Inventing China: The American Tradition of Translating Chinese Poetry

Abstract

T.S. Eliot called Ezra Pound the “inventor of Chinese poetry of our time.” With this observation as the premise for the discussion, this chapter focuses on the reception of classical Chinese poetry as manifest in English translations from Ezra Pound to contemporary American translators (many of whom are also poets). Exploring the nature of the paradigm shift from Pound to the later generations of translators, the question addressed here is: “[W]ho are the inventors of Chinese poetry of our time since Pound?”

For I know I shall never escape from this dull barbarian country, Where there is none now left to lift a cool jade winecup, Or share with me a single human thought. —John Gould Fletcher, “Chinese Poet Among Barbarians” (1922)