HALF A HUNDRED IDEOGRAMS FOR CHU
Some may win a Nobel prize for translation and remixing, others may end up confined to a detention center.
It is not our job to say what our precursors ought to have done, but we can try to find out why they did it. –Ezra Pound, Typescript for a preliminary survey. (1951)
A recently published book titled “EZRA POUND’S CHINESE FRIENDS, edited and annotated by Zhaoming Qian has rekindled my interest in IDEOGRAMIC METHOD, something originally introduced to me by Dr. Robert Anton Wilson through his on-line 8 week class entitled The Ideogramic Method. At the end of Qian’s book that consists mostly of letters between EZ and some Chinese friends, Qian includes the APPENDIX Typescript for a preliminary survey. (1951). By Ez. This introduction, overview, explication and detailed essay of correspondances concerns the Chinese Written character almost entirely. Some good writing about pictures IMHO.
As soon as i began the class with RAW in 2004 while living in New Orleans Louisiana, i noticed that my good friend and teacher CHU was already a part of the class–synchronistically to me–because of the various CH’ ideograms throughout Pound’s poem “The Cantos” and the fact that our course work and class assignments included texts that included many different references to CHU (CH’U, CHOU, CHO, CHUNG, CHUE, CHIANG, CHÜ, etc.)
Four years later in 2008 published in the Appendix of this great new book is for me the fullest and most comprehensive dissection of the CH’ ideograms and correspondingly CHU ideograms in the Chinese written language. This synchronicity has spooked me out for a long time i confess, but now with this very helpful translation by Ezra Pound, i can extract sufficient meaning and poetic logic to UNIFY the ancient Chinese written language with some of the newer, western ARTISTIC traditions. With a special focus on stereoscopic anaglyphic GRAFFITI. And in particular the language of CHU (Born in Walsall).
(I will be modifying the ideograms and updating them as i perfect my own word and calligraphic writing skills. GODISTURBER takes a particular interest in sign, symbol, sigil. Word, picture, idea. ITALICS by FLY for extra accent!
Also note:
The umlaut is a diacritic consisting of a pair of dots or lines placed over a letter. A very similar diacritic is the diaeresis or trema. When the vowel is an i, the diacritic replaces the tittle. The two diacritics are very similar in appearance, and the distinction between them is not always made. “Umlaut” is a German word roughly meaning “changed sound” or “altered sound”.–wiki/umlaut
CHOU
The great dynastic name, given as verb: provide, extend, make a circuit, adjective: enough, close secret; bend, revolution, circumference. Certainly associated with the idea of motion.19 ideograms in a multilated copy of Tsang picture as with grass indication: wrinkles mostly what lies close together, and in some cases what revolves. On the whole it seems to belong to our CH locative. Various CH’OU can be associated with the CH cut idea without great strain, and by ref/ to the pictograms. The first CH’O to stab, is a clear case.
CHU, to go out of
THE GREAT GENERATIVE, root of a tree lying
above ground, BAMBOO (the radical)
A half hundred ideograms in the CHU list, a rule, a lord, to halt to go out of, several of them clearly indication: origin, others baffling till we come to the clue in the 14th. “root of a tree lying above ground,” that picture unites the heteroclite for the eye. The bamboo radical indicates a particular result or root, something from which a thing goes, or on which it stays, a SOURCE. This CHU is definitely of the locative verb.
As with WEI, leather, we have apparently heteroclite meanings.
We have also in our own language traces of similar not-ambiguities. To hide, conceal, to give hiding. The leather curtain, the lash, the thong that binds, the showing a whip to a dog to produce respect or fear. So with the 32nd CHU, beat down, build erect, flap, the picture is dulcimer (bamboo radical) over a tree. The ambiguity of up, down, flap, and all equal to verb “y to bamboo,” i.e to do what the bamboo does or is under for. The “dulcimer” includes “work” and sign (i shd/ say for motion) that has no defined meaning as a seperate ideogram. 41. punish, eradicate
CHU 2
We root in the ground to root up, and we are said to be rooted when we stop and stand firm.
The CHU list is too long to reproduce here, but the earnest readers can enjoy himself with it if he be so minded.
