The Iowa Review
Volume 15
Issue 2 Spring-Summer: An Homage to Ezra Pound
1985
Pound, Yeats, and the Noh Theater
Daniel Albright
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Albright, Daniel. "Pound, Yeats, and the Noh Theater." The Iowa Review 15.2 (1985): 34-50. Web.
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Article 9
and the Noh
Yeats,
Pound,
Theater
Daniel Albright
A WHILE
AGO
a company of JapaneseNoh players visited my home
town,
Charlottesville,
Virginia,
I was
struck by their
neither gesture nor
movements,
formances.
sense, but a kind of studious
and
impossibly
slow
some
and
of
their
sudden,
per
incisive
nor dance in any Western
pantomime
to
vectors
surrender
outside human agency.
I
that they were performing
times that they aspired, through
felt sometimes
air, other
I watched
be organ-pipes
state of
happy
or conduits
of wind.
a karate
to injure the
designed
to
their deep rough intonation,
Like most of the audience I left in a
and yet, though we had seen little and under
the Noh
theater
stood less, we had attained a better acquaintance with
than had Yeats or Pound or any of those early twentieth-century
poets
to find a sort of dramatic
the purity and
who
salvation through
hoped
confusion,
severity of the Noh drama. This essay does not treat the actual practice of
treats certain exuberant
the Noh ?I
could not do this in any case?but
fantasies bred in considerable
theater. This invention
ignorance of the Noh
means of
amisunderstood
is amore usual state of
imitating
by
precedent
in the history of art have
affairs than it may seem, for the great renewals
to claim the prestige of some
remote
often found it convenient
extremely
at the end of the six
in Florence,
sanction: when
the opera originated
teenth
century,
classical Greece.
most
thought
Of
necessary
theater was
Noh
a
great
isting at
I do not mean
about
claimed
drama
of
knew
al
the music
of classical Greece,
and the little they
out to be wrong;
turned
knew
but
this
they
pleasant hope of
of long-forgotten
aesthetic truth allowed
their imaginations
the
freedom for invention. What
the Greek theater was to time, the
nothing
recovery
to be reviving
the musical
course Peri and Caccini
and Vicenzo
Galilei
its inventors
to space: a settled and elaborate
body of conventions
to almost any
distance and susceptible
interpretation.
that Yeats
and Pound
of the Noh
ex
to
did not do everything
they could
it
is
theater was;
simply that there
the reality
what
in 1913 to educate themselves properly.
little they could do in England
"Certain Noble Plays of
Yeats in 1916 wrote
his essay on the Noh,
When
war had
that
the
he
Japan,"
required the closing of the Print
complained
discover
was
34
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Room
the designs of the Japanese
Pound knew about the Noh
body
died
presents
came
from
two
sources.
The
first was
the
notes
in death
metamorphosed
needed by Pound for his
was
of
and
left by an American
scholar named Ernest Fenol
in 1908, just before Pound could have met him, but who
of scattered
losa, who
Pound
so that he had to
on old memories
rely
that Yeats
theater; and almost everything
of the British Museum,
into
translations
it, Fenollosa's
East and West
bridge between
of Noh
and of Chinese
poetry. As
the occult
life
the romance
as a
went
to
of modern
par excellence
scholarship. He
as
economics.
He
of
Commis
ended
professor
Imperial
Japan
sioner of Arts. He
treasure that no Japanese had heard
had unearthed
an
to
of.
be
say that he saved Japanese art for
exaggeration
as much
as any one man
Japan, but it is certain that he had done
to
set
art
in its rightful pre-eminence
the native
could have
and to
It may
. . .When he died
stop the apeing of Europe.
suddenly in England
a
sent
for his body, and the priests
the Japanese government
warship
at Miidera.
buried him within
the sacred enclosure
(Pound,
Translations,
p. 213)
of the scholar as swashbuckler?just
the sort
Shortly after this description
tells the story of the famous Noh
of scholar Pound
liked best?Pound
actor Umewaka
of 1868, and,
lived
who
Minoru,
through the revolution
when
it seemed
masks
and costumes,
clothes
that all the
would
off his back. Thus
of the Noh
theater, the great
to save them
by selling the
perish, managed
are
Fenollosa
and Minoru
both heroes of the
implements
save the
rank to Yeats and Pound,
those who
of art
highest
implements
a
is
and
indeed
Fenollosa
almost
from destruction;
the life of
little Noh
the mild-mannered
collector
scholar, amuseum
play of its own, in which
a
as
a
in
and
transcendental
putterer
antiquities,
suddenly reveals himself
a
a
fit
for
and
burial
sacred,
sage
apparition,
given
god.
