Europe, and Twilight on the Indian Ocean.
Ginza: the most fashionable street in Tokyo at that time.
uivKER and Bopoto: see Kitasono's letter to Pound (30 January 1937).
38
Alberto Carocci: Italian publisher.
Utai: the rhythmic chanting of No texts.
Rihaku: Japanese name for the Chinese poet Li Po.
con espressioni di alta Stima: with expressions of high esteem.
40
HajimeMatsumiya: ( T^X"^ ^'ll ),Councillorof the Japanese embassy in Italy, 1936-38.
ABC: ABC of Reading [A3 5].
W. E. Wloodward: see selection of letters from Pound to Woodward in Paideuma,
vol. 15, no. 1 (Spring 1986), pp. 105-20.
41
Suma Gen;i: a No play whose "suspense is the suspense of waiting for a supernatu- ral manifestation--which comes"; see The Classic Noh Theatre of Japan.
Active Anthology: [B32].
Make It New: [A36].
The Chinese Written Character: [B36].
Ta Hio: [A28].
D. C. Fox; Douglas Fox, assistant to Leo Frobenius at the Forschungsinstitut fiir
Kulturmorphologie in Frankfurt; edited numerous works of Frobenius. Paideuma was the name of the journal the institute published.
? NOTES
221
43
Margaret Lenoa; Margaret Gerstley Lenoa corresponded with Pound on staging No plays, etc.
Meierhold: Wsewolod Emiljewitsch Meyerhold (1874-1942), Russian actor and director.
44
Pauthier: M. G. Pauthier, French translator of Confucius, kana: Japanese syllabary.
Cathay: published in 1915 [A9].
45
Globe: Milwaukee magazine to which Pound contributed articles on politics and economics during 1937-38.
Uncle George: Representative George Holden Tinkham of Massachussetts; he met Pound in Italy.
J'uomo piu educate: "the most experienced, or knowledgeable man. "
Ronald Duncan: British poet and editor of Townsman (London); "no relation" of the
American dancer.
Satie: Erik Satie, who lived in Arcueil, a southern section of Paris.
Sasajima: Toshio Sasajima ( f^'? S) -^^ ), a member of the vou Club. Nakamura: Chio Nakamura ( ^ T^ ^ /%_^ ), a member of the vou Club. KOIKE:TakeshiKoike( ^hv^^^), amemberofthevouClub.
Cummings: e. e. cummings.
Morrison: Robert Morrison, a Protestant missionary in Asia who compiled a six-
volume Chinese-English dictionary (published in Malacca, 1815-22).
48
MAO SHE CH-HING tseen: Moo Shi cheng chien ( % ttf '^ ^- ), the text of the
Kwan Kwan Tsheu kew: f^ f^ ^ ^ ^H) ? The first line of the first poem (a folksong of Southern Chou) included in the Confucian Odes, meaning " 'Kwan, kwan' sing the [two] eaglefishers. " "Kwan" means "pass," but it is used here as onoma- topoeia of the bird's cry.
49
assuperiorman. . . : Pound'stranslationfromthefourthandsixthlinesofthesame
Lacharme interpretatione, edidit Julius Mohl (Stuttgart and Tubingen, 1830). Hemingway's "They aJJ made peace": VOU no. 19 (July 1, 1937) contains Kitasono's
Confucian Book of Odes edited with notes by Mao Heng [^ %. Ch'ang( \ X ), later annotated by Cheng Hsuan( ^p ^ period, and reputedly the most authentic version of the Odes.
poem in the Confucian Odes above:
old latin bloke: P. Lacharme, Conjucii Chi-King, sive Liber Carminum, ex Latina, P.
J^ ^ ~^h' \iB-
^^^^^^
) and Mao ) inthelaterHan
? 222 NOTES
Japanese translation of the poem by Hemingway (pp. 33-4).
Butcharl: Montgomery Butchart, author of Money, one of Pound's select economic
texts.
50
Jennings' appalling translation: The Shi King: The 0\d "Voeivy Classic" of the Chinese by William Jennings (1891).
51
beautiful book; Kitasono's book of poetry, Letters of the Summer
[Natsu no Tegami in Japanese]; La Lettre d'ete referred to in Kitasono's leuer of 6 September 1937.
BrinkJey: Francis Brinkley (1841-1912), an English Japanophile journalist. Visited Japan as a naval attache to the English Embassy in Tokyo in 1867; in 1881 bought the Japan MaiJ and became its president and chief editor. In 1892, also began writing for the London Times as its Tokyo correspondent. Author of Guide to English SeJ/-taught (1875); History of the Empire of Japan (1893); Japan and China (1903); New Guide to English Self-taught (1909); History of the Japanese People from the Earliest Times to the End of Meiji Era (1915).
52
^^^lih
crow. " Pound later translated the line (rightly) as "All red things foxes, each
black a crow/(evil in omen)," in Part One, Book 3, The CJassicaJ Anthology Defined by Confucius (1954), p. 19.
nowtrednot. . . :
(
%%M^%^
). "Red is the fox, black is the
Ukiyoe: woodblock print.
55
56
Bigelow: William Sturgis Bigelow (1850-1926), an American physician and Orien- talist who went to Japan in 1882. He later became a Buddhist, and gave his collection of Japanese works of art to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. See Van Wyck Brooks, FenoJJosa and His Circle.
58
Broletto: Italian quarterly magazine edited by Carlo Peroni.
Maria's booklet: Maria Pound's essay, "Gais or the Beauties of the Tyrol," was
eventually published in the Reijokai ( /^ -(f" ^ ) in Japanese translation by
Kitasono; Reijokai, vol. 18, no. 1 (January 1, 1939), pp. 98-111. Guide: Guide to Kulchur [A45].
(
I''i T*^
)
? NOTES
223
59
beautiful Townsman: refers to Townsman, vol. I, no. 1 (January, 1938) which contained Pound's introductory essay "vou Club" and a selection of poems by its members translated into English. Their poems were to be published in New Directions 1938, edited by James Laughlin. See Appendix.
62
Peroni: Carlo Peroni, editor of Broletto.
What does vou stand for? : According to Yasuo Fujitomi, when Kitasono and Shozo
Iwamoto were talking in 1935 about their new magazine in a coffee house, Iwamoto unconsciously and idly wrote with water from his fingertip on the table V and O and U. Kitasono thought vou had no meaning in any language, and they decided then that it be the title of the magazine.
UTAi:(^^) isthevocalpartoftheNoplay,andhasnothingtodowithvou. our PurceJJ music; Pound had organized performances at Rapallo of ten trio sonatas for two violins and continue by Henry Purcell (1658-95), based on an edition by
W. Gillies Whittaker and published by L'Oiseau Lyre in Paris. sheets of gaJiey proof: for Guide to KuJchur [A45].
63
Youngmen's Noh Plays: No plays performed by young men.
65
Kagekiyo and Kumasako: two No plays.
very smaJJ Western college: Olivet College (Michigan); see Pound/Ford, Letters, ed.
T. Materer, pp. 152-4.
Claude Bowers: member of the National Institute of Art and Letters in the U. S. ;
author of fefferson and Hamilton and The Tragic Era, books Pound strongly
recommended. U. S. Ambassador to Spain in 1938.
Fox: Douglas C. Fox, Leo Frobenius' assistant.
Delphian Quarterly: edited by Mary W. Burd; printed article by Olga Rudge on
Vivaldi, as well as numerous articles and letters by Pound, including "Reorganize Your Dead Universities" (April 1938 issue).
66
TongKienKangMou;T'ungchienkangmu('^ffl_'tjBl,. ^ri^ Q [Tsugankomokuin J
Japanese](59vols. ),abridgedbyChuHsi( '^^) fromTzuchiht'ungchien
(
C ^"3 J*^ ^^ ) [Shijitsugan in Japanese] (294 vols. ) by Su-Man Kuang
( Sl . 5^ ^
) oftheSungDynasty.
sort of notes left by Emperor Toi-tsong: cf. Canto 54, "And the Emperor Tai Tsong
left his son 'Notes on Conduct'. "
the first government note: According to Meng Lin ( ^/S:p|- ) of the Ching ( }'^)
dynasty, the currency notes had been used since the time of Kao Tsong in the
? 224
NOTES
T'ang period in China. But, according to more recent studies, the first govern-
ment note ( ? _ ^ ) appeared in 1023 in the Sung period. Pro/. Mori; see notes to Pound's letter of 24 May 1936.
Mr. Matsumiya: see Pound's letter of 1 January 1937.
67
Miss R/: Olga Rudge.
Isida:IchiroIshida(1909- ),JapanesecomposerandfriendofKitasono;amonghis
works is Piano Pieces: Northern Country.
68
Manyosyu: Manyoshu, the oldest Japanese anthology of poetry compiled toward the end of the Nara period, in the latter half of the eighth century. It comprises about 4,500 poems written by various classes of people, from Emperor to com- mon soldiers, living in various districts in Japan, from the fifth century to 759.
Waka: literally means Japanese poetry. In ancient times the word "waka" was used, to distinguish it from Chinese poetry, to denote choka, tanka, sedoka, and other forms of Japanese poetry, with the rhythmic pattern based on the combination of 5 and 7 syllables, but it now denotes particularly tanka, the most popular form among them, with 5, 7, 5, 7 and 7 syllables.
Uta: literally means poetry or song; it often denotes tanka.
Kokinsyu: Kokinwakashu [Anthology of Japanese Poetry, Ancient and Modern),
compiled between c. 905 and c. 914 by Ki no Tsurayuki, Ki no Tomonori, Oshikochi no Mitsune, and Mibu no Tadamine, by command of Emperor Daigo (888-930). It comprises about 1,100 poems, most of which are tanka.
