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Modernism; Translation; Chinese Poetry; World Literature; Critical Edition; Global Modernism; Comparative Literature; Ernest Fenollosa; Philology; Orientalism
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Cathay, Ezra Pound
Cathay, Ezra Pound
Poetry
Ezra Pound’s Cathay (1915) is a masterpiece of modernism, but also of world literature. The muscular precision of images that mark Pound’s translations helped established a modern style for American literature, at the same time creating a thirst for classical Chinese poetry in English. Yet Pound wrote it without knowing any Chinese, relying instead on word-for-word “cribs” left by the Orientalist Ernest Fenollosa, whose notebooks reveal a remarkable story of sustained cultural exchange.
This fully annotated critical edition focuses on Pound’s astonishing translations without forgetting that the original Chinese and Old English poems are masterpieces in their own right. By …