I suspect that Fenollosa
about the Noh
knew
the
actually
something
from more
ater, and that Pound might have worked
but his other source was more
ing his translations;
corrupt
texts
inmak
more dubi
exciting,
to find a
Pound managed
starving Japanese dancer, named
are
Michio
seemed to know all about the dances which
Ito, who
placed at
the climax of every Noh drama; and Yeats was sufficiently
that
intrigued
ous. Somehow
35
he appointed
Ito to dance
the role of the Guardian
of theWell
in his own
pseudo-Noh
play, At theHawk's Well
(1917). In fact Ito's training had
been of a different
the in
sort; he had studied with Eugene Dalcroze,
ventor of a system of motion
and gesture called "eurhythmies,"
designed
to make
which
one's body express
one heard. In D. H.
the quality of rhythm
and melodic
phrase
in
Women
Love
Lawrence's
(1920) Gudrun
a herd of cattle, a little
in order to hypnotize
euryth
Brangwen
mie ballet
performs,
students also be
gestures. One of Dalcroze's
using Dalcroze
came
came to Paris. After
Russes
coach
the
when
Ballets
Nijinsky's
study
ingwith Dalcroze,
pany,
Ito left for New York and danced at the Village Fol
St. Denis,
of the famous Denishawn
modern
dance com
on her return to the United
see that the or
States. We
first worked
lies, where
Ruth
were not some
igins of Ito's dance style
priestly cult in Japan, but in the
St. Denis herself, according
dance. Ruth
of modern
confused provenance
a
to
to many historians,
she saw a poster for
decided
become
dancer when
Island to seewhat Egyp
"Egyptian Goddess"
cigarettes and visited Coney
to some extent this will serve as a
really like; and
parable for
what Yeats and Pound did, as they sought to remold modern
theater from
sources so remote from their culture that
as much
resemblance
they bore
tian dance was
as the poster
origin
Ito's effect on Yeats and Pound was
to their ostensible
tard beginnings.
When
Yeats
to Egyptian
antiquity.
girl bore
no less
because
of its bas
striking
saw him dance
in a drawing-room
he found
him
the tragic image
studied lighting,
able,
no
that has stirred my imagination.
There, where
no
an artificial world,
was
made
he
stage-picture
as he rose from
legged,
the floor, where
he had been sitting cross
or as he threw out an arm, to recede from us into some more
life. Because that separation was achieved by human means
powerful
alone, he receded but to inhabit as itwere the deeps of the mind. One
realised
anew,
arts' greatness
at every separating strangeness,
can be but in their
intimacy.
that the measure
(Essays and Introductions,
of all
p. 224)
so
did he embody
heaven-sent,
perfectly
everything
at once in
in his new theater: gestures
Yeats wanted
old,
immemorially
timate and eerie, a passion wordlessly
raised to new pitches of intensity,
It is as if Ito were
36
the anti-self
of the talky realistic hateful theater made manifest.
Indeed the
amodel for the kind of art
toto to
in
appropriated
provide
in order to prove an historical myth about the
desired by early modernism,
of an ancient and devastating
theater, realized in Sophoclean
perversion
lost forever in theWest,
but miraculously
in Japan and
Greece,
preserved
Noh
theater was
available
today.
seems to be a contradiction
In Yeats' essay on the Noh we find what
in
once
at
his praise of the Japanese theater: he celebrates
it
for being com
art
a kind of
the
of
sheer
for
and
pletely unmechanical,
body,
being
seems to be at the
glorified marionette-show
(pp. 223, 226). This paradox
heart of Yeats' hopes for creating a new sort of play; and I think it isworth
a
to try to account for it.
into nineteenth-century
aesthetics
digression
What
amazed Yeats about the Noh was that it appeared to be a full-blown
to realize, with
version of just the theater he had been
struggling
varying
ever
since
he helped found the Abbey Theatre
in 1902;
degrees of success,
in his essay he points with
indeed
interest
to the
proto-Noh
features
in his
play The King's Threshold (1904), and to the many similarities between
Irish myth
a
and Japanese. The Noh,
invention
than a distant
then, as far as Yeats
is concerned
is less
echo of what
the Irish national theater
Japanese
to be; and when Pound translates certain Noh passages in a kind of
ought
Irish dialect ("There never was anybody heard of Mt. Shinobu but had a
?
to
kindly feeling for it" Trans., p. 286), he is helping Yeats
perfect his
drama.
hybrid
Hiberno-Japanese
art could be
century found that Oriental
appropriated
most
One
its
Occidental
of
useful functions was
any
purpose.
an
to
the domain of the spirit,
image for the other world,
simply
provide
which was defined aswhatever was least like our ordinary sensible nature.
nineteenth
The
for almost
Oriental
art was
valued,
then, for producing
in his fable about
a shiver of the unnatural.