Sinkokinsyu: Shinkokinwakashu [New Anthology of Japanese Poetry, Ancient and Modern), commissioned in 1201 by ex-Emperor Gotoba (1180-1239) and completed in 1221. Among the six compilers was Fujiwara Teika. It comprises about 2,000 poems. [All the dates supplied by Kitasono in parentheses for the three anthologies are uncertain. ]
A Guide to Japanese Studies: Kokusai Bunka Shinkokai, eds. , A Guide to Japanese Studies; Orientation in the Studies of Japanese History, Buddhism, Shintoism, Art, Classic Literature, Modern Literature (Tokyo: KBS, 1937).
K. B. S. : Kokusai Bunka Shinkokai ( ^ f,^ i. '^^'^^^4> ) [Society for Pro- moting International Cultural Exchange).
70
Cactus II: Cactus IrJand
Wyndham LI: Wyndham Lewis.
new portrait of me/: portrait in Tate Gallery.
72
K2? : "K secondo" or "duo"; K two times.
Girl's Circle; Rei/okai; see Pound's letter to Kitasono, 18 January 1938, and Kitaso-
no's letter to Pound. 10 February 1939.
? NOTES 225
Porteus: Hugh Gordon Porteus wrote, ". . . the most fruitful experiments with lan- guage are likely to continue to emerge from those who concern themselves with images and their relations. . . . Nothing more novel and exciting has been done
lately, along these lines, than by the poets of the Japanese VOU group. Criterion, vol. XVIII (January, 1939), pp. 397.
73
. "
Charles Henri Ford; American avant garde poet (1910-? ); author of numerous books of poetry, editor of Blues (1929- ) and View (1940- ). Ford's The Garden of Disorder and Other Poems (European Press, 1938) was reviewed by Kitasono in VOU no. 26 (April 26, 1939), pp. 17-8; Kitasono also translated into Japanese W. C. Williams' "Preface" to the book and Ford's note on international chain poems.
Chain poem: Charles Henri Ford was also a contributor, along with Kitasono, to the chain poem printed in New Directions 1940, together with his introductory "How to Write a Chainpoem. "
74
ALL theNoh pJaysought to be/iJmed; in a later letter (31 October 1939) to Iris Barry, curator of the film archive of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, Pound wrote:
Dear Iris
Cant remember everything all the time.
"Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive"--I suppose. W^ell, paradise comes, as Pound observed in the Cantos, "spezzato"--in bits and pieces. My memory is of an Ezraic generosity wide as the oceans--at least spanning oceans--and a keen curiosity that swept Japan into its vast net. Light would come from the East. Pound believed: the particularity of its perceptions reflecting the physical immediacy of the ideogrammatic characters. He abhorredabstractthoughtand likeBertoltBrecht--believed"thetruthis concrete" (the phrase is Brecht's). The concreteness of truth--this is what Pound found in the Far East. He never traveled to the Orient but for a while it so happened that I saw Japan as his surrogate. Being "Reck at Lake Biwa" has left a lot to live up to.
? 214 POSTSCRIPT
POSTSCRIPT: In Place of a Note to Letter 71
U SEFUL BOOKS need no explanation; they speak for themselves as this one does. But there may be some justification in underlining a new facet of Pound in his role of Father and Teacher and to add a touch of humor to an otherwise very serious text.
Pound must have been pleased when Katue Kitasono, alias "Kit Kat," assured him that young readers in Tokyo liked the description of life and customs in the Tyrol. The fact that neither Pound nor I could read Japanese made my rudimentary drawings of haystacks and rakes all the more valu- able as pictographs.
To Mary Moore of Trenton, on January 17, 1938, Pound wrote: "My own daughter has just made her literary debut in Japan. " Such explicit state- ments are rare in his correspondence. A day earlier he had fired off a typically cagey long letter "to the Rt/ Rev the possum and Omnibosphorous WHALE the one to hand to tother in ConSybbletashun. "
Everyone knows that the Possum is T. S. Eliot and that after his conver- sion to the Anglican Church, Pound playfully addressed him as the Right Reverend. The "Whale" was Frank Morley, a fellow editor at Faber & Faber who worked in close consultation with Eliot. He was sailing for New York, hence the "Omnibosphorous"; in a subsequent letter, "a wallowink on the Adlandik. " Morley, sometimes honored with the title of "Son of Narwahl," vied with his two friends in inventing a language for their private zoo filled with panthers, elephants, rabbits and cats, bats and lesser animals. Their letters can not be paraphrased, though more often than not, they need explaining. We can only hope to read them soon in their entirety.
Pound's promoting of unknown young authors is legendary. Modesty ought to forbid my transcribing parts of the letters concerning me, but it is to his credit:
. . . interesting to translate. Child of twelve/ stylistic influence if any. Miss Martineau's Norway (Italian translation of that to explain where a Norwegian child came from). And with all the fake naive stuff, a little real is a comfort/ to say nought of the perfectly good bits that Frazer hasn't got into the Golden Bough. If a child wrote it it must be compre- hensible to other infants? I don't think there can be any more cause the child has been uprooted and sent to a place to get kulchur. . . .
