BE. Witter Bynner

6. ‘Dragon-Drama’. Freeman, 3 October 1923, pp. 89-91.

	Reprinted in Prose Pieces.

Bynner’s discussion of East-Asian drama anticipates work by Gary Snyder (see CA14e) and other American writers after the Second World War. His focus is largely China, but the perception of a cultural link between East Asian and Native American tradition pertains here nonetheless for its anticipation of work to come. He suggests that ‘anyone who has lived among the Red Indians’ might well perceive a connection between Native American and East Asian ritual drama. He ‘cannot answer for’ an ‘exactly parallel application of ceremonial instruments’, but can ‘vouch for’ their ‘obviously Chinese use’ in the dances of the Hopi and the Pueblo. He wishes for a scholarship ‘versed in the beliefs and observances’ of both East Asian and Native American peoples in order that ‘a new and golden link between the past of America and the past of Asia’ might be established. Reprinted in 19.