Literature & Theology, Vol.
. No. , December

, pp.

"

doi:10.1093/litthe/frl037 Advance Access publication 27 September 2006

EZRA POUND: THE

ONE-PRINCIPLE TEXT
Chungeng Zhu
Abstract
Confucianism, Pound writes, is one, indivisible, a nature extending to every
detail as the nature of being oak or maple extends to every part of the oak
tree or maple. Pound considers Confucianism a universal principle of truth
manifest both in nature and in culture. He also follows Confucianism as
a literary method in making his art, which he calls the one-principle text.
This article examines how Pound applies his Confucianism as a unifying
method in The Cantos, and how his one-principle text, together with his
ideogrammic method, embodies his innovation of translating his reading of
Confucian philosophy into Confucian poetics.

The wind is part of the process

The rain is part of the process
Ezra Pound

ON THE rst page of Guide to Kulchur, Pound writes, in Chinese characters,1

the following phrase from the Confucian Analects:

The phrase
(yi yi guan zhi) literally means one runs
through all; Pound translates it into one-principle.2 This one-principle,
for Pound, is the Confucian Dao that he also renders as the process.3
Pounds understanding of the Confucian Dao is central to his cosmology and
to his art. He believes that he, in following this one principle in Guide to
Kulchur, is able to bring the whole territory of cultureChinese philosophy,
modern poetry, music, economics, etc.into an organic unity, which he calls
the ONE PRINCIPLE text.4 There is an oneness between Pounds
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CHUNGENG ZHU

395

Confucian ideology and his aesthetics, and Pounds one-principle text,

specically his use of the Confucian Dao as a literary method, has not received
adequate critical attention. This study explores this oneness in The Cantos rst
by dening what constitutes Pounds Confucian Dao as a principle that runs
through all. It examines, through an analysis of two passages from The Cantos,
Pounds use of the Confucian Dao as a literary methodhow he applies his
Confucian one-principle to the study of humanity, history, and culture in his
poetry, and how his Confucian one-principle informs his poetic form.5 This
study contends that Pounds one-principle text, as a literary method,
dialectically relates to his ideogrammic method as one approach. The latter,
though directly derived from Pounds reading of Fenollosa and the Chinese
written characters, should be viewed in close relation to Pounds Confucian
ideology and epistemology.

Before examining the aesthetic implications of Pounds Confucian principle

for his poetry, it is necessary to dene what constitutes Pounds Confucian
Dao or the process. The Confucian universe is an organic unity that
comprises Heaven, Earth, and humanity. Heaven is the ultimate reality that
operates in accordance with a central, benevolent principle. This principle
is the Way of Heaven that gives life to all things, is inherent in all things,
and brings all things into unity and harmony. This universal principle,
like the natural law, is manifest in the phenomenal; it is also a moral principle
essential to establishing social order and culture. It is this all-encompassing
principle, the Way of Heaven, which Pound identies with the Confucian
Dao. This identication is not unwarranted, for Confucian doctrines are
believed to be the result of observing and following the laws of Heaven and
Earth.6 The organic unity between Heaven and humanity, in Pounds view,
distinguishes Confucianism as a balanced system that does not split.7 It is a
balanced system in that Confucius offers a way of life, an Anschauung or
disposition toward nature and man and a system for dealing with both.8
The Confucian Dao deeply impresses Pound, rst of all, as a moral principle
and an ethical system. The Way of Heaven not only is inherent in all things
but also endows human nature with morals and ethics and sets the course for
humanity. The rst chapter of Zhong Yong begins with this statement:
What Heaven (Tien, Nature) imparts to man is called human nature.
To follow our nature is called the Way (Tao). Cultivating the Way is called
education.9

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THE ONE-PRINCIPLE TEXT

This statement draws an afnity between Heaven and humanity. Heaven

endows humans with the Way of Heaven; hence, the Way of humans has
its origin in the Way of Heaven. But the focus of this statement is not so
much on Heaven; it emphasize humanitys self-cultivation and self-knowledge
to actualize its Heaven-endowed nature, and it takes man as its point
of departure.10 One salient characteristics of the Confucian principle is
its focus on the cultivation of humanitys moral nature and on building an
orderly and harmonious society. Pound asks the reader not to go to
Confucianism just to seek aphorisms and bright saying in sentences,11 but
to discover its value to the modern world for himself.12 The Confucian
teachings, for Pound, constitute the hierarchy of values, and he believes that
civilization consists in the establishment of an hierarchy of values.13 Thus,
the Confucian principle, for Pound, is characterized by its humanistic
orientation and by its concern with humanity and life in this world. Early in
The Cantos, Pound writes:
And Kung gave the words order
and brotherly deference
And said nothing of the life after death.14

This focus on humanity and life in this world is what Pound thinks any
philosophy or religion should be. The essence of religion, Pound writes, is
the present tense.15
Confucianism appeals to Pound not only as a social philosophy but also
as a natural philosophy. Heaven, in the Confucian tradition, is identied with
nature.16 The Way of Heaven, with its two opposing but unifying forces
of Yin and Yang, is the natural law or principle that keeps all things in balance,
unity, and harmony. In his article Mang Tsze (Meng Zi), Pound writes:
[A]t no point does the Confucio-Mencian ethic or philosophy splinter or split
away from organic nature. The man who pulled up his corn because it didnt
grow fast enough, and then told his family he had assisted the grain, is Mencius
parable.17

This organic unity between Confucianism and nature is important to Pound.

