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Textual Attitudes and the Creation of a China in Ezra Pound's Shi Jing Tran

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Textual Attitudes and the Creation of a China in Ezra Pound's Shi Jing Tran î7 /1 2, Université de Monfréal Preposterous Transitions: Textual Attitudes and the Creation of a China in Ezra Pound’s Shi Jing Translations par Gregory McCormick Département d’études anglaises Faculté des arts et sciences Mémoire présenté à la Faculté des études supérieures en vue de l’obtention du grade de M.A. en anglais octobre, 2006 ©Gregory McCormick, 2006 R. u5 r3 o Université db de Montréal Dïrecion des bibIotlièques AVIS L’auteur a autorisé l’Université de Montréal à reproduire et diffuser, en totalité ou en partie, par quelque moyen que ce soit et sur quelque support que ce soit, et exclusivement à des fins non lucratives d’enseignement et de recherche, des copies de ce mémoire ou de cette thèse. L’auteur et les coauteurs le cas échéant conservent la propriété du droit d’auteur et des droits moraux qui protègent ce document. Ni la thèse ou le mémoire, ni des extraits substantiels de ce document, ne doivent être imprimés ou autrement reproduits sans l’autorisation de l’auteur. Afin de se conformer à la Loi canadienne sur la protection des renseignements personnels, quelques formulaires secondaires, coordonnées ou signatures intégrées au texte ont pu être enlevés de ce document. Bien que cela ait pu affecter la pagination, il n’y a aucun contenu manquant. NOTICE The author of this thesis or dissertation has granted a nonexciusive license allowing Université de Montréal to reproduce and publish the document, in part or in whole, and in any format, solely for noncommercial educational and research purposes. The author and co-authors if applicable retain copyright ownership and moral rights in this document. Neither the whole thesis or dissertation, flot substantial extracts from it, may be printed or otherwise teproduced without the author’s permission. In compliance with the Canadian Privacy Act some supporting forms, contact information or signatures may have been temoved from the document. While this may affect the document page count, it does flot tepresent any loss of content from the document. Université de Montréal faculté des études supérieures Ce mémoire intitulé Preposterous Transitions: Textual Attitudes and the Creation of a China in Ezra Pound’s $hi Jing Translations présenté par: Gregory McCormick a été évalué par un jury compos des personnes suivantes: 11 Résumé Celle thèse tente d’examiner la manière dont Ezra Pound fût à la fois inspiré et brimé par les pensées contemporaines d’une culture orientale dite mystérieuse et trop longtemps oubliée par les philosophes, artistes et écrivains occidentaux. Malgré que Qian, Hayot et Kem ont tissé des liens entre l’Orientalisme et les opinions de Pound sur la Chine, Confusius et l’Orient, la question du processus même des traductions de Pound, celui-ci fortement influencé par ses propres idées uniques sur l’Orientalisme, n’a pas été examinée à fond par le monde littéraire. En plus, si l’on étadie le recueil entourant les questions de la “méthode idéogrammique”, peu d’attention fût porté sur l’appropriation et la resignification de certains symboles chinois pour un public anglais et américain. Quoique l’intérêt des chercheurs sur la question du rapprochement de la traduction et l’Orientalisme est piqué, les précis et fonctions des emprunts et échanges transculturels ont été assez negligés. Quelle est la conséquence de l’usage de symboles culturels interpretés par un individu (Pound) pour son utilisation particulière? En explorant quelques hypothèses fondées par Pound lors de ses traductions, je tenterai de démontrer que sa traduction du Shi Jing lui a exigé de recréer une nation chinoise pour son public occidental. Quelles attentes espérait-il de son public cible et comment auraient celles-ci pu agir sur son approche à $hi Jing? Quelles odes spécifiques démontrent les opinions de Pound sur l’Orient et sa culture? Quels valeurs apporte-t-il à la traduction? Comment pourrait-on établir l’approche et les suppositions de Pound au sein d’un environnement où l’Orient était si exotique, si étranger? les mots clés Ezra Pound, orientalisme, $hi Jing, Shih King, les Odes, Confucius, le Chine Abstract My project explores the way in which Ezra Pound was both influenced and hindered by contemporary notions ffiat Asian cultures were mysterious and long overlooked by Western pbilosophers, artists, and writers. Though the connections between Orientalism and Pound’s views of China, Confucius and Asia generally have been examined in recent works by Qian, Hayot, and Kem, the issue ofhow ffie actual mechanics ofPound’s translation was affected by Pound’s unique ideas about Orientalism has not been examined to any large extent in the literature. Additionally, in the large body ofwork surrounding the questions ofPound’s “ideogrammic method,” relatively little attention lias been paidto Pound’s appropriation and resignification” of certain Chinese symbols for an English and American audience. Though ifie questions connecting translation wiffi Orientalism