Ezra Pound on Abstractions

The following is quoted from The Gift by Lewis Hyde, who is quoting from Ezra Pound's 1913 manifesto:

Ezra Pound implores us to "Go in fear of abstractions. Don't use such an expression as 'dim lands of peace.' It dulls the image. It mixes an abstraction with the concrete. A maze of abstractions destroys unity." He explains in the ABC of Reading:

In Europe, if you ask a man to define anything, his definition always moves away from the simple things that he knows perfectly well, it recedes into an unknown region, that is a region of remoter and progressively remoter abstractions.

Thus if you ask him what red is, he says it is a 'colour.'

If you ask him what a colour is, he tells you it is a vibration or a refraction of light, or a division of the spectrum.

And if you ask him what vibration is, he tells you it is a mode of energy, or something of that sort, until you arrive at a modality of being, or non-being, or at any rate you get in beyond your depth, and beyond his depth...

But when the Chinaman wanted to make a picture of ... a general idea, how did he go about it? He is to define red. How can he do it in a picture that isn't painted in red paint?

He puts ... together the abbreviated pictures of

• Rose
• Iron rust
• Cherry
• Flamingo