It means that Confucianism, its morals and ethics, has its basis in the objective
reality of nature. Pounds reference to the parable illustrates that ignorance
of the way of nature only results in human folly. Pound considers Da Xue
(the Great Learning) one of the most important books. One central idea in
)the investigation of things, which Pound translates
Da Xue is gewu (
into sorting things into organic categories.18 Pound understands the
importance of gewu in reading Confucianism. The attainment of social order
and harmony depends upon humanitys realization of its moral nature;

CHUNGENG ZHU

397

the cultivation of ones moral nature lies in extending ones knowledge

to the utmost through the investigation of things. The knowledge about
the natural law will make intelligible the process, and the understanding of
the principle in external things would lead ultimately to an understanding
of the principle within oneself.19
Confucianism is thus viewed by Pound as a totalizing philosophy that
holds nature and culture as an organic unity: if you neglect the root of the
Doctrine, Pound writes, the rest will wither . . . .20 And the root of this
doctrine, for Pound, lies in its objectivity. Inuenced by the Enlightenment
epistemology, Pound believes that theory must be drawn from concrete facts
and must be empirically veriable. All systems of philosophy fail, Pound
maintains, when they attempt to set down axioms of the theos in terms
of consciousness and of logic.21 In this regard, Confucianism, for Pound,
distinguishes itself by its rationalism and the method of seeking truth through
the investigation of things. In the Note to his translation of the Confucian
classics, Pound speaks how Confucianism has been proved through Chinese
history to be invariable truth or the only process to be followed:
China was tranquil when her rulers understood these few pages. When the
principles here dened were neglected, dynasties waned and chaos ensued.
The proponents of a world order will neglect at their peril the study of the only
process that has repeatedly proved its efciency as social coordinate.22

In the China Cantos, Pound rapidly scans the rise and fall of dynasties
through Chinese history, which, for Pound, indisputably proves the validity
of the Confucian principle: For 2,500 years, whenever there has been
order in China or in any part of China, you can look for a Confucian at the
root of it.23
Poetry, says T.S. Eliot, cannot be separated from belief. The Cantos, of
course, embodies the inuences of various traditions, and it certainly cannot
be all accounted for by Pounds belief in Confucianism.24 But the inuence
of Confucianism on The Cantos is substantial, not only because Pounds
Confucian ideology permeates his work but also because the Confucian
principle constitutes the very foundation of an earthly paradise that the poet
envisions in his modern epic:
better gift can no man make to a nation
than the sense of Kung fu Tseu
who was called Chung Ni25

The sense of Confucius is not just a gift to Pounds social and political
ideals but also to his poetry. The Confucian way of seeking truth through
the investigation of things, for Pound, emulates the method of modern

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THE ONE-PRINCIPLE TEXT

science, and the method of science is a good method for literary study.
The proper METHOD for studying poetry and good letters, Pound writes,
is the method of contemporary biologists . . . .26 After the manner of
a scientist discovering a natural process through the investigation of things,
the poet, in Pounds view, should pursue a permanent human process
through the study of human history and culture. The way, says Pound, is the
process of nature, one, in the sense that the chemist and biologist so nd it.27
In the following, a selection of two passages from The Pisan Cantos
and Section: Rock-Drill will be discussed to demonstrate how Pound has applied
the Confucian principle to the making of The Cantos. In these two passages,
Pound makes use of light and tree imageries, which not only articulates
Pounds vision of the Confucian process in relation to nature and culture, but
also manifests how the Confucian principle informs his poetic form and
textually brings the multiple diversities across history and culture into unity.

II

Throughout The Cantos, Pound consistently uses light imagery to

symbolize the source of universal truth, and the Confucian Dao, for
Pound, is the universal truth or light that transcends history and cultural
differences. Pounds interest in light philosophy, of course, does not originate
from his reading Confucius.28 Many of Pounds favorite poets and
philosophers, such as Dante, Cavalcanti, Richard St. Victor, John Scotus
Erigena, and Robert Grosseteste, have beheld visions of light or employed
allegories of light in their lives and works. According to Grosseteste, for
example, light is the rst corporeal form created by God, which multiplies
itself into all directions; the emanation of this original point of light,
expanding into spatial and temporal dimensions, is the universe. Pound
is impressed by this version of the universe: Grosseteste on Light may
or may not be scientic but at least his mind gives us a structure.29 But in
reading Confucius, Pound detects a similar mechanism of emanation in
Confuciuss image of light, which is expressed through the Chinese character
for bright:

is composed of sun on the left and a moon on the right. In his table of
Confucian terminology, Pound thus denes this Chinese character:
The sun and moon, the total light process, the radiation, reception and reection
of light; hence, the intelligence. Bright, brightness, shining. Refer to Scotus
Erigena, Grosseteste and the notes on light in my Cavalcanti.30

