[_This essay was practically finished by the late Ernest Fenollosa; I
have done little more than remove a few repetitions and shape a few
sentences._
_We have here not a bare philological discussion, but a study of the
fundamentals of all æsthetics. In his search through unknown art
Fenollosa, coming upon unknown motives and principles unrecognised in
the West, was already led into many modes of thought since fruitful in
"new" western painting and poetry. He was a forerunner without knowing
it and without being known, as such._
_He discerned principles of writing which he had scarcely time to put
into practice. In Japan he restored, or greatly helped to restore, a
respect for the native art. In America and Europe he cannot be looked
upon as a mere searcher after exotics. His mind was constantly filled
with parallels and comparisons between eastern and western art. To him
the exotic was always a means of fructification. He looked to an
American renaissance. The vitality of his outlook can be judged from the
fact that although this essay was written some time before his death in
1908 have not had to change the allusions to western conditions. The
later movements in art have corroborated his theories_.--EZRA POUND.]
This twentieth century not only turns a new page in the book of the
world, but opens another and a startling chapter. Vistas of strange
futures unfold for man, of world-embracing cultures half weaned from
Europe, of hitherto undreamed responsibilities for nations and races.
The Chinese problem alone is so vast that no nation can afford to ignore
it. We in America, especially, must face it across the Pacific, and
master it or it will master us. And the only way to master it is to
strive with patient sympathy to understand the best, the most hopeful
and the most human elements in it.
It is unfortunate that England and America have so long ignored or
mistaken the deeper problems of Oriental culture. We have misconceived
the Chinese for a materialistic people, for a debased and worn-out race.
We have belittled the Japanese as a nation of copyists. We have stupidly
assumed that Chinese history affords no glimpse of change in social
evolution, no salient epoch of moral and spiritual crisis. We have
denied the essential humanity of these peoples; and we have toyed with
their ideals as if they were no better than comic songs in an "opera
bouffe."
The duty that faces us is not to batter down their forts or to exploit
their markets, but to study and to come to sympathize with their
humanity and their generous aspirations. Their type of cultivation has
been high. Their harvest of recorded experience doubles our own. The
Chinese have been idealists, and experimenters in the making of great
principles; their history opens a world of lofty aim and achievement,
parallel to that of the ancient Mediterranean peoples. We need their
best ideals to supplement our own--ideals enshrined in their art, in
their literature and in the tragedies of their lives.
We have already seen proof of the vitality and practical value of
oriental painting for ourselves and as a key to the eastern soul. It may
be worth while to approach their literature, the intensest part of it,
their poetry, even in an imperfect manner.
I feel that I should perhaps apologize[1] for presuming to follow that
series of brilliant scholars, Davis, Legge, St. Denys and Giles, who
have treated the subject of Chinese poetry with a wealth of erudition to
which I can proffer no claim. It is not as a professional linguist nor
as a sinologue that I humbly put forward what I have to say. As an
enthusiastic student of beauty in Oriental culture, having spent a large
portion of my years in close relation with Orientals, I could not but
breathe in something of the poetry incarnated in their lives.
I have been for the most part moved to my temerity by personal
considerations. An unfortunate belief has spread both in England and in
America that Chinese and Japanese poetry are hardly more than an
amusement, trivial, childish, and not to be reckoned in the world's
serious literary performance. I have heard well-known sinologues state
that, save for the purposes of professional linguistic scholarship,
these branches of poetry are fields too barren to repay the toil
necessary for their cultivation.
Now my own impression has been so radically and diametrically opposed to
such a conclusion, that a sheer enthusiasm of generosity has driven me
to wish to share with other Occidentals my newly discovered joy. Either
I am pleasingly self-deceived in my positive delight, or else there must
be some lack of æsthetic sympathy and of poetic feeling in the accepted
methods of presenting the poetry of China. I submit my causes of joy.
Failure or success in presenting any alien poetry in English must depend
largely upon poetic workmanship in the chosen medium. It was perhaps too
much to expect that aged scholars who had spent their youth in
gladiatorial combats with the refractory Chinese characters should
succeed also as poets. Even Greek verse might have fared equally ill had
its purveyors been perforce content with provincial standards of English
rhyming. Sinologues should remember that the purpose of poetical
translation is the poetry, not the verbal definitions in dictionaries.
One modest merit I may, perhaps, claim for my work: it represents for
the first time a Japanese school of study in Chinese culture. Hitherto
Europeans have been somewhat at the mercy of contemporary Chinese
scholarship. Several centuries ago China lost much of her creative self,
and of her insight into the causes of her own life, but her original
spirit still lives, grows, interprets, transferred to Japan in all its
original freshness. The Japanese to-day represent a stage of culture
roughly corresponding to that of China under the Sung dynasty. I have
been fortunate in studying for many years as a private pupil under
Professor Kainan Mori, who is probably the greatest living authority on
Chinese poetry. He has recently been called to a chair in the Imperial
University of Tokio.
My subject is poetry, not language, yet the roots of poetry are in
language. In the study of a language so alien in form to ours as is
Chinese in its written character, it is necessary to inquire how those
universal elements of form which constitute poetics can derive
appropriate nutriment.
In what sense can verse, written in terms of visible hieroglyphics, be
reckoned true poetry? It might seem that poetry, which like music is a
_time art_, weaving its unities out of successive impressions of sound,
could with difficulty assimilate a verbal medium consisting largely of
semi-pictorial appeals to the eye. Contrast, for example, Gray's line: