本文是一篇英语论文，本文鉴于《诗章》融合了西方文明与中国原始儒学，并将历史的、文学的与政治经济的话语形式杂糅在一起，本文节选了被誉为最精彩篇章的《比萨诗章》，并以克里斯蒂娃所提出的互文性理论作为阐释文本的钥匙。
Chapter One The Research Subject and Methodology
1.1 Introduction of Ezra Pound and the Pisan Cantos
In 1885,Pound was born of a middle-class family in Idaho.His father served in theUS Mint and his grandfather was lieutenant governor of Wisconsin.In such a familyenvironment,Pound was deeply concerned about state politics from a young age.Afterpublishing his first poem at the age of 11,Pound hoped to be a poet,and aspired toknow more about poetry than anyone else alive when he was thirty(Nadel 212).With aspecific objective in mind,he entered the University of Pennsylvania in 1901.Theundergraduate and master education greatly enriched his knowledge.He acquiredtwelve languages in elective courses and discussed poetics,art and philosophy withschoolmates William Carlos Williams.Pound’s success as a poet was a combination ofmany factors.A powerful family and a solid education endowed him with talents andknowledge;traveling around Europe provided emotional materials and life experiencefor his works.
Pound came to London in 1908 and got acquainted with Yeats,Ford,Hume andothers,establishing lifelong friendships with some of them.Influenced by Yeats’viewthat the association of words is subjective and Ford’s“the expression of things shouldbe precise and objective”,Pound proposed the definition of image:a complex of reasonand emotion presented in a moment(Brooker 61).During thirteen years in London,hegrew from an unknown writer to a world-famous poet,publishing Cathay,Hugh SelwynMauberley and other works,promoting important writers such as James Joyce and T.S.Eliot.Even though Pound was later caught up in political turmoil and imprisoned,thesegolden years were never overshadowed and repeatedly appeared in the Cantos.
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1.2 Literature Review
Western researches on the Pisan Cantos was early.After receiving the BollingenPrize for Poetry,it sparked intense discussion,and the 1960s witnessed a studies boom.According to scholar Zhao Yiheng,Pound Studies has filled the shelves of Englishdepartment libraries in western universities(43).Overall,studies on the Pisan Cantoscan be divided into three categories:the first is Pound’s writing techniques.Byanalyzing Pound’s allusion to classics such as Odyssey and The Divine Comedy,interspersing images in the nonlinear narrative and other techniques,scholars generalizethe main line of the cantos from chaotic structures.The second is to exploremulticulturalism in the cantos.Pound was born in the United States but spent most ofhis life in England,Italy and other European countries.Rich personal experience,extensive reading and proficiency in many languages made his cantos an encyclopedia.By studying the text,which imitates and reproduces civilizations like native America,ancient China,and Egypt,scholars add new footnotes to the interpretation of this bookfrom heaven.The third category is about ideology in cantos.Scholars seek to clarifyPound’s transformation from a pacifist to an anti-Semite and fascist,and judge Pound’srepentance and self-justification from a relatively objective perspective.
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Chapter Two Pounds’Reasons for Advocating Confucianism
2.1 Political and Economic Appeal
Although Pound settled in London at the age of 23 and spent most of his life inEurope,as an American citizen,he carried a strong sense of responsibility andpatriotism.Being far away from the United States made him have a clearer view of thecurrent social station.He considered the three hundred years since the New World wasdiscovered,compared it to the cultural history of Europe,and sharply pointed out thatthe current system of the United States may be completely contrary to the founders’original intention,which caused great corruption(Guo 128).Pound had attempted toreturn to the United States and discuss his statecraft with the president and governmentofficials,but disappointingly no one believed him.Therefore,he expressed his politicaland economic demands through literature,and transformed various governingconceptions advocated in Confucianism into a power for the development of socialproduction.
2.1.1 Social Conditions of the United States
After the Industrial Revolution,the United States quickly entered the era ofindustrialization and commercialization,but various social problems followed.Contradictions accumulated from the imbalance of economic development and unequaldistribution of wealth finally resulted in the First World War,which tore Westerncivilization to pieces.Pound,in the first line of the Pisan Cantos,had already describedthe world as a great tragedy in which the dream was shattered.Human beings are like apigs in Circe’s pigsty;slaves in the forest;the corpse of souls scattered in the night;andlonely ants crawling away from the wreckage of Europe.By describing the hotels,restaurants that he once patronized were destroyed by gunfire or closed down during thewar;poets,sculptors who he had befriended sacrificed after joining the army;the houseof friends who loved collecting antiques turned into a salvage station,Pound narratedthe destruction of civilian life,literature,and human civilization by war frommulti-angle.He muttered,“who’s dead,and who isn’t/and will the world ever take upits course again?/very confidentially I ask you Will it,and repeat the word crying threetimes to show confusion and loss”(Cantos 453).
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2.2 Spiritual Demands
Pound’s preference for Confucianism is the product of his dedication to makeliterature serve art and society.Surrounded by scholars who mastered Oriental literatureand art,Pound gradually found that his poetics were inseparable from the creativity ofChinese classic philosophy.The ideographic features of Chinese characters makeimages no longer static and isolated,extending past experiences into the future.And thequestion-and-answer dialogue genre in Confucian canons strengthened Pound’sdetermination to use colloquial expressions,short sentences with vivid images andstream of consciousness in writing.Facing with the decline of Christianity and thespiritual wasteland,Pound foresaw the possibility of discovering a new Greece in thetwentieth century in Confucius’theoretical system of rebuilding social orders from thebottom up.
