Make It New  

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"Make it new" is the modernist credo of the poet Ezra Pound.

The poet Ezra Pound's 1934 injunction to "Make it new!" was paradigmatic of the modernism's approach towards the obsolete.

This is from Pound’s 1928 translation of Ta Hsio, The Great Digest (or Great Learning), a central Confucian text dating from the fifth to second century BC. It is crucial to remember: engagement with the past is inextricably linked to Pound’s conception of “make it new”: we can see this in the subjects he discusses in the 1934 essay collection of the same name (medieval troubadours, Elizabethan classicists, translators of Greek, 19th Century French Poets); we can certainly see it in his poems, from early lyrics to late Cantos; and we see it here, in Pound’s interest in the letters on T’ang’s bathtub.


1) In letters of gold on T’ang’s bathtub:

                            As the sun makes it new
                            Day by day make it new
                            Yet again make it new


2) It is said in the K’ang proclamation:

         He is risen, renewing the people.


3) The Odes say:

         Although Chou was an ancient kingdom/
         the celestial destiny/came again
         down on it new.

See also




Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Make It New" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

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