BK. Ezra Pound

28. ‘List of Books: Comment by Ezra Pound’. Review of Certain Noble Plays of Japan (21) and Noh, or Accomplishment (24). Little Review, August 1917, pp. 6-11.

By this date Pound in both public and private was expressing reservations about his work with the nô (see also 59e-f and 83). Here he suggests that the work is of value, and singles out in particular the climax of Kagekiyo (see 21a), finding in it ‘a truly Homeric laughter’ and remarking that if he ‘had found nothing else in Fenollosa’s notes’ he ‘should have been well paid for the three years’ he devoted to the plays; but of his work with Fenollosa’s manuscripts he now believes that ‘the Japanese stuff has not the solidity . . . of Rihaku’ and ‘is not so important as the Chinese’.