In tracing our CH conjugation we may even end with the idea that to “be at” or move, and to CUT have something in common. We “cut along.” We depart, part and split. The ax makes a clean cut and seperates. An active and an intransitive CH are not inconceivable.
CHU, with the umlaut is not going to fit very neatly into scheme so far outlined. We find however a carpenter’s square, utensil, arrange. If CHÜ (umlaut) enters our scheme at all it must be pre-it must have to do with preparation. Someone else must determine whether the cauldron preceded the altar. In the boiled sacrifice thay are the same. An element which Tsang gives as meaning: great, huge, combines with arrow sign to make the carpenter’s square. A saw is found lower in the list, also some saw tooth mountains. The saw may be ONOMATOPOEIC.
I leave CHÜ with judgement suspended.
CHÜ However does seem, in 24 ideograms fairly consistent in indication either preparation or unpreparedness, the preparation distinguished in the pictograms to show whether the preparation is in the cook house or the field, or by the pestle, for unprepared perhaps i shd/ write irresolute, hesitant (feet rad/). Both CHÜ and CH’Ü umlaut seem heteroclite, all one can observe is that if the groups seem without nexus, the individual words also seem without very comprehensible centre to their divergent meaning ascribed to them singly. Whether one shd/ postulate various lost terminal consonants, and leakages of meaning from other groups i do not know i see nothing here help to help define the CH verb.
CHUAN however seems fairly consistently to include the idea of turn, indicated definitely in 5 out of 13 ideograms, and for the most part directly relatable to either the CH of motion or of cutting.
Most of the 13 CH’UAN are clearly “connect” with pictogram of what (string, stream, beam) with a couple of violent exceptions, possibly emphasized chu’an, chu(boat) ang.
CHÜAN and CH’ÜANG [umlaut], the first fairly heteroclite, the second definitely indicating curvature which is also indicated in the pictograms, two of 12 CHÜAN and 6 of 11 CHÜAN (small circle, wriggle of snake)
CHUANG, CH’UANG, idea of weight, strength, bed is frequent.
CHUE, CHUEH, CHUEH (umlaut) CH’UEH (umlaut), this suffix EH is the latin ex, horn projection, husk
The chue is ambiguous in sound, but the pictogram contains “out of.”
CHÜEN and CHÜEN connect with the CHÜAN and CH’ÜAN.
CHUI
CHUI tempts to several false analogies: how do we connect sew, beat, hammer and awl?
I think the clue is in the simple radical for short tailed bird. The bird has a sharp beak and pecks, some hammers look not unlike certain birds. The thread and four stitches is the pictorial explanation of what happens with that particular piercing. Clay walls are hammered together but i do not think this is the primary association between the divergent senses of the sound chui.
CHUI belongs in the leather and root class. The verbal sense carries over quite clearly into at least three ch’ui: to beat, and two kinds of mallet, differentiated in ideogram.
The CHUN and CH’UN groups (lips and spring) are independent and extraneous from our locative or cut conjugations but CHÜN umlaut has clear indication of place above, latin super or altus, as with the water ad/ seep sea, italian mare alto. The third chun, even, equal must be taken as “level up to” and chun water level or plumb-line is wd/ say its relation. The verbal sense of the 15th chun can only be traced thru its noun, hornless deer (bind, seize, collect). But superior, ruler, high (with mountain rad/) etc. belong, i shd/ say without question to our verb CH.
CH’UN (umlaut) might be scattered were it not for the graphic signs. Grain heaped in an enclosure; the chief place above the sheep; the dress on the noble; granary, flock, and skirt for a lady.
CHUNG we have already located as the perpendicular axis potently locative, the weight that draws to the center, with ch’ung.
The single CH’OU is an eloquent picture of grind with the teeth (teeth and foot), and augur to bore a hole.–Ezra Pound, APPENDIX (1951), EZRA POUND’S CHINESE FRIENDS, ZHOAMING QIAN 2008. OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS.
I have refrained here, in this post, unlike others, from posting images of IDEOGRAMS from off the webnet because i wish to find the correct ones, and be more certain they are the correct ones myself, to be able to explicate the meaning better more visually.
This WIKIPEDIA LINK
Has some helpful background info upon the Chinese written characters.