From Ezra Pound to Maxine Hong Kingston: Expressions of Chinese Thought in American Literature

Abstract

Although divided by age, race, sex and literary practice, Ezra Pound and Maxine Hong Kingston have one thing in common: both are American writers concerned with the interpretation of Chinese thought. In the works of both, a process of cross-fertilization takes place, whereby Eastern and Western ideas meet, interact, and are transformed into new creative expressions. Each, in that sense, provides us with an interface between Chinese and American culture. But there is a significant difference in the kind of interface that each presents. Whereas Pound's is ideological, relatively detached and derived primarily from literary sources, Kingston's is pragmatic, personal and drawn from direct ethnic experience. Pound's interest in China belongs to a tradition of comparative study by non-Chinese writers seeking parallels and answers to aspects of Western civilization. Kingston's represents the newly emerging voice of the Asian-American minority struggling to establish its place and identity in America. This paper explores some of the implications of this difference, paying attention especially to the manner and scope of each author's involvement with China and the insights each offers into Chinese and American culture. Let us begin with Pound. According to Noel Stock, Pound had read Confucius as early as 1907.1 But we can say that his interest in China really began in 1913 when he received from Mary Fenollosa the notebooks of her deceased husband, Ernest, a sinologist who had studied in Japan. There is no doubt that Fenollosa's influence on Pound's career was seminal. In the first place, it convinced him that China held out the possibilities of a new esthetic and new modes of thinking that would allow him, as Hugh Kenner puts it, to rethink the nature of the English poem.2 Fenollosa's essay, The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry served as a catalyst in the development of a new poetics for Pound, leading to the formulation of the