the competition
of a real
Andersen,
a
has the mechanical
version
toy nightingale,
nightingale
wind-up
court
to fix a
of
from
the
the
and
this
seemed
imported
Japanese emperor;
association
Orient
between
the
and the world of sheer artifice. It is
lasting
Hans
Christian
with
to this tradition
that Yeats
appeals when
and it is explicitly
sublime puppet-show;
the nightingale
that Yeats
to Byzantium,"
in which
singing
to a
drowsy
he compares the Noh drama
to the fable of the emperor
to a
and
ten years later, he writes
appeals when,
"Sailing
a
he claims he desires to become
golden bird
is
into
after
he
the
artifice of eter
emperor,
gathered
37
nity. But, in addition
the East
sipid, while
termyth,
withered
to the
that modern Europe is banal, fat and in
myth
is complicated
and supernatural,
there arises a coun
to which
is decadent,
modern
exhausted,
Europe
according
into abstraction,
while
the East
without
is the kingdom
of bodily vigor,
and feeling, soul and body. It is
between
any dissociation
thought
this countermyth
that Yeats is thinking of when he praises the Noh for its
of the physical body:
if modern
drama consists
presentation
European
in the void, then the Noh
is the place
simply of talking heads yammering
un
It is easy to represent a
laughing man,
a mask;
then you will have to make your
of
projection
laughter.
body emotes.
face is covered with
the whole
where
less your
self a corporeal
Parallel to this peculiar
whole
at once
theater
extremely
hope
physical
of Yeats,
of a pseudo-Eastern
is the atti
disembodied,
the hope
and extremely
tude towards theOrient of Igor Stravinsky. InThe Rite of Spring (1913?
just the year that Pound discovers theNoh), Stravinsky tried to find in his
a
of pagan Russia
imagination
prehistorical
nature
of
before mankind
severed himself
when
the piercing rhythms
vitality,
from natural
and
intensities;
the ballet he looked to the resources of
choreographed
Ito was trained. This
similar to those inwhich Michio
expression
Nijinsky
physical
But both be
of the Orient.
clearly is the myth of the superior physicality
on an opera based on
fore and after The Rite of Spring Stravinsky worked
Hans Christian
is interesting
Andersen's
The
what
fable,
Nightingale;
about the opera is that, while Andersen's
fable and Stravinsky's
libretto
it clear that the pathos of the real nightingale
ismore admirable than
the soulless twittering
of the mechanical
nightingale,
Stravinsky's music
an
at
to
least
different
ear,
makes,
my
impression. The music of
entirely
in many broken phrases, as if
is swoony coloratura,
the real nightingale
the bird always limped as it flew; while
the music of the mechanical
night
make
not by a soprano but
is impelling,
im
represented
by the orchestra,
more fit for a
war than a toy bird. I take this as a
of
placable,
god
sign that
was
more
felt
that
the
mechanical
than
the
Stravinsky
organic;
fascinating
ingale,
and in his later career he again shows this, for example
movement
Three Movements
of which
(1945), the first
in the
Symphony
depicts the goose
in
in rhythms not far removed from those of the
troops of Hitler
stepping
in his opera The Rake's Progress (1951), writ
mechanical
and
nightingale,
ten to a libretto
In this, Stravin
and Chester Kallman.
by W. H. Auden
sky's only other
38
full-length
opera,
the theme of The Nightingale
returns
in
a different
pallidly
bearded
is forced to choose between
two girls,
guise: Tom Rakewell
a thin Mozartean
faithful Anne Truelove,
and
soprano,
the
lady Baba
in a
the Turk,
the Devil
whom
the
to marry
induces Tom
a
kind of mariage gratuit. Baba the Turk is, interestingly
enough,
wind-up
a
turns
a
into
over her
of
who
is
furniture
cloth
when
toy,
piece
placed
even
music
the
she sings
sounds like the music of
chattering head; indeed,
a mechanical
of scales. It is another contest be
rigid permutations
the organic
and the inorganic,
between
the humane
and the
not
more
not
it
is
and
is
clear
that
the
artifice
mechanical;
again
fascinating
than the woman.
bird,
tween
The
and the unphysical
over-physical
seem
diametrically
opposed;
and
yet the rhythmic ferocity of the human sacrifice in The Rite of Spring and
that of the mechanical
are in fact
quite similar
of opposites
that we
in Stravinsky's
It is the same convergence
find in Yeats'
seem
to feel that in
and Yeats
theater; both Stravinsky
theory of the Noh
the deepest part of nature there is something
unnatural,
uncanny. Yeats
and Stravinsky both sought this union of nature and unnature
in Oriental
nightingale
music.
art. The
roots of this
however,
go far back
conjoining,
In Kleist 's essay on the marionette
aesthetics.
