The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry:A Critical Edition by Ezra Pound & Haun Saussy & Ernest Fenollosa & Jonathan Stalling & Lucas Klein

Author:Ezra Pound & Haun Saussy & Ernest Fenollosa & Jonathan Stalling & Lucas Klein [Pound, Ezra]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2008-08-15T05:00:00+00:00

But this transcendence of parts of speech is only the beginning of the matter. So far we have been dealing with visible acts and truths; but by far the larger and more important part of truth is that which is not visible. As a plant throws out from a common vesicle a thousand seeds; so a force plunging into the mass of nature, shines through in a thousand forms of vibration. Myriad effects, of color, heat, and active ray, arise from common sunlight; as a nerve, a roadway, and a clearing house, are only different forms through which the necessity for intercommunication, and mutual readjustment of parts force out its channel. Laws of stimulus in the spiritual world are no different from those of the material. Pressures and stresses, and lines of least resistance are precisely the same in human character, as in an oak tree. This world is infinitely full of homologies, sympathies and identities; or if it were not so, thought would have starved, and language never have been invented. For how many verbal roots, or original symbols, in a language, think you? or primary, or original symbols. Not more than a few hundred, out of tens of thousands. How, then, did the enormous wealth of our vocabularies arise? By following with this handful of original keys, through the intricate maze of nature’s own homologies and suggestions, making symbols do manifold duty through plane after plane of correlated meanings. This is the well known fact that all language is metaphor, and that too metaphor piled upon metaphor, often in more layers than geologists can spell out the formation of earth’s crust.*

This is exactly what Chinese language does, or did; but with the advantage of having its original symbols firm & definite pictures, instead of slippery, forgettable, and changeable sounds.

Chinese, (contrary to ordinary belief) is just the most idealistic language of the world. Here comes in Chinese philosophy.

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