Chinese Characters in Cantos
Chinese Characters in Cantos
Chinese Characters in Cantos
THE CANTOS
by
Baomei Lin
__________________________________
Tim Redman, Chair
__________________________________
Milton A. Cohen
__________________________________
Ming Dong Gu
__________________________________
Fredrick Turner
__________________________________
Daniel B. Wickberg
Copyright 2009
Baomei Lin
All Rights Reserved
CROSSING THE DIVIDE BETWEEN EAST AND WEST, ANCIENT AND MODERN:
THE CANTOS
by
DISSERTATION
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December, 2009
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This dissertation could not be completed without the guidance and support of a number of
people who have continually resuscitated both it and me. I am most grateful to Professor Tim
Redman, my director, for his outstanding judgment, useful suggestions, warm encouragement,
incredible patience, generous support, and continuing investment in my success. He has been an
Milton Cohen, Professor Mingdong Gu, Professor Fred Turner, and Professor Daniel
Wickberg— for reading and commenting on my work, for generously giving their time, hard
work and intelligent advice, and for broadening my thinking about poetry, history and culture.
In April 2003, my foster father’s death brought the sudden and unwanted resurrection of
memories. During my depression, numerous mentors have sustained my life and sanity. I am
profoundly indebted to Professor Turner whose generous bestowal of wisdom has brightened my
soul. Professor Michael Wilson, the Associate Dean of the School Arts and Humanities, also
gave me invaluable understanding and support. Dean Zena Jackson and Dean Tom Fox at North
Lake College became my protectors and friends. Sharon Bowles at the Student Counseling
I also leaned too much on the good and generous nature of close friends. Special gratitude
is due Cynthia Manning, Yun Zhang, Yingyan Zhou, Ping Deng, Yiping Wu, Claude Pruitt,
iv
Finally and especially I thank my foster father for his love. This dissertation was in his
May, 2009
v
CROSSING THE DIVIDE BETWEEN EAST AND WEST, ANCIENT AND MODERN:
THE CANTOS
This dissertation will argue that Pound’s Chinese transliteration reflects a deep understanding of
the Chinese language and that his intellectual, cultural, and linguistic empathy with the far and
remote Chinese sign system is impossible without the accessibility of the Chinese written signs
that are visual and organic. Pound’s transcultural or translingual practice demonstrates that he
does have a bridge of signs that can lead him in crossing the distance between East and West,
ancient and modern. This dissertation consists of two parts. Part One gives an overview of the
Chinese language and culture, reveals the organic nature of Chinese characters and its connection
to Pound’s poetics, and analyzes the functions of the Chinese characters in The Cantos. A mini-
dictionary of all the Chinese characters in The Cantos in the order of their appearance, Part Two
offers a detailed account of those characters’ shapes, sounds, and meanings. As a whole, this
vi
dissertation will provide insights into Pound’s creative use of Chinese signs with the instincts of
a keen cultural observer and preserver. His understanding of the signs and symbols in Chinese
characters led him away from his initial vision of its aesthetics as a remedy for the inert
Victorian verse and into a liminal realm where the collective unconscious of a silenced culture
vii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgments………………………………………………………………………………iv
Abstract……………………………………………………………………………….................vi
List of Illustrations………………………………………………………….……………………ix
Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………1
Works Cited…………………………………………………………………………………….245
Bibliography……………………………………………………………………...…………….247
Vita
viii
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Fig. 1…………………………………………………………………………………………….29
Fig. 2…………………………………………………………………………………………….30
Fig. 3…………………………………………………………………………………………….31
Fig. 4…………………………………………………………………………………………….31
Fig. 5…………………………………………………………………………………………….32
Fig. 6…………………………………………………………………………………………….32
Fig. 7…………………………………………………………………………………………….32
Fig. 8……………………………………………………………………………………………33
Fig. 9…………………………………………………………………………………………….33
Table 1…………………………………………………………………………………………..36
ix
INTRODUCTION
This dissertation will argue that Pound’s Chinese transliteration reflects a deep
understanding of the Chinese language and that his intellectual, cultural, and linguistic empathy
with the far and remote Chinese sign system is impossible without the accessibility of the
Chinese written signs that are visual and systematic. In my close reading within the context of a
large linguistic picture, Pound’s transcultural or translingual practice demonstrates a clear case in
which two distinctive cultures can be bridged by signs. In establishing that, I also hope to end
the scholarly wavering when it comes to judge whether Pound is a genuine genius or a blind
copyist in using Chinese. He does have a bridge of signs that can lead him in crossing the
Ezra Pound’s devotion to Chinese culture has fascinated many scholars. Pound’s interest
in Chinese culture stretched over a period of fifty years. His relation to China is essential to our
knowledge of this important modernist figure. A substantial amount of research has contributed
D. Briton Gildersleeve’s 1998 survey provides a good guide to the literature on Ezra
critics and scholars, including T.S. Eliot, tried to separate Pound’s “real” poetry from his
translation. Hugh Kenner’s 1951 book, The Poetry of Ezra Pound, however, included
“meticulous reading of Pound’s Chinese materials” (Gildersleeve, 224). Eva Hesse viewed
1
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(Gildersleeve, 225). During the 1970s, Kenner’s book The Pound Era placed Pound in a
“completely new context of modernism” (Gildersleeve, 225). And the 1980s saw much Poundian
research focus on the Chinese ideograms and translation issues. The “virtual explosion” of Pound
criticism was in the 1990s. Of the “25 significant publications on Pound’s Chinese works,
adaption of Confucian works, and contact with Chinese culture continued to flourish. New
perspectives such as globalism and post-colonialism were also added. Eric Hayrot’s Chinese
Dreams: Pound, Brecht, Tel Quel investigates how Pound and other avant-garde artists have
used the oriental other to open their thinking and writing. Yunte Huang, for example, placed
Pound as a new historicist in the context of globalism. Chen Xiaomei, for another example,
rediscovered Pound in the light of a post-colonial discourse and defended his “misreading” of
Chinese as a “legitimate and necessary factor, as a dynamic force, in the making of literary
Legacy,” 82).
Overall, most scholars and critics tend to stress Pound’s poetics, ideology, and other
The key to the understanding of Pound’s poetics, ideology, and orientalism, however, is
his numerous citations of Confucian texts and Chinese characters in The Cantos. Those Chinese
characters, some in handwritten form and some in printed style, appear in more than half of The
Cantos. They clearly indicate Pound’s sophisticated knowledge and mastery of the Chinese
written language after decades of ardent studies. Those Chinese characters, most of which are
3
from Confucian texts formalized about two millennia earlier, demand intensive deciphering work
There have been many attempts to ease the reading of Chinese in The Cantos. In 1974,
David Gordon published a few essays in Paideuma on the characters that appeared in Canto 53,
98, and 99. In 1975, Thomas Grieve also wrote “Annotations to the Chinese in Section: Rock-
Drill.”. In 1976, Carroll F. Terrell’s A Companion to The Cantos of Ezra Pound listed all the
Chinese ideograms in The Cantos in both detailed notes and a final glossary. In 1980, Randall
Schroth’s “A Primer for Some of Pound's Chinese Characters” explained some of the most
frequently used Chinese characters and phrases in The Cantos. In 1992, Chao-ming Chou “The
Teaching of The Sacred Edict and Pound’s Cantos 98 and 99,” examines Pound’s contemplations
of The Sacred Edict of K’ang Hsi, the main source for this two cantos In 1996, Paul Wellen’s
those characters. In 2001, Naikan Tao’s carefully examined the Chinese characters used in the
Pisan cantos and helps us see many nuances of Pound’s lines. In the same Paideuma issue that
Tao discusses the Chinese characters in the Pisan cantos, Aaron Loh’s “Decoding the Ideogram:
The Chinese Written Character in The Cantos of Ezra Pound” examined all the characters in The
Cantos and linked them to the six traditional character forming principles () and aesthetics
of calligraphy.
broader issues. Steven G. Yao’s “‘Better Gift You Can Make to a Nation’: Pound’s Confucian
Translation and the Internationalisation of the The Cantos,” for example, mentions the “innate
poeticity” of Chinese characters; yet his major concern is about translation and language in
4
general (Yao, 111). Brian M. Reed’s “Ezra Pound's Utopia of the Eye: The Chinese Characters
in Rock-Drill,” for instance, also concerns Pound’s ideology. David Colón’s dissertation in 2004,
Embodying the Ideogram: Orientalism and the Visual Aesthetic in Modernist Poetry, even traces
the parallelism in accepting and appropriating the East by studying Fenollosa, Pound, the
In other words, the research about Pound’s use and transcription of Chinese characters in
The Cantos seems slight compared to the discussion about Pound’s relation to China. From 1974
to 2001, only Carroll Terrell, Paul Wellen, and Aaron Loh had cataloged and explained all the
Chinese characters in The Cantos. Even within this small body of work dealing with the Chinese
characters in The Cantos, there are many disquieting aspects of the research approaches
employed.
First, there is an apparent lack of any interest in understanding the Chinese language, and
consequently, there is not even a brief overview of the Chinese language. Terrell’s A Companion
to The Cantos of Ezra Pound, for instance, lists all those Chinese characters in detailed notes and
a final glossary of Chinese characters, but his notes on the system of Chinese ideograms are brief.
David Gordon, Paul Wellen, and Aaron Loh too give only a brief background of Chinese
It is well known that Pound’s knowledge of the written Chinese was mediated through
Fenollosa’s notes, Matthews’ and Karlgren’s dictionaries, and Pauthier’s introduction about
Chinese linguistics in Chine Moderne, all of them are serious studies of the Chinese language.
Yet those quality sources do not negate the need of overviews of the Chinese language in
examining Pound’s usage of Chinese characters. On the contrary, those sources need to be
Second, most of the explanatory notes or mini-dictionaries for the Chinese characters
used in The Cantos are devoid of etymology, even though quite a few scholars noticed Pound’s
reading of Chinese is etymological, and a hypothesis of Pound’s etymographic reading has been
proposed by Feng Lan in 2001. Yet, the interconnectivity of those Chinese characters cannot be
seen without the proper information about their early pictorial forms. The earlier pictorial forms
can also help us to understand Pound’s quick grasp of Chinese characters. No scholar, however,
has listed the ancient forms for all the charcters in The Cantos. Even though Paul Wellen’s
analytic dictionary and Aaron Loh’s decoding of the Chinese ideograms in The Cantos have the
strongest etymological appeal, none of them includes the ealier forms of Chinese characters.
Third, there is no discussion of the general patterns of Pound’s use of Chinese characters.
Without a thorough investigation of how Pound employs the written Chinese in general, the
studies of the Chinese characters in The Cantos can at best be scattered notes of exegesis.
There are also some alarming mistakes in some explanatory notes. For instance, in Canto
XCVIII, Pound wrote: “First the pen yeh本/then τέχυη業 “(Canto XCVIII, 706-707). Since
“yeh” is the pronunciation of “業,” Pound’s slip of the “pen” is obvious here; I believe he
intended to write: “First the pen本/then yeh τέχυη.” “本業” as a very deeply entrenched
Cantos of Ezra Pound, however, does not point out Pound’s confusion of these two verbal
entities.
This dissertation, therefore, will add to the studies of Pound’s relation to China with an
overview of Chinese, a mini-dictionary of Chinese ideograms in The Cantos that includes the
6
historical changes in their forms, and a detailed discussion of those ideograms’ nature and
function.
In Chapter 1, I will give an overview of the Chinese language from three aspects: the
origins of Chinese characters, the relations between the Tibetan and Chinese language, and the
Chinese characters, I will provide background on Chinese society and culture, and emphasize
particularly the ideological and material connection between the creation of characters and
divination. Then I will move on to discuss some linguistic features of Chinese that are not clearly
reflected in its written forms. I will first talk about the difference and connection between the
Tibetan and Chinese languages. Chinese is to Tibetan as English to German, and many of the
germinating forces innate in Tibetan still drive the evolution of Chinese. At the same time, the
Chinese language has incorporated new elements over time, and has become a completely new
This brief recapitulation of the relationship between Tibetan and Chinese will show that
Pound’s Chinese transliteration reflects an understanding of the Chinese language that is deeper
than what most scholars have realized and that his intellectual, cultural, and linguistic empathy
7
with the far and remote Chinese sign system is impossible without the accessibility of the visual
In Chapter 2, I will give a brief explanation of the organic nature of the Chinese
ideograms in The Cantos. I place the 243 characters from The Cantos under six main categories
and 49 subcategories. Most subcategories contain only one building block, that is, one basic
shape. For example, under the subcategory “Mouth,” fourteen characters share one basic shape,
( , mouth). Together with the mini-dictionary in Part Two, readers will be able to see
The discussion of the organic nature of the 243 characters in The Cantos will lead to an
inquiry into Pound’s poetics. His interest in reading and using Chinese characters serves as an
important case for cross-cultural studies. As a whole, the Chinese writing system employs about
200 basic roots; all of them pertain to basic aspects of human life and of immediate perception.
For Pound, Chinese ideograms can be universal signs because of their cross-cultural and extra-
temporal qualities. The possibilities of written concepts are infinite, and this fact lays the
foundation for the Far Eastern aesthetics and from which Pound advances his formulation of a
a map of Pound’s use of Chinese characters. There are two patterns of ideogram incorporation in
The Cantos:
1 ) Chinese characters as universally recognized signs for all readers, as in Canto CII:
“不” (“No”) is treated by Pound as a universal sign that needs no explanation, translation or
preceded by “the Commissioner Iu-p’uh” (The Cantos, 700). In Canto XCIII, “顯”(“to
demonstrate”) is given the pronunciation “hsien” immediately afterwards (The Cantos, 644).
“敬”(“respect”) in Canto LXXXVIII is given both the alphabetic spelling and the tonal value “in
In Pattern One, a Chinese character is inserted in the poetic flow without its Romanized
form or pronunciation. In Pattern Two, a Chinese character is provided together with its Roman
transliteration. Most ideograms, be they in Pattern One or Pattern Two, are given translations and
descriptions of their meanings. Sometimes, Pound leaves an ideogram without any explanation.
There are also a few places of ambiguity and confusion that leave his readers pondering whether
On the whole, however, Pound innovatively uses Chinese ideograms as building blocks
of this epic.
Chapter 4, “The Chinese Ideogram as Cotext: Poetics of Visual Certainty and Semantic
Complexity” will establish that Chinese ideograms serve as cotexts of different functions. They
can provide multiple directions in meaning, render ambience for free association, connect
imageries and thoughts, add new proposals, connect all key elements, invite the reader to play a
mind game, summarize, and complete many more tasks. In fact, one aspect of the timelessness of
9
The Cantos lies in this versatility of Chinese ideograms’ cotexting. This cotextuality might be a
unique feature of Chinese ideograms. No other language in The Cantos has such a complexity of
functions. By incorporating Chinese ideograms into English verse, Pound did “make it new”
Part Two of this dissertation will be a mini-dictionary of all the Chinese characters in The
Cantos. The Cantos incorporated 243 Chinese characters in total, all of them critical to our
understanding of this epic. A detailed account of all the characters’ shapes, sounds, and
meanings will not only put many missing semiotic pieces back onto the poetic canvas, but it will
also provide more insights into Pound’s deliberate use of Chinese signs as significant texts.
components as well as the page number(s) and the number of citations. By listing the different
forms for the same characters, readers can visualize the etymological transformation of Chinese
characters and better understand their immediacy. As to the pronunciation of these Chinese
characters, I will provide not only modern pronunciations but also ancient ones.
All in all, Pound’s creative use of Chinese ideograms demonstrates his acute instincts of a
Ezra Pound’s knowledge of Chinese poses an interesting, if not challenging, topic for
many critics and readers. He could not speak the language, but through the medium of Chinese
characters, he was able to convert classic Chinese poems into lucid English verse, develop his
ideogrammic poetics, and incorporate the Confucian texts into The Cantos. His interest in
Chinese culture, however, focuses solely on ancient texts. His attention to the beautiful lyricism
of the poems in Cathay soon developed into a philosophical inquiry into Confucian classics. In
other words, popular lines of Rahiku (Li Po) and Tao Yuan Ming led him to the more archaic yet
foundational works like Shijing (or Shi Ching, The Book of Poetry), The Analects of Confucius,
and Liji (The Book of Ceremony). His The Cantos only takes excerpts with gravitas from the
Confucian works. Be it the expressive Tang and Han poetry translated or the more moralistically
righteous Confucian books incorporated, Pound seems to land solidly on the two most important
cultural boulders of Chinese sense and sensibility. How can Pound, a poet with Western roots,
read, understand, translate and creatively use the gems of Chinese high culture without being
able to speak the language? Why did Pound’s interest in Chinese soon change from vivid
To answer those two questions, one must look into both the unique “universalities” of the
Chinese written language and the “unwavering pivot” quality of the Confucian classics in the
evolutionary context of the Chinese language and culture. In this chapter, I will first trace
11
12
Pound’s contact with Chinese culture and discuss his interest in the Confucian works. Next I will
illustrate the “universality” of the Chinese written language, and hence the “commonalities” of
Pound’s silent mastery of Chinese. Then I will discuss Pound’s uncommon remote sense of the
complexity of Chinese culture and his unique grasp of the pivotal moments in Chinese history.
understanding of the Chinese language. His intellectual, cultural, and linguistic empathy with the
far and remote Chinese sign system is also closely related to the accessibility of the Chinese
written signs.
