Readings from the Odes by Tyler

The Odes are vital to the development to the Digest and the Unwobbling Pivot

Tyler: Interconnection between poetry and social ethics, moral good.

Louis: EP tries to produce something that could be attached to people’s hearts, but they are more like military pieces, in sound and rhythm, but also in content.

Ben: The Odes left me with a sense of coldness. There’s a reductive simplicity to the rhymes.

Louis: Odes as a pretext for mature education.

Tyler: the Odes find their way in P’s Great Digest

Jeff: the connection between the odes and the comments is oblique. In what way are the odes confucian? They are pre- and anti-confucian. Romantic poems between unmarried couples are NOT confucian. The odes are communal songs, which are conceived to be shared and sung among the community. In early Chinese society they used to memorize the odes and use them to comment on events. Importance of music in ancient China (the “Book of Music” among the canon literature, but it was lost)

Olga: the Odes are folk songs, and as such they are very difficult to reproduce. Comparison between the odes and homeric epic. What role did they play in early chinese society? Why are the called “odes”? Plus, the sentences are incomplete and thus does not seem appropriate for an educational text.

Jeff: the classic anthology was compiled by Confucius, at least according to tradition, and it became one of the official text 2-300 years after Confucius’s death, when his thinking became the empire’s ideology.

Tyler: the ode is a praisal to a specific topic (ode to…)

Louis: reflection on the anonimity of the odes, which expands on the anonimity of many text throughout the whole world (England, the Balkans)

Tyler: switching to the Great Digest, which is a visual kind of text

Olga: parallel bilingual text is quite normal, but white on black is not

Jeff: EP tries to replicate ink pressing on stone, like a reverse printing

Olga: the choice the Roman capitals is not just for beauty,

Judd: Confucius & Ovid as religious figures in Pound

Tyler: Pound usually presents things and readers must discover them theirselves. But here the chinese text, for the common reader lacking in chinese,

Jeff: the use of a chinese dictionary. Maybe you are not able to read chinese, but if you’re able to use a chinese dictionary then you are able to see repetitions, you can get an eye on it. This chinese is archaic and elliptic, with spaces which open up to creativity.

Discussion draws back to the connection between Ovid and Confucius in Pound

Ben: Ovid does not present a philosophical system as Confucius does + Ovid is anti-imperialistic unlike Pound + switching to “The Immediate Need of Confucius”, where Pound does not talk about Confucius but about the need of Confucian thought

Jeff: in Confucius the emphasis is on the social responsibility and sincerity, which is a problematic but pivotal term for Pound. Human nature is good and thus sincere. The Odes are an example of sincere expression.

Olga: Pound is advocating for larger understanding among cultures (mainly West and East).

Jeff: this essay was published on an Indian theosophical magazine which main interest was world religion

Tyler: relationship between Pound’s confucianism and fascism, directio voluntatis, virtù