''The Cantos'' by
Ezra Pound is a long, incomplete
poem
Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings in ...
in 120 sections, each of which is a ''
canto
The canto () is a principal form of division in medieval and modern long poetry.
Etymology and equivalent terms
The word ''canto'' is derived from the Italian word for "song" or "singing", which comes from the Latin ''cantus'', "song", from the ...
''. Most of it was written between 1915 and 1962, although much of the early work was abandoned and the early cantos, as finally published, date from 1922 onwards. It is a book-length work, widely considered to present formidable difficulties to the reader. Strong claims have been made for it as the most significant work of
modernist poetry
Modernist poetry refers to poetry written between 1890 and 1950 in the tradition of modernist literature, but the dates of the term depend upon a number of factors, including the nation of origin, the particular school in question, and the biases ...
of the twentieth century. As in Pound's prose writing, the themes of economics, governance and culture are integral to its content.
The most striking feature of the text, to a casual browser, is the inclusion of
Chinese character
Chinese characters () are logograms developed for the writing of Chinese. In addition, they have been adapted to write other East Asian languages, and remain a key component of the Japanese writing system where they are known as ''kanj ...
s as well as quotations in European languages other than English. Recourse to scholarly commentaries is almost inevitable for a
close reader. The range of allusion to historical events is very broad, and abrupt changes occur with little transition. There is also wide geographical reference; Pound added to his earlier interests in the classical Mediterranean culture and East Asia selective topics from
medieval
In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire ...
and early modern Italy and Provence, the beginnings of the United States, England of the seventeenth century, and details from Africa he had obtained from
Leo Frobenius
Leo Viktor Frobenius (29 June 1873 – 9 August 1938) was a German self-taught ethnologist and archaeologist and a major figure in German ethnography.
Life
He was born in Berlin as the son of a Prussian officer and died in Biganzolo, Lago ...
. References without explanation abound.
The section he wrote at the end of
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
, a composition started while he was interned by American occupying forces in Italy, has become known as ''The Pisan Cantos'', and is the part of the work most often considered to be self-sufficient. It was awarded the first
Bollingen Prize
The Bollingen Prize for Poetry is a literary honor bestowed on an American poet in recognition of the best book of new verse within the last two years, or for lifetime achievement. in 1948. There were many repercussions, since this in effect honoured a poet who had been condemned as a traitor of his native country, and was also diagnosed with a serious and disabling
mental illness.
Structure
''The Cantos'' can appear on first reading to be chaotic or structureless because it lacks plot or a definite ending.
R. P. Blackmur
Richard Palmer Blackmur (January 21, 1904 – February 2, 1965) was an American literary critic and poet.
Life
Blackmur was born and grew up in Springfield, Massachusetts.
He attended Cambridge High and Latin School, but was expelled in 1918.
A ...
, an early critic, wrote, "The work of Ezra Pound has been for most people almost as difficult to understand as Soviet Russia … ''The Cantos'' are not complex, they are complicated". The issue of incoherence of the work is reflected by the equivocal note sounded in the final two more-or-less completed cantos; according to the
William Cookson, the final two cantos show that Pound has been unable to ''make'' his materials cohere, while they insist that the world itself still does cohere. Pound and
T. S. Eliot had previously approached the subject of fragmentation of human experience: while Eliot was writing, and Pound editing, ''
The Waste Land
''The Waste Land'' is a poem by T. S. Eliot, widely regarded as one of the most important poems of the 20th century and a central work of modernist poetry. Published in 1922, the 434-line poem first appeared in the United Kingdom in the Octob ...
'', Pound had said that he looked upon experience as similar to a series of iron filings on a mirror. Each filing is disconnected, but they are drawn into the shape of a rose by the presence of a magnet. ''The Cantos'' takes a position between the mythic unity of Eliot's poem and Joyce's flow of consciousness and attempting to work out how history (as fragment) and personality (as shattered by modern existence) can cohere in the "field" of poetry.
Nevertheless, there are indications in Pound's other writings that there may have been some formal plan underlying the work. In his 1918 essay ''A Retrospect'', Pound wrote "I think there is a 'fluid' as well as a 'solid' content, that some poems may have form as a tree has form, some as water poured into a vase. That most symmetrical forms have certain uses. That a vast number of subjects cannot be precisely, and therefore not properly rendered in symmetrical forms". Critics like
Hugh Kenner who take a more positive view of ''The Cantos'' have tended to follow this hint, seeing the poem as a poetic record of Pound's life and reading that sends out new branches as new needs arise with the final poem, like a tree, displaying a kind of unpredictable inevitability.
Another approach to the structure of the work is based on a letter Pound wrote to his father in the 1920s, in which he stated that his plan was:
:A. A. Live man goes down into world of dead.
:C. B. 'The repeat in history.'
:B. C. The 'magic moment' or moment of metamorphosis, bust through from quotidian into 'divine or permanent world.' Gods, etc.
he letters ABC/ACB indicate the sequences in which the concepts could be presented.In the light of cantos written later than this letter, it would be possible to add other recurring motifs to this list, such as: ''periploi'' ('voyages around'); vegetation rituals such as the
Eleusinian Mysteries
The Eleusinian Mysteries ( el, Ἐλευσίνια Μυστήρια, Eleusínia Mystḗria) were initiations held every year for the cult of Demeter and Persephone based at the Panhellenic Sanctuary of Elefsina in ancient Greece. They are th ...
; ''usura'', banking and credit; and the drive towards clarity in art, such as the 'clear line' of Renaissance painting and the 'clear song' of the
troubadour
A troubadour (, ; oc, trobador ) was a composer and performer of Old Occitan lyric poetry during the High Middle Ages (1100–1350). Since the word ''troubadour'' is etymologically masculine, a female troubadour is usually called a ''trobairi ...
s.
The poem's symbolic structure also makes use of an opposition between darkness and light. Images of light are used variously, and may represent
neoplatonic
Neoplatonism is a strand of Platonic philosophy that emerged in the 3rd century AD against the background of Hellenistic philosophy and religion. The term does not encapsulate a set of ideas as much as a chain of thinkers. But there are some id ...
ideas of divinity, the artistic impulse, love (both sacred and physical) and good governance, amongst other things. The moon is frequently associated in the poem with creativity, while the sun is more often found in relation to the sphere of political and social activity, although there is frequent overlap between the two. From the ''Rock Drill'' sequence on, the poem's effort is to merge these two aspects of light into a unified whole.
''The Cantos'' was initially published in the form of separate sections, each containing several cantos that were numbered sequentially using
Roman numerals (except cantos 85–109, first published with
Arabic numerals). The original publication dates for the groups of cantos are as given below. The complete collection of cantos was published together in 1987 (including a final short
coda or fragment, dated 24 August 1966). In 2002 a bilingual edition of “Posthumous Cantos” (''Canti postumi'') appeared in Italy. This is a concise selection from the mass of drafts (circa 1915–1965) uncollected or unpublished by Pound, and contains many passages that throw light on ''The Cantos''.
I–XVI
:Published in 1924/5 as ''A Draft of XVI Cantos'' by the
Three Mountains Press
William Augustus Bird (1888–1963) was an American journalist, now remembered for his Three Mountains Press, a small press he ran while in Paris in the 1920s for the Consolidated Press Association. Taken over by Nancy Cunard in 1928, it becam ...
in
Paris
Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...
.
Pound was discussing the possibility of writing a long poem since around 1905, but work did not begin until sometime between 1912 and 1917, when the initial versions of the first three cantos of the proposed "poem of some length" were published in the journal ''
Poetry
Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings i ...
''. In this version, the poem began very much as a direct address by the poet, not to the reader but to the ghost of
Robert Browning. Pound came to realise that this need to be a controlling narrative voice was working against the revolutionary intent of his own poetic position, and these first three ur-cantos were soon abandoned and a new starting point sought. The answer was a Latin version of
Homer
Homer (; grc, Ὅμηρος , ''Hómēros'') (born ) was a Greek poet who is credited as the author of the ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey'', two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature. Homer is considered one of the ...