Pound’s first contact with Chinese culture and literature was through Ernest Fenollosa’s
notes in 1913. Fenollosa’s notes combine an analysis, hypothesis, and treatise of Chinese
ideograms and poetry. The immediacy of pictorial Chinese characters helped Pound absorb
translation of Chinese poetry based on Fenollosa’s notes. T.S. Eliot called Pound the “inventor of
According to John Nolde, “Pound began his study of Confucius soon after Cathay”
(Nolde, Introduction, 17). He first learned the Four Books translated by M.G. Pauthier. The Four
Books are Duxue (The Great Learning,); Zhongyong (The Doctrine of the Mean ,
1917 or 1918, Pound “must have worked his way through the Analects… for in one of his
‘Imaginary Letters’ he uses material from the Analects which was to appear later in Canto XIII”
Pound’s quest for Confucianism then became a lifelong pursuit. When he was taken to
the DTC, the U. S. Army Disciplinary Training Center in Pisa, Italy, he had only two things with
Besides the Confucian classics, Pound also studied Père De Mailla’s Histoire Générale
“a Manchu version of the most prestigious of all Chinese histories” (Nolde, 25). These books
Pound’s relation with China, however, did not begin with his encounter with Fenollosa’s
widow in 1913. In fact, Chinese friends had accompanied him on his aesthetic journey to the
East. Qian Zhaoming’s book Ezra Pound’s Chinese Friends: Stories and Letters details Pound’s
friendship with Chinese officals, scholars, and students. Qian starts with Pound’s parents’
Chinese friend who offered Pound employment in China before he met Fenollosa’s widow. After
carefully presenting the correspondence between Pound and numerous Chinese friends, Qian
ends Pound’s list of friends with a Chinese missionary worker in Lijiang where the Na-Ki people
live. The Na-Ki people still use Dongbawen, the living fossil form of Chinese oracle ideograms.
Lijiang would become the final destination of Pound’s poetic imagination and the end of his
From Qian’s book, we see Pound’s trajectory to its landing on the earliest roots of
Chinese ideograms and culture. Lijiang is adjacent to Tibet and Dongbawen and is the written
language of a Tibetan tribe. Sinologists had long established that linguistically Chinese and
Tibetan come from the same root. Thus the inclusion of Lijiang as one of the sites of paradiso in
Also, Pound’s friends had influenced his choices of ideograms even though most
inclusions are based on the theme of a particular poem. Some of the characters in The Cantos are
also frequent regulars in Pound’s correspondence with his Chinese friends. In those letters Pound
frequently discusses Confucian concepts like “” and many of those concepts are written in
Another of Qian’s books, The Modernist Response to Chinese Art: Pound, Moore,
Stevens, also points out that it is through visual arts that Pound discovered China. This occurred
before his acquisition of Fellonosa’s notes. According to Qian, “Pound’s appreciation of Chinese
culture was awakened…in England in the years 1909-1914…and his mentor in Chinese art is the
British art expert Laurence Binyon” (Qian, The Modernist Response, 6).
It is interesting, as discussed at the beginning of this chapter, to see that throughout his
lifelong contact with Chinese culture, his interest mainly focuses on the Confucian works. Not
only did Pound use many Confucian concepts in The Cantos, but all the ideograms cited there
To illustrate, I will give two examples from The Cantos. One does not use Chinese
ideograms, and the other incorporates many. Both reflect Pound’s idea of an organic social
structure.
The word “chao1 is not given in Chinese and the first four lines are a translation of Verse
Guidelines. A line-by-line correspondence between the original and the translation is as follows:
This excerpt in Canto XCIX uses only the Romanized form and translation of Chinese.
In fact, if we extract these ideograms and put them together, they look like a clipped
collage of decrees from Shangshu, also called Shu Ching (/, The Book of History ), one
of the works of Confucian canon. Below are two chapters from Shangshu. The underlined
“
”
The first of the Rock-Drill cantos, Canto LXXXV, is about Shangshu (Shu Ching).
According to William Cookson’s A Guide to The Cantos of Ezra Pound, this canto “goes back to
the beginnings of the Confucian tradition by presenting radiant ideograms from the Shu Ching
(The Book of History, the oldest complete Chinese classic, which covers seventeen hundred years,
from 2357 to 641 BC). Thus, taking up themes from the previous summary of Chinese history
from de Mailla (LIII-LXI), the roots of Confucianism are embodied in Rock-Drill” (Cookson,
168-169).
In the next sentence, Cookson continues to comment on the Chinese ideograms used in
this canto. According to him, “the Chinese ideograms act as an important means of creating the
general effect of radiance which pervades Rock-Drill – the beauty of the layout of the words on
17
the page is more marked than anywhere else in the poem” (Cookson, 169). But Pound’s
incorporation of 104 Chinese ideograms in the opening of Rock-Drill is not merely a beautiful
layout of words. It also refers to the original Chinese text of Shangshu (Shu Ching). As a whole,
those ideograms formed a collage-like passage imitating a Shangshu (Shu Ching) passage.
In The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry, Ernest Fenollosa did not
focus on Confucian texts only. Pound’s philosophical inquiry into the Confucian classics,
however, involves much reading of the original texts. He had gained literacy in written Chinese
Pound’s “silent” reading of this language was not an isolated case. The cross-cultural
“universalities” of Chinese symbols enable many readers to use them without precise
pronunciations.
This picture requires no literacy. The only challenging part is the black dot inside .
It points to the sunspot (Chinese has one of the world’s earliest written record of the sunspot). As
an ideogram, “” is stylized form of the center of this picture. The horizontal stroke inside “”
replaces the black dot and the rectangular indicates the round shape of the sun.
18
For this image, sound is not recorded, and hence throughout history anyone who used this
symbol could attribute different pronunciations to it. More than three thousand Chinese dialects
pronounce it differently. Over half of these dialects are mutually incomprehensible. Over time,
Chinese pronunciation has continued to change, while the writing system had been little altered
In regions outside of China, the reading of Chinese characters became more creative.
Japanese, for instance, can read “” as “ni” as in their country’s name “ (Nippon)” or “bi”
as in the word “day of the week().” Korean, on the other hand, read it as “il( .” Needless
to say, since the Japanese and the Korean borrowed many words from the Chinese, their
instance, Chinese characters in Japanese have three kinds of borrowed sounds: from the
Wu region of China during the fifth and sixth centuries, from the capital of the Tang
Aside from borrowed sounds, the Japanese often has a native reading that is based on the
pronunciation of the Japanese equivalents of Chinese words. While a Chinese ideogram always
has one syllable, the native reading can consist of many syllables. The Chinese character “”
In The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry, Ernest Fenollosa points out
that Chinese ideograms are “arbitrary symbols” that have “no basis in sound” (Fellnollosa, 8).
This comment admits to the recognition of a kind of free association between sound and meaning
for Chinese characters. It is this liberation from sound in the language recording system that
makes the spread of Chinese ideograms possible. Anyone in any region during any period of
19
time can read Chinese ideograms or at least those ideograms that involve common aspects of
Those common objects’ pictorial representations became the roots of the Chinese system.
Once people master those few roots, the rest of the characters become easy to construe and
deduce. For example, the basic root “human being ” is a shorthand picture of a person . If
we add a horizontal line across the upper part of it, the “human being” gets two arms , which
indicates the expansion of space; hence its meaning “big” is easily assigned to this character. If
we add a dot to , it becomes , which means “too (much)” as a tail is not necessary for a
grand human being. If we add a shorter horizontal line on top of “big” , we have a new
character to represent “heaven/sky” as the top of our body can be an analogy for the top of
our universe. And if someone is taller than the sky, he is a hero, or rather, as traditional thinking
would have it, a tall, mature, married man. Therefore all four expansions of “”—“,” “”,
“,” and “” — are readable without taxing the memory; once readers know “,” they
Adding simple indicators to a basic signifying unit is not the only way to enrich this
system; modification can also achieve efficiency. Take “” as an example again : if hunches
over, we have a new word for “hunch,” which can further be expanded into “,” “sentence/a
stop in speech.” A slight tilt of head to the left means “not right,” hence + become “,”
20
“talking loudly.” A head tilt to the right also means “not right,” but it is associated more with
children and women as in the word (to die young) ” and “(ghost/seductive). ”
The rotation of a basic picture unit also adds new meaning to this system. Again, let’s
to change, to morph . And if is horizontally reversed into , we have the character for
“female” and “container.” If turns sideward, that means “to sit,” therefore and (a hot
needle or stick) means “to grill/long/eternity ” as the pain of a grill behind should be felt for a
The combined power of adding indicators, modification, and rotation is, however,
nothing compared to the power of juxtaposition of independent units. Two basic roots can be
basic root and an expansion of it can be also put together and even be further united with another
and “” (=place+ hand=to place things). Two expansions can merge together too, such as
“”(patterned speech + place=to visit, to interview). All in all, the possible combination are
endless. The life of these basic roots is so strong that today the Beijing National Security
Like the English alphabets, the basic roots are only a few in number. Xu Shen (c.58-147)
analyzed components of Chinese characters and found about 540 radicals out of 9,353 characters.
21
The radical is the catalog tag of Chinese ideograms and perhaps the closest concept to the basic
roots. Yet Xu Shen had never seen the carvings of the Shang Dynasty, the most ancient artifacts
of Chinese characters. His 540 radicals, though written very differently in his time, actually
overlapped in the form of the Shang Dynasty carvings. In her book, Explanation of Basic
Chinese Characters, Xiaoli Zou, a famous modern scholar informed by the Shang Dynasty’s
oracle carvings, further divides these radicals into seven categories: human body (197), utensils
(180), animals (61), plants (31), nature (27), numbers (12), and astronomy (22). Within each
category, those radicals are often connected as discussed in the example and expansion of “.”
In my view, Zou’s research could be taken further in that “” is a basic pictorial unit that
“controls” 83 radicals out of 197 that depict a whole human body. Zou also further divides the
remaining115 human body radicals into head, eye, mouth, hand, foot, thus reducing the 197
radical into 6 basic roots. Similarly, radicals in other categories can also be further reduced into
fewer basic roots. In total, there are about 200 basic roots; all of them are sketches of basic
aspects of human life. In other words, they are cognitively accessible symbols; readers do not
As discussed, the concept of basic roots can surpass radicals to illustrate the simplicity of
the formation of Chinese ideograms. This dissertation is, however, not intended to revolutionize
Chinese philology’s long cherished view about radicals, and such an endeavor requires at least
another dissertation. My primary goal in analyzing the simple interconnections among nearly
ninety thousand characters is to show that Chinese ideograms are in certain ways universal signs
that can be read by many people in many regions. Ezra Pound can read and comprehend Chinese
without speaking Chinese. All he ever needed was a revelation of the principles that govern the
numerous creations of Chinese signs. In fact, “from the beginning Pound surprised (Achilles)
22
Fang with his insights into the reorganization (in the seventeenth century) of the Chinese
dictionary from a 540-root system to a 214-root system” (Qian, Pound’s Chinese Friends, 42).
Fenollosa’s notes point out the “vividness in the structure of detached Chinese words”
and state that “the earlier forms of these characters were pictorial, and their hold upon the
imagination is little shaken, even in later conventional modification” (Fenollosa, 9). This gives
Pound a solid guide for a kind of certitude in the ideogram’s signification: “A rose is a rose.” It
also helps to break down a western language speaker’s strong concept of the division between
parts of speech:
…It not so well known, perhaps, that the great number of these ideographic roots
carry in them a verbal idea of action. It might be thought that a picture is naturally the
picture of a thing, and that therefore the root ideas of Chinese are what grammar calls
nouns.
But examination shows that a large number of the primitive Chinese characters,
even the so-called radicals, are shorthand pictures of actions or processes.
For example, the ideograph meaning ‘to speak is a mouth with two words and a
flame coming out of it…the ideograph for a ‘messmate’ is a man and a fire.
(Fenollosa, 9)
cognitive process in learners of the Chinese language when they are outside its linguistic and
educational setting. When I taught myself how to read at two, I was ignorant of the dialect in my
new foster home and of Mandarin, the educational language, in my daycare center. In the same
way, as a foreigner away from the sounds and sights of China, Pound might have been more
acute to the written Chinese’s signification mechanism than most native Chinese speakers.
This kind of acuteness might allow one to perceive the meaning of characters differently
solely dependent on the increment of shapes: (to hold both hands high and worship our
ancestors) + (to dig with a shovel) + (to have a spine and a head on top of organized lines)+
(the only thing left in a wrong world). So for me, communism follows this kind of logic:
sometime somebody created something communal(); if I work () hard enough, I too will be
the owner of my own labor and be admired by others(); this path to freedom is the only thing
constant in time(). To most educated Chinese, this idea might be an absurd reading. It is,
however, a personal and poetic reading that served to provide hope for an abused child. Similarly,
Pound might have “invented” his version of Chinese poetry out of linguistic mistakes in order to
Even without an emotional need for hope and an artistic urge to create, many an
inquisitive reader would find the Chinese writing system highly accessible. It is open to anyone’s
curious inquiries and easily rewards his or her effort. Chinese or not, the viewers of these
ideograms are on an easy ride of “shorthand pictures,” and usually a string of knowledge comes
to mind before the consciousness kicks in. This is very similar to the effect of TV, movies,
YouTube, and Powerpoint in today’s entertainment and education. It is, therefore, not hard to
imagine why Pound’s encounter with Fenollosa’s notes snowballed into five decades of studying
Fenollosa’s idea that “the ideograph meaning ‘to speak’ is a mouth with two words and a
flame coming out of it,” for instance, is wrong, as “” means “organized speech with a leading
idea.” Pound, too, often makes mistakes when he tries his hand in translating Chinese poetry. But
who hasn’t? Even Xu Shen erred about the origins of some signs in his book Explanation of
Characters(). But this book is still a textbook in Korean high schools and Chinese
24
colleges eighteen centuries after its publication. Even today, with what the Shang carvings
scholars have deciphered, there are still missing pieces in the correct mapping of Chinese
characters’ genealogy due to an archeological gap between the already sophisticated Shang
ideograms and the random marks on the pottery of China’s tribal period.
In fact, sometimes etymological mistakes are encouraged when the need of literacy
outweighs scholarly seriousness. When teaching rural peasants how to read, literate Chinese
educators even twisted the standard association between parts so that those who do not know
how to read can connect their lives with the seemingly complicated characters. For instance, “
(cotton)” in a rural classroom is no longer “a plant that gives us silky fabric” but “a tree where
our white towels are from.” Images, especially a flow of images based on the rule of
While free association between images and meaning can allow for universal readership, it
is not a gain on every front. One can easily hear and see the connections between European
languages, but many Chinese are not aware of the connection between Tibetan and their
language. Rules in the Tibetan language still govern their even most up-to-date speech. The
Sweden sinologist Bernhard Karlgren (1889-1978) builds a phonological link between Tibetan
and Chinese. In his view, features like double consontants are lost in Chinese but when modern
Chinese expanded its vocabulary with double-syllable phrases, these features continue to govern.
The double consonant “gl” in the Tibetan word “glang(girl),” for example, reduced into
Aside from this, the Tibetan language also explains the numerous homonyms in Chinese
as the one hundred thousand characters fall into about four hundred syllables. Usually if
different characters share the same or a similar syllable, they share the same origin. In Tibetan,
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“xue” means “yogurt.” In Chinese it splits into “(snow),” “(blood),” “(to study),” “
(cave),” “(boots),” and “(to cut and leave a smooth surface ),” all of them related to qualities
of yogurt or the yogurt-making process. “(snow)” is the color of yogurt: white; “(blood)” is
also a kind of thick liquid like yogurt; “(to study)” is also a type of transformation from
material to a new product; “(cave)” means a cool place, possible for making and storing yogurt;
“(boots)” shapes like a cave ; “(to cut and leave a smooth surface )” means a kind of cutting
that leaves a smooth surface, similar to dividing yogurt with a knife or a spoon.
Grammatically, some Tibetan words also contribute to some measure words before
certain nouns. As English differentiates between “a cup of tea” and “a glass of wine,” Chinese is
very particular about the quantity units before the nouns. (In fact, these units, or measure words,
are most difficult for non-native speakers of Chinese to master.) When speaking of a meal, the
Chinese would say “yidunfan (one pause of meal).” “Dun” means “meal” in Tibetan, so
“yidunfan” is actually “one meal of meal.” Even though the Chinese language lost the most
original meaning of “dun,” this word is still used for descriptions of any action that lasts as long
as a meal.
Although it is well established in the field of philology that Chinese and Tibetan are in
the same language family, books, essays, and dictionaries on the linkage are slow to trickle down
to the general public’s awareness. The inherent qualities of Chinese ideograms, such as their
pictorial accessibility and the free association between sound, meaning, and image, might also
contribute to this lack of “deep” inquiries about the roots of the Chinese language. This is very
similar to modern audiences’ fascination with moving pictures and their usual lack of interest in
the sources of those images. Hollywood would not entertain us if every movie it produced
26
actually inspired us to look into every detail of settings, camera movements, and editing
techniques.
