Gained in Translation:
Ezra Pound, Hu Shi, and Literary Revolution
Jenine HEATON*

I. Introduction
Hu Shi 胡適（1891-1962）, Chinese philosopher, essayist, and diplomat,
is well-known for his advocacy of literary reform for modern China. His
article, “A Preliminary Discussion of Literary Reform,” which appeared in Xin
Qingnian 新青年（The New Youth）magazine in January, 1917, proposed theradical idea of writing in vernacular Chinese rather than classical. Until Hu’s
article was published, no reformers or revolutionaries had conceived ofwriting in anything other than classical Chinese. Hu’s literary revolution
began with a poetic revolution, but quickly extended to literature in general,and then to expression of new ideas in all fields. Hu’s program offered apragmatic means of improving communication, fostering social criticism, andreevaluating the importance of popular Chinese novels from past centuries.
Hu Shi’s literary renaissance has been examined in great detail by manyscholars; this paper traces the synergistic effect of ideas, people, and literary
movements that informed Hu Shi’s successful literary and language revolutions.
Hu Shi received a Boxer Indemnity grant to study agriculture at Cornell
University in the United States in 1910. Two years later he changed his major
to philosophy and literature, and after graduation, continued his education at
Columbia University under John Dewey（1859-1952）. Hu remained in the
United States until 1917. Hu’s sojourn in America coincided with a literary
revolution in English-language poetry called the Imagist movement that
occurred in England and the United States between 1908 and 1917. Hu’s
diaries indicate that he was fully aware of this movement, and was inspiredby it.
Begun by Thomas E. Hulme（1883-1917）, the Imagist movement was
catalyzed by Ezra Pound（1885-1972）, and continued later under the leader* English Lecturer at Kansai University

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ship of Amy Lowell（1874-1925）. Imagism was begun as a protest against therigidity of traditional English poetry, which followed proscribed rules ofrhythm and rhyme schemes. Romantic and Victorian poetry, which had heldsway until the early 1900s, had become didactic, prolix, and stilted. Poets felt
they needed new potentialities in language to express the ideas of a rapidly
modernizing society, and were searching for a precise rhetoric that espousedclassical values more befitting the modern era, as well as new poetic forms
that allowed more freedom of expression in changing times.
It was at this juncture that two men with imperfect mastery of foreign
languages, Yone Noguchi （1875-1947） and Ernest Fenollosa （1853-1908）,
inspired Ezra Pound—considered by many to be the greatest American poetof the twentieth century—to effect a literary revolution in English-language
poetry and rhetoric that in turn inspired Hu Shi’s literary revolution. I will
examine first the influence of Yone Noguchi and Ernest Fenollosa on the
poetic revolution that swept England and America in the early 1900s before
turning to the Imagists and their impact on Hu Shi.

II. Yone Noguchi and the Introduction of Japanese Poetry to English
Literary Circles
Yone Noguchi unwittingly became a pivotal agent in introducing literary
Japonisme to the West. Noguchi, the fourth son of a family of merchants andBuddhist priests, attended Keio Gijuku, where he was encouraged by Yukichi
Fukuzawa（1834-1901）to travel to the United States. After arriving in San
Francisco in 1893 he worked at odd jobs while reading voraciously to
improve his English. Hearing about the California poet Joaquin Miller（18371913）, Noguchi visited Miller and asked if he could live at the poet’s residence as an unpaid laborer in exchange for room and board. Miller agreed.
Miller was a taciturn man who believed above all in the beauties of natureand silence, but as a colorful figure who had lived with Native Americans andwelcomed foreigners to his home, he was also genuinely supportive of
Noguchi.1 Noguchi lived in the cottage at Miller’s “Heights” residence forfour years, where he made the unlikely decision to become a poet using
English as his written medium. Miller was helpful in this regard; he was anhonorary member of the San Francisco Bohemian Club, where cultured journalists and musicians met. While living with Miller, Noguchi was able topublish the first of his poems in a small, iconoclastic San Francisco magazine
called the Lark, published by Gelett Burgess （1866-1951）, a prominent
member of the San Francisco Bay Area literary renaissance. Noguchi’s free
1 Yone Noguchi, The Story of Yone Noguchi Told by Himself（London: Chatto& Windus, 1914）, p. 67; p. 69.

Gained in Translation: Ezra Pound, Hu Shi, and Literary Revolution37

verse poetry, imbued with Japanese sensibilities and images from the natureof California and Japan, caused a sensation among the Bohemians.2 Noguchi
was subsequently able to publish more books of poetry in English, throughwhich he gained a wide number of admirers in American literary circles as “adisciple of things weird and mystic.”3 Critics described Noguchi’s poems as“unintelligible as a Japanese dream, yet [with] a poetic quality which neednot be understood to be enjoyed….With his intuitive grasp of Nature’s
greatest meanings, Yone Noguchi is an avowed admirer of Walt Whitman, but
his Oriental spirit protests against being called a follower of that poet.”4
In 1902 Noguchi traveled to England, where he wrote a slender book ofverse and sent it to one of Miller’s friends, the English writer and critic,
William M. Rossetti（1829-1919）, for appraisal. Rossetti liked the poems,
especially descriptions in the poem, “The Myoto,” such as the unusual visual
image, “velvet-footed moonbeams.” Foreshadowing the future Imagist poetic
movement, Rossetti described such novel expressions as “a daring transfer of
one impression of sense into a different but analogous impression.”5 Rossetti
helped Noguchi to publish the poems in a pamphlet of verse entitled From
the Eastern Sea in 1903. “Lines from the Japanese,” and “I Have Cast theWorld,” are the most haiku-like poems in Noguchi’s 1903 publication, thelatter of which continues to be published in anthologies of Imagist poetry.6
I HAVE cast the world
And think me as nothing,
Yet I feel cold on snow-falling day,And happy on flower-day.
Such prominent literary figures as Thomas Hardy, George Meredith, and
H. A. Giles were astonished by Noguchi’s merging of Eastern themes, novel
metaphors, and poetical English.7 Iza Duffus Hardy（1850-1922）wrote to
Noguchi that…“you open so strange and new a world of thought and expres2 Ikuko Atsumi, Yone Noguchi: Collected English Letters（Tokyo: The Yone
Noguchi Society, 1975）, p. 14.
3 Carolyn Wells, “The Latest Thing in Poets,” Critic 29（Nov. 14, 1896）, p. 302.
4 Ibid.
5 Ikuko Atsumi, Yone Noguchi: Collected English Letters, p.85. The first two
stanzas of “The Myoto” are: “The woman whispered in the voice that roses
have lost: “My love!” The man said, “Yes, dear!” In the voice that seas cannot
utter. The woman whispered in the voice of velvet-footed moonbeams: “Mylove!” The man said, “Yes, dear!” For the entire poem, see: Noguchi Yone,
From the Eastern Sea（London: Yone Noguchi, 1903）.
6 Bob Blaisdell, ed., Imagist Poetry: An Anthology （New York: Dover
Publications, 1999）, p. 97.
7 Noguchi Yone, From the Eastern Sea, pp. 106-107.