into nineteenth
theater, written
century
near the
of
that century, Kleist hypothesizes
that every ballet
beginning
dancer tries ?and
imitate the perfection
fails ?to
of movement
achievable
are
an in
ensure
to
whose
limbs
with pendulums
by marionettes
weighted
of motion
and countermotion;
Kleist
symmetry
goes on to
an
so
discover
of the divine in this sort of puppet-rhythm,
approximation
that there is a convergence
of the automaton
and the god. Kleist knew
of the Noh
theater, but its attempt to reduce and stylize human
nothing
fallible
movement
into a sacred marionette-show
tion of his dream;
dream,
as in another
later in the nineteenth
could be taken as the culmina
sense itwas
century,
the culmination
of Mallarm?'s
of a theater of silence,
inwhich,
as
he says in his essay "Ballets":
...
is not awoman,
the dancing woman
but ametaphor
assuming
one of the
our
of
form, sword, cup, flower, etc.,
aspects
elementary
and . . . suggesting by the wonder
of abridgement
and impetus, with
a
itwould
corporeal scripture what
to express...
tive prose and dialogue
of
apparatus
writing.
take many
a poem
paragraphs
disengaged
of descrip
from all the
39
Just asMallarm?
tried to liberate poetry from every
to see in the Noh
so it became
theater
possible
and Yeats
and Pound
discursive,
prosaic element,
a kind of poetry liberated almost
ence of
symbol interspersed with
this dream
seems
seems
now
to have
a pure imman
entirely from the verbal,
a little hieratic
It may be that
chanting.
or grotesque;
to us
Thomas
Pynchon
impossible
it so, for in his novel V.
thought
(1963) he rehearses
a par
ody of theBalletsRusses performing The Rite of Spring, an imaginary ballet
for one human
except
that she arranged to have
the inorganic
dancer,
a
on
stake impales her as a human sacrifice.
herself murdered
stage when
an
To Pynchon,
if not to the rest of us, every fascination with mechanical
performed
entirely
by full-sized
a
so infatuated with
girl
automatons,
a
against the organic principle
alogues of human life is deep transgression
art requires some
of the cosmos; but to sympathize with
early modern
sense that the unnatural
It is now
time?or
may have value and importance.
us to look at what Pound
past time?for
and Yeats
notes
texts of Noh
plays. In Fenollosa's
inspected the
a
a
a
suite of Noh plays in
Pound
single
plan for presenting
era of
a
six
about
the
first
had
this
parts,
play
evening's performance:
plan
or
third a "wig-piece"
the gods, second a battle-piece,
play about women,
sixth
fourth the Noh of spirits, fifth a piece about the moral duties of man,
found when
they
discovered
at the
performance
(Translations,
play about the lords present
panegyrical
an
was
about the Noh
rationalization
elaborate
Behind
this
p. 220).
plan
to war
from divine prehistory
drama as an epitome of human life, moving
of the mun
and then to a superseding
and love, the affairs of the world,
a
in the presentation
of spiritual reality. Pound thought that the battle
were
the chief in
the
usual
exploits and considered
boring martial
pieces
course
to lie in the spirit-plays; Yeats of
terest of the Noh
agreed, though
dane
so many
of Yeats'
pseudo-Noh
share Pound's
sumably did not
translated
that Pound
we
the Noh-of-spirits
find a few simple dramatic patterns.
that could
there is rarely anything
could
we
study these
In the Noh
of spirits,
when
plays contain battle episodes
distaste for that variety. Most
be considered
that he pre
of the Noh
sort;
and
be called
a
story; such action as there is to be found is usually accomplished
during,
and by means
of, the climactic dance. In the simplest plays a travelling
a folklorist or a connoisseur
of landscape, meets a humble old
priest, often
a
it dawns on the priest
man or old woman;
series of interrogations
after
that what
40
appears
to be a vagrant,
a
beggar,
or a
leech-gatherer,
is actually
a
a great man
the scene of amighty
triumphantly
remembering
in the delectation
of his locus. The meta
genius loci, rejoicing
means of a costume
a
is accomplished
by
morphosis
change and
change of
no
on
is
but
there
and
mask;
scenery
stage, nothing
bridges
potted pines,
spirit of
deed, or a
and the painted pine tree that is the backdrop of all Noh plays. The
is only amovement
what
towards enlightenment:
is surrounded by material
illusion at last reveals itself in its true supernat
in the characteristic
ural glory, a glory that reaches its perfection
dance of
dramatic
action,
then,
the spirit. It is not the sort of dramatic action
but in certain recent movies we find something
that we
similar
are accustomed
to,
to it. For
example,
Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of theThirdKind isNoh-like in that it
nor villains, no action except the
tantalizing unveiling
we do not
and nearly incomprehensible
spectacle; since
an ex
like in the 1970s or 80s to speak of spirits, Spielberg
substitutes
now
is
traterrestrial
all
is
of
that
the other
being, which
acceptable
has neither
heroes
of a remarkable
a Noh
have a climactic
where
dance, Spielberg
worldly;
play would
an
of unearthly
substitutes
forms. I doubt
increasing visual magnificence
that Spielberg was influenced by Noh drama, but I believe that this movie
share a common
and the Noh
aesthetic
ium of wonder.