This vague sense of Tibetan semiotic roots has a direct impact on Chinese poetics. For
centuries, Chinese poets have been conscious of emotions evoked by frictions, resonances, and
rhymes, such as the way /s/ sounds can be put together to depict rustling of silks and /ang/
sounds usually denote grandeur and happiness. But those sounds are not stable, as people in
different regions during different periods of time might pronounce them completely differently.
Any Chinese poem can sound quite differently acoustically if read in Cantonese, Mandarin, and
Korean respectively. What can remain intact during different audio transcriptions are the “visual
image in the mind,” or phanopoeia, “the maximum of” which “is probably reached by the
Chinese, due in part to their particular kind of writing language” (ABC of Reading, 42).
In ABC of Reading, Pound points out that: “The Chinese ‘word’ or ideogram for red is
based on something everyone KNOWS” (ABC of Reading, 22). In other words, Chinese
ideograms, loosed from their Tibetan semiotic roots, can be signs accessible to everyone, if he or
she is introduced to some basic roots of the Chinese writing system. Pound’s reading and
understanding of written Chinese, therefore, are not unusual. Like Pound, most Japanese and
Koreans can read and write Chinese without speaking the language. What is truly unusual,
however, is his poetic instinct and ingenuity to see the deep psychic levels of buried and silenced
III. Remote Sense: the Cultural Turn from Divination to Divine Order
Chinese is an old language which constantly renews itself. Like every other language, it
has evolved over a long period of time. Chinese speakers never stay the same in terms of region
and ethnicity. Compared to other ancient languages in the world, however, the Chinese language
does seem to stand out in terms of “continuity” and “unity.” Long after Egyptian hieroglyphs lost
their vocal vitality, Chinese still read the same literary works as their ancestors did several
thousand years ago. Moreover, Chinese speakers have never decreased in numbers. Mandarin
(Putong Hua/ Guo Yu/Hua Yu), a variant of Chinese, has now more than 1.3
billion speakers worldwide. Time seems to favor the Chinese language’s longevity and
expansion.
This “continuity” and “unity” have an impact on the Chinese people’s sense of identity.
Unlike many cultures in which national identity undergoes constant challenges, most Chinese
speakers seem to doubt very little about their Chinese identity. In Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared
Diamond notices that “it seems absurd to ask how Chinese has been Chinese. China has been
Chinese, almost from the very beginning of its recorded history” (Diamond, 323).
Diamond’s observation is correct, yet he does not point out that this psychological
security is in fact well wrapped in rampant signs of regional expansion and racial mixing. The
Chinese word for Chinese people, (zhongguoren), for example, means “people of the
middle kingdom,” or the people living in the Yellow River Plain. Most Chinese, however, have
never lived in this small patch of land, nor do they have close blood ties to the aboriginal people
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there. Moreover, even within the Han1 ethnic group, there are many separated communities like
the boat people in Fuzhou City and the Huian people who enjoy the working-mom-stay-home-
dad life style. These two groups, the boat people and the strong-women clan, came from
completely different origins and have successfully retained their cultural identity for almost one
thousand years. But in documentation they share the same ethnicity with other land-bound-male-
dominant Han Chinese. These are just two common cases in one small province of China.
In fact, the old term “Cathay” for China, also the title for Pound’s translation of Chinese
poetry, does not mean “China.” Nor does it mean the major ethnic group, the Han Chinese. It is
the name of a Tartar group that disappeared in history. Its cultural and biological DNA, however,
merged into the melting pot of the Chinese people. The Chinese identity has so long been forged
that “even in periods of political disunity at various times in the past, the ideal of a single,
culturally unified Chinese empire has never been forgotten” (Norman, 1). This continuity and
unity are, however, a process of constant development and at best a “linguistic near-unity”
(Diamond, 323). Together with the Chinese people’s security in their identity, they are the result
create a culture with a diverse and mosaic core, yet with a finished look that is simple and
harmonious. While Chinese is an ancient language, its linguistic geographic territory has always
been expanding and its written language always remained stable. Its continual evolution over
time in its linguistic territory, ideological constituents, and structural features are often
1
Han, named after the Chinese first enduring feudal dynasty, is the biggest ethnic group in China. Over
97% of the Chinese population is Han.
29
The first written record of the Chinese language was found among relics of the Shang
dynasty (1700-1027 B.C.) that ruled the Yellow River Plain with its powerful empire. A
“superstitious” state in the eyes of its successor, the Zhou dynasty, the Shang Empire was
obsessed with divination. It was through their pervasive divination activities that Chinese writing
was invented and systematized. There were two ways to prophesy: 1) interpretation of the
numerical division of Shi Cao (yarrow grass) sticks; 2) reading of the cracks in burned
turtle shells and ox shoulder blade bones. The archeological discovery of over 5000 characters
drawn over cracks in more than 150,000 oracle pieces documented a wide range of life activity
Those texts, though succinct in general, are ancestral to all later stages of Chinese,
including modern dialects. Their vocabulary, grammar, and passage structure are similar to later
Chinese. The sentence in the first picture shown here, for example, “ ” (“Until
wait in danger predict out”/“Try to find a way out when trapped in danger.”) shares the same
vocabulary and grammar structure of Confucius’s time (551B.C.—479 B.C.). The passage on the
auspicious to find one’s neck caught up with something and can not be useful. It is auspicious to
go into something good with someone. It is a dangerous thing, however, for a dragon to fall into
a forest. This is entrapment.”) Although this piece is as coherent and complicated as later
summarize each divination event. The sequence of the four sentences (descriptions and
conclusion) are also similar here to the Chinese essay rules “”( “beginning,
The Zhou dynasty (West Zhou 1027-770 B.C. and East Zhou 770-221 B.C.) immediately
after the Shang dynasty (1700-1027 B.C.), produced more complex and richer records on bronze.
31
This dynasty rejected its predecessor’s divining and drinking culture as superstitious, barbarian,
and corrupt, a rejection similar to Christianity’s denunciation of paganism. The Zhou people are
an ethnic group to the north of Shang. They believed in the Heavenly Order and were keen to
display and promulgate this “unwavering” truth in meticulous rituals, hierarchical social
This drastic cultural change can be seen in the wine accessories of these two dynasties.
The Zhou Dynasty uses wine for ceremonial rituals rather than an indulgence. Therefore their
wine cups tend to be bulky and less functional for drinking, or in other words, they are objects of
gravitas rather than symbols of extravagance. In fact, in Pound’s library, the illustrations of
Chinese vases in Guillaume Pauther’s 1937 book about Chinese history record only wine cups
Inscriptions on bronze also reflect the drastic cultural differences between the Zhou
Dynasty and the Shang Dynasty. Passages are usually longer, carefully arranged and are
appraisals of social orders. (The Grand Pot of Count Mao), for instance, described a
count’s gratitude for an Emperor’s bestowal of a prestigious position (the Royal Guard). This
Fig. 8. Inscription inside the Grand Pot of Count Mao, Zhou Dynasty
(Source: http://www.wenyi.com/art/shufa/xianqing/7.htm)
Later Chinese writings took on this orderly and logical look. For instance, an inscription
on a stone drum (c.221-207 B.C.) not only has straight horizontal and vertical lines but also has a
Interestingly, Pound was not fully aware of these divination texts. In 1899, a Chinese
philologist (Wang Yirong) discovered th ese bones and shells. Before that, Chinese
34
philologists had been oblivious of this early form of writing for more than two thousand years.
This oracle writing differs greatly from the bronze writing of the Zhou Dynasty, making it very
hard to recognize. It was not until the 1920s and 1930s that Chinese scholars achieved significant
breakthroughs in deciphering these texts. There are still about 2000 characters on those bones
The divination culture, together with its inscriptions, was “absent” from Chinese
intellectual life for a very long time. The superstitious and barbarian culture prior to Zhou
Dynasty, however, never lost its strong hold on Chinese culture. Paradoxically, it became the
philosophical foundation for the Zhou Dynasty’s and every dynasty’s political and cultural
models. According to legends, Zhou Wenwang, the founder of the Zhou Dynasty, discovered his
heavenly mission of building a grand dynasty by connecting the numerical divination system to
ancient folk songs in a Shang prison, an intellectual journey no less difficult and adventurous
Confucius then edited Zhou Wenwang’s thinking into the most important book of
Chinese culture, Yi Jing (, or I Ching,), The Book of Chang es2. Also, Confucius exalted Shi
Jing (, or Shi Ching), The Book of Songs, an oral record full of residues from the divination
culture, turning its blatantly direct courting songs into examples of ancestral innocence. In other
words, in China’s long pursuit of societal order and restraints since the Zhou Dynasty, the
divination culture had taken on a quantified and moralized look but never lost its vibrancy.
Today these two books are still widely read as the two most important books for Chinese
philosophy and art. Divination practitioners are still as popular as ever and traditional doctors
2
Most modern scholars tend to believed that Confucius did not compile the book. In Han Dynasty (206
B.C.-A.D. 9) I Ching was finalized as the first book of the Confucian canon. Confucius revered this book
as the explanation of the order of our universe.
35
still prescribe herbs following the same principles laid out in the I Ching. It is because of
Confucius’s cultural preservation, if not alteration, that the Chinese did not lose their divination
culture completely, even if the amnesia about oracle inscriptions lasted for more than two
thousand years. Taken together, the Confucian classics are printed crystals of Chinese pre-classic
culture.
Pound’s attention to the Confucian canons, therefore, was with the instincts of a keen
cultural observer and preserver. His understanding of the signs and symbols in Chinese
characters led him away from an initial vision of its aesthetics as a remedy for the inert Victorian
verse and into a liminal realm where the collective unconscious of a silenced culture meets the
While the West Zhou Dynasty’s rational humanism seems to forever dominate the
high/main culture, more and more mixed Chinese adapted the writing system matured by the
Shang wizards while preserving and reinventing their local and ethnic cultures. As seen from this
brief timetable of political and cultural highlights from the West Zhou Dynasty to present-day
China, the rational Zhou Dynasty’s humanism embedded in Confucianism has been held as a
model despite drastic dynastic changes. Confucianism’s vitality lies in its inclusiveness and
balance of the mystic divination culture and the rational federal state. This timetable’s dynastic
dates follow the convention of the standard state history books in the People’s Republic of China.
Some of the political and cultural highlights are my reflections; many are from memories of my
education.
36
Shang Tang rebels against Xia’s last king and Worship of various gods and
1700-1027 B.C. establishes the Shang Dynasty. ghosts. The deceased ancestors
are spirits and most natural
Nine surrounding tribes pay tribute to entities have a divine being.
the Shang Dynasty.
Western Zhou Wu Wang, the son of Weng Wang, Weng Wang finalizes the Ba
Dynasty 1046- establishes the Western Zhou Dynasty. Hua theory. The Yin and Yang
771B.C. dichotomy replacing the old
Formation of a political system of a divination culture.
strong central government and
subordinate dukedoms. Strict social hierarchy and
rituals.
Use of iron.
770-476 Powerful dukes turn their titled lands Political reforms and war with
Eastern B.C. into kingdoms. other kingdoms blossoming
Zhou Spring statesmanship and ideology.
770- and The Qin Kingdom grows stronger by
221 B.C. Autumn political reforms that reward Laws established in Qin
Period individuals for their labor and valor. Kingdom.
Table 1. continued
221-207 B.C. Qin Kingdom’s Shi Emperor unifies The end of intellectual freedom
Qin China in 221B.C, conquering the Huns after the burning of books and
and the Yue (Viet). the massacre of scholars in 213
B.C.
Liu Bang and Xiang Yu duel for Strengthening of political
control of China. machines.
206 B.C.-A.D. 9 Liu Bang, the first emperor of the Han Short intellectual renaissance
Western Han Dynasty lays the foundation of followed by dominance of
merciful reign for his descendents. Confucianism.
Prosperity of arts.
A.D. 25-220 Liu Xuan defeats Wang Mang and Messengers sent to India for
Eastern Han establishes the Eastern Han. Buddhist scriptures in 65 A.D.
Buddhism is first introduced
Dou Xian defeats the Huns. into China in 68 A.D.
Table 1. continued
A.D. 265-316 Sima Yan begins the Jin Dynasty and Mingling of southern and
Western Jin and gradually united China. northern cultures and the
A.D. 317-420 merging of a multi-racial nation
Eastern Jin with a similar life style.
Civil discordance lasts for 16 years.
The Jin dynasty’s scenic poet
Xie Lingyun and pastoral poet
Invasion of the Huns in 316 A.D. Tao Yuanming and others pave
the way for literary heights of
the Tang Dynasty.
A.D. 420-588 The rise of the Xianbei people in the Budhi Dhazma came to
Southern and North. Guangdong from India (527
Northern Dynasties A.D.) and starts Zen.
Acceleration of Sinicizing in the
second half of the fifth century. Buddhism is spread into Japan
Political split because of different via China.
attitudes towards this assimilation Chinese Chess emerged.
process.
The Zhou Dynasty reunits the North in
577 A.D
A.D. 581-617 Sui Sui Wen Di unites China. Reconstruction of the Great
Wall.
Grand Canal links North China
and South China.
Japan sends boarding students
to China.
China attacks Korea in 614
A.D.
Turkey invadesChina in 615
A.D.
39
Table 1. continued
A.D. 618-907 Tang Li Yuan rebells against the Sui Monk Xuanzang’s travels to
Dynasty, defeating the Turkish, Korea India to fetch the Buddhist
and Japan. scripture in 628 A.D. His story
Empress Wu becomes the first and last is the inspiration for the classic
novel: The Journey to the West.
female emperor in Chinese history.
Xuan Zong’s reign marks the height of Christians and Buddhists are
forbidden to practice and preach
Tang politics, economy, and art.
from time to time.
Tibetans invades China and raids
Peak moment of Chinese
Changan in 763 A.D.
poetry.
Huang Chao’s rebellion from 859
A.D. to 884 A.D.
960- 1279 A.D. Zhao Kuang becomes the first Explosives used in battle by
Song emperor of the Song Dynasty. Chinese against the
Manchurians
Prime Minister Wang AnShi’s reform.
Marco Polo visits China in 1271
Manchurians invade Song.
A.D. He calls the Northern
The rebellion of Liangshan heroes. China “Cathay)”, which later
Gao Zhong crowns himself as First becomes the name for China.
Emperor of Southern Song (1127 - Cathay is the name for a
1279 A.D). dominant ethnic group: Qidan
.
Genghis Khan united Mongolia,
invades the Mongols, and attacks Expansion of the bureaucrat
Russia, Poland and Hungary. Kublai system.
Khan succeeds Genghis Khan and
establishes the Yuan Dynasty.
40
Table 1. continued
A.D. 1279-1368 Attack on Japan, Turkey, and Asia Marco Polo returns to Italy in
Yuan Minor. 1295 A.D.
Conquering Java and Vietnam. Rating of social status based on
race: first, the Mongolian;
Instituting the Han Chinese bureaucrat
second, races other than the
system with Mongolian control.
Mongolian and Chinese Han;
the third, the Chinese Han.
Catholicism spread.
Golden age of drama and
lyricism as most Chinese Han
literati can not advance in
politics.
A.D. 1368-1644 Zhu Yuan Zhang rebels against the Many missionaries like Matteo
Ming Yuan Dynasty in 1355 A.D. Ricci, Nicolas Trigault, John
Beijing becomes its capital in 1420 Aaden Scall von Belle come to
China.
A.D.
Clash between Chinese practice
Attack on Vietnam.
of ancestor worship and
Japan invades the coastal province of Catholic doctrine leads to
ZheJiang. deportation of foreign
The Manchurians occupy the northern missionaries in 1616 A.D.
province of Liao Yang. Seven ocean voyages of Zheng
Rebellion of Li Zicheng, a Chinese He (SanBao), a Chinese
Christian. Muslim. He reaches as far as the
east coast of Africa.
Table 1. continued
1949-now
Pound’s The Cantos also provides a brief listing of Chinese dynasties, together with its
LVIII. Japan
Tartar Horse Fairs
Tai Tsong, song of Tai Tseu
Twenty-second Dynasty Manchu 1625
LX. Jesuits
John Nolde’s Blossoms from the East: The China Cantos of Ezra Pound also gives us an
appendix for the Chinese dynasties. He divides Chinese history into 22 dynasties. For each
dynasty, he lists each emperor’s name and enthronement date. He catalogs emperors’ names
Pound mentioned in The Cantos with Pound’s spelling in caps and Wade-Giles transliteration in
2205 YU (Yu)
2079 CHAO-KANG (Shao Kang)
(Nolde, 435)
Pound’s outline, compared to Nolde’s catalog and division of Chinese history, apparently
lacks a historian’s consistency in style and standard. He seems to focus more on particular
Pound’s selections reflect a deeper, if not more accurate, understanding of Chinese history, or do
they simply turn into a jambalaya of a foreign pundit’s idiosyncratic fragmentation of a distant
country’s past?
The irregularity of Pound’s listing can provide an insight to this question. For instance,
Pound groups Confucius with the great emperors. The intention is clear. Confucius is the
philosopher king who founded an ideal statecraft. This is also an official view among Chinese
after the Han Dynasty. Pound also stresses the Burning of the Books in the Tsin (Qin) dynasty,
which provides a reason for this dynasty’s short-lived glory. Words like “flight” and “reform”
also reflect tension and change. “Japan,” “Jesuits,” “Russian Treaty” suggest foreign influences.
“Japan,” “Tartar Horse Fair,” “the books into Manchu,” and the mentioning of many non-Han
rulers like “Ghengis” and “Kublai” imply the on-going cultural and ethnic blending.
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China is an ancient country constantly renewing itself. Confucianism’s vitality lies in its
perfecting the ideals of statecraft while retaining and incorporating many elements of various
cultures. As discussed above, while the West Zhou Dynasty’s rational humanism replaced the
Shang Dynasty’s shamanism, it continued to use the writing system brought to maturity by the
Shang wizards. At the end of Zhou Dynasty’s reign, Confucius achieved the perfect balance
between a hierarchical, stable, and rational political structure and ethnic and cultural blending.
As a keen cultural observer and preserver, Pound grasps these two most important elements in
lessons from the East. For him, Confucius’s state and cultural ideals are correctives for the
Western world shattered by two great wars. In his sworn statement under arrest for treason on
Whenever a Chinese dynasty has lasted three centuries it has been founded on the
principles ascertained by Confucius, i.e. based by him on his collection of historic
Documents; and formulated by in his Testament. Dynasties not so founded have flopped,
as have the systems of Mussolini and Hitler. I mean that the other dynasties have flopped
in briefer periods. Hence my translations of the Testament, the first, and of the
Unwavering or Unwobbling axis, the second of the FOUR Chinese classic Confucian
books.
A peace in the orient can ONLY be on a Confucian basis. Chiang Kai Chek is probably
ready to admit this. The Chinese republic has erred in eliminating Confucian teaching, or
diminishing it in the schools.
The first statement about the longevity of Chinese dynasties is very accurate. Confucius’s
principles were developed after Zhou’s tight central and rational control fell apart and China’s
45
dukedoms were in constant wars, a situation similar to Europe’s warring states during Pound’s
time. Confucius’ hometown, Qufu, is close to the Mountain Tai (Tai Shan), a sacred place where
Heaven ordains its virtuous sons, the emperors. Confucius himself was a ritual official for the
already weakened Zhou Royal Court. Between the old Zhou ideals of statecraft and the chaos of
warring dukedoms, Confucius sought a balance between a strong central power and flourishing
local cultures. His principles, much like Pound’s The Cantos, are simple in statement yet rich in
inclusiveness of various cultures. The foundational book of Confucius, I Ching or The Book of
Changes, reveals that changes are always the only constant thing in the universe. Pound’s spirit
for constant artistic reinvention, as my advisor Tim Redman has pointed out in one of our
In conclusion, Pound’s interest in historical changes led to his unusual visions of the rise
and fall of China’s political figures. Similarly, he acutely senses the most important cultural
transition between the Shang Dynasty’s mystic divination and the West Zhou Dynasty’s rational
humanism. All these keen cultural observations and preservations started with his reading of the
Chinese signs through Fenollosa’s notes. Besides benefiting from an excellent sinologist’s
The Chinese ideograms as a whole form an organic system. This knowledge is important
for tracing Pound’s literary career. His poetic theories, especially his Vorticism pact, his
remarkable synthesis of cultures, and his consistent pursuit of the energy pattern of magnetic
fields are all related to his understanding of the organic nature of the Chinese language. In this
chapter, I will first categorize the Chinese ideograms in the The Cantos and explain their organic
nature. Later, I will outline Pound’s transition from Imagism to Vorticism and the parallelism
between Pound’s Vorticist poetics and his understanding of Chinese writing. Lastly, I will look
into the reason behind Na-Ki as the image of paradise at the end of The Cantos.
signs. They are “based on something everyone KNOWS” (ABC of Reading, 22) and therefore
can be worldwide intellectual resources open to any inquisitive mind. Pound’s reading and
understanding of those signs, though indeed exceptional during his time and even today, is
actually a normal acquisition of visual knowledge, its mechanism highly similar to a movie
46
47
characters will, moreover, reveal the interconnection between these signs and the simplicity of
their roots. Through Pound’s precise inclusion of Chinese characters one can see that Pound not
only understood these ideograms correctly, but also that he comprehended the organic nature of a
writing system that these ideograms embody. In other words, Pound recognizes that the Chinese
ideograms. It is evident in his poetic practice. An illustration of the connections between all the
Chinese ideograms in The Cantos can shed some light upon Pound’s recognition of the organic
Using Zou’s methodology in her book, Explanation of Basic Chinese Characters, I now
divide all the Chinese characters into six major categories: human, animals, plants, natural
1) Human:
Whole Body:
Parts:
• Nose: ( , self);
• Beard ( ,and);
• Ear: 聰( , smart);
49
• Neck: 經( , canon);
• Armpit: ( , also);
50
• Breasts: ( , do not);
• Waist: ( , important)
ancestor);
• Buttocksocks: ( , behind)
• Meat: ( , help)
2) Animals:
horse);
Insect: ( , insect);
omen);
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Lizard: ( , change);
3) Plants
Grass: ( , tea)
Root: ( , his/her/her)
4) Natural Phenomena:
( , river);
Fire: ( , fire);
Moon: ( , friend);
Rain: ( , earthquake);
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5) Human Productivity:
Nail: ( , nail);
Knife: ( , do not);
Armor: ( , first);
( , match);
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Boat: ( , complete);
( , in/among/at);
Plow: ( , strength);
Net: ( , libel);
6) Number/Pairing:
Lord Kelvin, a famous British physicist, once said: “When you cannot express it in
numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind” (qtd. in Livio: 1). In order to
ideogram, I have further reduced this listing into subcategories and counted their numbers:
1) Human (whole body, eye, beard, ear, mouth, breath, face, neck, hand, armpit, heart,
total);
2) Animals (snake, bird, beast, dog, insect, sheep, shell, lizard, 8 subcategories in total);
4) Natural Phenomena (water, fire, jade, sun, moon, rain, 6 subcategories in total);
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5) Human Productivity (spear, knife, axe, armor, container, boat, stick, plow, net, fabric,
The 243 characters in The Cantos can be separated into six main categories and 49
subcategories. As a general rule of thumb, most subcategories contain only one building block,
that is, one basic shape. For example, under the subcategory “Mouth,” fourteen characters share
one basic shape, ( , mouth). All of the following ideograms contain this basic shape:
A basic shape can also be added, morphed, and reduced to form different words. For
and “親( , intimate)” all sprout from the basic shape “eye.” This shape, when combined
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with “sun” and “barrel,” forms “risk” and “law.” With two extra lines indicating vision range, it
expands to mean the action “to see.” And this changed “eye” can be further placed with “spice”
Similarly, for the subcategory “fabric,” there are six characters but only two common
shapes “ ” and “ ,” “silk yarn” and “drape.” These two pictorial morphemes are also
connected as drapes are the end products of silk yarns. In other words, almost every basic shape
is cognitively easy for the human eyes to process and they are interrelated with each other.
Some subcategories might seem to have many different shapes, but the relationships
between them are very obvious. The subcategory “land/land development” has the greatest
number of basic shapes. Those shapes, however, are self-explanatory. “ ” is the “field,”
“door.” All of those shapes are images of human being’s physical surroundings.
In my discussion so far, an acute reader might have already detected a hesitation. What is
considered to be a basic shape? Defining what constitutes a basic shape and quantifying their
numbers in each category is a difficult undertaking. Should “ (silk yarn)” and “ (drape)” be
two basic shapes, since they have no apparent resemblances in line arrangement, or just one,
since both are indeed connected to fabric making? And since “ (field),” “ (base),”
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human surroundings, should they be considered as one basic shape or as totally different basic
shapes that have their own independent force that signifies, is signified, refers, and inter-refers?
This dilemma of deciding on and dividing basic shapes also exists in the first category
( , light), ( , start).
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It is easy to spot these basic shapes among them: (human), (dead or resting
human), (baby with a large head), (kneeling person), (tall and standing person).
In a way, each subcategory only employs one basic shape. In this case, all of the
reoccurring shapes represent a complete human, head, torso, and limbs and all. In photographic
terms, all of them are long shots of different human beings. Only, these shots capture different
types of human beings, some generic, some ugly, some feminine, some infantile, some proud,
some curled up, some fat, and some tall. ( , ghost), for instance, is a person with grizzly
hair and an out of proportion head, hence, it carried the sense of a horrifying ghost. ( ,
human), on the other hand, is sketchy and nondescript, therefore it represents any human being
with two walking legs. And the left part of “( , good)” and the right part of “婦
( , wife)”, with their curvy lines and kneeling posture, suggests a subordinate female.
In sum, of all the 243 Chinese characters listed in The Cantos, there are only 49 basic
1) whole body, eye, beard, ear, mouth, breath, face, neck, hand, armpit, heart, breasts,
male reproductive organ, buttocks, foot, meat, bone (all related to human beings, 8 in
total);
2) snake, bird, beast, dog, insect, sheep, shell, lizard (all related to animals, 8 in total);
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3) bamboo, tree, grass, flower, crop, root (all related to plants, 6 in total);
4) water, fire, jade, sun, moon, rain, (all related to natural phenomena, 6 in total);
5) spear, knife, axe, armor, container, boat, stick, plow, net, fabric, land, (all related to
Then Chinese ideograms are just like the the Roman alphabet in that only a few basic
building blocks are used to construct a language unit. Hence, Pound’s accurate comprehension of
the connections between Chinese written signs can be clearly explicated. Pound has his own
theory about the Chinese ideogram. This theory might not be approved by sinologists, but it
conforms to the visual cognitive laws of perception, especially the law of free association.
This knowledge about the interrelationship between the Chinese ideograms’ basic
building blocks was not formulated during Pound’s time. The orthodox studies of Chinese
ideograms were still very much limited to the analysis done by Xu Shen (c.58-147). Xu’s
concept of 540 radicals out of 9,353 characters still dominates Chinese education today, despite
In fact, the organic nature of Chinese characters is still a philological concept much
limited to the field of Chinese etymology. As for the exploration of how exactly does the
intrinsic organic nature of this writing system permeate the Chinese psyche, we still have to wait
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for the rise of interdisciplinary studies between Chinese etymology and other fields. This might,
it seems, take a long while. Chinese academics are still more interested in knowing the West than
diving into the ancient finds of oracle texts and swimming outward into aesthetics and
comparative studies.
Despite all these disadvantages and research delays, Pound’s 1913 encountering with
Fenollosa’s manuscripts brought about a big leap in his understanding of the organic mechanism
sequence of a metronome.
Later that year, Pound acquired Fenollosa’s manuscripts. This is “a turning point not only
for Pound’s career, but also for Anglo-American Modernism” (Gu, 1002). Fenollosa’s treatises
on Chinese characters and poetry had a great influence on Pound, and subsequently, on English
verse through Pound’s innovations. Within this chapter, however, I will not go into details of this
influence but instead focus on the parallelism between Pound’s Vorticist poetics and his
In Vorticism, the poetic image is “…a radiant node or cluster…a VORTEX, from which,
and through which, and into which, ideas are constantly rushing” (Pound, Gaudier-Brzeska, a
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Memoir, 92). This concept of “vortex” is similar to the rationale of the ideogram with its basic
shapes discussed in the first part of this chapter. As a building block, a Chinese root is a radiant
node, a cluster that fosters fresh ideas. It is a discrete entity but enclosed by and related to other
When further compared, Pound’s vortex parallels more with Chinese characters’ roots. In
the first Blast, Pound states that in a vortex “every concept, every emotion presents itself to the
vivid consciousness in some primary form. It belongs to the art of this form.” (The italics are
mine.) The Chinese character is also a primary form. It is a two-dimensional simple sketch of
human observation and comprehension. Pound also defined the vortex as “the point of
maximum energy,” and called the Vorticists to rely on the “primary pigment.” These terms of
“maximum energy” and “primary pigment” best describe the basic shapes of Chinese characters.
The basic roots such as ( , mouth), ( , sun), and (human) employ simple lines but
In contrast to( , mouth), ( , sun), and (human), real images of a mouth, the
sun, and a human being might be vivid, clear, and specific, but those images were hard to share
across different regions and generations before the invention and popularization of photography.
The ideograms, though primary in many senses, have an organic structure that promotes creation
and dissemination.
According to Laszlo Géfin, Pound’s reading of Arnaut, Vidal, Cardenal, Sordello, and
Bertrans de Born revealed to him the discovery of their poetic method, the idea-image, which
Their method was the creation of idea-image through the relation of compressed
metaphors. “Pound called it the ideogrammic method,” observes one critic, “but he
discovered it in Provence long before he came across the Fenollosa manuscripts.” While
this is an exaggeration, it is safe to say on the basis of the evidence that Pound’s mind
was prepared by his Provençal studies so that the seeds of Fenollosa’s essay fell on fertile
ground. (Géfin, 8)
Géfin also argues that “the method of the ideogram…is implicit in the early works on
romance in the discussion of the “luminous detail” the series of essays “I Gather the Limbs of
Osiris” (Géfin, 6). According to him, “the very basis of” Pound’s ideogrammic method is
“Pound’s intuitive affinity for description by particulars” which “is present in The Spirit of
Romance (1910) and in “I Gather the Limbs of Osiris” (1911-1912). These works, together with
his “Cavalcanti” essay, contain the fruits of his research in the romance tradition” (Géfin, 4).
There are also some interesting parallelisms between the idea of paideuma and the
Chinese ideograms as the records of their times. The knowledge of the Chinese ideograms as an
organic system, therefore, is important to access Pound’s poetic theories, his fascination with the
Orient, his remarkable strength in world cultural synthesis, and his consistent pursuit of magnetic
Looking eastward even my own scant knowledge of ideograms has been enough
to teach me that a few hours’ work on it is more enlivening, goes further to jog a man’s
fixations than a month’s work on a great Greek author. I don’t know how long such
enlivenment would endure. At the moment I see no end to it, I assert that for Europe and
for occidental man there is here an admirable means of getting out of his ruts and his
stupidities.
…
A sane university curriculum will put Chinese where Greek was, or at least put it
in the smaller position whereto has now fallen, that is as a luxury study.
(Pound, Selected Prose, 286)
In Pound’s eyes, the concept of paideuma has “the sense of the active element in the era,
the complex of ideas which is in a given time germinal, reaching into the next epoch, but
conditioning actively all the thought and action of its own time” (Pound, Selected Prose, 284) .
Chinese characters, as discussed in Chapter One, are products of the ancient divination culture.
Many basic shapes were actually “the active elements in the era.” The subcategory of
and , containers made of branches, possible formed earlier than , the ceramic
urn. The metal pots, and , should come the latest. Nevertheless, all of those shapes
reach “into the next epoch” (Pound, Selected Prose, 286), and they are the geminating seeds of
more characters.
In this light, it is easy to see Pound’s preferred paideuma for “the gristly roots of ideas
that are in action” and for his description of a vortex where “all experience rushes into this
vortex. . . . All the past that is vital, all the past that is capable of living into the future, is
pregnant in the vortex, NOW.” Both propositions are close to the organic quality of Chinese
characters.
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explanations. In the next chapter, however, I will only focus upon the visual effects of the
Chinese texts in it. But, before I shift to a discussion of aesthetics, I would like to go back to
explore one more feature of Chinese ideograms, the silence of sound, which will lead us into a
In chapter One, I reiterated Fenollosa’s point that Chinese ideograms are “arbitrary
symbols” that have no basis in sound” (Fellnollosa, 8). Yet I also insist that Sino-Tibetan sound
roots lay deep in the subconscious of Chinese poetics and still live actively in Modern Chinese.
To ultimately understand the Chinese ideograms as a record of voiced language that can be
pronounced and read aloud, one can not ignore the Tibetan culture. Hence, at the end of The
Cantos, Na-Ki, a region next to the Tibet, becomes a symbol of Paradiso. This is Pound’s resting
point in his inquiry into the complete picture of the Chinese mind and also an opening for future
intellectual journeys.
Pound’s choice of the last document mentioned in The Cantos is Joseph Rock’s Ancient
Na-Khi, Kingdom of Southwest China, after citing T.S. Eliot’s “These fragments I have shored
Joseph Rock did research on the Na-Ki culture. To Pound, the final quest for the deep
roots of the Chinese ideogram has to be through the Na-Ki culture. In this culture, the ideograms
are still in their maturing state and people still speak a language similar to Tibetan. It is a node
where sounds and shapes merge and the tree metaphorically is still in its seed state.
Here, Pound leaves The Cantos at this hopeful beginning of new search. Since his
contact with Fenollosa’s notes in 1913, his eastward gaze upon the Chinese signs lasted half a
and promotion of Chinese written signs, however, should not be examined for their errors. The
ideogram’s ubiquity and appeal are in accordance with the creative mode of our universe; so is
Pound’s poetics.
To conclude, Pound’s knowledge of Chinese ideograms and texts, therefore, should not
be dismissed as merely a copyist’s broken fantasy. Quite the contrary, his interest in reading and
using Chinese characters serves as an important case for cross-cultural studies. He understood
the organic nature of Chinese characters. Of the 243 characters in The Cantos, there are 49 basic
shapes. In its entirety, the Chinese written system employs about 200 basic roots; all of them
pertain to basic aspects of human life. The possibilities of the ideas imbedded in these Chinese
written concepts are infinite, a limitlessness that lays the foundation for Far Eastern aesthetics. It
is from these possibilities which Pound advances his formulation of a more befitting modernist
poetics.