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Journal of Cultural Interaction in East Asia Vol.3 2012sion to us of the West.”8 Rossetti praised the volume for its “feeling for the
beauties of Nature, a conversion of these into the aliment of the loving andcontemplative soul, and what Europeans recognize as idealism.”9 Noguchi’s
free verse was a novelty among English poetry circles of the time. Arthur
Diosy（1856 - 1923）, founder of the Japan Society of the United Kingdom, forexample, appraised Noguchi’s first volume of poetry positively, but added that“…the metre of your blank verse is unfamiliar to the British eye.…”10 The
Scottish critic, William Archer（1856 - 1924）, expressed similar reservations:“Your knowledge of English is quite remarkable, but it is not perfect, andyour metres are not known in English verse.”11 Such remarks imply that
Noguchi unwittingly introduced free verse to English-language poetry.
By the time Noguchi wrote “A Proposal to American Poets” in 1904, in
which he advocated Japanese hokku as a model for English-language poetry,the literary world was listening. The poet Masaoka Shiki in 1892 had
replaced the term hokku with haiku, a fact of which Noguchi was apparently
unaware. In the article, Noguchi challenged American poets, declaring: “Pray,
you try Japanese Hokku, my American poets! You say far too much, I shouldsay.”12 Along with his translations of two hokku by Basho, Noguchi introduced four of his own attempts at hokku in English, including:
Fallen leaves! Nay, spirits?
Shall I go downward with theeLong a stream of Fate?
Later scholars have noted that Noguchi’s explanations of haiku were
flawed and that his own haiku did not always contain the prerequisite threephrases of 5, 7, and 5 moras, kigo（seasonal references）, and kireji（cutting
words）.13 It is quite possible, however, that if Noguchi had accurately
detailed the rules for writing haiku, Western poets would not have been as
receptive to it. It was Noguchi’s proscriptions for brevity and his unrecognizable meter describing nature and love that resonated with the new generationof English poets. The British poet and critic, Thomas E. Hulme, for example,
in his 1908 “Lecture on Modern Poetry” declared that traditional poetry was
8 Ikuko Atsumi, Yone Noguchi: Collected English Letters, p.86.
9 Yone Noguchi, The Pilgrimage; Japanese Hokkus; The Ganges Calls Me（Tokyo: Edition Synapse）, 2007, Afterword.
10 Ikuko Atsumi, Yone Noguchi: Collected English Letters, p. 88.
11 Ibid., p. 92.
12 Yone Noguchi, “A Proposal to American Poets,” Reader 3:3（February 1904）,
p. 248.
13 Edward Marx, “A Slightly-Open Door: Yone Noguchi and the Invention ofEnglish Haiku,” Genre XXXIX, University of Oklahoma, Fall, 2006, pp.
109 - 111.

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39

in the latter stages of decay: “The carcass is dead, and all the flies are upon
it. Imitative poetry springs up like weeds, and women whimper and whine ofyou and I alas, and roses, roses all the way.”14 He stated that modern poets“no longer strive to attain the absolutely perfect in poetry….the tendency will
be rather towards the production of a general effect….What has foundexpression in painting as Impressionism will soon find expression in poetry as
free verse…The direct language is poetry, it is direct because it deals inimages….This new verse resembles sculpture rather than music; it appeals tothe eye rather than to the ear.”15
In January 1909 the Poets’ Club in Soho, London, published For Christmas
MDCCCCVIII, a poetry anthology that contained two of Hulme’s poems:“Autumn” and “A City Sunset.” These two poems are considered the firstexamples of “Imagist” poetry. “Autumn” echoes Noguchi’s poem, “Autumn
Song,” also published in 1909, in Noguchi’s two-volume The Pilgrimage, acollection of English verse about Japan, nature, Buddhism, and other themespresented mainly in free verse. Here is Noguchi’s poem, followed by Hulme’son the same theme:“Autumn Song” by Noguchi Yone
The gold vision of a bird-wing sways on the silver foam ofsong,
The oldest song rises again on the Autumn heart of
dream.
The ghost castle of glory is built by the sad magic ofTime,
With the last laughter of sorrow, and with the red tempestof leaves.
My little soul born out of the dews of singing dawn,
Bids farewell to the large seas of Life and speech.
“Autumn” by T.E. Hulme
A touch of cold in the Autumn night—
I walked abroad,And saw the ruddy moon lean over a hedge
Like a red-faced farmer.
I did not stop to speak, but nodded,
And round about were the wistful stars
With white faces like town children.
“A City Sunset” is replete with images of the color red, such as “sudden
14 Thomas Ernest Hulme, Lecture on Modern Poetry（Poets’ Club, 1908）.
15 Ibid.

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Journal of Cultural Interaction in East Asia Vol.3 2012flaring sky,” “frolic of crimson,” and “heaven’s jocund maid flaunting a
trailed red robe.” As is apparent, Hulme’s images are haiku-like, and thepoem lacks meter and rhyme. Noguchi’s nonstandard version of haiku thus
helped open an avenue for free verse with easily visualized images.
In April 1909, Ezra Pound attended Hulme’s literary association, where
hokku, tanka, and Japanese art were being enthusiastically discussed. Thatsame year, Noguchi’s The Pilgrimage was heralded as an “interchange…of theimages which the eye sees or the ear hears with the impression which thesestamp upon the mind and the emotions. Noguchi has a singular faculty…for
merging sounds into sights, or vice-versa, the perceptions of sense into theabstractions and intuitions of the spirit: he brings to our consciousness matterand thought in a perpetual flux, phenomena adumbrating ideas, a homogeneous kosmos.”16 The second volume contains the same four hokku that
Noguchi published in “A Proposal to American Poets,” as well as two moreof his own hokku. Noguchi describes hokku as seventeen-syllable poems that“might be compared with a tiny star, I dare say, carrying the whole sky at its
back.”17 In 1911 Noguchi sent a copy of The Pilgrimage to Ezra Pound（1885 - 1972）.
Noguchi became the primary medium for introducing Japanese poetics
and Noh drama to literary figures in England, including to Pound. When
Pound thanked Noguchi in a letter in September, 1911 for The Pilgrimage,Pound admitted, “Of your country I know almost nothing—surely if the east
& the west are ever to understand each other that understanding must comeslowly & come first through the arts.”18
It did not take long for Pound to absorb the concepts of free verse, brevity,and visual images that Noguchi expounded. Indeed, Pound has been said tohave been “among the most important of Japanese influences in Englishlanguage verse of the first half of the twentieth century.”19 In 1912, when the
Complete Poetical Works of T.E. Hulme was published with commentary by
Ezra Pound, the Imagist poetry contained therein was described in the afterword as being of “great rhythmical beauty in curious verse-forms.”20 The
16 Yone Noguchi, The Pilgrimage, Afterword.
17 Ibid., p.137. Many Western poets used Noguchi’s term, hokku, when they firstbegan writing haiku. Besides Lowell and Pound, e.e. cummings also wrote
hokku. See: “Three Hokku” in E.E. Cummings: Complete Poems 1904 - 1962,
George James Firmage, ed.（New York: Liveright Publishing, 1994）.
18 Ikuko Atsumi, Yone Noguchi: Collected English Letters, p.211.
19 Japonisme, Orientalism, Modernism: A Bibliography of Japan in EnglishLanguage Verse of the Early 20th Century, http://themargins.net/bib/B/BK/006
bkintro.htmlrl
20 Ezra Pound, Ripostes of Ezra Pound: Whereto are Appended the Complete

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41

description of Hulme’s poetry mirrors that of Noguchi’s. Modern poets had
now found a new voice: sensual images in free verse. Free verse andImagism arrived on the literary scene simultaneously.21 Free verse not onlyused non-metrical prosody, but was also self-consciously against traditional
meter. In this sense, Pound’s Imagism, which unleashed an entirely new way
to approach language, was “one manifestation of an almost mystical theory ofperception which is one of the remarkable phenomena of our time.22
In October of that same year, Harriet Monroe（1860 - 1936）founded the
Poetry magazine in what was then America’s agricultural heartland, Chicago.
Monroe hoped her magazine would appeal to the “most complete expressionof truth and beauty.”23 Monroe said of the new poets that they “swept away
Victorian excesses and weaknesses—all the overemphasis on trite sentimentwith its repetitions and clichés, and archaic formalities of diction and technique.” Although east coast newspapers derided the idea of a poetry magazine
being published in Chicago（the “Porkopolis”）as incongruous with the city’s
image, the magazine became interchangeable with the history of modern
poetry in America.24 The earliest issues contained poems by Ezra Pound, H.D.
（1886 - 1961）, and Wallace Stevens （1879 - 1955）, the latter who were
unknown at the time. Other regular contributors included Carl Sandburg（1878 - 1967）, Sara Teasdale （1884 - 1933）, Yone Noguchi, William Butler
Yeats（1865 - 1939）, and William Carlos Williams（1883 - 1963）.25 Pound also
submitted the first poem in English by Rabindranath Tagore to Poetry magazine, which in December 1912 carried six of what later became his Nobel
prize-winning Gitanjali poems.
Poetical Works of T. E. Hulme（Edinburgh: NF. II. L. and Co., Ltd., 1912）, p. 61.
21 Charles O. Hartman, Free Verse: An Essay on Prosody（Illinois: Northwestern
University Press, 1996）, p. 131.
22 Ibid., pp. 133 - 136.
23 Dana Goodyear, “The Moneyed Muse,” The New Yorker（February 19, 2007）.
24 Ibid.
25 Poetry Foundation, http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/archive;
Noguchi continued to have a respected place among the Imagist poets ofPoetry magazine as is evidenced by his correspondence with Harriet Monroe
and Imagist poet John Gold Fletcher. Monroe wrote in a letter dated
December 13, 1923 to Noguchi that “Your portrait…a fine photograph of yourhead in profile…adorns our ‘poets gallery’ at the Poetry office, among about
thirty of our leading poets.” Fletcher wrote on January 25, 1921 to Noguchithat “I am glad you had the inspiration to write to me. For I owe you a debt.
The only book of yours I ever saw（previous to [Seen and Unseen]）was yourPilgrimage, and the first poem in that book suggested to me my “Blue
Symphony.…” See: Ikuko Atsumi, Yone Noguchi: Collected English Letters,
p. 223; p. 219, respectively.

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Pound, living in London, was the foreign editor and a contributor to themagazine from its inception. In the March 1913 issue of Poetry magazine,
Pound penned two articles on Imagism, one under the name of fellow poet
F.S. Flint （1885 - 1960） entitled “Imagisme,” and another under his own
name: “A Few Don’ts by an Imagiste.” Flint’s article was actually written by
Pound, H.D., and Richard Aldington（1892 - 1962）, and contained three tenetsof Imagism:
1. Direct treatment of the “thing,” whether subjective or objective.
2. To use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation.
3. As regarding rhythm: to compose in the sequence of the musicalphrase, not in sequence of a metronome.26
The third point was a call for free verse, which was expected to follow
natural rhythms.
The proscriptions in Pound’s “A Few Don’ts by an Imagiste” in the same
issue contained ten rules on how not to write poetry. These were:
1. Use no superfluous word, no adjective, which does not reveal something.
2. Don’t use such an expression as “dim lands of peace.” It dulls the image.
It mixes an abstraction with the concrete. It comes from the writer’s notrealizing that the natural object is always the adequate symbol.
3. Go in fear of abstractions.
4. What the expert is tired of today the public will be tired of tomorrow.
5. Don’t imagine that the art of poetry is any simpler than the art of music.
6. Be influenced by as many great artists as you can, but have the decency
either to acknowledge the debt outright, or to try to conceal it.
7. Don’t allow “influence” to mean merely that you mop up the particulardecorative vocabulary of one or two poets whom you happen to admire.
8. Use either no ornament or good ornament.
9. If you are using a symmetrical form, don’t put in what you want to say
and then fill up the remaining vacuums with slush.
10. Don’t mess up the perception of one sense by trying to define it interms of another. This is usually only the result of being too lazy tofind the exact word.27
In April, Pound published his haiku-like poem, “In a Station of the Metro”
in Poetry magazine. The poem is considered to be the first “Imagist” poem
that clearly reflects a haiku influence. Pound himself called his effort a“hokku-like sentence.”28 Pound explained that he chose this form with whichto write his poem because “…it struck me that in Japan where a work of art
26 F. S. Flint, “Imagisme,” Poetry,（March 1913）.
27 Ezra Pound, “A Few Don’ts by an Imagiste,” Poetry（March 1913）.
28 Ezra Pound, “Vorticism,” Fortnightly Review（September, 1914）, pp. 465 - 467.

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43

is not estimated by its acreage and where sixteen syllables [sic] are counted
enough for a poem if you arrange and punctuate them properly, one mightmake a very little poem….”29 Sources for Pound’s information on Japanese
hokku were limited to explanations in English, of which Noguchi was themost obvious advocate at the time.
Noguchi is also thought to have arranged a meeting between Pound andMary McNeill Scott Fenollosa（1865 - 1954）in September 1913; two months
later, Pound was in possession of Ernest Fenollosa’s papers.30 Pound also met
Noguchi when Pound was acting as secretary for William Butler Yeats in
Sussex in 1914, and is said to have sent Noguchi a copy of the Metro
poem.31 Pound wrote to his mother of his meeting with Noguchi: “Yone
Noguchi dined with me on Tuesday; interesting littérateur of the second
order….Still you needn’t repeat this, as the acquaintance may grow andthere’s no telling when one will want to go to Japan.”32 Though Pound wasnever to realize his ambition of traveling to Japan, Noguchi’s introduction of
Mary Fenollosa to Pound was fortuitous for all poets interested in modernizing the English language; Pound based his highly influential notions of“super-position,” Imagism, Vorticism, and the Ideogrammic Method on
Fenollosa’s explication of Chinese ideographs as combinations of visual
images and actions.

III. Ernest Fenollosa, Ezra Pound, and the Ideogrammic Method
Ernest Fenollosa first traveled to Japan in 1878 to teach political economy
and philosophy at the Imperial University of Tokyo after studying art at the
Boston Museum of Fine Arts. During his eight-year stay in Japan, Fenollosa
helped revive Nihonga, helped found the Tokyo Fine Arts Academy and theImperial Museum, conducted the first inventory of Japan’s national treasures,and converted to Buddhism. He also studied Chinese poetry（kanshi）under
the renowned Japanese Sinologist, Kainan Mori（1863 - 1911）. Fenollosa died
before he could publish his essay on Chinese characters as a medium for
poetry, but Pound revised and completed the work. Fenollosa’s The Chinese
Character Written as a Medium for Chinese Poetry（hereafter referred to as
Chinese Poetry） focused on the pictorial nature of Chinese ideograms,
emphasizing the notions that each character is alive through its verbal idea of
29 Ezra Pound, “How I Began,” T. P.’s Weekly, June 6, 1913, p. 707.
30 Japonisme, Orientalism, Modernism: A Bibliography of Japan in EnglishLanguage Verse of the Early 20th Century http://themargins.net/bib/D/d15.htmlrl
31 Ikuko Atsumi, Yone Noguchi: Collected English Letters, p. 15.
32 Japonisme, Orientalism, Modernism: A Bibliography of Japan in EnglishLanguage Verse of the Early 20th Century http://themargins.net/bib/B/BK/00
bkintro.thmlr

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action; that the wealth of transitive verbs in Chinese poetry originates fromthe power of combining several pictorial elements in a single character; andthat juxtaposition of those characters creates a visual as well as a semantic
poetic impact. The second half of Fenollosa’s book is comprised of Pound’stranslation notes of Chinese poetry based on Fenollosa’s glosses. Fenollosa’s
exposition on the inherent energy contained in Chinese characters and theircapacity for expressing abstract notions through concrete images inspired
Pound to develop the Ideogrammic Method of poetic representation. It should
be noted that Fenollosa’s work, as well as Pound’s interpretation of it, hascome under attack from many scholars as being flawed.33 Chinese poetry,especially of the Tang period—the main focus of Fenollosa’s work—required
elaborate rules for composition and sound schemes, of which Fenollosa wasapparently unaware. Yet it was this ignorance that helped him appreciate thefundamentals of Chinese poetry in ways his predecessors had not. In fact,
Fenollosa’s interpretation of Chinese poetry read as Japanese kanshi was revolutionary. In his introduction to Chinese Poetry, Fenollosa states:
An unfortunate belief has spread both in England and in America
that Chinese and Japanese poetry are hardly more than anamusement, trivial, childish, and not to be reckoned in theworld’s serious literary performance. I have heard well-known
sinologues state that, save for the purpose of professional linguistic
scholarship, these branches of poetry are fields too barren to repay
the toil necessary for their cultivation.34
Given the biases of the time, Fenollosa dedicated much of his discussion
to justification for the study of Chinese poetry, citing in particular its “semipictorial appeals to the eye.” Intrigued by the poetry’s visual impact,
Fenollosa attempted to explain how lines of Chinese poetry could be distinguished from prose, as well as the rationale for the order in which characters
appear. He stated that thought as represented by Chinese characters was
successive, the “transferences of force from agent to object, which constitutenatural phenomena, occupy time,” and that Chinese poetry speaks with thevividness of painting and with the mobility of sounds.35 Fenollosa asserted
that English and Chinese were similar in structure, Chinese simply lacking thearticles that are necessary for English to be grammatically correct. To illustrate his point, Fenollosa proposed the sentence, “Farmer pounds rice,” which
33 Wai-lim Yip, Ezra Pound’s Cathay （Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton
University Press, 1969）, pp. 4 - 6.
34 Ernest Fenollosa, The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry,
Foreword and Notes by Ezra Pound（London: Stanley Nott, 1936）, p. 9.
35 Ibid., pp. 10 - 13.

