Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Refiguring the Poundian Ideogram: From Octavio Paz's Blanco/Branco to Haroldo de Campos's Galáxias

Refiguring the Poundian Ideogram: From Octavio Paz's Blanco/Branco to Haroldo de Campos's Galáxias : From Octavio Paz’s Blanco/Branco to Haroldo de Campos’s Galáxias Marjorie Perloff In March 1968, Octavio Paz, then residing in New Delhi as Mexican Ambassador to India, wrote to thank Haroldo de Campos in São Paulo for the manifestos and poems by the Noigandres group the latter had sent him. Paz was as intrigued by the Concretists’ theory of the ‘constellation’ – a term derived from Stéphane Mallarmé’s Un coup de dés – as he was sceptical about their devotion to Ezra Pound, and especially Pound’s inclusion of actual Chinese ideograms in the Cantos. Paz’s commentary is worth citing at some length: I understand that you [meaning the whole Noigandres group] see in Pound a precursor. I must point out, however, that Pound’s poetry – fundamentally discursive – does not actually make use of ideograms, but rather descriptions of ideograms . . . In certain passages of the Cantos [Pound introduces] real Chinese ideograms: they are cited in a foreign language that, to be understood, requires their translation into our discursive language. Our [Western] languages are the extreme opposite of Chinese, and the most that can be done is what you people (not Pound) are doing: to create http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Modernist Cultures Edinburgh University Press

Refiguring the Poundian Ideogram: From Octavio Paz's Blanco/Branco to Haroldo de Campos's Galáxias

Perloff, Marjorie
Modernist Cultures , Volume 7 (1): 40 – May 1, 2012
Download PDF
16 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/edinburgh-university-press/refiguring-the-poundian-ideogram-from-octavio-paz-s-blanco-branco-to-dHZuDvuh5o
Publisher
Edinburgh University Press
Copyright
© Edinburgh University Press 2012
Subject
Film, Media and Cultural Studies
ISSN
2041-1022
eISSN
1753-8629
DOI
10.3366/mod.2012.0027
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

: From Octavio Paz’s Blanco/Branco to Haroldo de Campos’s Galáxias Marjorie Perloff In March 1968, Octavio Paz, then residing in New Delhi as Mexican Ambassador to India, wrote to thank Haroldo de Campos in São Paulo for the manifestos and poems by the Noigandres group the latter had sent him. Paz was as intrigued by the Concretists’ theory of the ‘constellation’ – a term derived from Stéphane Mallarmé’s Un coup de dés – as he was sceptical about their devotion to Ezra Pound, and especially Pound’s inclusion of actual Chinese ideograms in the Cantos. Paz’s commentary is worth citing at some length: I understand that you [meaning the whole Noigandres group] see in Pound a precursor. I must point out, however, that Pound’s poetry – fundamentally discursive – does not actually make use of ideograms, but rather descriptions of ideograms . . . In certain passages of the Cantos [Pound introduces] real Chinese ideograms: they are cited in a foreign language that, to be understood, requires their translation into our discursive language. Our [Western] languages are the extreme opposite of Chinese, and the most that can be done is what you people (not Pound) are doing: to create

Journal

Modernist Cultures – Edinburgh University Press

Published: May 1, 2012

There are no references for this article.