I have simplified the spelling. The "Norwegian child" is Henny Bull
? POSTSCRIPT
215
Simonsen, and the effect of Miss Martineau's book was such that our friendship endures to this day.
WhileI wasgettingkulchurinFlorence,Poundwassuggestingpossible illustrators for The Beauties of the Tyrol. Edmund Dulac was one of them. He made it quite clear I was not a young prodigy; Mozart and Shirley Temple notwithstanding, he had a real horror of young prodigies. He asked the gentlemen at Fabers that the contract be made with the "authoress to whomlcheerfully deed over translation fees as encouragement. . . . "There seemed to have been no doubt in his mind that the booklet would make Fabers' fortune! But Mr. Eliot, after due consideration, answered, yes, it was a nice little book, well written and life well portrayed, but there was just one objection: "it couldn't sell. "
"I takes my possum as he cooks it" (EP to TSE, 25 Nov. 1937) was not always the case. Not when the Possum was not possum enough to hide his tracks and betrayed careless reading of his friend's letters. He had some- what ironically wondered if Pound had become proficient in Swedish, or whether he had translated from an Italian translation from the Swedish.
W. C. Williams' story that my mother was a Swede curiously rankled andPound may have detected a lingering echo. So the final comment was: "Waaal naow Protopherious . . . the error was I didn't send it to Larry [Pollinger, the literary agent] who would have saved you the error of thinking it wouldn't sell. " And he bets that when it does get printed, it will sell TWO copies for every copy Faber has sold of his (E. P. 's) own work, with the exception perhaps of Selected Poems to which Eliot had written the preface. In closing, the seemingly nonchalant riposte: "Oh yes, en passant/ the Tyrol has never been Swedish/ perhaps you mix Gustavus Adolphus with the late Frangois whiskers Giuseppe. " That ended the matter, and Pound has taught us not to overestimate juvenilia, be it his own or anyone else's.
What we get in this collection of letters to Japan is the persistent effort of an adult and responsible artist to create a better understanding between distant nations and the establishment of culture as a concrete value, a measure of exchange. If the possession of a small island threatens blood- shed, let the contendants trade off land for such a commodity as a tradition- al and highly refined form of art. An island like Guam in exchange for one hundred films of No plays, for instance. Men paid to talk peace might examine such simple solutions?
--Mary de Rachewiltz
? 216
NOTES
NOTES TO LETTERS
1
YoneNoguchi:YonejiroNoguchi ^tZ ^^^j>[1875-1947]. Inanundated
(
letter of 1914 to his mother, Pound wrote: "Yone Noguchi dined with me on Tuesday; interesting litterateur of the second order. Dont like him so well as Sung, or Coomaraswami. Still you neednt repeat this, as the acquaintance may grow and there's no telling when one will want to go to Japan. "
The Pilgrimage: a book of verse by Yonejiro Noguchi, illustrated with wood-block prints by Utamaro, published by Elkin Mathews in 1909.
Mathews: Elkin Mathews had published Pound's A Quinzaine/or This YuJe (1908) [A2], Personae (1909) [A3], Exultations (1909) [A4], and Canzoni (1911) [A7].
The Spirit of Romance: was published by J. M. Dent & Sons (1910) [A5]. Yeats: W. B. Yeats
Mary FenoIJosa: wife of Ernest Francis Fenollosa (1853-1908), American scholar and Orientalist who taught philosophy and economics at Tokyo Imperial Uni- versity (1878-86) and other universities in Japan, while he studied Japanese and Chinese art, religion and literature.
Along with fellow Americans in Japan--Edward Morse, Percival Lowell, Wil- liam Sturgis Bigelow, Lafcadio Hearn and John La Farge--Fenollosa and his circle greatly contributed to the rediscovery of the value of Japan's classical artistic heritage at a time when it was being neglectfully cast aside in favor of Westernization and modernization. See Van Wyck Brooks, Fenollosa and His Circle (N. Y. : E. P. Button, 1962).
Sarojini: Sarojini Naidu (1879-1949), a Bengali poet. Educated in England, she is the author of The Golden Threshold (1905) and other poems written in English. Mary Fenollosa had met Pound at Naidu's home in London on September 29, 1913. See Omar Pound and A. Walton Litz, eds. , Ezra Pound and Dorothy Shakespear: Their Letters 1909-1914, pp. 264-70; and D. G. Bridson, "An Inter- view with Ezra Pound," New Directions 17, ed. James Laughlin, p. 177.
"My City, My beloved . . . ":i. e. New York City. Quoted from the first line of Pound's poem, "N. Y. ," included in Ripostes (1912).
Franz Hals: Frans Hals (15817-1666), Dutch portrait painter.
banshee: a supernatural being in Irish and Scottish folklore, supposed to give
warnings by its wails of an approaching death in the family.
Mr. Hirata: Kiichiro Hirata (1873-1943), translator, essayist, and scholar of English literature. After studying at Oxford University, he taught at Tokyo Koto Shihan
]
? NOTES
217
Gakko and other universities. Author of Studies of Recent English Literature,
and Essays of Tokuboku ("Tokuboku" is his pen name).
Romaji: Roman letters.
"Kinuta": a No play included in Fenollosa and Pound, tr. , The Classical Noh
Theatre of Japan; so are "Nishikigi" and "Hagoromo. "
"Voroboshi": "Yoroboshi," a No play. A blind child beggar at Tennoji in Naniwa
turns out to be the son of the man in the seventeen-day Buddhist practice at the same temple. The son, having been enlightened, is led by his father's prayers to describe the beautiful scenes of Naniwa as he envisions them in his mind, and dances. The two return home.
"Sumidagawa": In search of her son, the mother comes from Kyoto to the bank of the Sumida River, only to find his tomb; there at night she tries to embrace his ghost in vain.
Verdun: a city on the Meuse River, in the north-eastern part of France; site of significant battle of World War I.
8
Itow: Michio Ito (f f P^J^^p) [1893-1961], a Japanese dancer; played the part of the Hawk at the performance of Yeats' At the Hawk's Well in Lady Cunard's drawing room on April 2, 1916, for which Edmund Dulac designed and made the costumes and masks. In writing this play, Yeats had been inspired by the Japanese No plays in English translation in Ernest Fenollosa's notebooks.
the "cloud-bridge": Hashigakari, the bridge between the stage and the retiring room in the No theatre.
11
Lustra: was published by Elkin Mathews (1916) [All].
Certain NobJe PJays o/ Japan: with an introduction by W. B. Yeats, was published
by The Cuala Press (1916) [A12).
Miss Bisland: Elizabeth Bisland (1861-1929), later Mrs. Elizabeth B. Wetmore, who
edited the letters of Lafcadio Hearn; a friend of Mary Fenollosa's.
Tagore: Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), Bengali poet, dramatist and mystic; acquaintance of Pound and Yeats. His "hiding, incognito, somewhere in South-
ern California" is spurious. Awarded Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913.
13
book on poor Gaudier Brzeska: Gaudier Brzeska, published by John Lane (1916) [AlO].
Egoist: edited by Harriet Weaver and Dora Marsden.
? 218 NOTES
Quest: edited by G. R. S. Mead.
Poetry Review: edited by Harold Monro.
15
play . . . about Fox: Michio Ito had performed "Fox Dance" in 1915.
18
Coburn: Alvin Langdon Coburn (1882-1966), American photographer who resided at the time in London; see his Autobiography, ed. Helmut and Alison Gern- sheim. A photograph of Pound by Coburn was reproduced as frontispiece for Lustra (1916). Pound had listed him as a faculty member in the "Preliminary Announcement of the College of Arts" (1914).
22
East Stroudsburg: a town on the upper Delaware River which Pound had been acquainted with in his youth.
DaJcroze: Emile Jaques-Dalcroze (1865-1950), Swiss composer and music teacher; inventor of eurhythmies, a system whereby music is coordinated with body movements. He founded the various Instituts Jaques-Dalcroze throughout Eu- rope.
Kyogen: Japanese traditional comedy which developed with the No, and is often performed with No plays on the No stage.
"Shojo," "Kagekiyo," "Hagoromo": No plays, included in Fenollosa-Pound transla- tions, Certain NobJe PJays of Japan [ Al 2] . "Your book" refers to 'Noh ' or Accom- plishment [A13].
"Busu": a piece of Kyogen. During the master's absence, his two servants find out that the "busu," which they have been told to be poison, is actually black sugar. They eat it up, and break their master's favorite hanging scroll and a bowl as well.
25
Kandinsky: Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944), Russian abstract painter and mystic; see his Concerning the Spiritual in Art [Uber das Geistige in der Kunst] (pub- lished in 1914 in English translation as The Art of Spiritual Harmony).
26
Picabia: Francis Picabia (1879-1953), French Dadaist and "sur-irrealist" painter; acquaintance of Pound's in Paris.
27
Capt. /. BrinkJey; John Brinkley (1887-1964), son of Francis Brinkley and uncle of Aya, wife of Gonkuro Koume (younger brother of Tami); worked for the League of Nations in Paris.
? NOTES 219
30
Gakushuin: ( |^ p P/C ). educational institution established in 1877 in Tokyo mainly for the children of Japanese nobility. It is now open to the public, and includes a co-ed university, high school and other levels.
Barney: Natalie Clifford Barney, who held the "Friday salon," was "I'Amazone" of Remy de Gourmont's Letters to an Amazon. See Charles Norman, Ezra Pound (New York: MacMillan, 1960), p. 269.
32
FenoJIosa: see note to letter 4.
Umewaka Minora: Minora Umewaka ( ^-^/p
) [1827-1909], a Japanese No player; gave lessons to Fenollosa. See letter 5; see aJso Fenollosa and Pound,
'Nob' or Accomplishment.