CHUNGENG ZHU

399

Pounds association of Confucianism with sun and moon, the archetypes

of Yin and Yang, is quite illustrative of his view of Confucianism. The light of
sun and moon is concrete and internal to the universe (i.e. at the center); the
combination of sun and moon unies Yin and Yang into a single universal
dynamic with multiple manifestations, and it keeps all things in balance,
harmony, and order. In comparison with Grossetestes Neoplatonic trope, the
Confucian light is, for Pound, a more adequate mode of the concrete
universal.
The following lines from Canto 74, the rst of The Pisan Cantos, which may
seem disconnected and fragmented, are, in fact, quite effective in presenting
his vision of the Confucian Daothe one-principle that strings together
disparate fragments of thoughts:
A lizard upheld me
the wild birds wd not eat the white bread
from Mt Taishan to the sunset
From Carrara stone to the tower
and this day the air was made open
for Kuanon of all delights,
Linus, Cletus, Clement
whose prayers,
the great scarab is bowed at the altar
the green light gleams in his shell
plowed in the sacred eld and unwound the silk worms early
in tensile
in the light of light is the virtu`
sunt lumina said Erigena Scottus
as of Shun on Mt Taishan
and in the hall of the forebears
as from the beginning of wonders
the paraclete that was present in Yao, the precision
in Shun the compassionate
in Yu the guider of waters
4 giants at the 4 corners
three young men at the door
and they digged a ditch round about me
lest the damp gnaw thru my bones
to redeem Zion with justice
sd/Isaiah. Not out on interest said David rex
the prime s.o.b.
Light tensile immaculata
the suns cord unspotted
sunt lumina said the Oirishman to King Carolus,
OMNIA,
all things that are are lights
and they dug him up out of sepulture

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THE ONE-PRINCIPLE TEXT

soi disantly looking for Manichaeans.
Les Albigeois, a problem of history,
and the eet at Salamis made with money lent by the state to the
shipwrights
31
Tempus tacendi, tempus loquendi.

In these lines Pound wanders from place to place, skipping to a new locus of
attention in almost every other line and leaving many unbridged transitions
and unexplained allusions that trace the unfettered movement of the caged
poets consciousness. He, beginning from where he is (the mountain that he
can see from the DTC), thinks of Mt. Taishan and Confucius (Taishan is a
sacred mountain near Confuciuss birthplace in Shandong Province) and
further of Carrara (from where the marble was brought to build the DTC
watchtower). From depths of his helplessness, the poet recalls rst Guanyin
(the Buddhist goddess of compassion and mercy) and then the prayers of
Catholic popes. The externals of prayer (the emblems on a chasuble) lead next
to the idea of the scarab (the Egyptian symbol of fertility and rebirth, as well as
a form of solar deity), and on to the Chinese character xian (which means to
appear or to display, but Pound, pictorially, sees in the left component of
the character a sun on the top and silk at the bottom, and it thus presents
to him the image of tensile light like silk descending from the sun). The
Chinese character suggests Erigenas sunt lumina and the Christian paraclete,
which he, tracing far back, links with the Chinese legendary emperors
of Yao, Shun, and Yu. Then, the poet suddenly retrenches, reverting
to his own still point, and then sets out again for Zion, King David, the prophet
Isaiah, and the matrix of Hebrew tradition. From there he moves back to
Light tensile immaculata and Erigenas sunt lumina; from Erigenas
persecution he jumps to the Albigensian crusade (both the Manichaeans
and the Albigensians derived part of their thought from Mithra, the Persian
sun-god) to Salamis (where the Greeks defeated the Persians in 480 BC) . . . .
This narrative style, owing freely and rapidly to anywhere the bed of the
poets stream of thought chances to turn, does not seem to be guided by
concern for overt structural coherence. But Pound, in the example above, is in
fact quite consciously hewing to the Confucian root of his one-principle and
tries to string all fragments together with the recurrent motif of light:
Mt. Taishan and the light of the sunset; the green light of the scaraban
Egyptian symbol of the sun god; the Chinese image of sunlight (Pounds
reading of the character xian); Erigenas Ominia, quae sunt, lumina sunt (all
things that are are light); the Christian paraclete of divine light; the light of
the promised land of Hebrew tradition; and the Persian god of light. Each of
these references to light has an individual meaning within its religion and
system of belief, but Pound believes that the ultimate reality of nature,

CHUNGENG ZHU

401

like Confucian doctrine as he understands it, is one and indivisible,

though there may be different ways of perceiving it. Thus, he unites all these
lights, juxtaposed and interpenetrating regardless of cultural, historical, and
ideological contexts (i.e., the paraclete that was present in Yao), under the
aegis of Confucian DaoGod of God, Light of Light.32 This narrative
mood, the one-principle text, may cause readers some problems, but it serves
Pound adequately insofar as his vision of Confucian truth is concerned.
III

In addition to the light imagery, Pounds vision of the Confucian universe

is also expressed through tree imagery, and the Confucian Dao is viewed as
the root of the universe. Pound is interested in tree imagery since the early
stage of his poetic career. In his The Spirit of Romance (1910), Pound states that
thoughts in poetic minds are as the thought of the tree is in the seed, or in
the grass, or the grain, or the blossom. This sort of mind, he maintains,
is close on the vital universe.33 In reading Zhong Yong, Pound is much
impressed by the Confucian depiction of the universe as a tree, and this tree
imagery, Pound thinks, manifests the meridian of the work:
That axis in the center is the great root of the universe; that harmony is
the universes outspread process [of existence]. From this root and in this
harmony, heaven and earth are established in their precise modalities, and the
multitudes of all creatures persist, nourished on their meridians.34

That axis in the center comes from Pounds pictorial translation of the
Chinese character (middle or center), which he takes to be a pictorial
expression of a centrality principle inhering in the universe. The outspread
process of the universe has to depend upon the root in the center for
nourishment. In Pounds Confucian cosmology, this tree image draws
a process of germination just as the light image depicts a process of emanation.
The opening of Canto 85, the rst of Section: Rock-Drill, is a good example
that illustrates Pounds use of tree imagery in articulating his vision of the
Confucian principle:
LING

Our dynasty came in because of a great sensibility.

