First published in 1919 by Ezra Pound, Ernest Fenollosa-s essay on the Chinese written language has become one of the most often quoted statements in the history of American poetics. As edited by Pound, it presents a powerful conception of language that continues to shape our poetic and stylistic preferences: the idea that poems consist primarily of images; the idea that the sentence form with active verb mirrors relations of natural force. But previous editions of the essay represent Pound-s understanding-it is fair to say, his appropriation-of the text. Fenollosa-s manuscripts, in the Beinecke Library of Yale University, allow us to see this essay in a different light, as a document of early, sustained cultural interchange between North America
and East Asia.
Pound-s editing of the essay obscured two important features, here restored to view: Fenollosa-s encounter with Tendai Buddhism and Buddhist ontology, and his concern with the dimension of sound in Chinese poetry.