's ''
Odyssey
The ''Odyssey'' (; grc, Ὀδύσσεια, Odýsseia, ) is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest extant works of literature still widely read by modern audiences. As with the ''Iliad'', th ...
'' by the
Renaissance
The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history
The history of Europe is traditionally divided into four time periods: prehistoric Europe (prior to about 800 BC), classical antiquity (800 BC to AD ...
scholar
Andreas Divus
Andreas Divus was a Renaissance scholar, about whose life little is known; in Italian he is called Andrea Divo giustinopolitano or di Capodistria, i.e. surnamed Justinopolitanus in Latin and implying an origin at Koper, now in Slovenia, which was ...
that Pound had bought in Paris sometime between 1906 and 1910. Using the
metre
The metre (British spelling) or meter (American spelling; see spelling differences) (from the French unit , from the Greek noun , "measure"), symbol m, is the primary unit of length in the International System of Units (SI), though its prefi ...
and
syntax of his 1911 version of the
Anglo-Saxon poem ''
The Seafarer'', Pound made an English version of Divus' rendering of the ''
nekuia'' episode in which
Odysseus and his companions sail to
Hades in order to find out what their future holds. In using this passage to open the poem, Pound introduces a major theme; the excavating of the "dead" past to illuminate both present and future. He also echoes
Dante
Dante Alighieri (; – 14 September 1321), probably baptized Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri and often referred to as Dante (, ), was an Italian people, Italian Italian poetry, poet, writer and philosopher. His ''Divine Comedy'', origin ...
's opening to ''
The Divine Comedy
The ''Divine Comedy'' ( it, Divina Commedia ) is an Italian narrative poem by Dante Alighieri, begun 1308 and completed in around 1321, shortly before the author's death. It is widely considered the pre-eminent work in Italian literature an ...
'' in which the poet also descends into hell to interrogate the dead. The canto concludes with some fragments from the ''Second Homeric Hymn to
Aphrodite
Aphrodite ( ; grc-gre, Ἀφροδίτη, Aphrodítē; , , ) is an ancient Greek goddess associated with love, lust, beauty, pleasure, passion, and procreation. She was syncretized with the Roman goddess . Aphrodite's major symbols inclu ...
'', in a Latin version by
Georgius Dartona which Pound found in the Divus volume, followed by "So that:"—an invitation to read on.
Canto II opens with some lines rescued from the ur-cantos in which Pound reflects on the indeterminacy of identity by setting side by side four different versions of the troubadour poet
Sordello
Sordello da Goito or Sordel de Goit (sometimes ''Sordell'') was a 13th-century Italian troubadour. His life and work have inspired several authors including Dante Alighieri, Robert Browning, and Samuel Beckett.
Life
Sordello was born in the ...
: Browning's poem of that name, the actual Sordello of flesh and blood, Pound's own version of the poet and the Sordello of the brief life appended to manuscripts of his poems. These lines are followed by a sequence of identity shifts involving a seal, the daughter of
Lir
Lir or Ler (meaning "Sea" in Old Irish; ''Ler'' and ''Lir'' are the nominative and genitive forms, respectively) is a sea god in Irish mythology. His name suggests that he is a personification of the sea, rather than a distinct deity. He is na ...
and other figures associated with the sea:
Eleanor of Aquitaine
Eleanor ( – 1 April 1204; french: Aliénor d'Aquitaine, ) was Queen of France from 1137 to 1152 as the wife of King Louis VII, Queen of England from 1154 to 1189 as the wife of King Henry II, and Duchess of Aquitaine in her own right from 1 ...
