The East Asian Influence in Ezra Pound's Pre-Cathay Poetry

Abstract

Since early in the twentieth century American poetry has exhibited an East Asian orientalism as an essential part of its makeup. This essay traces the East Asian influence on Ezra Pounds poetry before the publication of Cathay in 1914. Ezra Pound began learning about Japanese and Chinese poetry even before his acquisition of the Ernest Fenollosa notebooks in 1913 and made attempts to incorporate their themes, forms, and perspectives into his own poetry. As early as 1912, Ezra Pound discerned a form of super-position in Japanese haiku and tried to adopt this form in his own English-language poetry. He also picked up Chinese themes from pre-exiting translations of Chinese literature, such as those done by Herbert Allen Giles, and tried to incorporate them into his poetry. He even attempted to apply the Japanese-inspired form to Chinese-inspired subject matter in three out of the four Chinese adaptations and imitations he wrote in this period (After Chu Yuan, Liu Che, Fan Piece for Her Imperial Lord, and Tsai Chih). These efforts contributed to an enhancement of the intensity, precision, and suggestiveness of his poetry and an improvement in the objectivity and impersonality of its mode of presentation. In this way Ezra Pounds pre-Cathay poetry paved a way for American poets afterwards to naturalize themes, subject matters, techniques, and perspectives of East Asian origin into their poetry.