CHAPTER THREE
As discussed in the previous chapter, The Cantos employs 243 characters that contain 49
basic roots. Pound’s use of those Chinese ideograms in this epic-length poem is a result of his
years of studies. Meanwhile, the Chinese character’s lucidity may have made it possible for him
to incorporate these symbols, though visually very different, into an Anglo/Western text.
The Chinese ideogram functions at multiple levels with other texts in The Cantos. First,
as a contextualizing building block, it is an inseparable part of The Cantos’ long semantic string,
not much different from the English, Italian, French or any other form of text. Secondly, it is a
co-text, helping the rest of the text to flow together, both visually and semantically. Moreover, it
provides intellectual and cultural inter-text for each canto and thus works as a bridge between the
East and the West. In other words, inside The Cantos, Chinese ideograms operate as both context
and co-text while they also point to other intellectual and cultural texts outside.
The Chinese ideogram is obviously not the only non-English text in the multi-lingual The
Cantos. Italian, Greek, French, German, and Latin are seen throughout the whole poem. Both
Canto LXXII and Canto LXXIII, for example, are written entirely in Italian. Canto XLVII places,
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69
for another example, English transcriptions and their Greek originals together as in
Μοῖραιτ̓ ’′Αδονιν/Kai MOIRAI' ADONIN” (Pound, The Cantos, 236). Also, half of Canto
The interplay of English with other European languages is not unusual. Carmina Burana,
for example, contains several poems mixing Latin with Medieval German and French. Pound’s
incorporation of music score, club sign, Egyptian hieroglyphic, Persian characters, and Chinese
Before Canto XXXIV, The Cantos contains no Chinese symbols. In this canto, after a
pyramid sign and right before the section ends, a Chinese symbol is first seen:
Constans proposito
Justum et Tenacem
(The Cantos, 171)
“,” as explained in Chapter 2, means “letter/trust,” a perfect mirroring for the adjacent
At the end of Canto LI, two other Chinese ideograms appear: “”(“to rectify names”).
They summarize this canto’s discussion of usura or usury. The lines precedent to these two
…
Circling in eddying air; in a hurry;
The 12: close eyed in the oily wind
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these were the regents; and a sour song from the folds of this belly
sang Geryone; I am the help of the aged;
I pay men to talk peace;
Mistress of many tongues; merchant of chalcedony
I am Geryon twin with usura,
You who have lived in a stage set.
A thousand were dead in his folds;
In the eel-fishers basket
Time was of the League of Cambrai:
In the following canto section, after Pound explains his treatment of Chinese names, the
ideogram “”(“glory/illumination”) occupies half of the foreword for Canto LII -LXXI.
“Bright, vide note on p. 42. Upper right, abbreaviated picture of wings; lower,
bird=to fly. Both F. and Morrison note that it is short tailed bird” (Fenollosa, 62,
Fordham UP edition).
The component ' bright ' in the second ideogram is resolvable into fire above a
man (walking). The picture is abbreviated to the light and the moving legs. I should say it
might have started as the sun god moving below the the horizon, at any rate it is the upper
part of the fire sign. (Fenollosa, 63, Fordham UP edition).
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Here, “” (“glory/illumination”) is not directly related to the proceeding and following texts.
Terrell’s A Companion to The Cantos of Ezra Pound even skips the explanation of this ideogram.
This ideogram, however, is very important as it is the one-word preview of the end of Canto
LXXI, the last canto of the Adams Cantos. It is also Pound’s Chinese equivalence of paideuma
that Pound explained before the Chinese and Adams Cantos: “Note that the final lines in greek,
Canto 71, are from Hymn of Cleanthes, part of Adams’s paideuma: Glorious, deathless of many
names, Zeus aye ruling all things, founder of the inborn qualities of nature, by laws piloting all
In the first canto of the Chinese and Adams Cantos, another Chinese symbol “” (“to
stop,” 261) is also placed at the rear in a similar position to “” (“to rectify names,” 252) in
Canto LI.
In short, before Canto LIII, Chinese symbols are rarely deployed. Only four characters
names”); all of them are placed at the end of a poem with an explanatory note. While “
(“letter/trust”)” echoes the meaning of its adjacent lines, the latter three ideograms, however,
provide a new meaning. “”(“to rectify names,” 252) conclude Pound’s discussion of usury
in Canto LI while “”(“glory/illumination”) introduces Canto LII -LXXI as the canto of light.
From Canto LIII on, Chinese ideograms are incorporated into every canto except for
Cantos LXIV, LXV, LXXI, LXXII, LXXIII, LXXV, LXXXI, XCII, and CIII. In the drafts and
fragments of Cantos CX-CXVII, three pieces use Chinese signs. In other words, from Canto LIII
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to Canto CXIX, 48 cantos use Chinese symbols, bringing the total number of cantos with
Chinese symbols to 50. No other non-European writing or non-literary sign is so widely used.
The use of Chinese ideograms can be divided into these two patterns:
1) A Chinese character is inserted in the poetic flow without its Romanized form or
pronunciation.
One might be tempted to make the generalization that the Chinese is used in the first
pattern as “text,” because it shares the same status as any Anglo, European, or non-literary text.
The Chinese used in the second pattern should be named, on the other hand, “co-text” since it co-
These two patterns contain many variations, though some consist of very minute changes.
In the first pattern, for instance, an explanation or paraphrase of the character is sometimes
provided in the adjacent lines. And this explanation, sometimes hinted at the description,
The second pattern, or the co-existence of Chinese characters and their pronunciation/
Romanization, also has a different textual organization and different semantic interplays.
Although most of the time a Chinese character is placed next to its pronunciation, Pound seems
to have no fixed rule as to its position. A character can be placed below, above, to the left of, and
to the right of its pronunciation. Sometimes, a character is even placed a few lines away from its
pronunciation.
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The third and fourth sections of this chapter are detailed listings of these variations along
Pronunciation
into the text of The Cantos. Pound treats this character as a universal sign readable to all readers.
(“glory/illumination,” 254),” and “”(“to stop,” 261)” all end a poem o r an explanatory note;
Throughout The Cantos, this pattern is used relatively less than the second pattern. From
Canto LIII on, only the following characters are used without any notes on pronunciation: “
not the other way around,”290), “/”(“change,” 313), “”(“correct,” 352), “”(“middle,”
413, 738), “/” (“to show,” 449), “”(“sunset/do not,” 450), “/” (“honesty,” 474), “
”(“how far,” 518), “ /”(“do not help growth,” 552), “”(“compassionate &
”(“reaching their ends that man and that woman, ” 567), “/”(“each
one grows at his place,” 568), “”(“virtue,”570), “/”(“spirit,” 571), “” (“ultimate, 573),
“” (“blood,” 573), “”( “slant,” 573), “”(“earth middle,” 574), “ ”(“respect,” 575),
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“”(“spear,” 575), “”(“town,” 576), “”(“teach,” 579), “”(“hold,” 579), “”(“risk,” 579),
the look of one person,” 583) “/”(“machine,” 623, 766), “”(“letter/trust,” 584), “ ”
(“up,” 595), “”( “profit,” 595), “ ”(“stop,” 596), “”(“must,” 612), “”(“change,” 618),
“/”(“machine,” 623, 766), “”(“king,” 660, 661), “”(“root,” 660), “”(“new,” 662),
3
“”(“rectify names,” 702), “/”(“Old horse god does not lie down, ”
703), “”(“no,” 705, 748), “ /” (“question,” 708), “ ”( “reverence and filial piety,” 711),
flattery to worship others’ dead ancestors,” 487), “”(“will,” 487), and “/”(“seal,” 488)
are also inserted into the text without a listing of the pronunciations. An explication of their
Altogether, characters used in Pattern One fall into the following types:
1) Translation as Explanation
3
Carroll F. Terrell’s translation in A Companion to The Cantos of Ezra Pound (Terrell, 627).
75
In many cases, when pronunciations are absent, translations are offered to explain these
adjacent lines. In Canto LXXXVI, “(“letter/trust,” 584) is also translated in the line above:
In some cases, a character can have many translations, all of them are correct such as
Here, “” (“to stop,” 596) is delivered as “dissolution,” “arrived,” and “got to”; all of
rendered as “novelle” and “”(“middle,” 413, 738) is translated into the Italian word “mezzo.”
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Sometimes, Pound uses a translation related to the actual meaning of the original Chinese.
“”(“respect,” 575), for instance, is translated as “sincere” as in “and you can know the sincere”
(LXXXV, 575) .
From time to time, the translation, as embedded in the lines, poses a challenge for its
readers. In many cases, a reader must have some familiarity with the characters inserted, even
though most basic components or word roots in Chinese, as discussed in Chapter 3, are visual
representations of human beings and their surroundings and require no further instruction.
Hence, The Cantos can pose quite a challenge to its Western readers even if the
explanation is offered in translations. Fortunately, Pound places many of his translations right
next to the characters. In the case of“ / ” (“field and money,” 711), for instance, such
confusion is eliminated as the translations are placed right next to the characters:
“”(“hold,” 579) and , for instance, has the corresponding line, “as the hand grips the wheat,”
(LXXXV, 579)
3) Description/Narration as Explanation
Sometimes, a Chinese word is neither translated nor dissected; rather, its meaning is only
A lizard upheld me
the wild birds wd not eat the white bread
from Mt Taishan to the sunset
From Carrara stone to the tower
and this day the air was made open
for Kuanon of all delights,
Linus, Cletus, Clement
Whose prayers,
the great scarab is bowed at the altar
the great light gleams in his shell
plowed in the sacred field and unwound the silk worms early
In tensile
in the light of light is the virtù
“sunt lumina” said Erigena Scotus
as of Shun on Mt Taishan
and in the hall of the forebears
as from the beginning of wonders
the paraclete that was present in Yan, the precision
in Shun and the compassionate
in Yun the guider of water
(LXXIV, 448-449)
Here, the word “/” (“to show”) is explained in several descriptions. One is about
nature. In this scene of sunset, silk worms and light are two primary images, which is the same
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with the left side of “,” a shorthand picture of the sun shining upon two silk worms. Another
description here is about prayer. In this scene, light or a divine spirit infuses the space, opening
the air and gleaming on the scarab shell. This light is similar to the solar light, which is reflected
in the top part of the left side of“.” But more importantly , since this light is generated through
prayers, it is also an energy from the mind, hence, the right side of “”—“”(“head”) become
a visual summary of the essence of this light. Finally, descriptions about nature and prayer
illumination turn into a reminiscence of the virtues of historical figures. In classifying Yao’s,
Shun’s and Yu’s moral or intellectual strength, Pound demonstrates different signs of divine
4) A Hint as an Explanation
Sometimes, some explanatory notes are tangential, just enough to provide a clue for an
intelligent guess. As cited below, in Canto LXX, “” follows after the word “balance:”
“Balance” is not the literal translation of “” which means “middle” in Chinese. Yet
5) Partial Explanation
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6) No Explanation
There are many characters in The Cantos left without any explanatory notes. “ ”(“to
rectify names,” 252), “(“glory/illumination,” 254),” and “ ”(“to stop,” 261),” for instance, all
provide a new turn in meaning but their meanings are not explained at all.
or pronunciations. In that case, “”(“teach,” 579) is not explained because it has two
Quite a few long phrases and complete sentences in Chinese ideograms are not clarified.
woman,” 567), and “各長于厥居/各”(“each grow at his place,” 568) are not explained
at all.
It is unclear why Pound left out the explanation. Maybe these long phrases and complete
sentences form their verbal strings, making the interruption of explanatory notes awkward. He
might also have left out the explanation due to concern about length. He might have expected an
audience who was curious about China. For example, “” (“virtue,”570) is associated with the
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line above “Tch’eng T’ang for guide” (LXXXV, 570). “,” the name of a successful
emperor’s reign between 627A.D. and 649 A.D., is often viewed as another historic period no
less great than the time of “Tch’eng T’ang”(“ ,” -1646 B.C.), Shang Dynasty’s founding
father.
It is apparent, however, that Pound seldom gives an explanation of the basic shape of
Chinese characters. If a simple Chinese character is itself a basic root or just a slight variation of
a basic root, it often left without explanation. “” (“earth middle,” 574) is a case in point:
T’án
iue
p’ei
houâng
XIII,9 k’i p’eng
Also in Canto CII, “不” (“No”) is treated as an easy character that needs no explanation or
Overall, in Pattern One, a character or several characters are inserted in the flow of the
text without pronunciation notes. In most cases, an explanation, description, or a hint is given to
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illustrate the meaning of those characters. Nevertheless, quite a number of characters are not
clarified.
Variations of Pattern One are often interchangeably used. “/”(“question,” 708), for
instance, is hinted at by the question marks close to it, while its components are also explained:
“”(“sunset/do not,” 450), for another example, is given a literal translation in English:
“don’t.” “Sunt lumina,” a translation in Latin, is given too. An explanation of the image
suggested by the character for “a man on whom the sun has gone down,” is also listed. Moreover,
there are descriptions of different scenes or images such as “the sun dragging her stars” to further
Pronunciations or Romanization
As mentioned above, Pattern One is used relatively less than Pattern Two in which
Chinese characters are used as supplementary signs to their Roman transcription. Throughout
The Cantos, Pound uses a great number of Chinese words. Some are names for people, places,
and historical events. Some are concepts, and some are Confucian quotations. Most of these
Similar to characters in Pattern One, those Romanized Chinese words are sometimes left
without any explanation. In Canto LVI, for instance, Chinese words sometimes move along
Mogols./ Han, Lang, Quen, Kong, Mei, Kien, Tchong, King, Fou, Pong, Chun King” (LVI, 303).
Some of these Romanized Chinese words are also translated or described as the
characters used in Pattern One, especially if their ideogram equivalents are given. In “They who
are skilled in fire/should read tan, the dawn” (XCI, 635), “tan/ ” is translated as “dawn.”
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Pound often gives both the pronunciation and the paraphrase at the same time. Also, “” (“to
demonstrate,” 650) in Canto XCII is provided with both the pronunciation “hsien” and the
Not all the Romanized Chinese words, however, have their ideogram equivalents
attached close to them. Usually, when a Chinese ideogram is attached right next to its
Romanization, the purpose is either to clarify which exact word Pound intended to use, or it is
As discussed in Chapter 1, Chinese words can be pronounced in many ways. A word can
pronunciations for one word, however, is in sharp contrast with the scarcity of phonetic variety
for one language/dialect’s entire vocabulary. In Mandarin, for example, only 407 sounds are used
to read its tens of thousands of characters. Even though Mandarin has four tones, the variety in
writing still outweighs the variety in sound. Often, only in the form of an ideogram can a word
be distinguished from another. For instance, “” and “/” share the same syllable “i/yi.”
Even though one is assigned the first tone and the other the fourth tone in Mandarin Chinese,
their pronunciation without tones will not reveal this difference. “” shows up four times (583,
620, 659, 664) in the whole poem while “/” appear seven times (583, 587,615, 647, 694,
709,710). Pound puts down the characters almost every time. “The Commissioner Iu-p’uh, ” in
another instance, is given as “” in Canto XCVIII (XCVIII, 700) because both “Iu” and
When characters work as visual aids, they function more like co-texts rather than contexts.
Since characters in Pattern One also assist and enhance the meaning of The Cantos, I will fully
illustrate these ideograms’ visual and cultural function in the next chapter. For the time being, I
both, can be translated, described, hinted at, or left unexplained as characters in Pattern One. The
interplay between meaning and form for characters in Pattern Two is similar to what is in Pattern
One. Hence, instead of focusing on different types of interplay, I will concentrate on different
1) Different Systems
There are several systems of Chinese Romanization of Chinese: Hanyu Pinyin, Wade-
Giles, Gwoyeu Romatzyh and other uncommon Romanization systems. Gwoyeu Romatzyh was
developed by Zhao Yuanren in the 1920s. Hanyu Pinyin is a later invention in 1958.
For the most part of The Cantos, Pound uses the Wade-Giles system. It was developed by
Thomas Francis Wade and refined by Herbert Allen Giles. Before 1979, it is used in several
standard reference books and in all books about China published in the West. To name a few,
“Iu-p’uh” for “” in Canto XCVIII, and “Tai Wu Tzu” for” ” in Canto XCIV are all
Also, because of his studies of De Mailla’s Histoire Générale de la Chine and Pauthier,
Pound uses French pronunciations too. “ôu iu chouèi,” for instance, is the pronunciation for “
.”
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Pound’s transcription also reflects dialectical differences. For instance, “ngò” for
Japanese pronunciation is especially seen often in The Cantos. In this case we see:
2) Tones
A large proportion of the Chinese pronunciations in The Cantos have no tones. But much
later in his life and work, Pound will give tones in form of superscript or description.
For instance:
…
Once gold was
by ants
out of burrows
not
pao three
This is not treasure.
Can you tell pao three from pao four, a wild cat:
Da radice toribida
Is no clarity.
(CIV, 760)
Occasionally, Pound will describe the tones in lines close by as seen below:
Also Antoninus as apex, but on slavery and on bhoogery…
Not un-man, my Estlin, but all-men
Asching
in the fourth
tone
(LXXXVIII, 601)
Most of the time, ideograms and their pronunciations share the same physical vicinity.
