A Poetics of 'Secretaries of Nature': Ezra Pound's Etymological Reading of Chinese Characters as a Poetic Site for the Reunification of Culture and Nature

Author: Yu, Ning¹

Source: Comparative American Studies, Volume 7, Number 2, June 2009 , pp. 140-150(11)

Publisher: Maney Publishing

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Abstract:

Re-examining what twentieth-century sinologists dismissed as Pound's 'idiosyncratic' interpretation of Chinese written characters, this article finds a significant connection between Pound's etymological reading of written Chinese and his claim to being one of the 'secretaries of nature'. Pound's insistence on seeing a connection between Chinese written words and things and relations in the physical world offers ecocritics a much needed balance between what Lawrence Buell calls an 'outer mimetic' and 'realistic' approach to literature and structuralist and post-structuralist linguists' definition of language as a self-referring and self-containing system that has no connection with the 'real' world. Considered in the context of Wendell Berry's challenge for poets and critics to 'stand by their words', Pound's seemingly Quixotic pursuit of a language and a poetics that reunite culture and nature can actually be a very useful tool for ecocritics.

Keywords: AMERICAN LITERATURE; WENDELL BERRY; CHINESE WRITTEN CHARACTERS; CULTURE AND NATURE; ECOCRITICISM; POETICS; EZRA POUND

Document Type: Research article

DOI: 10.1179/147757009X442532

Affiliations: 1: Western Washington University, USA;, Email: Ning.Yu@wwu.edu

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