Pound's Translations of Confucius

Literary/ Cultural Context Essay

Yi-Kuan Su (University College London)

Ed. by Matthew Hofer, University of New Mexico
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Domains

Literature Topic

Dates

Date of occurrence 1928-1954

Places

United States (Location)
China (Involved)

Introduction

Canto XIII of Ezra Pound’s modernist epic begins with the lines “Kung walked / by the dynastic temple / and into the cedar grove.” “Kung” is the idiosyncratic French spelling of the name of the Chinese philosopher Confucius. The clarity and precision of the word “dynastic” links the poem not only to the past, but also to the perpetuating of traditions. Pound perceived himself as a devoted disciple of “Kung” and proclaimed that he had a mission to translate and transmit the moral philosophy of his master to the West: “The blossoms of the apricot / blow from the east to the west, /And I have tried to keep them from falling” (Canto XIII…

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

4784 words

Citation: Su, Yi-Kuan. "Pound's Translations of Confucius". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 26 January 2018 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=19500, accessed 24 November 2024.]

Save this article