Occasionally, they are placed at a distance. For instance, in Canto LVI, “” does not
mogul
drifting dung-dust from the North.
(LVI, 302)
In Canto LXXXV, for instance, most characters are given a pronunciation. But “” in
the middle of the poem is given both a pronunciation and the English explanation of “whereby.”
Also in the case of “” (“grip risk,” 579), pronunciations, ideograms translations, and
Sagetrieb
As the hand grips the wheat,
Risked the smoke to go forward
An example is in “” (“also favor the look of one person,” 583) where only
“” is given its pronunciation. But the line following these ideograms explains the meaning of
mao
At times, Chinese characters are only loosely associated with other texts in the
surrounding area. “何遠/” (“how far,” 518), for instance, is related to neither Mr. Beddoes
somewhat connected to “/” (“how far” ). By placing “/” (“how far” ) so far
from its association, Pound might be playing a textual game with his readers in which “/
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” (“how far” ) literally means “far for readers to get at it.” But this is also a risk too since both
This placement could well have been a mistake too. Pound might have meant to place “
/” (“how far” ) right next to “the cat -faced eucalyptus nib/is where you cannot get at it.”
“” (“virtue,” 566), on the other hand, can only be remotely inferred from the context:
What does “” refer to here? What does “this process” mean? Does the process refer to the
cooperation between people as indicated in the components of”” (For the components, please
see the dictionary in Part Two.)? Or does it simply points to the action described above? Can
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“” also point to the virtuous characters such as Yi Yin and Dante later on? It is hard to pin
Sometimes, Pound seems to place an ideogram in the wrong place. For instance:
That Tch’eng T’ang
湯 overthrew Hia
Praestantissimos regere
(LXXXV, 575)
“” is just a part of “ ” and is not rela ted to the rest of the text. There is a possibility
that maybe Pound wants to emphasize that “” (“completion”) requires sharp actions such as
taking up spears to fight. Carroll Terrell also notices that “this text does not appear alone in the
Couvreur text but as a component in the next character.” He insists, however, that Pound “put
together” those elements to “say: ‘With his spear, Tch’eng T’ang overthrew Hia” (Terrell, 477).
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Nevertheless, “湯” means “to kill/stab Tch’eng T’ang.” Therefore Terrell’s in terpretation is
incorrect.
building blocks of this epic. His use of Chinese ideograms follows two patterns. In Pattern One,
a Chinese character is inserted in the poetic flow without its Romanized form or pronunciation.
transliteration. Most ideograms, be they in Pattern One or Pattern Two, are given translations and
descriptions for their meanings. Sometimes, an ideogram is left without any explanation. There
are also a few places of ambiguity and confusion that leave his readers pondering whether they
As discussed in Chapter Three, the Chinese ideograms are building blocks of The Cantos.
Semantically, these characters are an intrinsic part of The Cantos’ long verbal strings, similar to
other foreign texts. Being a language art, poetry relies mostly on its verbal components to
The Chinese ideogram also functions as a visual aid. Its intrinsic visual quality helps to
illustrate and highlight other texts. In that sense, it is a text and co-text at the same time.
Moreover, most ideograms in The Cantos are from Confucian canons. Therefore these
ideograms also function as an intertext, a gateway to a “new Greece” and a bridge between the
civilization.
In 1981, Marjorie Perloff proposed a theory of the modernists’ poetics. She called it a
“poetics of indeterminacy” and listed Pound as its most prominent practitioner. According to
Perloff, “Pound violates the norms of the lyric, especially the Romantic lyric” (Perloff, The
Dance of the Intellect, 17). Donald Carne-Ross also points out “Pound’s offense against the great
principles of inwardness, of internalization that has put us at the centre of things and laid waste
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The Cantos, as well as other modernists’ works such as T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land and
William Carlos Williams’s Spring and All, do point out to the reader multiple directions of
decoding. The Cantos, however, goes beyond semantic indeterminacy when it embraces Chinese
ideograms whose intrinsic visual quality and organic nature give both certainty and complexity
to “the visible world.” In other words, Pound has never “laid waste the visible world.” Quite the
contrary, as a cotext, the Chinese ideogram brings visual lucidity to Western poetry.
Although poetry has long been regarded as an art that paints with words, the visual
lucidity of English verse was first facilitated in Pound’s poetic painting with Chinese characters.
The validity of Chinese characters as Pound’s poetic medium, however, seems dependent upon
the universal literacy of Chinese ideograms. After all, if Pound paints with Chinese characters,
his readers should at least be educated in this new medium. As Sun Hong states: “…most people
are not Chinese scholars. Without dictionaries and proper training, they have nothing but their
minds to rely on. Is there any hope for them to comprehend the Chinese characters in The
Like the Impressionists’ brushwork that creates immediacy in viewing, however, Pound’s
inclusion of Chinese characters can also generate immediacy in aesthetic response to his poems
“” clear
as to definitions
CHING
(Cantos LXVII, 387)
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“,” as explained in the dictionary, is composed of two images: a block and a foot.
Together these two images mean “to stop at the right place,” hence it means “correct.” Canto
LXVII is a poem of reflection on authority. Revolving around John Adams’s argument for
judiciary independence, it contains many historic events and characters but rarely any “lucid”
images.
Even readers who do not know Chinese can have an understanding of this sketch of lines
crosing, “”. Thus the semantic certainty in Pound’s work actually invites complexity in reader
reponses. This clear image, as paradoxical as it might seem, in fact opens more room for
meaning. Does Pound intend to say that all definitions point to one correct understanding? Does
he make this comparison of an Eastern symbol and the Western multi-syllabic word definition a
Also, as mentioned in both Chapter One and Chapter Three, a Chinese character can be
distanced from its original images but still retain its portal of meaning or, web of possible
meanings. “,” for instance, can also point to a messy placement of lines. Following this line of
reasoning, a reader can further inquire about Pound’s intention. Maybe he wants to express the
idea that definitions can be deceptions too? When taking the whole of Canto LVII and the rest of
the Adams cantos into consideration, can Pound’s poetic strategy be seen as “”, parallel or
Paradoxically, the answers to these questions can be either positive or negative, or even
both. The indeterminacy here points us back to Perloff’s “poetics of indeterminacy.” Whether a
reader can pin down the answers or exhaust the possibilities of questions, however, the image
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“” remains concrete and clear. Semantic indecisiveness is thus “compensated” with a visual
certainty.
Not all the ideograms will, however, add that much complexity to the text of The Cantos.
Let us look at more examples to see in what ways Chinese ideograms bring visual certainty and
LING2
“靈” takes up four lines in space and is very important in this canto. In Part Two, this
Explanation: rain +three mouths + (two persons +rainbow) = rain + to show+ wizard = to
pray for rain= to invoke spirits for rain=spirit
Page: 563, 572, 575, 580, 695, 758, 760
On the surface, this character might be very elusive for any one who is not trained in the
Chinese language. A more careful look, however, will reveal its simplicity, especially when it is
enlarged. Maybe Pound demands that his reader joyfully treat different layers of this visual
Horizontally, each layer is composed of one or a few of the basic shapes discussed in Chapter
Two:
(human)]
“ ,” “ ”, “”, “”, and “” are all basic , easily recognizable signs. Together they form
a clear picture of men, or crafty, smart men calling for rain. It is partially translated in the key
word of the next line, sensibility. In Chinese folklore, only the most sincere petition of the people
will make the Heavenly God, or Shang Di, grant them the much desired rain. It is through
emotions that people and the Heavenly God bond. Hence, “” depicts a more vivid picture of
After Xia (ca. 2000-1500 B.C) and Shang (1700-1027 B.C.), the Zhou Dynasty is the last
of China’s pre-fedual dynasties. It was also divided into West Zhou (1027-771 B.C.) and East
Zhou (770-221 B.C.). East Zhou had a nominal central government, and its warring states
forsook most of the social orders established by King Weng of the West Zhou Dynasty. As
discussed in Chapter One, the cultural change between the Shang and Zhou dynasties is very
significant in Chinese history. The divination-frantic Shang was culturally replaced by the more
rational and structured Zhou. Yet, similar to Christ’s replacement of Dionysus, Zhou’s more
stratified and rigid social order never wiped out the undercurrent of the free-spirited Shang.4
Sense and sensibility are just two sides of a coin. In the last Chinese dynasty, one of the
emperor’s duties as the Son of Heaven was still to pray for rain when necessary. The core of this
royal rain-praying ritual is earnest and emotional sincerity. (For instance, emperors must bathe,
change, fast, and abstain from sex before entering the praying site.)
Therefore, the ideogram “” offers a vivid sketch of Shang shamanism, and a good
reminder of what led to a rational state. In that sense, Canto LXXXV, like a movie, opens with a
rain-praying scene in the frame of an ideogram. Hence, the first seven lines of Canto LXXXV
4
In his 1920 poem “Hugh Selwyn Mauberley,” Pound wrote: “Christ follows Dionysus, / Phallic and ambrosial /
Made way for macerations; / Caliban casts out Ariel.” Interestly, Confucius (551-479 B.C.) also embraced the Shang
culture while upholding the West Zhou Dynsty’s social order.
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Like“(right)” in Cantos LXVII, the ideogram “” here adds more complexity to the
text by evoking a scene before “our dynasty.” Whether a reader is familiar with the dynastic and
cultural change between the Zhou and the Shang, “” provides a visual co -text to the rain-
praying scene and therefore a link to Zhou’s sensibility, the keyword in the next line.
This link can have as many contours as a reader’s free associations can come up with.
The meaning of “” is derived by means of the free association of five ba sic signs. A reader
might see the mouth sign as the most prominent one and therefore see “voicing” and
“sensibility” as two ends of a semantic bridge. A reader might also focus more on the rain sign
and the crouched human sign, and the connection between the ideogram and the next line might
become something like “our dynasty came in because of a great sensibility to human suffering.”
Unlike “(right),” however, “” does not bring too much indecisiveness to the meaning
of those lines and therefore might not be able to serve as a primary example of Perloff’s “poetics
of indeterminacy.” It is a much more descriptive and concrete ideogram than “” though the
former is more structurally complicated. As a picture, “” contains more details and provide s a
This visual certainty is very similar to the cinematic art. In a certain sense, The Cantos is
like a movie trailer. Different episodes denote and connote different thoughts, moods, and
energies. Dependent upon the reader’s free association, an ideogram might provide a image but
This image refers to dawn. So the lines above can be rewritten in the translation and
paraphrases as:
Or better, since is a sketch of the sun departing , those lines can further be rewritten as:
Pound does not need to write “the dawn” three times. The dawn imagery might remind a loyal
reader of Homer of a frequent line — “When young Dawn with her rose-red fingers shone once
As the sun sprang up, leaving the brilliant waters in its wake,
Climbing the bronze sky to shower light on immortal gods
And mortal man across the plowhands ripe with grain
(The Odyssey, Book Three, 107)
a well-known Western image with an eastern word. The connection can only be embodied and
The upper part of this ideogram indicates a sun, and the lower part the horizon. As a
whole, the image indicates the energetic sun pushing the darkness away as it departs from the
horizon. Sun rays are much like forceful or lively fingers. Therefore, we see Homer’s sunrises
often involve images of fingers. As an image of the sunrise, “” bears the universal thought
print. Pound’s account of “the dawn” and of Odysseus’s twists and turns, therefore, once again
immortalizes Homer’s famous stories and makes Odysseus’s story a universal human theme.
another purpose. To quote once again lines like “When young Dawn with her rose-red fingers
shone once more” might sound trite to Pound. He seems to reserve his poetic energy, similar to a
LXXXV, and “” in the middle of Canto XCI, the functions of Chinese ideograms can be
sentence “why should (we) talk about interest?” This sentence complements the previous line:
“Public debt was extinguished.1834” (Canto LXXXIX, 615) and validates the next line “This
similar to 3) in the brief summary above, only these four characters connects thoughts rather than
images and they also further the discussion of public debt by bring up the importance of interest-
free lending.
Even a reader equipped with a companion book might not understand the meaning of “
” at first glance. He or she by free association can guess from the basic signs such as “
proposing a more reasonable or humane public credit system based on the natural rhythm of
categories summarized above. In fact, all the Chinese ideograms in the The Cantos are multi-
…
(Tenth, Paradiso, nel Sole)
non per color, ma per lume parvente
Custumier…
de la foresta 14
are yellow-green after sunset H
in politique capacity a king dies not 3
ancient eit franchies,
ne injuste vexes
progress ostendunt
Magna Charta, chap XII
periplum, assie in periplum
and King also was minister
pen
the root is that charter.
(Canto CVII776-777)
“” in Chinese can mean both “root” and “book/charter.” Pound uses the oneness of this
Chinese character’s two meanings to drive home his claim that nature and law are one. “” is
also an image of a tree, so it can also connote growth, process, and balance. Therefore, “”
unites almost all the keywords here. Without this cotext, a reader would miss the key elements
person)” seem quite independent from the rest of text in Canto XCV:
hu 1
jên 2
the light there almost solid.
YAO’S worry: to find a successor
“(close to compassion) ” seems quite unrelated and “” is the red uced and
redundant follower of “a successor.” What are these Chinese ideograms attempting to achieve?
What do they contribute to the meaning of these lines and the whole Canto XCV? If there are
indeed irrelevant pictures here, where should they be placed? Must physical proximity dictate
The answer to the last question is apparently no. A reader of The Cantos must travel
according to Pound’s “periplum” and be ready for a return visit. Canto XCV’s first few lines
inform us that “LOVE, gone as lightning, / enduring 5000 years. / Should the comet cease
moving / or the great stars be tied in one place!” (CantoXCV, 663). “(compassion)” is also
“love” in Chinese. And “5000 years” alludes to the Chinese self-proclaimed duration of their
civilization. But soon Pound leaves the Chinese theme in The Cantos and he moves to Delacroix,
Dante, John Adams, Desmond Fizgerald, and many other Western figures. Yet, the Chinese
water theme in the opening does not evaporate into the air, it returns as rain or water that brings
about a paradisal scene in “the crystal wave mount to flood surge.” In between the “wave” and
“the light” only “LOVE” or “ (compassion)” can be solid. The forty-one lines in between the
China theme and three Chinese ideograms do not obstruct this truth. Clearly Pound thinks that
these forty-one lines are close or “(close)” enough to his reader to travel back to the China
theme.
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In the case of “ (one person),” however, the proximity rule still seems to work. “
(one person)” can be seen as the Chinese recap of “a successor.” Yet in the next two lines,
King Edward VIII’s “instrumental” role “in keeping WWII from starting”(Terrell, 688) make the
seems better to place “” after “Windsor.” Nevertheless, this rearrangement might not yield
the same weight on the stress of “a successor,” and it might make the transition between a
After the above analyses, “(close to compassion) ” and “(one person)” seem
quite deeply linked with, rather than somewhat independent from, the rest of the texts in Canto
XCV. As for their functionality, I believe a creative reader can find more possibilities besides
what I see as a poet’s witty hint of poetic proximity and quasi-dangerous arrangement of a
connecting point. Pound’s poetry so often invites the reader to play a mind game.
Often, Pound’s poetic mind games are G-rated; players of all different levels can
participate. The “(to accomplish) ” at the end of Canto LXXVII is a excellent case in point:
bringest to focus
ch’êng Zagreus ch’êng
Zagreus
(Canto LXXVII, 495)
For readers without any Chinese background, the shape “” might look like spear-shaped
objects winging the phrase “bringest to focus.” Since “” means “to accomplish,” a reader who
understands Chinese might think that the two “s” are there to emphasize bringest. Someone
who is well educated in ancient Chinese, however, would soon spot a phrase in the two “s”
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and reach a utterly different conclusion. (“(to accomplish) ” is the original form for “(city) ”
and “(sincerity). ” Therefore “” can be read either as “to build a city” or “to obtain
sincerity.”)
Sometimes, even omission of ideograms provides a hint for reflection. In this canto, the
Shang Dynasty is missing due to “no further necessity to repeat” because “the pivotal dynasty
and its spirit of renewal was already represented…in its founder Cheng Tang’s admonition
With the Chinese ideograms, the cotexting invites a mind game, of course. Sometimes,
they are there just to summarize a certain passage. In the same Canto LXXVII, for instance, the
All in all, Chinese ideograms serve as cotexts with different functions. They can provide
multiple directions in meaning, render ambience for free association, connect images and
thoughts, add new proposals, connect all the key elements, draw the reader into a mind game,
summarize, and accomplish many other tasks. In other words, Chinese ideograms in The Cantos
are versatile. By incorporating them into an English verse, Pound did “make it new” with their
There are also many other non-Chinese cotexts in The Cantos. Both Canto XCIV and
Canto XCVII, for example, contain an Egyptian hieroglyphic sign— . Canto XXII has a club
sign too:
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Both the hieroglyphic sign and the club sign are visual aids too, illustrating, explaining, and
enhancing other texts. The similarities and differences between Chinese and non-Chinese
This part of my dissertation is a mini-dictionary of all the Chinese characters, in the order
of their appearances, used in The Cantos. For each character, forms, pronunciations, meaning,
and explanations of components are given as well as the page number(s) and citation frequency.
Pound uses only the traditional form, also called the full form. The simplified characters,
though invented only five decades ago and not known to Pound, are also listed here due to their
popularity in mainland China. Ancient forms are listed in chronological order, in other words,
oracle bone characters come before bronze inscription characters and before seal characters.
Most characters matured at the stage of seal characters around ninth century A.D. Their shapes
can easily be connected with both the traditional and simplified forms listed here. Therefore this
chapter will only give the necessary ancient form(s) up to the seal character. For example, if an
oracle form is sufficiently similar to the form used by Pound in The Cantos, both the bronze
inscription and seal forms will be left out. Likewise, if a character was developed later, only the
they Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, or other. It is, obviously, impossible and pointless
to record all of them here. Pinyin, mainland China’s alphabetic spelling of written words, is
given first as Pinyin is more widely accepted among modern readers. Pound’s pronunciations are
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109
In general, only the core meaning is given. Since many Chinese words are homonyms, a
complete catalog of all the meanings in one character can only distract readers’ attention away
that readers can see how these parts add to the core meaning. Space is a sure and fine guide line
for the division of parts. For instance, ,” also as , is spliced into a left side and a right
side. Hence the formula of explanation runs as follows: two feet + (earth +sheep+ foot) = to
After this brief note on the structure of organization, here is the mini-dictionary of
Pronunciation: xn(Pinyin)
Explanation: human being + (main idea+ pattern +mouth) =human being + speech=message/trust
Pronunciation: zhng (Pinyin); CH’ing, ching, CHING, Ching, tchung, cheng (Pound’s)
Meaning: Correct
Page: 252, 333, 352, 382, 387, 400, 577, 702, 711
Meaning: name
Meaning: stop
Meaning: grass, also the name of a legendary ruler after Emperor Yao
Explanation: square land with dots +two hands =grassland/lawn/to tidy up a land
Meaning: a kind of insect, also the name of the ruler after Emperor Shun
Explanation: a bug
Explanation: (ray+sun) + (tree+root) =sunlight + tree root =deeply rooted growth= river
bank/marsh/ high/eminent /alternate
Page: 264
Page: 264
Meaning: sun
Explanation: a sun
Explanation: people from the Middle Kingdom (people with big heads and four limbs) =grand
people = prime =summer
Page: 265
113
Explanation: a human being + (a block + a line in the middle) = the middle son
Meaning: to get close, later became the title for Buddhist nuns
Meaning: compassion
Page: 290
Meaning: wealth
Meaning: to develop
Meaning: body
Pronunciation: bù (Pinyin)
Meaning: no/not
Meaning: grass, also the name of a legendary ruler after Emperor Yao
Explanation: square land with dots +two hands =grassland/lawn/to tidy up a land
Meaning: a kind of insect, also the name of the ruler after Emperor Shun
Explanation: a bug
Explanation: a human being + (a block + a line in the middle) = the middle son
Meaning: to get close, later became the title for Buddhist nuns
Meaning: grass, also the name of a legendary ruler after Emperor Yao
Explanation: square land with dots +two hands =grassland/lawn/to tidy up a land
Meaning: wide water, a river, also a dynatic name and the name for the largest ethnic group in
China
Explanation: water + (grass +middle +earth+ grass) = water+ the broadness of a water body =
wide water
Page: 309
Meaning: to change
Page: 313
Pronunciation: zhng (Pinyin); CH’ing, ching, CHING, Ching, tchung, cheng (Pound’s)
Meaning: Correct
Page: 333, 252, 352, 382, 387, 400, 577, 702, 711
Meaning: name
Meaning: name
Meaning: happiness/fortune
Explanation: drapery from heaven + a full wine urn= ancestral blessing+ being rich
=happiness/fortune
Page: 338
Meaning: tea
Explanation: grass + a human being+ tree= tree leaves that can be eaten by men = tea
121
Page: 341
Pronunciation: zhng (Pinyin); CH’ing, ching, CHING, Ching, tchung, cheng (Pound’s)
Meaning: Correct
Page: 352, 252, 333, 382, 387, 400, 577, 702, 711
Pronunciation: zhng (Pinyin); CH’ing, ching, CHING, Ching, tchung, cheng (Pound’s)
Meaning: Correct
Page: 382, 252, 333, 352, 387, 400, 577, 702, 711
Meaning: name
Pronunciation: zhng (Pinyin); CH’ing, ching, CHING, Ching, tchung, cheng (Pound’s)
Meaning: Correct
Page: 387, 252, 333, 352, 382, 400, 577, 702, 711
Pronunciation: zhng (Pinyin); CH’ing, ching, CHING, Ching, tchung, cheng (Pound’s)
Meaning: Correct
Page: 400, 252, 333, 352, 382, 387, 577, 702, 711
Meaning: name
Meaning: middle
Page: 413, 474, 484, 496, 560, 570, 574, 659, 738
Meaning: evident
Explanation: (sun+ two silk yarns) + big head = to inspect silk yarns under the sun = obvious
Pronunciation: mò (Pinyin)
Meaning: do not
Explanation: image a sun set under grass = dusk = the end of a day = do not do something in the
dark = do not
Page: 450
Meaning: middle
Page: 474, 413, 484, 496, 560, 570, 574, 659, 738
Meaning: sincerity
Explanation: (main idea+ pattern+ mouth) + (spear+ shelf) = speech + finished work = to
accomplish things with a speech = sincerity
Page: 474
Meaning: middle
Page: 484, 413, 474, 496, 560, 570, 574, 659, 738
Meaning: first
Meaning: behind/after
Explanation: human being upside down +mouth = the back opening of a human body = hind =
behind/after
Meaning: which
Explanation: person + person carrying two baskets = person +to carry something heavy = person
+ to be able to = which one is able to = which
Meaning: far
Explanation: images of feet all around the sun = walking all day = far
Meaning: sunrise
Meaning: mouth
Meaning: not
Explanation: image of two identical human beings/ribs = together = not the only one = not
Explanation: image of a braided container = things that contain other things = that, his, its, her,
their
Explanation: image of a person on +knees with frizzy hair on a huge head = ghost
Pronunciation: ěr (Pinyin)
Meaning: and
Pronunciation: jì (Pinyin)
Meaning: to worship
Explanation: (meat +table) +hand = to put meat on the table = to offer food with respect = to
worship
Meaning: to go/of
Meaning: to flatter
Explanation: (main idea+ pattern +mouth) + (person + fire pit/trap) = to trap someone with
words = to flatter
Pronunciation: yě (Pinyin)
Meaning: also
Explanation: image of a snake = long and meandering things = somewhat connected = also
Meaning: wish/aspiration
Pronunciation: fú (Pinyin)
Explanation: two bamboo leaves + (human +hand) = bamboo + to give someone = to give
someone a bamboo case = a letter case/to fit
Explanation: two bamboo leaves + (bamboo stem+ horizontal plane of a bamboo node) =
bamboo knot = to divide/to cut down
Meaning: to accomplish
Meaning: middle
Page: 496, 413, 474, 484, 560, 570, 574, 659, 738
Meaning: first
Meaning: behind/after
131
Explanation: human being upside down +mouth = the back opening of a human body = hind =
behind/after
Meaning: which
Explanation: person + person carrying two baskets = person +to carry something heavy = person
+ to be able to = which one is able to = which
Meaning: far
Explanation: images of feet all around the sun = walking all day = far
Meaning: sunrise
Meaning: mouth
Meaning: not
Explanation: image of two identical human beings/ribs = together = not the only one = not
Explanation: image of a braided container = things that contain other things = that, his, its, her,
their
Explanation: image of a person on +knees with frizzy hair on a huge head = ghost
Pronunciation: ěr (Pinyin)
Meaning: and
Pronunciation: jì (Pinyin)
Meaning: to worship
Explanation: (meat +table) +hand = to put meat on the table = to offer food with respect = to
worship
Meaning: to go/ of
Meaning: to flatter
Explanation: (main idea+ pattern +mouth) + (person + fire pit/trap) = to trap someone with
words = to flatter
Pronunciation: yě (Pinyin)
Meaning: also
Explanation: image of a snake = long and meandering things = somewhat connected = also
Pronunciation: fú (Pinyin)
Explanation: two bamboo leaves + (human +hand) = bamboo + to give someone = to give
someone a bamboo case = a letter case/ to fit
Explanation: two bamboo leaves + (bamboo stem+ horizontal plane of a bamboo node) =
bamboo knot = to divide/to cut down
Meaning: wish/aspiration
Meaning: to accomplish
Meaning: way
Page: 502
Pronunciation: cí (Pinyin)
Meaning: speech
Explanation: fingers on the top trying to separate entangled things + (mouth +hand) = mess + to
control with word = to control mess with words = to litigate = speech
Page: 506
Pronunciation: dá (Pinyin)
Meaning: to arrive
Explanation: two feet + (earth +sheep+ foot) = to arrive a place where sheep can be herded = to
arrive
Page: 506
Meaning: yellow
Explanation: possibly image of color of a farm field = the color of earth = yellow (as the earth
color of the Middle Kingdom are mostly yellow)
Page: 507
Meaning: bird
Page: 507
Meaning: stop
Meaning: which
Explanation: person + person carrying two baskets = person +to carry something heavy = person
+ to be able to = which one is able to = which
Meaning: far
Explanation: images of feet all around the sun =walking all day = far
Meaning: dog
Page: 519
Pronunciation: wù (Pinyin)
Meaning: do not
139
Page: 552
Meaning: help
Explanation: phallus+ plow = strength +to work = to work on strength =to help
Page: 552
(seal)
Meaning: to grow/long
Page: 552,568
Meaning: bright
Meaning: middle
Page: 560, 413, 474, 484, 496, 570, 574, 659, 738
Meaning: spirit
Explanation: rain +three mouths + (two person +rainbow) = rain + to show+ wizard = to pray for
rain = to invoke spirits for rain = spirit
Meaning: he/she (This meaning is very modern. In The Cantos, this character only means an
official.)
Explanation: person +hand holding a stick = to hold a scepter = to rule = rule= respectful person
= he/she
Page: 563
Meaning: to rule
Page: 563
Meaning: stop
Page: 563
Meaning: compassion
(seal)
Meaning: intelligence
Page: 564
Meaning: good
Page: 564
Explanation: cross/cross within closed borders → the first of the Ten Celestial Numbers
Page: 564
Meaning: upright
Explanation: human standing on a floor+ (hair +beard) = standing+ straight face= straight
=upright
Meaning: time
=sun + (foot on floor + hand) = sun + (stop + measure) = measuring of sun stops =time
Explanation: heart + a person with a load on his shoulders = heart + down = deep hearted =
sincere
Page: 565
Meaning: virtue/morality
Explanation: (two persons) + (ten + four+ one + heart) = fourteen people interact with one heart
= what holds people together = virtue/morality
145
Meaning: worship
Explanation: drape + human on knees = sign from heaven + worshipper = worship/to worship
Page: 566
Meaning: to divine/chastity
Explanation: image of a turtle shell = to divine (Chinese burned turtle shell to tell fortune from
cracks) = good omen = chastity
Meaning: arrange
Explanation: flat land with stones + wheel +hand = place + carriage +hand = to put carriages in
places = to arrange (an army) = to arrange
Page: 567
Meaning: caution
Page: 567
Meaning: gain
獲=beast +(grass+ bird +hand) = to hunt for birds and beast in a prairie = to gain
Page: 567
Pronunciation: zì (Pinyin)
Meaning: self
Page: 567
Meaning: finish
Explanation: hand +empty/nearly empty container = things inside the container are gone = finish
Page: 567
Pronunciation: pǐ (Pinyin)
Meaning: pair/match
Page: 567
Meaning: man/husband
Page: 567
Pronunciation: f (Pinyin)
Page: 567
Meaning: plate
Page: 568
Pronunciation: gè (Pinyin)
149
Meaning: each
Page: 568
(seal)
Meaning: to grow/long
Pronunciation: yú (Pinyin)
Meaning: in/among/at
Explanation: image of being inside= in/among/at
Page: 568
Explanation: = tubers + spade =to dig up root fruits = dark = faint = same as (the on-
surface/obvious one) = he/ his/she/her
= base + (tubers + spade) =to dig up root fruits from below= dark = faint =same as (the
on-surface/obvious one) =he/his/she/her
Page: 568
Pronunciation: j (Pinyin)
Meaning: to live/residence
Explanation: sitting person + (cross + mouth) = not moving + (to set up+ mouth) = moving +
established = to live/residence
Page: 568
Meaning: virtue/morality
Explanation: (two persons) + (ten + four+ one + heart) = fourteen people interact with one heart
= what holds people together = virtue/morality
Meaning: high
Page: 569
Meaning: ancestor
= house + drape = house +signs from heaven= house +divinity = divinity under a house
= deceased ancestor
Page: 569
Meaning: consider/worry
= tiger+ field + heart = danger + (cross work +heart) = danger + to think through = to
consider/worry
Page: 569
Meaning: time
=sun + (foot on floor + hand) = sun + (stop + measure) = measuring of sun stops =time
Meaning: middle
Page: 570, 413, 474, 484, 496, 560, 574, 659, 738
Meaning: evident
Explanation: (sun+ two silk yarns) + big head = to inspect silk yarns under the sun = obvious
Page: 571
Meaning: to divine/chastity
Explanation: image of a turtle shell = to divine (Chinese burned turtle shell to tell fortune from
cracks) = good omen = chastity
Meaning: servant/serve
154
Page: 571
Meaning: spirit
Explanation: rain +three mouths + (two person +rainbow) = rain + to show+ wizard = to pray for
rain = to invoke spirits for rain = spirit
Meaning: smart
Explanation: ear + (head with a soft spot on the top +heart) = smart
Page: 572
Explanation: image of grain containers piled up = harvest = granary filled with grain/to
trust/sincerely
155
Page: 572
Meaning: bright
Meaning: evident
Explanation: (sun+ two silk yarns) + big head = to inspect silk yarns under the sun = obvious
Meaning: martial
Meaning: stop
(seal)
Meaning: equal
Page: 573
Meaning: woods/forest
Page: 573
Pronunciation: jí (Pinyin)
Explanation: tree + hand with a stick = to reach = to reach the highest = the highest = extreme
Page: 573
Meaning: blood
Page: 573
Meaning: one-sided/inclined/slanted
Explanation: human being + (panel of a door + book) = human being + flat = inclined/slanted
Page: 573
Meaning: to threaten/pain
Explanation: heart + (cave + one + mouth) = heart + empty echo/together = heart beating loudly
= to threaten/pain
Page: 573
Explanation: cold base + eye + small = pain/to care for others’ pain
Page: 573
Meaning: be/however
Page: 573
Meaning: body
Meaning: atrocity
Page: 574
Meaning: supervise/prison
Page: 574
Meaning: earth/land
Explanation: flat floor+ stone = stone piled land = marked place = land/earth
Page: 574
Meaning: middle
Page: 574, 413, 474, 484, 496, 560, 570, 659, 738
Meaning: sunrise
Meaning: speak
Meaning: pair/match/mate
Page: 574
Meaning: emperor/royal
Page: 574
Explanation: image of a braided container = things that contain other things = that, his, its, her,
their
Meaning: friends
162
Page: 574
Meaning: fire
Page: 575
4
Pronunciation: jng (Pinyin); ching, ching (Pound’s)
Meaning: respect
Explanation: mouth + person with feather head + (stick +hand) = to respect with words,
costumes, and actions = respect
Pronunciation: g (Pinyin)
163
Meaning: spear
Page: 575
Meaning: to accomplish
Explanation: river + (sun +pig) = liquid + (sun +pig) = sweat from a hot pig = sweat= hot
water/soup
Page: 575
4
Pronunciation: din (Pinyin); tien (Pound’s)
Meaning: field/heavy
164
Page: 575
Meaning: spirit
Explanation: rain +three mouths + (two person +rainbow) = rain + to show+ wizard = to pray for
rain= to invoke spirits for rain=spirit
Meaning: beginning
Explanation: a flower bud = the beginning of something (cf. = the opposite of something )
Page: 576
4
Pronunciation: r(Pinyin); erh (Pound’s)
165
Meaning: two
Page: 576
Pronunciation: y(Pinyin)
Meaning: town/country/state
Page: 576
Explanation: image of a person with his arms wide open and an extra dot between his legs = too
much
Page: 576
Meaning: martial
(seal)
Explanation: image of a nail = nail →the fourth of the Ten Celestial Numbers
Page: 576
Meaning: think/only
Page: 576
167
Pronunciation: zhng (Pinyin); CH’ing, ching, CHING, Ching, tchung, cheng (Pound’s)
Meaning: Correct
Page: 577, 252, 333, 352, 382, 387, 400, 702, 711
Meaning: to go/of
Explanation: = sun + (two hands up) = to worship sun = to worship (with sacrifice) =to
worship/to provide
