Xu Yuanchong as a Touchstone for Ezra Pound’s Translation of Tang Poetry

Abstract

This study attempts to compare and contrast Pound’s Chinese-English translation with the translation rendered by Xu Yuanchong (1921-), winner of the “Aurora Borealis” Outstanding Literary Translation Award. This study endeavors not just to cast light on the dialectic nature of poetry translation, but it seeks to reveal what has been lost and what has been gained in the Poundian rendition. The new contribution of the current study lies, therefore, in its novel undertaking that employs Xu Yuanchong as a touchstone to examine the loss and gain in Pound’s literary translation, and Pound as another to sieve whatever sievable inasmuch as the esthetic essence of Tang poetry is concerned. It strives to unveil the cross-cultural esthetic transmigration of Tang poets in lending their lifetime character alchemy, a Chinese alchemy in which image rhymes with music, to the forging of the new in American Imagism during the era of Ezra Pound.