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| Achilles Fang:A Chinese Friend and Pound's Late Translation of Confucian Canons |
| Qian Zhaoming Ou Rong |
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Abstract Ezra Pound,the American modernist poet,had a career-long interest in Chinese culture,especially Confucianism .In addition to extensive use of Confucian sayings and other Chinese cultural and historical materials in his poetry and critical prose,Pound translated into Italian two of the″Four Books,″The Great Digest and The Unwobbling Pivot,and translated into English The Unwobbling Pivot,The Analects (also one of the″Four Books″),part of Mencius (the last of the″Four Books″),and The Book of Songs or Classic Anthology Def ined by Conf ucius .When he was confined to St .Elizabeths Hospital in Washington D .C .in the 1950s,he befriended Achilles Fang (Fang Zhitong ),an erudite Chinese scholar at Harvard . Their correspondence from 1950 to 1958 (consisting of 108 letters from Pound to Fang and 106 from Fang to Pound) brings to light some of the world's most vigorous cross-cultural exchanges on Confucian ideas in the past century .The mere fact that the two learned men carried on this dialogue on Confucianism for eight and half years has effectively refuted the common belief that Pound relied totally on eighteenth-and nineteenth-century Western Sinologists' versions to study and translate Confucian classics .Pound's late Confucian translations have proven to be different from his early Confucian translations in three key aspects:first,they have shifted away from the early focus on the Confucius' emphasis on the individual and social responsibility|second,they have expanded in scope beyond the″Four Books″to reach classics such as The Book of Songs and The Book of History|and,third,they have cast off the widely criticized disregard for the Chinese sound .These breakthroughs in Pound's late Confucianism have for decades eluded Pound scholars' attention .Archival materials reveal that Achilles Fang actually collaborated with Pound on Pound's late Confucian translations,notably his 1951 bilingual edition of Confucius:The Great Digest & The Unwobbling Pivot (New Directions ) and his 1954 trade edition of Shih-Ching:The Classic Anthology Def ined by Conf ucius (Harvard University Press) .As a Chinese scholar immersed in the Confucian tradition,Achilles Fang played an indispensible role in the preparation and publication of Pound's late Confucian translations .In their correspondence week after week for eight and half years they alertly discussed key Confucian terminologies such as jing or respect,the″Four Tuan,″ren,yi,li,zhi,or four virtuous beginnings of human nature,and so on,resulting in Pound's profound understanding of the relevant Confucian concepts and expansion in scope of Confucian studies beyond the″Four Books″to include The Book of Songs .Achilles Fang was involved in virtually every aspect of Pound's The Book of Songs translation project,from the design of the book cover,composition of its introduction to galley proofreading before publication .Achilles Fang's introduction to Pound's trade edition of The Book of Songs not only succinctly sums up the origin and development of the 305 ancient songs,but also emphasizes the importance of equal attention to the formation,the sound,and the tone of the characters in each song .Without Achilles Fang's assistance,Pound would not have insisted that his ideal non-trade edition of The Book of Songs be accompanied by an original Chinese text and a Wade sound key .Due to Pound's lack of patience with his publisher's work,his non-trade edition of The Book of Songs with an original Chinese text and a Wade sound key fell apart .But the fact that he once insisted on such an edition proves to the world that he did not disregard the sound in the Chinese character throughout his life as some scholars argued .Achilles Fang's contributions to Pound's late Confucian translations are far greater than Pound's scholarship has hitherto been acknowledged .Without his remarkable help Pound could not have achieved what he did in his late Confucianism .
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2015, Vol. 1 