an attempt to
a delir
goal,
provoke
"Per Arnica Silentia Lunae," Yeats
In his essay of 1917,
tells the plot of his favorite Noh play and says that in it the spirits have at
of fire, the exact opposite of the terrestrial; and he re
tained the condition
a
on the
that in his play, The Hour-Glass,
beggar writes
are
one
two
walls of Babylon
that "There
visible and one
living countries,
it is summer there, it is winter
it is
and when
invisible,
here, and when
minds
his readers
November
Mythologies,
anti-world
it is lambing-time
there" (Collected
Plays, p. 197;
Yeats
in
that
he
found
drama the
Noh
pp. 356-57).
thought
that he elsewhere calls
that he had long sought, the anti-world
with
us,
or Byzantium.
Faeryland
The favorite Noh play of Yeats,
and one of the favorites of Fenollosa
as well, was
and Pound
the Nishikigi.
The title is a word
that means
a
man
two
is
the
about
lovers:
three
fruitless
charm-sticks;
play
spends
a young woman,
to woo
who
disdains him
years erecting charm-sticks
to
a cloth; the
spend her time weaving
spirits of these
an itinerant
two
to
in
for
death
the young
them,
marry
priest
implore
woman wishes
she had been less oblivious of the young man's charms; the
and chooses
instead
play ends with
the marriage-dance
of the two
shades. Yeats
liked many
41
this play: the plot was identical to that of a story he had heard
the
Islands of Ireland; the sense of the interconnectedness,
of the quick and the dead was agreeable to him; and
mutual
dependence,
most of all he liked the artistic unity of it, the fact that the whole
is
things about
in the Aran
a
a
upon
playing
single metaphor,
as deliberate
as the
echoing
rhythm of line inChinese and Japanese painting. In theNishikigi the
on
out of
carries the cloth she went
of the girl-lover
weaving
she should have opened the chamber door to her lover,
grass when
and incident.
and woven
grass returns again and again in metaphor
ghost
sorrow for uncon
that in an a?ry body they must
summated
love, are "tangled up as the grass patterns are tangled."
are like an unfinished
cloth: "these bodies, having no
Again
they
at last the
even now are not come together.
..."
and when
weft,
The
lovers,
now
of the priest unites them in marriage
the bride says that he
over wild grass, over the grass
"a
has
made
dream-bridge
[the priest]
prayer
I dwell in_"
(Essays and Introductions,
Ezra Pound was
similarly
p. 234)
impressed:
a text seems to
at the end, the reader
"go off into nothing"
or
is made
remember
"that the vagueness
paleness of words
the
its
emotion
has
of
the
for
the
final
Noh
dance,"
unity in
by
When
must
good
emotion.
better
It has also what
are all built
we may call
Unity
into the intensification
plays
red maple
leaves and the snow flurry
of Image. At least, the
of a single Image: the
. . .
in Nishikigi
(Translations,
Both
and Yeats
p. 237)
are
possesses unity, but
agreed that the Nishikigi
seem to agree little about the
of
that
unity: Yeats sought an
they
quality
seemed
cloth, the properties of which
artifact, in this case the girl's woven
to sum up the drama, while Pound sought some striking natural detail, in
this case the red leaves and the snow emblematizing
the transitoriness
of
nature
note
Pound
as
opposed
to the passage
to the invulnerability
In a foot
of the spiritual world.
I just cited, Pound speaks further about the relation of
theNoh play to the Imagewith a capital I:
42
This
intensification
of the Image,
to me
this manner
as an
of construction,
is
we
for
Imagiste,
Imagistes
set out in our own manner.
very interesting
personally,
of these plays when we
knew nothing
These plays are also an answer to a question
that has several
been put to me: "Could one do a long Imagiste poem?"
times
the literary movement
which
Pound and a few friends had be
Imagism,
a
few years earlier in 1912, defined an Image as "an emotional
and in
gun
in an instant of time." This definition would
tellectual complex
seem, on
the face of it, to preclude
facilitating
length, while
lengthy
poems
than an instant
poems, poems more
such as this most
famous one:
of these faces
apparition
on a wet, black
Petals
bough.
The
in the crowd
in
:
on a
Imagist poems depend
simple principle of super
a
on a
is presented,
and then, as if painted
striking detail
position:
a
the
in
front
of
first
second
film
surface,
transparent
picture, bearing cer
to the first, ismade manifest.
First the telling ap
tain formal similarities
This
and many
other
then the picture is recast, in
pearance of the faces on the subway platform;
into the alien aesthetic
of petals and
deed in this case Orientalized,
a
a
act
It is readjustment
of focus,
deliberate
of altered percep
branches.
importance of the Noh drama for Pound's career is that it
see
that a poem could be longer than two lines, and yet
enabled him to
to it: for the Noh
its spare
have a quality of instantaneity
theater, with
an
was
instant of
toward
ness, its anti-discursiveness,
continually working
tion. The
central
of buckling
between
the spiritual and
a
to
of Noh play, the whole
lead-up
what Fenollosa calls sculptural (Trans, p. 273); nothing
then there
the integrity of the composition;
violates
breakthrough,
The beginning
old beggar
the mortal
worlds.
is static,
no action
happens,
?
is a revelation
the
the dance,
to be the spirit of a celebrated warrior?an
instant of
of the
this is the dramatic equivalent of the superposition
a
content
of
sudden
the
hidden
aesthetic
poem,
perception
turns out
metamorphosis;
brief Imagiste
of an ordinary
thing. When
poem, he made
very long,
taneous evocation
of glassy
a
to write
long,
of nature-spirits,
the instan
in air, amajor feature of his project; and
Pound
came
in the Cantos
the immanence
forms
43
he learned from
the Noh
thru
the "bust
called
drama
something
of how
to
accomplish
what
he
Indeed
from
quotidien"
(Selected Letters, p. 210).
aNoh
4 (1919) seems in places on the verge of becoming
play, with
to old Japanese
trees:
into
its tissue of references
who
turned
people
Canto
The
at Takasago
pine
the pine of Is?!
grows with
The water
up the bright pale sand in the spring's mouth
the Tree of the Visages!"
"Behold
as if with
lotus.
Forked branch-tips,
flaming
whirls
Ply over ply
The shallow eddying fluid,
beneath
of the gods.
the knees
(4/15)
Yeats
a more
received
that he and Pound
winter
months
orthodox
undertook
living
influence
from
1913
in Sussex with
him.
the study of the Noh
Pound spent the
to describe
simplest way
from
to 1916, when
The
the pseudo-Noh plays which he wrote from 1917 until just before his
death in 1939 is to call them fairly straightforward Irish equivalents of
tacked on. Almost
every Noh play in
endings
unhappy
plays with
the priest
the spirits happily manifest,
Pound's
ends benignly,
collection
a
to
is
in
Yeats'
of
there
but
fortunate
behold;
urgency, of des
quality
plays
to the mysterious
In general
calm of the original.
peration quite foreign
Noh
Yeats
is less interested
shivery moment
when
of a disguised
translated
feels himself
in the manifestation
a man
intensities; when Yeats does
greater-than-human
of a disguised
manifestation
spirit, in The Words
(1934)?which
spirit
turns out
spirit than in the
into a domain
of
treat the theme
of the
upon the Window-Pane
is not much like aNoh play in any case?the disguised
to be that of Jonathan
Swift, whose
distress
is unrelieved
by the seance that invokes him; indeed Swift inflicts his feverishwretched
ness on
the medium
herself.
The
clearest
example
of Yeats'
revision
of
Noh themes is found in The Dreaming of theBones (1919),which is a re
writing of our old friend theNishikigi; but in Yeats' version the dead
are
a
to grant them peace, to let them marry,
beg
passer-by
are
traitors
who
the
and
for
Diarmuid
frustrated,
they
Dervorgilla,
to pursue their adulterous
in
armies
into
order
Ireland
foreign
brought
lovers who
44
love, and no one will forgive them their crime. Their final dance is not, as
a solution, a reconciliation,
in theNishikigi,
but instead a further display of
In most of the later
the tangledness
that can never be untangled.
pseudo
Yeats
Noh
themes
with
the themes of Wilde's
the
Noh
mingles
plays
for he came
Salom?,
almost
earthly
ment; while
to understand
as a
exclusively
the climactic
dance
the passage from the earthly to the un
a literal disembodi
severing of the head,
occurs,
the severed head
sings,
as in The
King of theGreat Clock Tower (1935). The culmination of this can be seen
inThe Death ofCuchulain (1939), inwhich Cuchulain's wife Emer dances
in front of the severed head of her husband, represented by a
on a stick; this gesture
mounted
black parallelogram
the
neatly combines
from terrestrial life with a kind of abstract art, the cubism
disengagement
the final dance
that Yeats
natural.
latent
forces
the most
of the super
appropriate
representation
labors to effect an impression of the abiding spiritual
in common
labors to show that
life; but Yeats' pseudo-Noh
thought
Noh drama
common
life must
unearthly
may
everywhere
grow vivid.