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45

follows the natural order of cause and effect and is understandable as English
even without articles. Fenollosa surmised that this similarity between English
and Chinese “renders translation from one [language] to the other exceptionally easy,” a misapprehension that perhaps encouraged Pound to take up thetask of translating the Chinese poems in Fenollosa’s book in spite of having
no knowledge of Asian languages at all.36
Fenollosa believed that Chinese ideographs and word order conciselytransmit visual images:
Abstract meaning gives little vividness, and fullness of imagination
gives all. Chinese poetry demands that we abandon our narrowgrammatical categories, that we follow the original text with awealth of concrete verbs….So far we have exhibited the Chinesecharacters and the Chinese sentence chiefly as vivid shorthand picturesof actions and processes in nature. These embody true poetry….
….We need in poetry thousands of active words, each doing its
utmost to show forth the motive and vital forces….Poetic thoughtworks by suggestion, crowding maximum meaning into the single
phrase pregnant, charged, and luminous from within.” ….
Refined harmony lies in the delicate balance of overtones.37
Fenollosa’s work on Chinese characters conflated well with Pound’sinterest in haiku-like forms and vivid images. As was the case with Noguchi’s
introduction of hokku through the foreign medium of English, Fenollosa’s
explanation of Chinese poetry through the medium of Japanese instruction
gave rise to the phenomenon of inaccurate representation. Yet it was thislinguistic lacuna that enabled Pound to succeed in his mission to create freer
rules for composition of English poetry. To Pound, Fenollosa’s ideas were
inspiring; he came to believe that words could be charged with meaning inthree ways, as he explained in his ABC of Reading: “phanopoeia, melopoeia,
logopoeia…You use a word to throw a visual image on to the reader’s imagination, or you charge it by sound, or you use groups of words to do this.”38
Pound’s theory reflects the ideas of Fenollosa, of whom Pound later said
was perhaps too far ahead of his time to be easily comprehended.
He did not proclaim his method as a method. He was trying
to explain the Chinese ideograph as a means of transmission
and registration of thought.39
A proponent of conciseness, Pound was intrigued by notions of both short
36
37
38
39

Ibid., p. 20.
Ibid., p. 25; p. 32; p. 36.
Ezra Pound, ABC of Reading（London: Faber and Faber, 1951）, p. 37.
Ibid., p. 19.

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poetic forms and ideograms that could represent multiple meanings throughvisual and semantic means. He later elaborated on Fenollosa’s treatment ofChinese characters:
By contrast to the method of abstraction, or of defining
things in more and still more general terms, Fenollosa
emphasizes the method of science, “which is the methodof poetry,” as distinct from that of “philosophic discussion,”and is the way the Chinese go about it in their ideographs
or abbreviated picture writing.40
Pound explained his Ideogrammic Method for writing English poetry, which
was based on Fenollosa’s essay, in terms of Chinese characters:…when the Chinaman wanted to make a picture of something
more complicated, or of a general idea, how did he go about it?
He is to define red. How can he do it in a picture that isn’t
painted in red paint?
He puts（or his ancestor put）together the abbreviated pictures of
ROSE
CHERRY
IRON RUSTFLAMINGO…The Chinese “word” or ideogram for red is based on something
everyone KNOWS…..Fenollosa was telling how and why alanguage written in this way simply HAD TO STAY POETIC…41
Pound’s “In a Station of the Metro” discussed above is considered one of
the leading poems of the Imagist movement, and implements Fenollosa’s
advice for poetry. The poem was followed by Pound’s poetry anthology
entitled Des Imagistes, first published in the Glebe in 1914. In the preface of
the anthology, Pound reiterated the three tenets of Imagism that he had
published under F.S. Flint’s name. The anthology contains Imagist poems by
Richard Aldington, H.D., F.S. Flint, Amy Lowell, William Carlos Williams,
James Joyce（1882 - 1941）, Ezra Pound, and others. The themes of the poems
range from Greek to Asian. Here is an Asian-themed poem by Pound fromDes Imagistes:“Ts’ai Chi’h”
The petals fall in the fountain,
the orange colored rose-leaves,
Their ochre clings to the stone.42
Pound’s poems represent a syncretism of Chinese motifs and Japanese
haiku-like forms, a blending of Chinoiserie and Japonisme that create a new
40 Ibid., p. 20.
41 Ibid., p. 22.
42 Ezra Pound, Des Imagistes（New York: Charles and Albert Boni, 1914）.

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paradigm for poetry written in English.
After publication of Des Imagistes, Pound had a disagreement with Amy
Lowell, whose poetry, he felt, did not meet the standards of the Imagist
movement. In September 1914 he wrote an article entitled “Vorticism” in the
Fortnightly Review, in which he stated that the “image is the poet’s pigment（The image has been defined as ‘that which presents an intellectual andemotional complex in an instant of time.’）.”43 In the article, Pound explains
his conflation of Fenollosa’s study on Chinese characters and Japanese hokku
that culminated in his Metro poem:
A Chinaman said long ago that if a man can’t say what he has to say
in twelve lines he had better keep quiet. The Japanese have evolved
the still shorter form of the hokku.
“The fallen blossom flies back to its branch: A butterfly.”…
The “one image poem” is a form of super-position, that is to say,
it is one idea set on top of another….I wrote a thirty-line
poem, and destroyed it because it was what we call awork “of second intensity.” Six months later I made apoem half that length; a year later I made the following
hokku-like sentence:“The apparition of these faces in the crowd:
Petals, on a wet, black bough.”44
In addition to his fascination with Japanese poetic forms, Pound became
intrigued with Chinese language and poetry through his work on Fenollosa’s
Chinese Poetry. In 1915 Pound produced his anthology, Cathay, an eclecticcollection of his “translations” of Chinese poems based on Fenollosa’s
glosses and his own inventions. The introduction to Cathay states that thepoems are “for the most part from the Chinese of Rihaku [Li Bai], from thenotes of the late Ernest Fenollosa, and the decipherings of the professors Mori
[Kainan] and Ariga [Nagao].”45 The collection has been analyzed thoroughly
by many scholars, including Wai-lim Yip, who compares several extant
English translations with Pound’s, and finds that in many cases Pound better
captures the essence of the poems through use of “super-position,” a juxtaposition of images and meaning based on his ideogrammic method.46 In contrast
to Pound, other translators either forced the Chinese verse into English rhyme
and meter schemes, or added so many extra-textual images that the original
meaning was obscured.
43
44
45
46

Ezra Pound, “Vorticism,” Fortnightly Review（September, 1914）, p. 462.
Ibid., pp. 465 - 467.
Ezra Pound, Cathay（London: Elkin Mathews, 1915, foreword.
Ibid., p. 22.; Wai-lim Yip, Ezra Pound’s Cathay, p. 83.