have interested many scholars, the specifics and mechanics ofthese trans-cultural borrowings and substitutions lias been relatively neglected. What are the implications of one individual borrowing a culturally-wide understood symbol for his own idiosyncratic use? By exploring some ofthe assumptions that Pound makes when translating, I will demonstrate that Pound’s project in translating the Shi Jing required bim to “create” the nation of China for bis western audiences. What did he expect from bis target language audience and how does ifiat affect bis approach to Shi Jing? What specific odes demonstrate Pound’s ideas about the Orient and its culture? What are the values he brings to traaslation? How miglit we situate Pound’s approach and Pound’s assumptions in an environment where the Orient was so exoticized and foreign? Key words: Ezra Pound, Orientalism, Shi Jing, Shih King, The Odes, Confiicius, China. for Lei vi Table of Contents Introduction 1 • Chapter One Pound as Modernist Translator/Traductor 20 Chapter Two The Orientalist Legacy 2$ Chapter Three Pound ‘s Approach: Imagism and Ideogram in Translationsfrom the Shi Jing 39 Chapter four The Shi Jing ‘s Three Modes ofExpression and Pound ‘s Ideogrammic Method 51 Conclusion 6$ vil A Note on Transiiteration and use of Characters This document employs the Pinyin system of transiiteration since the Wade-Giles system is generally falling out of use in academic discourse. Occasionally, I have used the former system if it has general currency in the English language. Addffionally, I am using the simplified system of Chinese characters as opposed to the traditional characters (IE4*) unless I am attempting to demonstrate how a character’s meaning may have changed or developed from classical times to more contemporary usage (particularly given the wide variations in spoken and written Chinese). viii Acknowledgements Thanks to Dr Andrew Miller for suggesting that I explore Ezra Pound’s translations as a starting point for my thesis. I gained an enormous amount from bis classes, and bis patient guidance and frequent suggestions have been invaluable to me as this proj cet took shape. Thanks, also, to Dr Heïke Harting for an inspiring (if at times daunting) reading list in her graduate seminar which contained a wealth ofknowledge about many areas related to this project. I am constantly amazed and iuspired at how much these readings (and her class generally) influenced me, flot only in terms ofthis project, but in terms ofmy personal approach to the complex interaction of cultures in this age of globalization. Finally, thanks to Masaru Nakane, for providing me with a comfortable tatami room for all those months in Tokyo when I worked on tins proj cet. ix In dusk’s pure air I read an anthology. Ancient poets lived in me, singing. --Adam Zagajewski, from “Anthology”1 I Mysticism for Beginners (New York: farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997) Introduction 2 “Where should the birds fly after the last sky?” This brief single une from Mahmoud Darwish’s1 poem serves as an important moment in Homi Bhabha’s argument in his 1994 book Location of Culture, a metaphor for modem life having become a collection ofgaffierings: Gatherings of exiles and émigrés and refugees; gathering on the edge of ‘foreign’ cultures; gathering at ifie frontiers; gatherings in the ghettos or cafés of city centers; gathering in the haif-life, half-light of foreign tongues, or in the uncanny fluency of another’s language; gaffiering the signs of approval and acceptance, degrees, discourses, disciplines; gathering the memories of underdevelopment, of other worlds lived retroactively; gaffiering the past in a ritual of revival; gaffiering the present. (200) These gatherings are important cross-sectionary encounters for Bhabha in his exploration of the West as “living the localily of culture,” particularly since, according to Bhabha, the West’s historicism aiways dominates the discussion of the nation as a cultural force. As groups of people were displaced in nineteenffi century European creations of “nation,” and later, as European powers expanded to the east in colonial I Edward $aid, trans., Afler the Last Sky (London: Faber, 1926). 3 domination and even more became displaced or lost their sense of “belonging,” the term “home” took on a textual meaning beyond simply a physical locale. Ideas about nation, home, race, language, religion ail became codified in a textual sense and ffieir meanings became something abstract. This “metaphor of language” is used by Bhabha as means by which to get at the discursive nature of the nation as a narrative tool for nationalism and national identity. Bhabha: the “metaphoric movement [of nation] requires a kind of ‘doubleness’ in writing; a temporality of representation that moves between cultural formations and social processes” (141). Though for Bhabha this metaphoric movement ultimately has its power in how the ideas of modernity are shaped, my interest in this textual notion of nation has to do with how a nation might be created textually for readers (or an audience) who have littie or no prior knowledge of the nation in question.
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