168
=human being + sun + (two hands up) = to worship sun = to worship (with sacrifice) =to
worship/to provide
Page: 577
Meaning: to assist
Page: 577
Meaning: to teach/doctrine
Explanation: (four divination sticks +baby) + (stick +hand) = children learning + teacher guiding
= to teach/doctrine
Meaning: time
=sun + (foot on floor + hand) = sun + (stop + measure) = measuring of sun stops =time
Explanation: image of flagged spear =marked defending weapon = individual dangerous when
offended = I, me, and myself
Page: 577
Meaning: bright
4
Pronunciation: jn (Pinyin); tsiun chün (Pound’s)
Explanation: human being + (bird +hand) = person who dressed like a bird = good looking/smart
Page: 577
Meaning: mandate/order/fate/life
Page: 578
Meaning: to cut
Page: 578
4
Pronunciation: bi (Pinyin); pei (Pound’s)
Meaning: to prepare
171
Page: 578
Explanation: image of a face with eyebrows, eyes, and a mouth = face = something that contains
many items = to contain/to tolerate
Page: 578
Page: 578
Meaning: thick
Page: 578
1-4
Pronunciation: jio/jio (Pinyin); kiaó, chiao (Pound’s)
Meaning: to teach/doctrine
Explanation: (four divination sticks +baby) + (stick +hand) = children learning + teacher guiding
= to teach/doctrine
Meaning: to hold
Page: 579
Page: 579
Meaning: sympathy
Explanation: heart + container with a blood dripping into it = heart + blood = sympathy
Page: 580
2
Pronunciation: xing (Pinyin); hsiang (Pound’s)
Meaning: detail/comprehensive
Page: 580
Meaning: spirit
Explanation: rain +three mouths + (two person +rainbow) = rain + to show+ wizard = to pray for
rain= to invoke spirits for rain=spirit
Meaning: ritual/canon
Explanation: two hands below + organized items on the top = to worship= ritual/canon
Page: 580
Meaning: book/simple
Page: 581
Meaning: to teach/doctrine
Explanation: (four divination sticks +baby) + (stick +hand) = children learning + teacher guiding
= to teach/doctrine
Meaning: upright
Explanation: human standing on a floor+ (hair +beard) = standing+ straight face= straight
=upright
Meaning: body/style
Explanation: bone + (wine + tall cup) = bone + harvest = big bone = body/style
Page: 581
Meaning: must/important
Explanation: two hands on both sides + a girl with her spine = waist = something pivotal =
must/important
Page: 581
Meaning: finished
Explanation: pot + person with eyes looking at the other side = eating finished =finished/already
Page: 581
Meaning: heart
Meaning: serene/solemn
Page: 582
Meaning: king
Meaning: slow/insistent
Page: 582
Meaning: loyal
Page: 582
Meaning: to divine/chastity
Explanation: image of a turtle shell = to divine (Chinese burned turtle shell to tell fortune from
cracks) = good omen =chastity
Meaning: constant
Explanation: (ray + some place high + mouth) + drape = high fashion people talk about + status
indicator = high status = constant
Page: 582
Meaning: law
Explanation: upside cage + eye = watch out for the limits = law
Page: 582
Pronunciation: l (Pinyin)
Page: 582
Meaning: look
Page: 583
Pronunciation: y (Pinyin)
Meaning: also
Page: 583
Meaning: fashion/esteem
180
Explanation: ray + some place high + mouth = high fashion people talk about = fashion/esteem
Page: 583
Meaning: one
Meaning: justice/righteousness
Explanation: self + sheep = self + beauty = what makes a person beautiful and good = justice
/righteousness
Pronunciation: xn(Pinyin)
Explanation: human being + (main idea+ pattern +mouth) =human being + speech=message/trust
Meaning: not
Explanation: image of two identical human beings/ribs = together = not the only one = not
Meaning: treasure
Meaning: to shake
Meaning: dark
Page: 587
Meaning: king
Meaning: justice/righteousness
Explanation: self + sheep = self + beauty = what makes a person beautiful and good =
justice/righteousness
Meaning: peace
Page: 587
Page: 587,703
184
Meaning: fowl
Page: 587
Meaning: to accomplish
Meaning: king
Meaning: stop
Page: 591, 261, 507, 563, 573, 596, 645, 800, 801
Meaning: sun
Explanation: a sun
Meaning: wish/aspiration
Meaning: three
Meaning: orphan/lonely
Meaning: heart
Meaning: virtue/morality
Explanation: (two persons) + (ten + four+ one + heart) = fourteen people interact with one heart
= what holds people together = virtue/morality
Meaning: up/above
Page: 595
Meaning: sharp/benefit
Explanation: crop with grains + knife = to harvest with sharp knifes = sharp/benefit
(seal)
Meaning: intelligence
Meaning: stop
4
Pronunciation: jng (Pinyin); ching, ching (Pound’s)
Meaning: respect
Explanation: mouth + person with feather head + (stick +hand) = to respect with words,
costumes, and actions = respect
189
Meaning: corpse
Page: 602
Pronunciation: sh (Pinyin)
Meaning: book
Page: 610
Meaning: king
4-5
Pronunciation: b (Pinyin); pi (Pound’s)
Meaning: must/have to
Meaning: justice/righteousness
Explanation: self + sheep = self + beauty = what makes a person beautiful and good =
justice/righteousness
Meaning: which
Explanation: person + person carrying two baskets = person +to carry something heavy = person
+ to be able to = which one is able to=which one to be=which
4-5
Pronunciation: b (Pinyin); pi (Pound’s)
Meaning: must/have to
Meaning: speak
4
Pronunciation: l (Pinyin); li (Pound’s)
Meaning: sharp/benefit
Explanation: crop with grains + knife = to harvest with sharp knifes = sharp/benefit
Meaning: change
Page: 618
Explanation: baby + basin = the baby who takes a bath in a basin = small baby = the third son
Meaning: one
Meaning: upright
Explanation: human standing on a floor+ (hair +beard) = standing+ straight face= straight
=upright
Meaning: to divine/chastity
Explanation: image of a turtle shell = to divine (Chinese burned turtle shell to tell fortune from
cracks) = good omen =chastity
Pronunciation: j (Pinyin)
Meaning: machine/opportunity/pivot
Explanation: tree + (two silk yarns + spear) = machine to weave silk = machine = important =
pivot/opportunity
Meaning: three
Meaning: orphan/lonely
Meaning: evident
Explanation: (sun+ two silk yarns) + big head = to inspect silk yarns under the sun = obvious
Meaning: to shake
Meaning: sunrise
Meaning: stop
Page: 645, 261, 507, 563, 573, 591, 596, 800, 801
Meaning: justice/righteousness
Explanation: self + sheep = self + beauty = what makes a person beautiful and good =
justice/righteousness
4
Pronunciation: l (Pinyin); li (Pound’s)
Meaning: strength
Explanation: image of a plow = tools that requires and enhances strength = strength
197
Page: 648
2
Pronunciation: hang/hang/hng/xng (Pinyin); hsing (Pound’s)
Meaning: row/walk/ready
Page: 649
Meaning: near
Meaning: compassion
Meaning: sun
Explanation: a sun
4
Pronunciation: jin/xin (Pinyin); chien (Pound’s)
199
Meaning: to see
Page: 649
Meaning: evident
Explanation: (sun+ two silk yarns) + big head = to inspect silk yarns under the sun = obvious
Explanation: image of a person with his arms wide open and an extra dot between his legs = too
much
Meaning: martial
Meaning: ridge/bridge
Explanation: (water+ sharp knife) + tree = trimmed lumber soaked in water = sturdy lumber =
ridge/bridge
Page: 656
Meaning: good/benefit/benevolent
Page: 656
Meaning: wealth
Meaning: to develop
2
Pronunciation: w (Pinyin); wu (Pound’s)
Explanation: image of a dancer holding two drums/bows = to dance = right in the middle of
performance= negative/not to have
Page: 656,703
Meaning: treasure
Meaning: to develop
Meaning: wealth
Meaning: middle
Page: 659, 413, 474, 484, 496, 560, 570, 574, 738
Meaning: one
Meaning: king
Meaning: root/basic
Meaning: king
Meaning: sun
Explanation: a sun
Meaning: near
1
Pronunciation: h (Pinyin); hu (Pound’s)
Meaning: compassion
Meaning: one
Meaning: boom
Page: 673
Meaning: to develop
Meaning: to shake
Meaning: sun
Explanation: a sun
3
Pronunciation: z (Pinyin); tzu (Pound’s)
Meaning: purple
Explanation: (foot +dagger) +silk yarn = ready to cut +silk = almost ripe = close to the utmost
color red = purple
Page: 679
Meaning: to go/of
2-5
Pronunciation: du (Pinyin); to (Pound’s)
Page: 679
Meaning: red
Page: 679
Meaning: justice/righteousness
Explanation: self + sheep = self + beauty = what makes a person beautiful and good =
justice/righteousness
1
Pronunciation: qn (Pinyin); ch’in (Pound’s)
Meaning: intimate/relative
Explanation: tree with fruits + see = tasty/harsh + see = bitter/sweet +see = emotionally close =
intimate/relative
Meaning: sunrise
211
Meaning: spirit
Explanation: rain +three mouths + (two person +rainbow) = rain + to show+ wizard = to pray for
rain= to invoke spirits for rain = spirit
1
Pronunciation: qn (Pinyin); ch’in (Pound’s)
Meaning: intimate/relative
Explanation: tree with fruits + see = tasty/harsh + see = bitter/sweet +see = emotionally close =
intimate/relative
Explanation: hand + large beast = to move a big animal = to do/(to do something) for (someone,
something)
Page: 696
Meaning: treasure
Meaning: compassion
213
Meaning: to divine/chastity
Explanation: image of a turtle shell = to divine (Chinese burned turtle shell to tell fortune from
cracks) = good omen = chastity
Meaning: sunrise
Meaning: sunrise
Pronunciation: zhng (Pinyin); CH’ing, ching, CHING, Ching, tchung, cheng (Pound’s)
Meaning: Correct
Page: 702, 252, 333, 352, 382, 387, 400, 577, 711
Meaning: name
Meaning: name
Pronunciation: m (Pinyin)
Meaning: horse
Page: 703
Pronunciation: z (Pinyin)
Meaning: ancestor
Page: 703
2
Pronunciation: w (Pinyin); wu (Pound’s)
Explanation: image of a dancer holding two drums/bows= to dance = right in the middle of
performance=negative/not to have
Meaning: tired
Explanation: person + crop + two hands + corpse = dead tired after crop-picking = tired
Page: 703
Pronunciation: bù (Pinyin)
Meaning: no/not
Meaning: again
Explanation: tree + stick = wood stick = to dust/to beat = to go back to the original simple state
=simple
Page: 706
Pronunciation: sh (Pinyin)
Meaning: to show/sign
Page: 706
Meaning: root/basic
Meaning: career/profession
2-5
Pronunciation: f/f (Pinyin); foé, fu (Pound’s)
219
Meaning: Buddha
Meaning: to give up
Explanation: (something falling into a trap) + a trap + two hands = to give up rescuing/to drop
down = to give up
Page: 707
Explanation: (three branches) + cross + mouth = gather + cross + to breathe = to settle down =
house/stop/to drop down = to throw away
Page: 707
Pronunciation: ma (Pinyin)
220
Explanation: mouth + horse = a speech word with the sound of “horse” = a question word
Page: 708
Meaning: small
Page: 708
Meaning: king
Meaning: again
Meaning: justice/righteousness
Explanation: self + sheep = self + beauty = what makes a person beautiful and good =
justice/righteousness
Meaning: deep
Page: 709
3-4
Pronunciation: l (Pinyin); li (Pound’s)
Meaning: neighborhood/mile
Page: 709
Meaning: original
Page: 709
Explanation: image of a person with his arms wide open and an extra dot between his legs = too
much
2
Pronunciation: png (Pinyin); p’ing (Pound’s)
Explanation: image of something flat and balance = flat/equal /balance/to bring peace to
Page: 709
Meaning: wind
Explanation: = image of a big bird, either a phoenix or a peacock = wings that produces
wind = wind
Page: 709
Meaning: benevolence/gratitude
2
Pronunciation: qng (Pinyin); ch’ing (Pound’s)
Meaning: emotion/feeling/love
Explanation: heart + (two earth symbols +moon) =heart + blue/deep color = deep from one’s
heart =emotion/feeling/love
Page: 709
Meaning: justice/righteousness
Explanation: self + sheep = self + beauty = what makes a person beautiful and good =
justice/righteousness
4
Pronunciation: q (Pinyin); ch’i (Pound’s)
Meaning: air/anger
Page: 710
225
Meaning: wealth/health
Explanation: crop + field + flakes = bran left in the field = harvest = wealth/health
Page: 710
Meaning: bright/prosperous/happy
Page: 710
Meaning: respect
Explanation: mouth + person with feather head + (stick +hand) = to respect with words,
costumes, and actions = respect
Page: 711
Pronunciation: zhng (Pinyin); CH’ing, ching, CHING, Ching, tchung, cheng (Pound’s)
Meaning: Correct
Page: 711, 252, 333, 352, 382, 387, 400, 577, 702
Meaning: gate
Page: 711
Meaning: field
Page: 711
Meaning: money
Explanation: image of metal on anvil +two spears = metal + spears = spear-shaped currency =
money
Page: 711
Meaning: root/basic
Meaning: career/profession
Explanation: baby + basin = the baby who takes a bath in a basin = small baby = the third son
Pronunciation: w (Pinyin);
Page: 713
Pronunciation: h (Pinyin)
Meaning: sudden/neglect/forget
Page: 713
Meaning: evident
Explanation: (sun+ two silk yarns) + big head = to inspect silk yarns under the sun = obvious
Meaning: bright
Meaning: scared/saint
Page: 713
Meaning: inform/command
Explanation: speech + (three branches + meat +knife) = announce + party = to inform everyone
= inform/command
Page: 713
Meaning: rules/law
Explanation: water + (earth + leak) = water leaking into earth = always downward= rules/law
Page: 719
2-5
Pronunciation: f/f (Pinyin); foé, fu (Pound’s)
Meaning: Buddha
Meaning: sign/omen
Page: 729
Meaning: benevolence/gratitude
Meaning: middle
Page: 738, 413, 474, 484, 496, 560, 570, 574, 659
Meaning: Buddha
Explanation: person + negative word= person + sound f/f = a person who is named
translated as Fo/Fu= Buddha
Meaning: white
Page: 738
Meaning: sun
Explanation: a sun
Meaning: light/bright/shine
Page: 739
Meaning: bright
Meaning: sunrise
Page: 745
Pronunciation: bù (Pinyin)
Meaning: no/not
Meaning: spirit
Explanation: rain +three mouths + (two person +rainbow) = rain + to show+ wizard = to pray for
rain= to invoke spirits for rain=spirit
235
Pronunciation: w (Pinyin)
Meaning: wizard/witchcraft
Page: 758
Meaning: spirit
Explanation: rain +three mouths + (two person +rainbow) = rain + to show+ wizard = to pray for
rain= to invoke spirits for rain=spirit
Meaning: treasure
four
Pronunciation: bo (Pinyin); pao (Pound’s)
Meaning: leopard
Page: 760
Meaning: root/basic
Meaning: career/profession
Pronunciation: j (Pinyin)
Meaning: machine/opportunity/pivot
Explanation: tree + (two silk yarns + spear) = machine to weave silk = machine = important =
pivot/opportunity
Meaning: millet
Page: 767
Meaning: behind/after
Explanation: human being upside down +mouth = the back opening of a human body = hind =
behind/after
Explanation: image of a person on +knees with frizzy hair on a huge head = ghost
Meaning: to flatter
Explanation: (main idea+ pattern +mouth) + (person + fire pit/trap) = to trap someone with
words = to flatter
Meaning: straw/hotel/manage/control
Page: 772
Meaning: to close
Page: 773
Meaning: root/basic
Meaning: end
silk yarn + hand + reduced water = cloth + hard to get water = cloth + winter = the end
of a year = end
Page: 780
Pronunciation: sh(Pinyin)
Meaning: beginning
Explanation: female + pot (with steam) = a female looking at a pot = beginning of cooking =
beginning of cooking/family life
Page: 780
Meaning: root/basic
241
Meaning: career/profession
Pronunciation: j (Pinyin)
Meaning: suburb
Explanation: silk yarns + spear +field = places that produce silk and food for the big city =
suburb
Page: 787
Pronunciation: b (Pinyin)
Page: 787
Meaning: upright
Explanation: human standing on a floor+ (hair +beard) = standing+ straight face = straight =
upright
Meaning: stop
Meaning: stop
Meaning: sun
Explanation: a sun
4
Pronunciation: jng (Pinyin); ching, ching (Pound’s)
Meaning: respect
Explanation: mouth + person with feather head + (stick +hand) = to respect with words,
costumes, and actions = respect
4
Pronunciation: y (Pinyin); Yü (Pound’s)
Meaning: jade
Page: 804
2
Pronunciation: h (Pinyin); ho (Pound’s)
Meaning: river
Page: 804
4-5
Pronunciation: m (Pinyin); mu (Pound’s)
Meaning: tree
Page: 812
245
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Baomei Lin was born in Zhangzhou, China, on December 8th. When she was one year old, she
became the adopted daughter of Zhoudi and Guoying Lin and moved to Fuzhou, China. After
graduating from the No. 4 Middle School in Fuzhou in 1992, she attended Beijing Normal
University where she received her B.A. in Chinese Language and Literature in July 1996 and
M.A. in Chinese Philology in July 2000. During the following year she was employed as a
lecturer at Beijing Normal University, teaching Chinese as a second language. In 2001, she
entered the School of Arts and Humanities at the University of Texas at Dallas. Currently she is