Confucius (Paperback)

~ Ezra Pound (Author)
Key Phrases: solid merit, Tsze Sze, Yen Yuan, The Odes (more...)

Product Details

• Paperback: 292 pages
• Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation (October 1, 1969)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0811201546
• ISBN-13: 978-0811201544
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #731,887 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Those who know aren't up to those who love..., May 24, 2001

By	tepi "tepi" - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

One of the worst problems in our world is that it is infested with 'experts,' 'experts' of every variety from the diploma-wavers through to the self-appointed. The main aim of these 'experts' seems to have been to convince the world that only 'experts' have a right to say anything about anything. In this they have been extremely successful, and the mature, intelligent, and well-informed adult who may have a lot to contribute, but who is not an 'expert,' has been pretty well reduced to silence.

His mouth has been shut. He has been convinced that his own God-given brain is worthless. Even if there's something he'd like to say, he or she is afraid of being shouted down by the 'experts' and their groupies. A reading of the great Chinese thinkers would soon convince anyone of how dangerous and damaging to society 'experts' can be, but most of us don't read the Chinese. We have been conditioned to think of them as alien and to forget that they were human like us.

Ezra Pound may have been a bit crazy in some ways (who isn't?), and his Chinese readings have come in for a lot of flak, but anyone who, like Pound, loved Asian thought and set out to bring it to a West that is desperately in need of it, certainly deserves our gratitude whether they be 'expert' or non-expert.

Nobody knows how much Chinese Pound knew anyway. He certainly knew some. And anyone who knows anything at all about the complexities of Classical Chinese realizes that all readings or translations from that language, whether by professional linguists or enthusiasts such as Pound, must always be personal. There are just too many ways of validly interpreting a given line.

And as Burton Watson, who is one of the USA's foremost scholars of Ancient Chinese has pointed out in his 'Complete Works of Chuang Tzu,' since there can be no definitive interpretation neither can there be any such thing as a definitive translation. Watson, incidentally, was perfectly happy to approve Thomas Merton's readings of another great Chinese thinker, Chuang Tzu, even though Merton knew no Chinese at all. He feels that the more translations, whether expert or non- expert (when done with sincerity and love), the better. But experts such as Burton Watson, sadly, are rare, perhaps because they are the only true experts.

My own copy of Pound's 'Confucius' was purchased many years ago. It's very well-thumbed and heavily annotated, and I often return to it. I've also studied Arthur Waley's more exact translation carefully, and a few others. But the Confucian lines that stick in my mind always seem to be those of Pound, lines such as: "If the root be in confusion, nothing will be well governed" (page 33).

The "root" today is certainly "in confusion." And those who dismiss Pound on the basis of a few howlers are simply adding to the confusion. To let you in on a secret, there are many howlers - up to and including the omission of whole lines - in the translations of even reputable and well-known scholars of Chinese (though I've never found any in Burton Watson).

My advice would be to ignore the gripers, most of whom don't have direct access to the Chinese text anyway, and to read Pound's version of Confucius. He was a literary genius and got it right most of the time, and you'd learn a great deal from it.

Pound's 'Confucius' has always found and will continue to find readers. I think it's because, as Confucius says: "Those who know aren't up to those who love..." (page 216).

13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars If you're gonna fail, fail big, April 30, 2000

By	Keith Ammann (Freeport, IL USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

A bizarre, glorious train wreck of a translation. It's not a word-for-word translation of the works of Confucius, and it doesn't try to be. Instead, it's like one of those movie "adaptations" that turn out to have only the most tenuous connections with the books on which they're based. Pound, living up to the stereotypical eccentricity of poets, interprets any character he's not familiar with based on the literal meanings of its radicals, mashing them together into clumsy yet somehow apropos metaphorical images. However, for all the liberties Pound takes in translating individual characters -- and in getting Confucius and all his disciples to talk in his own curmudgeonly voice -- he's strangely obstinate about preserving word order. Plus, the whole thing is contaminated with Pound's skewed point of view. For all its inadequacies as a translation, it's a surprisingly intriguing read, but it's better as a study of Ezra Pound than as a study of Confucius. Highly inconsistent Wade-Giles romanization.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not a good place to start studying Confucianism, January 1, 2007

By	From_Plano_TX "a_customer_from_plano" (Plano, TX USA) - See all my reviews

I bought this book because I had heard some people say it was more poetic than other translations. I did not find this to be true. If you are a beginner in Confucianism, "The Unwobbling Pivot" is usually referred to as the "Doctrine of the Mean." "The Great Digest" is usually referred to as "The Great Learning". I read Pound's translation of the Analects and I was disappointed. I think Waley's translation is closer to being poetic than Pound's translation. I have studied many translations of the Analects and I found Pound's translation to seem off-mark. The language was usually clumsy rather than poetic. I eventually put it aside.

I do applaud Ezra Pound's love of Confucianism and his intention to promote Confucianism for Westerners. In this vein, I recommend "Achieve Lasting Happiness" by Robert Canright, which is a version of the Analects updated for modernity. Canright's book also presents a vision of how Americans can embrace Confucianism as a system of universal ethics.

One of the other reviews said "no one knows how much Chinese Ezra Pound knew". I recommend "Ezra Pound and Confucianism" by Feng Lan. The author discusses Pound's translation in a way that is accessible and interesting. Dr. Feng Lan goes beyond the issues of translation. He also discusses Ezra Pound's "political polemic" in chap. 3 and Pound's spiritual beliefs in chapter 4.

Whether or not you buy this book by Pound, I encourage you to buy Robert Canright's book and Feng Lan's book.