All there by the time of I Yin
All roots by the time of I Yin.
Galileo indexd 1616,
Wellingtons peace after Waterloo

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THE ONE-PRINCIPLE TEXT

chih

a gnomon,
Our science is from the watching of shadows;
That Queen Bess translated Ovid,
Cleopatra wrote of the currency,
Versus who scatter old records
ignoring the hsien form

and jumping to the winning side

(turbae)35

Pound opens the poem with the character , which carries the primary
meanings of spirit, soul, or inspiration. It is comprised of the characters
for rain ( , an image of raindrops falling from the sky) on the top, three
mouths ( ) in the middle, and priest or shaman ( ) at the bottom. One
of the ancient meanings of this word refers to those who perform a ceremonial
dance to invoke rain. Pound seems to take this word to mean knowledge or
awareness of a heavenly spirit that bestows insight into the process of worldly
affairs. Pound translates this word as great sensibility, and he believes that the
record of Confucius is the record of a very great sensibility.36
From the root of great sensibility, the poet branches off to ve characters:
Yi Yin, Galileo Galilei, the Duke of Wellington, Queen Elizabeth, and
Queen Cleopatra. Yi Yin is a celebrated minister of Shang Tang, the founder
of the Shang dynasty. After the death of Shang Tang, Yi Yin assisted
the young emperors Bu Bing and then Zhong Ren in running the state.
Galileo discovers that the shadow of the moon bears a relation to the passage
of time and that the movement of bodies is identical, in principle, to that
revealed in the shadow of the pointer on a sundial (gnomon). The Duke of
Wellington has a moderating effect on the exaction of reparations from the
French after Napoleons defeat, thereby knowing where to stop ( means
stop in Chinese). Queen Elizabeth is the translator of quite a few classics
(though she is not known to have translated Ovid), and she consistently
informs the Renaissance, the revival of antique civilization. Finally, Cleopatra
is wise to take the control of currency and the coinage, for she understands the
essential role of monetary policies in running a state, thereby demonstrating
great sensibility and hsien ( , xian, means virtue in Chinese).
These ve historical characters, across times and cultures, are seemingly
unrelated, yet they, in Pounds view, have all followed the Confucian
principle in cultural establishment.37 Yi Yin is highly regarded by Pound for
teaching the young emperors the principles of a virtuous government.
Confucius himself, as we know, travels from state to state, teaching the

CHUNGENG ZHU

403

principles of a virtuous government and persuading rulers to adopt his ideal of

social and political reform. Galileos theory about the position of the sun
resonates with Pounds Confucian cosmology: the root of the universe is also
the source of light. The Duke of Wellington, for Pound, is a Confucian hero
who knows when to (stop). His guidelines after Waterloo, as Carroll F.
Terrell notes, prevented either Germany or France getting territory which
might lead to future wars.38 Pound considers (knowing when to stop)
one of the most important terms in the Confucian philosophy. Queen
Elizabeth, for Pound, is a Confucian ruler, who is noted for the Confucian
quality of great learning. Confucius himself is known to have edited the
classics, taught the classics, and greatly cherished the cultural legacy of the past.
Finally, Cleopatra, in Pounds view, is another Confucian ruler because of her
sense of responsibility in running the state; she is in contrast with those who
scatter old records and ignore hsien, thereby causing great damage to
civilization and culture.
From great sensibility to the accomplishment of the ve characters, we
see an example of how an idea grows into actions or how Pounds Confucian
process is at work. First, we see the extraordinary scopes that the root
of great sensibility grows into. One of Pounds favorite Confucian line
is [t]hings have roots and branches; affairs have scopes and beginnings.39
The words roots and branches come from the characters
(ben mo),
which are derived from word tree ( mu). If one line is added to the
bottom of tree, it means root ( ); if it is added to the top, it means branches
( ). Pounds great sensibility opens up broad branches in such areas that
include Confucian views on government, cosmology, politics, cultural legacy,
and economics. The ve characters, each in his or her own way, have
followed the Confucian Dao in building society and culture. Second, Pounds
great sensibility also demonstrates how the Way of Heaven is actualized to
be the Way of humans. Humans are endowed, as discussed earlier, with the
Way of Heaven. The actions of these ve characters show that they have, in
one way or another, gone through the process of realizing their moral nature
and made the Way manifested in human affairs. The great sensibility is the
root to their actions; their accomplishments, in turn, have illustrated what the
great sensibility is meant in cultural contexts.