2.2.1 Guides During the Cultural Journey
Among American literature in the twentieth century,Pound had the closest relationship with Chinese culture.With the deepening of his research and the inspirationof other scholars,his understanding of Confucianism was constantly updated.In theinitial phase,Pound was influenced by the cultural atmosphere around him andgradually became interested in Confucianism.According to Nole Stock,Pound probablyread some Confucius as early as 1907(176).He had read a folded picture bookcollected by his parents,called a Chinese book,which recorded some poems about theEight Landscapes of Xiaoxiang.Although it was a replication by the Japanese,the poemstill planted a seed of oriental civilization in Pound’s mind.And his lifelong pursuit oftraditional Chinese culture was stimulated by his acquaintance with Laurence Binyon,an oriental art historian at the British Museum.He attended Binyon’s lectures,andfrequently visited the museum to appreciate Chinese and Japanese paintings,calling thisprecious time the British Museum era in the Pisan Cantos.In 1913,under the guidanceof Allen Upward,author of The Sayings of K’ung the Master,Pound was formallyintroduced to the Confucian classics.After reading the French translation of Confucius’works by Guillaume Pauthier,Pound wrote to his wife,“I’m stocked up with K’ung fuTsze,and Men Tsze,etc.I supposed they’ll keep me calm for a week or so”(Carpenter219).And according to this version,he translated the Great Learning into English.
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Chapter Three Confucian Utopia in Pisan Cantos as Historical Texts ..... 22
3.1 Collage ................................ 22
3.1.1 The Music Score .................................. 23
3.1.2 Chinese Ideogram Writing ............................ 24
Chapter Four Confucian Pragmatism in Pisan Cantos as Social Texts .... 36
4.1 Tao ..................................... 36
4.1.1 Acts of Humanitarianism .......................... 37
4.1.2 Conformance with the Nature Law ......................... 38
Conclusion ........................... 48
Chapter Four Confucian Pragmatism in Pisan Cantos as SocialTexts
4.1 Tao
Tao is known as the most basic and complex concept in Chinese philosophy.Originally,Tao refers to the road or path,but in contexts of West,the same core conceptin the Confucian classics will have obvious differences.For example,French SinologistM.Guillaume Pauthier took Tao as the norm of moral behavior;British SinologistArthur Waley defined it as the infallible law;Hugh Kenner,a famous Pound scholar,said it was a unified and normative ethic(Hu,Ideologies 94).For Pound,Tao does notrefer to Lao Tzu’s Taoism,because the basic doctrine of Taoism is nonbeing,encouraging people to get out of complicated affairs,which is not in line with Pound’sproposition of going into the world,acting and influencing it.Tao in the Pisan Cantos isa doctrine closely linked to Confucian wisdom.Pound excerpts and quotes about Taofrom the Four Books and interprets it in a way which is easy for western readers to understand from the character pattern:“The process.Footprints and the foot carryingthe head;the head conducting the feet;an orderly movement under lead of theintelligence”(Confucius 22).Tao in Confucianism provides not only ethics of beingkind to others when dealing with society,but also the objective law of conforming to thedevelopment of things when dealing with nature.
4.1.1 Acts of Humanitarianism
Pound’s understanding of Tao is reflected in his translation of the opening passageof Doctrine of The Mean:what heaven has conferred is called the nature;an accordancewith this nature is called the path of duty;the regulation of this path is called instruction.(Legge,Volume I 382).After heaven has endowed man with his nature,one mustrationalize his actions through self-education in order to cultivate the virtue,which isnot an easy process.Pound used the process to symbolize Tao,representing people’sefforts to reach the ultimate goal of having a heart filled with kindness,compassion andtolerance.
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Conclusion
Pound’s mother suggested he write an epic about the West,but after witnessingEurope’s flagging cultural industries and impoverished people living under the doubleblow of war and periodic economic crises,Pound resolutely turned to the orientalculture around 1914.The successful translation and publication of Chinese poetryinspired Pound’s exploration of Confucianism.During the process of reading the FourBooks,Pound discovered that the political and economic theories advanced byConfucian scholars can still influence society thousands of years later.Therefore,Pounddecided to translate and disseminate Confucian classics with the help of artists andscholars from both the east and the west.Among them,Fenollosa’s Chinese WrittenCharacters as a Medium for Poetry had a profound impact on Pound’s attempt to createinclusive imagery poetry and creative interpretations of Confucian theory.Unlike theabstract Christian doctrines and the Greek philosophy which divorced from the masses,he saw the beauty of harmony and order in Confucianism and practiced it as amethodology which could save individuals and societies.
In the view of intertextuality,the Pisan Cantos is a complex and diversifiedstructure.Inspired by Bakhtine’s carnival poetics,Kristeva found dialogism,multipletunes and intertextuality in novels,but these are not unique features of novels.Thecantos contains not only the exchange of eastern and western historical figures,but alsothe dialogue of culture,ethics and philosophy between east and west.Pound usedintertextual techniques such as collage,quotation and juxtaposition to connect historicalfragments of ancient Greece,ancient Egypt and Europe with the ancient China recordedin Confucian classics.And he realized the dialogue between past and reality by placingsignifiers of historical texts in the modern context of Pisan Cantos.Through examiningand criticizing the course of human development,Pound firmly believed that the idealworld should be a peaceful world which inherits and develops Confucianism.Butinfluenced by the Confucian nature of serving authoritarian rule,Pound overemphasizedthe importance of the wise ruling class,showing an elitist tendency.
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