Ezra Pound, Confucius and the art of interpretation

This thesis investigates Ezra Pound's creative translation of the Confucian masterpiece, The Great Digest, in an attempt to study the problematic opened up by his "ideogrammic method" of interpretation. Being first and foremost poet, Pound's translation is put into the context as more a study of his pursuit in poetics, rather than one of interlingual interpretation. The connection between language, translation and poetry, and the transformation of Chinese ideograms from natural, material images to poetical ideas are the two main threads of the following discussion. Tracing Pound's earlier studies of Chinese art in London and his editing of Ernest Fenollosa's notes of Chinese characters, shows the development of the early, yet fundamental ideas upon which Pound conducted his later studies and translations. With the example of Pound's Confucian translation The Great Digest, I intend to compare his "ideogrammic method" to other major discourses and practices in Chinese translation. The "Elementary Learning" tradition that I introduce elucidates the traditional "Six Methods" of forming ideograms, a source from which Pound has drawn important nutriment.