Confucian Analects

by Ezra Pound

Genres: Philosophy

136 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1951

About the author

Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet, critic and intellectual who was a major figure of the Modernist movement in early-to-mid 20th century poetry.

Pound's The Cantos contains music and bears a title that could be translated as The Songs—although it never is. Pound's ear was tuned to the motz et sons of troubadour poetry where, as musicologist John Stevens has noted, "melody and poem existed in a state of the closest symbiosis, obeying the same laws and striving in their different media for the same sound-ideal - armonia."

In his essays, Pound wrote of rhythm as "the hardest quality of a man's style to counterfeit." He challenged young poets to train their ear with translation work to learn how the choice of words and the movement of the words combined. But having translated texts from 10 different languages into English, Pound found that translation did not always serve the poetry: "The grand bogies for young men who want really to learn strophe writing are Catullus and François Villon. I personally have been reduced to setting them to music as I cannot translate them." While he habitually wrote out verse rhythms as musical lines, Pound did not set his own poetry to music.

Reviews

[Vinicius Bruno]

[Confúcio 1/5]

[Tim Jarrett · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of my farewell purchases from the late lamented Captain’s Bookshelf in Asheville. I’m no scholar of Confucian thought, but Pound’s attempts to render the words of the master make for tantalizing reading.

[Charles Pero · Rating 4 out of 5]

probably not the most accurate translation of the confucian classic, pounds genius instead recontextualizes kung's ancient wisdom, reviving it for modernity