be quelled,
quenched,
sacrificed,
so that the
When Yeats in 1935 sent to Pound themanuscript for The King of the
Great Clock
itwith
historians
treasonous
found
Yeats'
is one of his greatest works ?Pound
returned
one
in
of
those
odd
reversals
which
literary
putrid. But,
ten years later, arrested for
refer to as ironical, Pound himself,
Tower ?which,
one word:
and caged in the army detention
camp at Pisa,
to themes very like those of
himself
returning
again and again
the
of the poet caught amid
desperate prostration
play, themes of
radio broadcasts
seized and about to be hanged, and yet trying to
forces beyond his control,
see
into the world
his
circumstances
of divine energies,
present
through
cut off his head. One of Pound's
art, before the authorities
imperishable
in the "Pisan Cantos"
methods
as amanifestation
in the distance
Negro
African
There
of dormant
becomes
Mt.
is to try to understand what
forces in the landscape. Thus
Taishan,
a sacred mountain
is around him
the mountain
in China;
the
it upon the sacred mysteries
of
impinge without
knowing
a
common
is
invested with
tribes; every
thing
fringe of eeriness.
are
in
soldiers
into the deten
and
introduce
too,
Pisa,
Japanese
they
soldiers
tion camp
the world
of the Noh
Says the Japanese
some of the best
play:
sentry : Paaak yu djeep over there,
soldiers we have says the captain
45
Dai Nippon Banzai from the Philippines
remembering
"a better
Kagekiyo
and they went
fencer
: "how
stiff the shaft of your
off each his own way
than Iwas,"
neck
is."
a shade.
said Kumasaka,
(74/442)
a
plays which
display
near-unearthly
was
a
man
heroism and magnanimity:
who
young
Kagekiyo
single-hand
an army of thieves, and commented,
tore the vizard
he
routed
when
edly
from an enemy's helmet,
"how stiff the shaft of your neck is;" then both
The
two
references
here are to Noh
is the spirit of a famous
laughter. Kumasaka
in death decided to make reparation by protecting
the coun
brigand, who
once
in
he
of
the
he
the
the
praises
ravaged;
tryside
play
bravery
boy who
hero
and villain
broke
into
killed him. Both become images in the "PisanCantos" of a kind of delir
a temper that dismisses
and generosity,
all the pettiness
and
a
in
of
of
of
loftiness
favor
faction,
earthly life,
immorality,
superhuman
a
can
in himself, but
like to cultivate
spirit. It is spirit that Pound would
not quite attain.
ious candor
Several
times
in the "Pisan Cantos,"
fragments from the Noh plays drift
as a reminder of an ethical ideal, other times
into consciousness,
sometimes
as a vision of extraterrestrial
the aerial spirit of
beauty. Once he remembers
feather mantle was found by a mortal who
the play Hagoromo,
whose
not surrender it until the spirit taught him her dance, a
would
symbolical
of the phases of the moon;
she agreed, but said that she
representation
could
not
trickery,
deceit:"
her cloak; the mortal
suspected
perform her dance without
the spirit told him, "With us there is no
but was chastened when
the moon's
arse been
chewed
off by
this time
semina motuum
"With
us there
is no deceit"
said the moon
Give
had
immacolata
nymph
back my cloak, hagoromo.
I the clouds of heaven
as the nautile
borne
ashore
in their holocaust
as wistaria
floating
shoreward
(80/500)
46
This
is both
a visitation
sentation
of an ethical
holocaust
to announce
lie; the motto
from
a pre
beauty and
in
of
the
midst
appears
the realm of superhuman
ideal, for the moon
nymph
that in her other-world
there is no such thing as a
a
urn
is truth, truth beauty ?is
of Keats' Grecian
?beauty
it
in these Cantos
in the "Pisan Cantos."
Elsewhere
governing
principle
econ
seems that the ethos of the Noh
extreme
austerity and
plays, their
can
that Pound
the
those
of
world
lower
do
with
battle
omy,
aspects
hates:
Greek
rascality against Hagoromo
vs/ vulgarity
Kumasaka
(79/485)
statues of the palace do battle against
the marble
"Byzantium"
I take it that Pound here
in upon Byzantium;
the formless ocean pouring
to Japanese dramaturgy.
a similar function
The Noh play is asked
assigns
to rectify the world,
shaken by the events of the Second World
much
In Yeats'
War.
