The art of sincerity: Confucianism, Ezra Pound, and the Malatesta cantos

This thesis focuses upon sincerity and the distinguishing characteristic of Ezra Pound's modernist ethos and esthetic. It assumes as its foundation the Ta Hio (The Great Learning) of the Confucio-Mencian tradition, a text Pound translates twice over the course of eighteen years in the belief that its teaching might revitalize modern culture. The first chapter explores the main discrepancies between the two translations, discovering with Pound that sincerity is not simply a state of mind, passively obedient to circumstances and indiscriminate with the facts of history, but an active force that is always transforming and completing things, effectively shaping and enlightening our existence. From this principle, the second chapter champions sincerity as the central condition of Pound's "new method in scholarship," celebrating the pivotal responsibility of the artist in the articulation and determination of cultural character. The third chapter then examines the art of sincerity in terms of the Chinese or ideographic manner of exemplum, demonstrating the integrity with which Pound sought to stimulate the need for a new cultural renaissance by foregrounding the deeds of a fourteenth-century Italian mercenary, Sigismondo Malatesta, in light of the dark moral context in which it was his misfortune to be born.