EZRA POUND — THE CONFUCIAN ODES — New Directions Paperbook — 81 (1959)

Description

EZRA POUND
THE CONFUCIAN ODES
New Directions PB 81
(1959)
CONDITION:  GOOD OR BETTER trade paperback; worn at edges and corners.  No markings.
Book states “First Published as New Directions Paperbook No. 81 (1959).”
Evidently it was originally published by Harvard University in 1954.
Ezra Pound - whom T. S. Eliot has called "the inventor of Chinese poetry for our time" - here recreates for the English-speaking world the great poetry of ancient China. The 305 odes of the Classic Anthology are the living tradition in Chinese poetry. Since the fifth century before Christ, they have been as familiar to every literate Chinese as the Homeric poems were to the ancient Greeks. Indeed, Confucius held that no man was truly educated unless he had studied the odes; and, in the only "Apologie for Poetrie" in the history of China, he pronounced that the odes serve to exhilarate, to stimulate awareness, to preach dissociation, to kindle resentment against evil.
Mr. Pound's translation of the Classic Anthology is the culmination of forty years of Chinese study, which began with Cathay and continued through the Chinese Cantos, the Unwobbling Pivot, and the Confucian Analects. A translator whose work gives the illusion of being not mere translations but a "translucence," he makes these mysterious early poems spring to life and seem as contemporaneous as any modern verse.
Commentaries on line:
Pound's thesis on the Odes were that they were meant to impart concrete examples along with the benefits of musical prosody to the Confucian students; as such, this whole collection is primarily an example of trying as many different metrical rhythms as he can.
the mental imaginings and serene natural vistas along with quick and paced meter truly makes a joy of this work.
I read these poems years ago, and ended up flipping through them again the other night for the first time since. And they're just beautiful. Pound completely reinvented the art of poetic translation in the modern period, and this book is as good an example as any of what a genius he was as a translator.
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