Dr. Mori: Kainan Mori ( y^^% ^ ) [1863-1911], a Japanese scholar of Chinese
language and literature; gave lessons to Fenollosa.
Dr. Ariga: Nagao Ariga ( ^ '^ h^'^%- ) [1860-1921] graduated from Tokyo Im-
perial University in 1882, where he was a student of Fenollosa. Doctor of jurisprudence in international law; taught at Tokyo Imperial University and Waseda University. Author of a number of books on literature, sociology, and pedagogy as well as international law; later became a member of the Privy Council. He was an assistant-interpreter for Fenollosa while the latter was in Japan, and the translator of Fenollosa's Epochs oj Chinese and Japanese Art after it was posthumously published in 1912.
that earth quake: "The Great Earthquake of Kanto" which struck Tokyo and Yoko- hama area on September 1, 1923. According to the statistics, the magnitude was 7. 8-8. 2; deaths totalled 99,331, with 43,476 missing.
C. H. Douglas: Major Clifford Hugh Douglas (1879-1952), British economist and originator of the theory of Social Credit, which holds that maldistribution of wealth due to insufficient purchasing power is the reason for economic de- pressions and World Wars.
Published articles in A. R. Orage's The New Age.
Gesell: Silvio Gesell (1862-1930), Minister of Finance of the second Munich Repub- lic (1919); monetary reformer and author of The Natural Economic Order.
Cavalcanti: Guido Cavalcanti Rime, published in 1932 [B27]. ABC of Reading: published in 1934 [A35]
33
Jean Cocteau: French poet and long-standing friend of Pound's from his years in Paris (1920-25).
35
Izzo and Camerino: Carlo Izzo, an Italian translator of Pound's poems, and his friend Aldo Camerino, sent out a group of letters in the fall of 1935, and launched
f:
? 220 NOTES
"a movement tending to establish a regular exchange of technical, mostly pro- sodic, information . . . between literary people of different countries"; see Charles Norman, Ezra Pound, p. 332.
Bunting: Basil Bunting, British poet.
LaughJin; James Laughlin, publisher of New Directions.
Zukofsky: Louis Zukofsky, American poet.
AngoJd; J. P. Angold, a British poet; author of an unpublished book on economics
called "Work and Privilege" which Pound tried to translate into Italian; see
David Heymann, The Last Rower (New York: Viking Press, 1976), p. 140. weJsh scholar: W. Moelwyn Merchant? ; Hugh Gordon Porteus?
36
]efferson and/or Mussolini: published in July 1935 [A41].
37
Ken Yanagisawa: { %^f '^'^ "j^ ) [1889-1953], Japanese diplomat and poet; author of Orchard, Journals of South Europe, and Twilight on the Indian Ocean.
Ginza: the most fashionable street in Tokyo at that time.
uivKER and Bopoto: see Kitasono's letter to Pound (30 January 1937).
38
Alberto Carocci: Italian publisher.
Utai: the rhythmic chanting of No texts.
Rihaku: Japanese name for the Chinese poet Li Po.
con espressioni di alta Stima: with expressions of high esteem.
40
HajimeMatsumiya: ( T^X"^ ^'ll ),Councillorof the Japanese embassy in Italy, 1936-38.
ABC: ABC of Reading [A3 5].
W. E. Wloodward: see selection of letters from Pound to Woodward in Paideuma,
vol. 15, no. 1 (Spring 1986), pp. 105-20.
41
Suma Gen;i: a No play whose "suspense is the suspense of waiting for a supernatu- ral manifestation--which comes"; see The Classic Noh Theatre of Japan.
Active Anthology: [B32].
Make It New: [A36].
The Chinese Written Character: [B36].
Ta Hio: [A28].
D. C. Fox; Douglas Fox, assistant to Leo Frobenius at the Forschungsinstitut fiir
Kulturmorphologie in Frankfurt; edited numerous works of Frobenius. Paideuma was the name of the journal the institute published.
? NOTES
221
43
Margaret Lenoa; Margaret Gerstley Lenoa corresponded with Pound on staging No plays, etc.
Meierhold: Wsewolod Emiljewitsch Meyerhold (1874-1942), Russian actor and director.
44
Pauthier: M. G. Pauthier, French translator of Confucius, kana: Japanese syllabary.
Cathay: published in 1915 [A9].
45
Globe: Milwaukee magazine to which Pound contributed articles on politics and economics during 1937-38.
Uncle George: Representative George Holden Tinkham of Massachussetts; he met Pound in Italy.
J'uomo piu educate: "the most experienced, or knowledgeable man. "
Ronald Duncan: British poet and editor of Townsman (London); "no relation" of the
American dancer.
Satie: Erik Satie, who lived in Arcueil, a southern section of Paris.
Sasajima: Toshio Sasajima ( f^'? S) -^^ ), a member of the vou Club. Nakamura: Chio Nakamura ( ^ T^ ^ /%_^ ), a member of the vou Club. KOIKE:TakeshiKoike( ^hv^^^), amemberofthevouClub.
Cummings: e. e. cummings.
Morrison: Robert Morrison, a Protestant missionary in Asia who compiled a six-
volume Chinese-English dictionary (published in Malacca, 1815-22).
48
MAO SHE CH-HING tseen: Moo Shi cheng chien ( % ttf '^ ^- ), the text of the
Kwan Kwan Tsheu kew: f^ f^ ^ ^ ^H) ? The first line of the first poem (a folksong of Southern Chou) included in the Confucian Odes, meaning " 'Kwan, kwan' sing the [two] eaglefishers. " "Kwan" means "pass," but it is used here as onoma- topoeia of the bird's cry.
49
assuperiorman. . . : Pound'stranslationfromthefourthandsixthlinesofthesame
Lacharme interpretatione, edidit Julius Mohl (Stuttgart and Tubingen, 1830). Hemingway's "They aJJ made peace": VOU no. 19 (July 1, 1937) contains Kitasono's
Confucian Book of Odes edited with notes by Mao Heng [^ %. Ch'ang( \ X ), later annotated by Cheng Hsuan( ^p ^ period, and reputedly the most authentic version of the Odes.
poem in the Confucian Odes above:
old latin bloke: P. Lacharme, Conjucii Chi-King, sive Liber Carminum, ex Latina, P.
J^ ^ ~^h' \iB-
^^^^^^
) and Mao ) inthelaterHan
? 222 NOTES
Japanese translation of the poem by Hemingway (pp. 33-4).
Butcharl: Montgomery Butchart, author of Money, one of Pound's select economic
texts.
50
Jennings' appalling translation: The Shi King: The 0\d "Voeivy Classic" of the Chinese by William Jennings (1891).
51
beautiful book; Kitasono's book of poetry, Letters of the Summer
[Natsu no Tegami in Japanese]; La Lettre d'ete referred to in Kitasono's leuer of 6 September 1937.
BrinkJey: Francis Brinkley (1841-1912), an English Japanophile journalist. Visited Japan as a naval attache to the English Embassy in Tokyo in 1867; in 1881 bought the Japan MaiJ and became its president and chief editor. In 1892, also began writing for the London Times as its Tokyo correspondent. Author of Guide to English SeJ/-taught (1875); History of the Empire of Japan (1893); Japan and China (1903); New Guide to English Self-taught (1909); History of the Japanese People from the Earliest Times to the End of Meiji Era (1915).
52
^^^lih
crow. " Pound later translated the line (rightly) as "All red things foxes, each
black a crow/(evil in omen)," in Part One, Book 3, The CJassicaJ Anthology Defined by Confucius (1954), p. 19.
nowtrednot. . . :
(
%%M^%^
). "Red is the fox, black is the
Ukiyoe: woodblock print.
55
56
Bigelow: William Sturgis Bigelow (1850-1926), an American physician and Orien- talist who went to Japan in 1882. He later became a Buddhist, and gave his collection of Japanese works of art to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. See Van Wyck Brooks, FenoJJosa and His Circle.
58
Broletto: Italian quarterly magazine edited by Carlo Peroni.
Maria's booklet: Maria Pound's essay, "Gais or the Beauties of the Tyrol," was
eventually published in the Reijokai ( /^ -(f" ^ ) in Japanese translation by
Kitasono; Reijokai, vol. 18, no. 1 (January 1, 1939), pp. 98-111. Guide: Guide to Kulchur [A45].
(
I''i T*^
)
? NOTES
223
59
beautiful Townsman: refers to Townsman, vol. I, no. 1 (January, 1938) which contained Pound's introductory essay "vou Club" and a selection of poems by its members translated into English. Their poems were to be published in New Directions 1938, edited by James Laughlin. See Appendix.
62
Peroni: Carlo Peroni, editor of Broletto.
What does vou stand for? : According to Yasuo Fujitomi, when Kitasono and Shozo
Iwamoto were talking in 1935 about their new magazine in a coffee house, Iwamoto unconsciously and idly wrote with water from his fingertip on the table V and O and U. Kitasono thought vou had no meaning in any language, and they decided then that it be the title of the magazine.
UTAi:(^^) isthevocalpartoftheNoplay,andhasnothingtodowithvou. our PurceJJ music; Pound had organized performances at Rapallo of ten trio sonatas for two violins and continue by Henry Purcell (1658-95), based on an edition by
W. Gillies Whittaker and published by L'Oiseau Lyre in Paris. sheets of gaJiey proof: for Guide to KuJchur [A45].
63
Youngmen's Noh Plays: No plays performed by young men.
65
Kagekiyo and Kumasako: two No plays.
very smaJJ Western college: Olivet College (Michigan); see Pound/Ford, Letters, ed.
T. Materer, pp. 152-4.
Claude Bowers: member of the National Institute of Art and Letters in the U. S. ;
author of fefferson and Hamilton and The Tragic Era, books Pound strongly
recommended. U. S. Ambassador to Spain in 1938.