IV

Pounds one-principle text, as a literary method, is naturally reminiscent

of the ideogrammic method, which Pound considers his most important
contribution to criticism.40 Indeed, Pounds ideogrammic method, together
with his imagist and vorticist aesthetics, constitutes the core of his poetics. But
the ideogrammic method is never just a literary method per se, independent

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THE ONE-PRINCIPLE TEXT

of Pounds Confucian world-view. Art cannot be separated from ideological

belief. [T]he one thing you shd. not do, Pound reminds his readers, is to
suppose that when something is wrong with the arts, it is wrong with the
arts ONLY.41 The ideogrammic method, inevitably ideological as any other
literary approach, both reects, and serves to express, Pounds Confucianism.
The ideogrammic method originates from Pounds misreading of the Chinese
character for red, which he thinks consists of four components: rose,
cherry, iron rust, and amingo; the meaning red is thus expressed
through the references to four objects of the color of red. The one-principle
text follows exactly the same approach. The idea of great sensibility,
as discussed earlier, is expressed through the references to the actions of
ve characters, which, each in its own way, denes what Pound means by
great sensibility. In fact, Pound explicitly identies ideogrammic thinking
with the Confucian method of getting in to ones own intentions. 42 and
he calls it the Confucian building of ideogram and search into motivation,
or principle. 43
The term one-principle text has not received much critical attention, but
it, in fact, has always worked simultaneously with the ideogrammic method.
Pound deployed the ideogrammic method since his early cantos, though
he did not formally speak of it as a method until the 1930s, rst in ABC of
Reading (1934) and then in Guide to Kulchur (1938). Similarly, Pound became
deeply interested in Confucianism when he started writing the cantos, but
he rst spoke of the one-principle text in Guide to Kulchur. It is in Guide to
Kulchur, a work considered Pounds fullest realization of the ideogrammic
method of criticism,44 that Pound explicitly displays how the one-principle
text and the ideogrammic method are internally related as one approach.
In Guide to Kulchur, Pound begins with the Confucian one-principle
, and then follows with a discussion of the Confucian idea

(the rectication of names). When asked about the meaning of

the rectication of names, Confucius speaks of governmental instructions,

business, rites and music, penalties and punishments, equity and justice. It is
through the juxtaposition of these ostentatiously unrelated subjectsa
paradigm of ideogrammic methodthat the idea of the rectication of
names is dened as a principle essential to them all and stringing them
together. The reader is thereby made aware why an intelligent man cares
for his terminology and gives instructions that t.45 Pound follows the
same method as he moves to broaden his discussion on culture. He asks his
readers to be patient with his approach: I am not being merely incoherent.
I havent lost my thread in the sense that I havent just dropped one thread to
pick up another of different shade. I need more than one string for a fabric.46
To continue with Pounds metaphor, one may say that it is these threads
that hold together the huge fabric of human history and culture that the poet

CHUNGENG ZHU

405

is weavinga fabric that consists of the arrangement and the juxtaposition

of various patterns and colors.
The ideogrammic method, together with the one-principle text, is
deeply rooted in Pounds Confucianism. The ideogrammic method may be
directly derived from the Chinese characters, but the Chinese language, in
Pounds view, both embodies and reects the Confucian cultural tradition.47
Indeed, what Pound sees in the Chinese characters is not just a literary method
but also a difference between the European thinking and the Chinese
thinking (i.e., the Confucian thinking). The European thinking, Pound says in
his ABC of Reading, follows the method of abstraction, or of dening things in
more and still more general terms.48 But the Chinese thinking emphasizes that
knowledge and ideas are to be obtained from sense perception and empirical
experiences. The Chinese way of dening a concept, as shown in the character
for red, is based on something everyone KNOWS.49 This mode of thinking,
in Pounds view, follows the Confucian investigation of things and is
objective and scientic:
That, you see, is very much the kind of thing a biologist does (in a very much
more complicated way) when he gets together a few hundred or thousand slides,
and picks out what is necessary for his general statement. Something that ts the
case, that applies in all of the cases.50

This mode of thinking or of approaching an idea, for Pound, is also poetic. It is

a way of using language for visual effect that he champions in imagism
a casting of images upon the visual imagination.51 A language written in this
way, Pound maintains, simply HAD TO STAY POETIC.52 This method of
writing, for Pound, is also what Confucius advocated in his works and
teachings. Confucius, Pound maintains, demanded or commended a type of
perception, a kind of transmission of knowledge obtainable only from such
concrete manifestation. Not without reason.53
The one-principle text and the ideogrammic method, in a way, may appear
to contradict each other in their orientations: one emphasizes the essentiality of
ideas; the other advocates a return to things. Indeed, Pound, in his imagist
poetics, draws a sharp distinction between two modes of poetry: one consists in
the presentation of sensuous images of concrete reality and the other deals with
abstract ideas. Pound believes that it is not until poetry lives again close to the
thing that it will be a vital part of contemporary life.54 But Pounds emphasis
on images or sense perception is never an end in itself; the visual presentation of
external reality is not meant to be some kind of desireless or disinterested
contemplation involving neither cognition nor philosophic engagement.55
Instead, Pound believes, Art does not avoid universals, it strikes at them all the
harder in that it strikes through particulars.56 The ideogrammic method

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THE ONE-PRINCIPLE TEXT

exactly follows the approach of, as Fenollosa puts it, the use of material images
to suggest immaterial relations.57 Thus, for Pound, it is not the images alone,
but the immaterial relations made visible through material images that call forth
an ecstasythat sense of sudden liberation; that sense of freedom from time
limits and space limits; that sense of sudden growth.58 The Confucian process
is not abstract ideas but the immaterial relations to be empirically derived; they
are immanent rather than transcendent in relation to the physical reality.
In a philosophical sense, the one-principle text and the ideogrammic method
are dialectically related as one method or as two sides of the same coin. In the
ideogrammic method, Pound emphasizes the importance of natural and
empirical facts in which truth resides and is to be found. In the one-principle
text, Pound shows that it is the underlying truth that unies and brings disparate
particulars into unity or parts into a whole. These two methods are inseparable:
each depends upon the other for its existence.

