BK. Ezra Pound

191. Miyake, Akiko. ‘Ezra Pound and Noh’. Kôbe joshigakuin daigaku ronshû 36/3  (1990): 67-102. Reprinted, with slight emendation, in 201.

		Reprinted with small changes in A Guide.

Basic to understanding Pound’s use of the nô. Miyake’s argumentation is even more dense than in her earlier, related work for the same journal (187), but is nonetheless compelling. Describes three ‘periods’ in Pound’s encounter with the nô, 1913 to 1916 when he was involved with his ‘interpretations’ of Fenollosa’s translations, 1920 to 1948 as he came to understand the nô as ‘a stage art of unique impact’, and the years preceding 1954 as he was preparing a new edition of the nô plays (for 60) and translation of The Women of Trachis (61). Advances interrelated arguments that Pound ‘quietly’ conflated Greek ideas of mystical love and Dantesque motifs of ascension within his revisions of Fenollosa, and that a consequent ‘mixture’ of these with their Japanese counterparts informs The Cantos, particularly, The Pisan Cantos (56). Includes discussion of most of the plays that appear in “Noh’ or Accomplishment (24) and most of The Cantos that derive images from the nô, and includes as well brief but cogent remarks about Yeats’s incorporation of principles derived from the form.