Preface to Cathay
Ezra Pound
Track 1 on Cathay
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On 6th April 1915, Pound published Cathay through Elkin Matthews. Ostensibly translations, largely of works by the Chinese poet Li Po (李白), whom Pound calls by the Japanese version of his name, Rihaku, the poems in Cathay are actually Pound’s interpretations of Fenollosa’s glosses, and do not come directly from the Chinese. Nevertheless, Pound’s poetic sensibility means that they’re widely acclaimed not only as brilliant translations of the Chinese material, but moreover in their effort ‘to rethink the nature of the English poem’. (Hugh Kenner, The Pound Era, p. 199).
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