In his essay Mang Tsze, Pound says, This doctrine [Confucianism] is one,
indivisible, a nature extending to every detail as the nature of being oak
or maple extends to every part of the oak tree or maple.59 This statement
or tree imagery draws a picture of Pounds understanding of Confucianism as
a universal principle that is all encompassing, running through all things.
Pounds one-principle text, as a literary method, precisely captures and reects
Pounds understanding of Confucianism as a totalizing philosophy, and it
embodies and displays the poets applying this universal principle to examining
the multiplicity of things and categories across history and cultures. In the
ONE PRINCIPLE text, Pound writes, we have four common signs: one,
by, passing through, emerging.60 These four signs are Pounds reading of the
four Chinese characters that make up the phrase one runs through all; they
also best describe how Pound perceives the Confucian process is at work.
Pound learns the Confucian one-principle method from reading The Analects,
in which Confucius speaks of it as a method of learning. Pound also observes the
Confucian one-principle method through his reading Zhong Young, in which it
is used as a method of textual construction.61 The one-principle text may be
traced to the ancient Confucian tradition, but Pound has undoubtedly made this
method new in his art. Pounds one-principle text represents his effort of putting
into practice his reading of Confucianismfrom Confucian morals and ethics to
Confucian cosmology and epistemology. It represents his innovation of
translating his reading of an ancient philosophy into a modern poetics.
Suwanee, GA 30024, USA.
czhu@charter.net

CHUNGENG ZHU
REFERENCES
1

Regarding the criticism of Pounds and

Fenollosas misreading of Chinese characters, Hugh Kenner writes: Poetry was
their center of interest, not Chinese,
but a new understanding of Poetry was
assisted by a myth about Chinese. See
Hugh Kenner, The Poetics of Error, in
Tamkang Review, vol. 6/7 (197576): 8897,
p. 96. Kenner draws a good distinction.
Pounds reading of Chinese characters
may be idiosyncratic, but what Pound
learned from his misreading is a new way
of making poetry.
In this article, I contend that Pounds
reading of Confucianism, not just Chinese
characters, also profoundly informed his
poetics. Pounds Confucianism, like his
reading of Chinese characters, may also be
prone to criticism. Pounds translation of
the Confucian texts is sometimes inaccurate
due to his pictorial, idiosyncratic reading of
Chinese characters. Pounds Confucianism
is limited to his reading of the Four Books:
Da Xue (The Great Learning) Zhong Yong
(The Doctrine of the Mean), Lun Yu (The
Analects), and Meng Zi, which are favored
by Neo-Confucians. Pound may have
brought much of his own ideological
and philosophical beliefs into reading
Confucianism. But the purpose of this
study is not about Pounds Confucianism;
it is about how Pounds reading of
Confucianism has informed his poetics
and about the unity between his Confucian
ideology and his poetics. For this purpose,
I will in this article quote some of Pounds
translations of the Confucian texts to illustrate his understanding of Confucianism.
In The Analects, there is a conversation
between Confucius and his disciple
Zi Gong (
) about learning:
Confucius said, Tzu (Tzu-kung), do
you suppose that I am one who learns a
great deal and remembers it? Tzu-kung
replied, Yes. Is that not true? Confucius
said, No, I have a thread (i-kuan) that runs
through it all. See Wing-tsit Chan,

407

A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy

(Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1969), p. 43. The Confucian

means that a person, once knowing the

fundamental principle of things, may connect and relate it to all things. For Pound,
this is not just about learning. Pound views
the Confucian Dao as such a universal truth
that relates to all. Here is how Pound
translates Confuciuss reply to Zi Gongs
question: No, I one, through, stringtogether, sprout [that is: unite, ow
through, connect, put forth leaf ]. For me
there is one thing that ows through,
holds things together, germinates. See
Confucius: The Unwobbling Pivot, The Great
Digest, The Analects, trans. Ezra Pound
(New York: New Directions, 1951),
p. 263; hereafter abbreviated Confucius.
Pound brings in some interpretations
that are not exactly based on the
original text. The words sprout and
germinate reect how Pound perceives
Confucianism
as
immanent
truth
inherent in all things. See my following
discussion on Pounds use of light and
tree imageries.
The Confucian Dao ( ) is generally
translated as the Confucian Way. In
Chinese, Dao means way, path, or road;
by derivation it also means method,
theory, and rule of conduct. In both
The Cantos and his translation of the
Confucian classics, Pound renders it
as process. For example, Zhong Yong
begins with:
,
,
and here is Pounds translation: What
heaven has disposed and sealed is called the
inborn nature. The realization of this nature
is called the process. See Confucius, p. 99.
Pound translates Dao as process perhaps
because he considers that realizing
ones Heaven-endowed nature has to
be a process of self-cultivation. In
his table of Confucian terminology, Pound
thus explains the word Dao: The process.
Footprints and the foot carrying the