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Journal of Cultural Interaction in East Asia Vol.3 2012

Even as Pound’s modernist literary movement, based largely on
Orientalism, became profoundly influential in the English speaking world,
Amy Lowell, with her sizable fortune and literary connections, made an
immeasurable impact of her own. Lowell included poets in her Imagist publications that only loosely met Pound’s “A Few Don’ts.” In April 1915 Lowellpublished an anthology of verse entitled Some Imagist Poets, in which she
explains that a difference of opinion having occurred among the contributors
to Des Imagistes, Lowell decided to publish an anthology independent ofPound and his coterie. In the preface Lowell stated her Imagist Credo as
follows:
The poets in this volume do not represent a clique. Several ofthem are personally unknown to the others, but they are unitedby certain common principles, arrived at independently. These
principles are not new; they have fallen into desuetude. They
are the essentials of all great poetry, indeed of all great literature,and they are simply these: 1. To use the language of common speech, but to employ always the exact
word, not the nearly exact, nor the merely decorative word.
2. To create new rhythms—as the expression of new moods—and not tocopy old rhythms, which merely echo old moods. We do not insist upon
“free verse” as the only method of writing poetry. We fight for it as fora principle of liberty. We believe that the individuality of a poet may
often be better expressed in free verse than in conventional forms. In
poetry, a new cadence means a new idea.
3. To allow absolute freedom in the choice of subject….
4. To present an image….
5. To produce poetry that is hard and clear, never blurred nor indefinite.
6. Finally, most of us believe that concentration is the very essence of
poetry.47
Lowell’s six points parallel Pound’s ten points, and again constitute apractical means for writing new poetry better representing the modern era.
Contributors to the volume were Richard Aldington, H.D., John Gould
Fletcher（1886 - 1950）, F.S. Flint, D.H. Lawrence, and Amy Lowell herself.
The Imagists now had many forums in which to publish their poetry, andto influence the rise of many different poetry groups, bringing to fruition themodernist era in American and British poetry. University students, including
those from China, followed the exciting developments in poetry and language
as intently as they did issues such as women’s rights, world politics, and
47 Amy Lowell, Some Imagist Poets, An Anthology （Boston and New York:
Houghton Mifflin Company, April 1915）.

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49

philosophy. Hu Shi was one of these students.

IV. Imagism, Hu Shi, and the Program for Chinese Literary ReformAt Cornell University Hu Shi studied science, agriculture, history, German,
Latin, and English. He excelled in school, was president of the university’s
Cosmopolitan Club, belonged to the Chinese Students’ Christian Association,
won speech contests, and became well-versed in a remarkable number ofdisciplines East and West.48 Under the tutelage of such luminaries as Cyrus
Northrup（1834 - 1922）and William Strunk（1869 - 1946）Hu also read manyof the classics of English literature, including the works of Shakespeare,
Milton, Wordsworth, Chaucer, and Emerson. In July 1914 Hu Shi and his
Chinese friends, such as Mei Guangdi 梅光迪, formed a reading group to
discuss weekly the Western novels and plays that they read, starting withNathaniel Hawthorn and Gerhart Hauptmann（1862 - 1946）.49
Hu kept informed of the tumultuous changes then occurring in China, andbecame interested in such issues as women’s suffrage, political systems, world
events, and language reform. Though Hu often wrote poems in Chinese,50 it
wasn’t until he had to prepare a sonnet for the tenth anniversary of theCornell Cosmopolitan Club in December 1914 that he began to become
serious about writing poetry in English. His sonnet on that occasion reflected
the angst he felt about the lack of world peace. His original version wasrevised twice by Professor Martin W. Sampson, who taught creative writingat Cornell. Hu dedicated two pages of his diary to the rules of composition
for sonnets, which he called “English lüshi（英文之律詩）.51 He wrote a second
sonnet in English, entitled “To Mars,” an anti-war poem, which he showed toProfessor Liberty Hyde Bailey. Bailey advised Hu that the rules for sonnet
composition were too restrictive to express Hu’s ideas, and that he should try
other poetic forms.52 Hu subsequently joined the Tome and Tablet, which met
once a week, and the Manuscript Club, two of the many literary societies atCornell, to become more familiar with English poetics.
In 1914 Hu enrolled in Columbia University after graduating from Cornell.
At Columbia Hu earned a PhD in philosophy under the pragmatic philosopher, John Dewey（1859 - 1952）. Hu Shi’s world was shaken in early 1915
48 Hu Shi, Hu Shi liuxue riji（1）, Hu Shi zuopinji 34（Taipei: Yuanliu Publishers）
胡適留學日記（一）, 胡適作品集34 （臺北：遠流出版, 1986）, pp. 3 - 79; pp. 204 208.
49 Hu Shi, Hu Shi liuxue riji（1）, Hu Shi zuopinji 35（Taipei: Yuanliu Publishers）
胡適留學日記（一）, 胡適作品集35 （臺北：遠流出版, 1986）, pp. 52 - 55.
50 Ibid., p. 168.
51 Ibid., pp. 237 - 242.
52 Ibid., p. 250.