Fox: Douglas C. Fox, Leo Frobenius' assistant.
Delphian Quarterly: edited by Mary W. Burd; printed article by Olga Rudge on
Vivaldi, as well as numerous articles and letters by Pound, including "Reorganize Your Dead Universities" (April 1938 issue).
66
TongKienKangMou;T'ungchienkangmu('^ffl_'tjBl,. ^ri^ Q [Tsugankomokuin J
Japanese](59vols. ),abridgedbyChuHsi( '^^) fromTzuchiht'ungchien
(
C ^"3 J*^ ^^ ) [Shijitsugan in Japanese] (294 vols. ) by Su-Man Kuang
( Sl . 5^ ^
) oftheSungDynasty.
sort of notes left by Emperor Toi-tsong: cf. Canto 54, "And the Emperor Tai Tsong
left his son 'Notes on Conduct'. "
the first government note: According to Meng Lin ( ^/S:p|- ) of the Ching ( }'^)
dynasty, the currency notes had been used since the time of Kao Tsong in the
? 224
NOTES
T'ang period in China. But, according to more recent studies, the first govern-
ment note ( ? _ ^ ) appeared in 1023 in the Sung period. Pro/. Mori; see notes to Pound's letter of 24 May 1936.
Mr. Matsumiya: see Pound's letter of 1 January 1937.
67
Miss R/: Olga Rudge.
Isida:IchiroIshida(1909- ),JapanesecomposerandfriendofKitasono;amonghis
works is Piano Pieces: Northern Country.
68
Manyosyu: Manyoshu, the oldest Japanese anthology of poetry compiled toward the end of the Nara period, in the latter half of the eighth century. It comprises about 4,500 poems written by various classes of people, from Emperor to com- mon soldiers, living in various districts in Japan, from the fifth century to 759.
Waka: literally means Japanese poetry. In ancient times the word "waka" was used, to distinguish it from Chinese poetry, to denote choka, tanka, sedoka, and other forms of Japanese poetry, with the rhythmic pattern based on the combination of 5 and 7 syllables, but it now denotes particularly tanka, the most popular form among them, with 5, 7, 5, 7 and 7 syllables.
Uta: literally means poetry or song; it often denotes tanka.
Kokinsyu: Kokinwakashu [Anthology of Japanese Poetry, Ancient and Modern),
compiled between c. 905 and c. 914 by Ki no Tsurayuki, Ki no Tomonori, Oshikochi no Mitsune, and Mibu no Tadamine, by command of Emperor Daigo (888-930). It comprises about 1,100 poems, most of which are tanka.
Sinkokinsyu: Shinkokinwakashu [New Anthology of Japanese Poetry, Ancient and Modern), commissioned in 1201 by ex-Emperor Gotoba (1180-1239) and completed in 1221. Among the six compilers was Fujiwara Teika. It comprises about 2,000 poems. [All the dates supplied by Kitasono in parentheses for the three anthologies are uncertain. ]
A Guide to Japanese Studies: Kokusai Bunka Shinkokai, eds. , A Guide to Japanese Studies; Orientation in the Studies of Japanese History, Buddhism, Shintoism, Art, Classic Literature, Modern Literature (Tokyo: KBS, 1937).
K. B. S. : Kokusai Bunka Shinkokai ( ^ f,^ i. '^^'^^^4> ) [Society for Pro- moting International Cultural Exchange).
70
Cactus II: Cactus IrJand
Wyndham LI: Wyndham Lewis.
new portrait of me/: portrait in Tate Gallery.
72
K2? : "K secondo" or "duo"; K two times.
Girl's Circle; Rei/okai; see Pound's letter to Kitasono, 18 January 1938, and Kitaso-
no's letter to Pound. 10 February 1939.
? NOTES 225
Porteus: Hugh Gordon Porteus wrote, ". . . the most fruitful experiments with lan- guage are likely to continue to emerge from those who concern themselves with images and their relations. . . . Nothing more novel and exciting has been done
lately, along these lines, than by the poets of the Japanese VOU group. Criterion, vol. XVIII (January, 1939), pp. 397.
73
. "
Charles Henri Ford; American avant garde poet (1910-? ); author of numerous books of poetry, editor of Blues (1929- ) and View (1940- ). Ford's The Garden of Disorder and Other Poems (European Press, 1938) was reviewed by Kitasono in VOU no. 26 (April 26, 1939), pp. 17-8; Kitasono also translated into Japanese W. C. Williams' "Preface" to the book and Ford's note on international chain poems.
Chain poem: Charles Henri Ford was also a contributor, along with Kitasono, to the chain poem printed in New Directions 1940, together with his introductory "How to Write a Chainpoem. "
74
ALL theNoh pJaysought to be/iJmed; in a later letter (31 October 1939) to Iris Barry, curator of the film archive of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, Pound wrote:
Dear Iris
Cant remember everything all the time.