408

8
9

10

THE ONE-PRINCIPLE TEXT

head; the head conducting the feet, an

orderly movement under lead of the
intelligence. See Confucius, p. 22.
Pounds explanation of the word, the
foot carrying the head, is etymologically
sound. The idea of an orderly movement
under lead of the intelligence echoes the
notion of going through some kind of
process of enlightenment.
E. Pound, Guide to Kulchur (New York:
New Directions, 1970), p. 21.
I also discussed the relation between
Pounds Confucian ideology and his
aesthetics in my article Ezra Pounds
Confucianism in Philosophy and Literature,
vol. 29, no. 1 (April 2005): 5772. In
that article, I specically discussed
how Pounds Confucianism inuenced
his reading of Thomas Jefferson and
John Adams and how Pounds poetic
form serves to express his Confucian
world-view.
Xinzhong Yao, An Introduction to
Confucianism (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2000), p. 141.
Pound
criticizes
both
Greek
philosophic thought and Christianity for
splitting that is, the separation of ideas
from the phenomenal or culture from
nature.
E. Pound, Guide to Kulchur, p. 24.
Wing-tsit Chan, A Source Book in Chinese
Philosophy, p. 98.
Wei-ming Tu, Centrality and Commonality:
An Essay on Confucian Religiousness
(New York: State University of
New York Press, 1989), p. 10. Heaven
endows humanity with human nature; this
Heaven-endowed human nature also
denes the Way of Heaven. In this sense,
there is an inseparable unity between
Heaven and humanity. But humanity,
though endowed with the Way of heaven,
has to depend on itself to actualize
it. Confucius therefore emphasizes
the importance of education or selfcultivation. As Tu states, the only way
for humanity to know Heaven is to
penetrate deeply into his own ground of

11
12

13
14

15
16

17
18

19

20

being. See Wei-ming Tu, Centrality and

Commonality, p. 10. It is this humanistic
dimension of Confucianism, the focus on
the cultivation of human moral nature and
on building a harmonious society, which
Pound nds most attractive.
E. Pound, Confucius, p. 194.
Ezra Pound, Selected Prose, "
-".
ed. William Cookson (New York: New
Directions, 1973), p. 75.
Ibid., p. 90.
E. Pound, The Cantos of Ezra Pound
(New York: New Directions, 1991),
Canto 13, p. 59.
E. Pound, Selected Prose, p. 70.
Heaven in the Confucian tradition
has multi-dimensions. There is, says Yao
Xinzhong, a naturalistic dimension with
respect to the Confucian Ultimate in
which Heaven is primarily taken as
Nature, and the Way of Heaven as
something similar to Natural Law. Yao
considers the concept of Heaven as Nature
one of the underlying ideas of Confucian
rationalism that leads to the harmony
between human beings and their environment (p. 149).
E. Pound, Selected Prose, p. 87.
E. Pound, Confucius, p. 31. Gewu (
) is
commonly translated as the investigation
of things. In the Confucian tradition, this
term only refers to the moral training in
the sense of understanding right or wrong
in human affairs. But for Neo-Confucians,
gewu means to investigate to the utmost
the principles of all things, internal and
external. The whole spirit of their
doctrine
[Neo-Confucianism],
says
Wing-tsit Chan, involving both induction and deduction, is denitely consonant
with science. See Wing-tsit Chan, Source
Book, p. 611. Pound nds this naturalistic/
rationalistic dimension of Confucianism
very attractive.
Daniel K. Gardner, Chu His and the
Ta-Hsueh: New-Confucian Reection on the
Confucian Canon (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1986), p. 54.
E. Pound, Selected Prose, p. 92.

CHUNGENG ZHU
21
22
23

24

25
26

27
28

29
30
31
32

Ibid., pp. 49-50.

E. Pound, Confucius, p. 19.
E. Pound, Jefferson and/or Mussolini;
Lidea statale; fascism as I have seen it.
(New York: Liveright Publishing Corp.,
1970), p. 113.
The Cantos, as Mary Paterson Cheadle says,
are an enormous tapestry which embodies Pounds study of not only China and
Confucianism, but Ovidian and Homeric
polytheism; Renaissance Italy, medieval
Provence, and Neoplatonic light philosophy; nineteenth-and twentieth-century
America and modern Europe . . .. See
Mary Paterson Cheadle, Ezra Pounds
Confucian Translations (Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press, 2000),
p. 219. Pounds reading of Confucianism,
however, helps him to bring some of these
various traditions into a unied worldview. Akiko Miyake, for instance, observes
that Pound sees a parallel between
Eleusinian-Dantean mysteries of love and
the ancient Chinese scriptures, and his
reading of Confucius enables him to
develop a Dantean-Plotinian-Confucian
universe. See Akiko Miyake, Ezra Pound
and Mysteries of Love: A Plan for the Cantos
(Durham: Duke University Press, 1991),
pp. 17779.
E. Pound, The Cantos, Canto 76, p. 468.
E. Pound, ABC of Reading (New York:
New Directions, 1987), p. 17.
E. Pound, Selected Prose, p. 87.
Peter Liebregts thinks that Pound used the
light imagery to connect the Neoplatonic
and Confucian concepts of the Self and
self-awareness and that Pound regarded
Confucianism as a practical translation
of the perhaps more abstract tenets
of Neoplatonism. See Peter Liebregts, Ezra
Pound and Neoplatonism (Madison: Fairleigh
Dickinson University Press, 2004), p. 108.
E. Pound, Selected Prose, p. 77.
E. Pound, Confucius, p. 20.
E. Pound, The Cantos, Canto 74, pp. 442-43.
According to Wendy Stallard Flory,
Pound wrote the Chinese character ming
(light) beside God of God, Light of