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when articles began appearing in English newspapers condoning Japan’s military and political encroachment in China. Hu reacted by writing letters to the
New Republic, Post-Standard, the Outlook, and the Ithaca Journal. A confirmed
pacifist, Hu did not believe in violence or war. Hu was searching for a way tocontribute to his country’s development when Shakespearean Professor
Joseph Q. Adams Jr. questioned him in February 1915 on China’s lack ofhigher education, and warned that if China wanted to create a new civilization, new literature, or new knowledge, educational reform would be imperative. Hu agonized over how best to achieve these goals. He realized acutelythat China needed not only a navy and an army, but universities, public
libraries, and museums.53 He came to the conclusion that education, which
would require language and literary reform, would be the key to modernizing
China. In March of that year, Hu and his compatriots studying abroad formeda special group that decided to mobilize to “save the country.”
Hu became interested in writing poems in the vernacular, and wrote his
first English poem in free verse in July 1915, before attempting to write
Chinese vernacular free verse. The poem, entitled “Crossing the Harbor,”
resembled Carl Sandburg’s “The Harbor,” which appeared in Poetry magazine
in March 1914.54 Sandburg’s poem, written in free verse, begins with imagesof ugliness and poverty, which are juxtaposed with the sun over a “blue burstof lake” and free-flying gulls. Hu’s poem begins with rain and wintry wind ona lake and ends with “a sphere of radiancy,” the Statue of Liberty.
Interestingly, the same March 1914 issue of Poetry magazine also contains apoem by Sara Teasdale entitled “Over the Roofs,” which Hu translated in
1919 as Guan bu zhule!（關不住了！）. Hu explained in the preface to thesecond edition of his collection of poetry, Chang shiji（Book of Experiments）,
53 Hu Shi, Hu Shi liuxue riji（1）, Hu Shi zuopinji 36（Taipei: Yuanliu Publishers）
胡適留學日記（一）, 胡適作品集36 （臺北：遠流出版, 1986）, p.5.
54 Ibid., pp. 120 - 123. Sandburg’s “Harbor” was one of his Chicago Poems:“Passing through huddled and ugly walls,/ By doorways where women
haggard/Looked from their hunger-deep eyes,/ Haunted with shadows ofhunger-hands,/ Out from the huddled and ugly walls,/ I came sudden, at thecity’s edge,/ On a blue burst of lake,/ Long lake waves breaking under thesun/On a spray-flung curve of shore;/ And a fluttering storm of gulls,/ Massesof great gray wings/ And flying white bellies/ Veering and wheeling free in the
open.” Hu Shi’s “”Crossing the Harbor” was written on a February night in
New York: “As on the deck half-sheltered from the rain/ We listen to thewintry wind’s wild roars,/ And hear the slow waves beat against themetropolic shores;/ And as we search the stars of Earth/Which shine so staringly/ Against the vast, dark firmament,--/ There--/ Pedestalled upon a sphereof radiancy, One Light stands forth pre-eminent./ And my-comrade whispers
to me, “There is ‘Liberty’!”Gained in Translation: Ezra Pound, Hu Shi, and Literary Revolution

51

the first book of its kind to be published in China, that after ten years of
struggling with old poetry forms he had spent “the last three years playing
with a variety of syllabic experiments, gradually achieving something of anaturalness.”55 He considered his translation of Teasdale’s poem to be a “newera of success” in his “attempt at new poetry.”56 He added that “this type of
poetic syllabification is not the old style of 5, 7 words, and is not the syllabification of Chinese ci（詞）or qu（曲）poetry, but is vernacular poetry（白話詩）.57 The March issue of Poetry magazine that contained “Harbor” andTeasdale’s poem also contained an article by Amy Lowell on “Vers Libre andMetrical Prose.” The fact that Hu wrote his poem in free verse similar to thatof Sandburg and chose Teasdale’s poem to translate, indicates that he probably read the March 1914 issue of Poetry magazine.
Throughout 1915 Hu Shi experimented with increasingly freer verse forms
in Chinese.58 Hu and his peers discussed methods for facilitating the teachingof literature in China, and analyzed the use of Romanization, Korean hangul,
and Japanese kana. Hu claimed that “classical Chinese（漢文）truly is a halfdead system of writing; it is inappropriate to teach it using methods for aliving language.” Unlike Fenollosa and Pound, who extolled the Chinese
ideograph for its pictorial components, Hu lamented that the meanings ofideographs might be discernible, but the pronunciations were not.
Furthermore, the student of Chinese must memorize the semantic etymologyof each component to understand the overall meaning of the ideograph, anenormous task. Hu considered the idea of making the study of etymology
mandatory, but thought such an approach would prove infeasible. According
to Hu, devising a grammar had also been tried to no avail; Ma Jianzhong 馬
建忠, author of the Mashi Wentong 馬氏文通（Basic Principles for Writing
Clearly and Coherently by Mr. Ma）had already written a grammar that had
failed to achieve the objective of helping the Chinese masses to become literate.59
In September 1915, on occasion of the departure to Harvard Universityof Hu’s friend, Mei Guangdi, Hu wrote a rambling sixty-line poem in classical Chinese on the momentum of Western scientific and literary advances,and on the futility of trying to stop the tide of change. On literature, Hu
stated:55 Hu Shi, Changshiji, Hu Shi zuopinji 27（Taipei: Yuanliu Publishers）胡適嘗試, p.42.
集, 胡適作品集, 27 （臺北：遠流出版, 1986）
56 Wong Yoon Wah, Essays on Chinese Literature: A Comparative Approach（Singapore: Singapore University Press, 1988）, p. 35.
57 Hu Shi, Changshiji, Hu Shi zuopinji 27, p. 43.
58 Hu Shi, Hu Shi liuxue riji（1）, Hu Shi zuopinji 36, pp. 135-139; pp. 154-158.
59 Ibid., pp. 174-177.