But Pound
Noh
tent,
does not claim
theater offers. On
and he imagines
a
that he personally
rainy night the wind
that it is a hannya,
lives up to the ideal that the
blows open the flaps of his
the evil spirit of the Noh,
that is
embodied in thewind:
passes over my smoke-hole
the excess electric illumination
As Arcturus
is now
focussed
on the bloke who
and Awoi's
stole a safe he cdn't open . . .
tent
hennia
plays hob in the
flaps
k-lakk.thuuuuuu
making
rain
uuuh
(77/465)
In theNoh playAwoi No Uye the Lady Awoi is exorcised of her patholog
the exorcist manages
ical jealousy when
ousy as an evil spirit, a hannya, which
to
to incarnate that jeal
embody,
to dismissal.
is then susceptible
47
Pound therefore imagines that he is justly persecuted by his own illwill,
his own
as he puts
spitefulness;
pas assez,
probablement
convenience
in a passage
a little before
this,
J'ai eu piti? des autres
and at moments
that suited my
Le paradis
own
n'est pas artificiel
l'enfer non plus.
(76/460)
The citations from theNoh plays help Pound to establish that his life in
the detention
is a kind of theater,
camp
by good
a character,
populated
psychomachia
the Noh drama becomes
governed
and evil spirits.
laws, a
by strict moral
In a sense the whole
of
a setter-of-terms,
in the larger drama
of
transfiguration.
imprisonment
Not only does Pound remember passages from Noh plays; his thoughts
he translated them, his sojourn with
also keep turning to the time when
Yeats from 1913 to 1916. He even recollects Michio
Ito, living in extreme
and his vision
of Pound's
poverty:
So Miscio
"How
sat in the dark
Ainley
lacking the gasometer
all the time
face work
. . .
penny
back of that mask"
But Mrs
never believed
Tinkey
for mouse-chasing
and not
he wanted
her cat
cuisine.
for oriental
(77/469)
Henry
Ainley
created
the role of Cuchulain
in Yeats'
first experiment
in
Noh theater,At theHawk's Well (1917). Chiefly, however, Pound keeps
it fair to
over and over in his mind his memories
I think
of Yeats;
turning
in
"Pisan
Cantos"
Yeats
is
the
the
dominant
character
say that
besides
Pound himself. He dwells on Yeats' dreams of nobility (74/433); he re
members
how
Yeats
at
(80/496);
48
times
and murmured
Rapallo
thinks of snatches of Yeats'
home
he
several
he
takes Yeats
as an
looked
"Sligo
poems
at the sea-cliffs
in Heaven"
and
exemplar
(77/473;
imitates Yeats'
of fierce
devotion
near Pound's
cf. 114/793);
Irish accent
to
beauty
as in other
as a stern ideal; and
places he takes the Noh drama
(80/511), just
in one of the remarkable passages in the Cantos it appears that Yeats him
turns
in the act of intoning his poem "The Peacock,"
self, remembered
into a sort of aesthetic ghost:
There
is fatigue
deep
as the grave.
The Kakemono [a painted scroll] grows in flat land out of mist
sun rises
over the mountain
lop-sided
so that I recalled the noise in the
chimney
as it were
in the chimney
the wind
but was
in reality Uncle William
downstairs
composing
that had made a great Peeeeacock
in the proide ov his oiye
had made
made
a great
a great
peacock
in the proide
. . .
in the
peeeeeeecock
of his oyyee
ov his oy-ee
proide
as indeed he had, and
perdurable
. . .
a great
peacock aere perennius
at Stone
in Sussex by the waste
Cottage
and
the holly bush.
(or whatever)
moor
(83/533-34)
a small detail indeed,
holly bush is
earlier passage in the "Pisan Cantos":
That
and for that Christmas
at Maurie
but
it seems
to look back
to an
Hewlett's
out from
Going
Southampton
car
they passed the
by the dozen
not have shown
who would
weight
on a scale
riding, riding
for Noel the green holly
49
Noel,
Noel,
the green
holly
A dark night for the holly
That would
have been
Salisbury
plain
. . .
(80/515)
In passages like these the outer world grows dim, and supernatural beings
is no reason why an
There
start to teem, to grow urgent and clamorous.
an
not
and so Iwill offer
end with
outrageous
essay should
suggestion,
are in a sense a huge Noh
one. The "Pisan Cantos"
play, in which Pound
and Yeats plays the role
than a fussy old man, but
a sort of
spirit of poetical
disengaged
plays the role of the priest seeking enlightenment,
of the spirit, who once seemed to be little more
who
in death
creativity.
only Western
is revealed
Pound
the remarkable
to be
in his anthology
of Noh
translations
that the
of the Noh play is the seance (Trans., p. 236); and
in
from Canto
83, near the end of the sequence,
remarks
equivalent
passage
in the chim
like wind
voice, resounding
nearly disengaged
as
almost verges itself on a sort of
he reads his poem "The Peacock,"
ney
seance in which
the ghost of Yeats shows itself to Pound in weird
splen
a terminal dance of words.
dor, makes
which
50
Yeats'