33

34

35
36

37

409

Light in the Catholic Prayer Book for Army

and Navy that was given to him while he
was detained in the DTC. See Wendy
Stallard Flory, Confucius against Confusion: Ezra Pound and the Catholic
Chaplain at Pisa, in Ezra Pound and China,
ed. Zhaoming Qian (Ann Arbor: University
of Michigan Press, 2003), p. 156.
E. Pound, The Spirit of Romance
(New York: New Directions, 1968),
pp. 92-93.
E. Pound, Confucius, p. 103. Hiroko Uno
observes that Pounds interest in tree
image derives from Yeatss inuence. See
Uno, Hiroko Uno, Trees in the Poetry
of Yeats and Pound, in Paideuma, vol. 
(1999):13348.
E. Pound, The Cantos, Canto 85, pp. 55758.
Thomas Grieve, one of the earliest
critics who have discussed Pounds use
of ling, thinks that ling is an image of
the process of virtuous government
and that [t]he character also gives
image to the attitude of a man responsive
and in supplication to the descent of
natural and divine benecence. See
Thomas
Grieve,
Annotations
to
the Chinese in Section: Rock-Drill, in
Paideuma, vol. (1975): 36185, p. 379.
Carroll F. Terrell thinks that Pound
uses ling to tie together the processes of
heaven with the processes of nature and
the Confucian ideals of order in man.
See Carroll F. Terrell, A Companion to the
Cantos of Ezra Pound. vol. 1 & 2 (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1984),
p. 475. Mary Paterson Cheadle, however, thinks that Pounds denition of
(ling) is more practical than Terrells
Neo-platonic one. See Mary Paterson
Cheadle, Ezra Pounds Confucian Translations, p. 248.
In his article on the Rock-Drill Cantos,
William Cole explains, Hypertext nodes
and links dene each other. A node is
anything which can be linked to
something else. He thinks that the
character ling makes a particularly
signicant node within Rock-Drill and

410

38

39
40
41
42
43
44

45
46
47

48
49
50
51

THE ONE-PRINCIPLE TEXT

that [b]y following what amounts to a

looping path away from and back to the
ling node, the reader develops an increasingly rich context of associations. See
William Cole, Pounds Web: Hypertext
in the Rock-Drill Cantos, Paideuma, vol. 
(1997): 13750, pp. 13941. Coles notion
of ling as node in a hypertext offers another
interesting way of looking at Pounds
Confucian principle or tree imagery.
F. Carrol Terrell, A Companion to the
Cantos of Ezra Pound, p. 468.
E. Pound, Confucius, p. 29.
See Ezra Pound, Selected Prose, p. 333.
E. Pound, Guide to Kulchur, p. 60.
E. Pound, Selected Prose, p. 78.
Ibid., p. 158.
Laszlo K. Gen, Ideogram: History of a Poetic
Method (Austin: University of Texas Press,
1982), p. 34.
E. Pound, Guide to Kulchur, p. 17.
Ibid., p. 29.
Pound presents a list of Confucian
terminology in his translation of
Confucian classics, and his understanding
of some Confucian ideas precisely comes
from his pictorial reading of the composition of Chinese characters.
E. Pound, ABC of Reading, p. 20.
Ibid., p. 22.
Ibid.
E. Pound, Literary essays of Ezra Pound, ed.
T.S. Eliot (New York: New Directions,
1968), p. 25.

52
53
54
55

56
57

58
59
60
61

E. Pound, ABC of Reading, p. 22.

E. Pound, Guide to Kulchur, p. 28.
E. Pound, Selected Prose, p. 41.
Pounds imagism was once criticized
for wanting only things, not ideas.
See Frank Kermode, Romantic Image
(London: Routledge & Kegan Paul
Inc., 1957). p.136. But the image Pound
speaks of is meant to create an ecstasy
or epiphany that inevitably involves some
philosophic engagement and intellectual
content. Similarly, the one-principle
text and the ideogram method co-exist,
for the very arrangement or juxtaposition
of particulars already presupposes the
presence of a principle or idea that holds
those particulars together.
E. Pound, Literary Essays, p. 420.
Ernest Fenollosa, The Chinese Written
Character as a Medium for Poetry, ed. Ezra
Pound, (San Francisco: City Lights Books,
1983), p. 22.
E. Pound, Literary Essays, p. 4.
E. Pound, Selected Prose, p. 82.
Ezra Pound, Guide to Kulchur, p. 21.
In his translation of Zhong Yong, Pound
includes Zhu Xis preface that explains
how the composition of Zhong Yong
follows the one-principle: At its start
the book speaks of the one principle,
it then spreads into a discussion of things in
general, and concludes by uniting all
this in the one principle. See Confucius,
p. 97.