Linking Ancient and Contemporary: Continuities and Discontinuities in Chinese History of Literature and Thought

The Dipartimento di Studi sull'Asia esull'Africa Mediterranea (DSAAM) of the Università Ca'Foscari Venezia, in collaboration with the Department of Chinese Language and Literature of  北京大学 Peking University, organised an international conference in Venice from  21-22 March  2013 on the subject of "Linking Ancient and Contemporary:Continuities and Discontinuities in Chinese History of Literature andThought".  

Sean Golden, a member of the Inter-Asia research Group, spoke at the conference on the subject of “Liu Xie 劉勰’s Wénxīn Diāolóng 文心雕龙, Ernest Fenollosa’s complete The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry and 20th century avant garde American writing outside the Ezra Pound tradition”. 

Abstract

Ezra Pound’s edition of Ernest Fenollosa’s manuscripts for The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry was a landmark in modernist European poetry and the imagist movement at the beginning of the 20th century. Pound’s work has stood for Fenollosa’s vision since then and has been the subject of controversy among Sinologist’s for its emphasis on the graphic elements of Chinese written characters. A recent edition of the complete Fenollosa manuscripts by Haun Saussy, Jonathan Stalling and Lucas Klein has made it possible to see the differences between Fenollosa’s interests and Pound’s interpretations and to restore Fenollosa’s original intentions. Even though Sinologists have questioned the Fenollosa-Pound emphasis on the graphic elements of Chinese writing as a component part of Chinese poetry, Chapter 39 of the classical Chinese text  文心雕龙 Wénxīn diāolóng by  劉勰 Liu Xie (ca. 466-ca. 520) refers specifically to this phenomenon as a mode in the composition of Chinese poetry. Case studies of work by John Cage and Jackson Mac Low show that Fenollosa’s impact on 20th century avant garde literature went far beyond the works of Ezra Pound.