Rooted in the tradition of western Hermeneutics, Reception Aesthetics regards readers’comprehension as the substantialization of diverse horizons, the fusion of horizons of individual expectation and history. However, the aesthetic distance between the work and readers’horizon of expectation, if unacceptably wide, may block the fusion of horizons, and prevent its readers from concretizing the inviting structure of the work. From the perspective of Reception Aesthetics, translation is a sort of recreation based on preunderstanding. Cathay,therefore,is a transla?tion experiment that tells Pound’s poetics and aesthetic experience. In Cathay, Pound, by means of transplanting and reproducing, endeavors to reserve the soul of Chinese poetry—image, which embodies the hermeneutic circula?tion and reflects principles of Reception Aesthetics.