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China’s literature has been withering and decaying fora long time. It has been a hundred years since anyone
vigorous has arisen. There’s a new tide that cannot be
stopped. It is time for a literary revolution.60
The following month, a female friend of Hu Shi recommended he read
Noguchi Yone’s The Spirit of Japanese Poetry, which had made a tremendous
impact on Imagists in England the year before with its introduction in English
to Japanese hokku and Noh drama. Hu noted that the book was elegantly
written and easy to read, but was so self-important that he found it unpleasant.61
Hu’s friends were highly critical of his ideas on poetic revolution, andridiculed his efforts at language reform. This response caused Hu to searchfor paradigms for language reform that fellow Chinese could accept more
readily. He began delving into China’s own past for examples of “living
language,” arguing that when Confucius or the great poets of the Tang period
wrote, the language they had used was alive at the time. Hu also studied thelanguage in popular novels such as Shuihu Zhuan 水滸傳（The Water Margin）
and Xi You Ji 西遊記（Journey to the West）, arguing that they also represented
literary revolutions. On July 22, 1916, Hu initiated a virtual war of words
with his friends, Mei Guangdi and Ren Shuyong（任叔永）, when he sent his
first vernacular（baihua）poem to Mei in response to the latter’s criticism of
Hu’s ideas on a new, living literature. The poem discusses changes in Chinesecharacter usage through history, and claims that literature can also be dead, as
in the case of Latin, or alive, as is the case with contemporary literature. Hu
ended his poem by saying that “literature must have a revolution; you and I
both have responsibility for it.”62
Mei Guangdi responded that Hu should not be influenced by the vulgar,
common poetic movement then current in the West, or try to cheat his fellow
countrymen by plagiarizing the worthless new tide. Mei defined this “newtide” in literature in terms of “Futurism, Imagism, Free Verse.”63 Mei laterelaborated on his criticism of the promoters of New Culture. Of the baihua
movement he said, “The so-called colloquial poetry is merely the offal of vers
libre and recent American Imagism, both of which are nothing but two mere
ramifications of the Decadent movement.”64
Undaunted, Hu drew up his eight conditions for a literary revolution（八
60
61
62
63
64

Ibid., p. 196.
Ibid., pp. 210-211.
Hu Shi, Hu Shi liuxue riji（1）, Hu Shi zuopinji 37, p. 56; pp. 67-74.
Ibid., p. 81.
Wong Yoon Wah, Essays on Chinese Literature, p. 30.

Gained in Translation: Ezra Pound, Hu Shi, and Literary Revolution

53不主義）on August 21, 1916. The points mirror Pound’s “Don’ts” andLowell’s “Imagist Credo”:
I advocated using the vernacular to write poetry, but
a great many of my friends were against my idea. Actually,
everyone has their own will; there is no need to force themto agree. I also needn’t abandon advocating the vernacular
just because there are some people against it. Other people
don’t have to use the vernacular to write poetry, either. Writing
vernacular poetry is just one part of my program for a “newliterature.” As I said in a letter the day before yesterday to
Zhu Jingnong（朱經農）, there are about eight important points
for a new literature:
1. Don’t use classical allusions.
2. Don’t use clichés and hackneyed expressions.
3. Don’t write in couplets or parallelisms.
4. Don’t avoid colloquial words and phrasings.
（Don’t dislike using the vernacular to write poetry.）
5. Pay attention to grammar. This aspect is about form.
6. Don’t groan and moan if you are not sick.
7. Don’t imitate the ancients.
8. What you say must have substance. This aspect is about the spirit（content）.65
A second diary entry also dated August 21 is part of a letter that Hu wrote
to Chen Duxiu（1879-1942）, then editor of New Youth magazine. The letter
was published in the October 1916 issue of the magazine, and contained theabove eight points.
An undated clipping from the New York Times appears in the December
26, 1916 entry of Hu’s diary after the above eight points for literary reform.
The article is a reprint of the preface to Amy Lowell’s “Some Imagist Poets,”
called the Imagist Credo. Hu Shi noted that most of the points advocated by
the Imagists resembled his own.66
Although Hu Shi did not acknowledge directly the influence of the
Imagists on his ideas, Mei Guangdi was not the only critic well aware of thesimilarities between Hu’s eight points for literary reform and the modernist
literary program promulgated by Ezra Pound and Amy Lowell. The botanist
Hu Xiansu（胡先驌, 1894-1968）noted that “In America and Europe there are
Imagists…In Hu Shi’s Book of Experiments, poems such as ‘The Blue Sky’
are products belonging to this category….Without concern for beauty, they
65 Hu Shi, Hu Shi liuxue riji（1）, Hu Shi zuopinji 37, p. 96.
66 Ibid., p.162.

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Journal of Cultural Interaction in East Asia Vol.3 2012absorbed all kinds of ideas into their works….some of the bad poems are:…
Carl Sandburg’s Chicago Poems.”67 Later, Professor Liang Shiqiu（梁實秋）made similar comments.68
Initially, Hu’s program for literary revolution made very little impact.
Then Chen Duxiu tried reprinting the article in New Youth magazine in
January 1917 after moving his publishing office from Shanghai to Beijing. He
and Hu Shi revised the title to the less controversial, “Some Tentative
Suggestions for a Reform of Literature,” Hu rearranged his eight points, andChen added an article of his own on literary revolution. The response thistime was overwhelming. Hu had ignited China’s modern literary renaissance.

V. Conclusion
When Hu Shih again visited Cornell University in 1927, he was lauded
as “the leader of the Chinese Renaissance.” His mentor, Professor Martin
Sampson, said of Hu that “of all Cornell graduates since the University was
founded, Hu Shih is undoubtedly the one who has had the greatest influenceon the largest number of people.” The article explains that Hu
is doing for China what Dante and Petrarch did for theEuropean revival of learning…He is ranked among
the greatest of living Chinese….Hu Shih…began…tourge his associates to write, in the vernacular….Throughthis means, his influence is reaching many millions ofpeople.69
This glowing tribute is matched by T.S. Eliot’s description of his mentor, Ezra
Pound, in the introduction to Pound’s Literary Essays: “Mr. Pound is more
responsible for the XXth Century revolution in poetry than is any otherindividual.”70
Hu Shi and Ezra Pound were two of the greatest literary geniuses of theirtime. Both recognized that literary forms from foreign languages could transform the societies in which they lived. The fact that they modified andadapted those forms to meet the needs of their own cultures rather than copy
them outright, underscores their foresight and ingenuity. It can also be said
that the zeitgeist inherent in transnational cultural interactions brought together
the imperfect translations of Noguchi and Fenollosa, and the creativity of
67 Wong Yoon Wah, Essays on Chinese Literature, p.31. The Chicago Poems
include Sandburg’s “Harbor.”
68 Ibid., p. 32; p.44.
69 Anonymous, “Noted Chinese Coming,” Cornell Alumni News, Vol. XXIX,
No.22（Ithaca, N.Y.）, March 3, 1927, p. 265.
70 Ezra Pound, Literary Essays of Ezra Pound（New York: A New Directions
Book）, 1968, p.xi.

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Pound and Hu to give rise to two literary revolutions: the modernization ofEnglish poetry and literature, and the Chinese baihua movement.