who, through a pair of Homeric epithets that echo her name, shifts into
Helen of Troy, Homer with his ear for the "sea surge", the old men of
Troy
Troy ( el, Τροία and Latin: Troia, Hittite: 𒋫𒊒𒄿𒊭 ''Truwiša'') or Ilion ( el, Ίλιον and Latin: Ilium, Hittite: 𒃾𒇻𒊭 ''Wiluša'') was an ancient city located at Hisarlik in present-day Turkey, south-west of Ç ...
who want to send Helen back over the sea, and an extended, imagistic retelling of the story of the abduction of
Dionysus
In ancient Greek religion and myth, Dionysus (; grc, Διόνυσος ) is the god of the grape-harvest, winemaking, orchards and fruit, vegetation, fertility, insanity, ritual madness, religious ecstasy, festivity, and theatre. The Roma ...
by sailors and his transformation of his abductors into dolphins. Although this last story is found in the ''Homeric Hymn to Dionysus'', also contained in the Divus volume, Pound draws on the version in
Ovid
Pūblius Ovidius Nāsō (; 20 March 43 BC – 17/18 AD), known in English as Ovid ( ), was a Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a contemporary of the older Virgil and Horace, with whom he is often ranked as one of the th ...
's poem ''
Metamorphoses
The ''Metamorphoses'' ( la, Metamorphōsēs, from grc, μεταμορφώσεις: "Transformations") is a Latin narrative poem from 8 CE by the Roman poet Ovid. It is considered his ''magnum opus''. The poem chronicles the history of the ...
'', thus introducing the world of ancient Rome into the poem.
The next five cantos (III–VII), again drawing heavily on Pound's Imagist past for their technique, are essentially based in the Mediterranean, drawing on
classical mythology
Classical mythology, Greco-Roman mythology, or Greek and Roman mythology is both the body of and the study of myths from the ancient Greeks and ancient Romans as they are used or transformed by cultural reception. Along with philosophy and poli ...
,
Renaissance
The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history
The history of Europe is traditionally divided into four time periods: prehistoric Europe (prior to about 800 BC), classical antiquity (800 BC to AD ...
history, the world of the
troubadour
A troubadour (, ; oc, trobador ) was a composer and performer of Old Occitan lyric poetry during the High Middle Ages (1100–1350). Since the word ''troubadour'' is etymologically masculine, a female troubadour is usually called a ''trobairi ...
s,
Sappho's poetry, a scene from the legend of
El Cid that introduces the theme of banking and credit, and Pound's own visits to Venice to create a textual collage saturated with
neoplatonist
Neoplatonism is a strand of Platonic philosophy that emerged in the 3rd century AD against the background of Hellenistic philosophy and religion. The term does not encapsulate a set of ideas as much as a chain of thinkers. But there are some id ...
images of clarity and light.
Cantos VIII–XI draw on the story of
Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta
Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta (19 June 1417 – 7 October 1468) was an Italian condottiero and nobleman, a member of the House of Malatesta and lord of Rimini and Fano from 1432. He was widely considered by his contemporaries as one of the mo ...
, 15th-century poet,
condottiero, lord of
Rimini
Rimini ( , ; rgn, Rémin; la, Ariminum) is a city in the Emilia-Romagna region of northern Italy and capital city of the Province of Rimini. It sprawls along the Adriatic Sea, on the coast between the rivers Marecchia (the ancient ''Ariminu ...
and patron of the arts. Quoting extensively from primary sources, including Malatesta's letters, Pound especially focuses on the building of the church of San Francesco, also known as the
Tempio Malatestiano
The Tempio Malatestiano ( it, Malatesta Temple) is the unfinished cathedral church of Rimini, Italy. Officially named for St. Francis, it takes the popular name from Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, who commissioned its reconstruction by the fa ...
. Designed by
Leon Battista Alberti
Leon Battista Alberti (; 14 February 1404 – 25 April 1472) was an Italian Renaissance humanist author, artist, architect, poet, priest, linguist, philosopher, and cryptographer; he epitomised the nature of those identified now as polymaths. H ...
and decorated by artists including
Piero della Francesca
Piero della Francesca (, also , ; – 12 October 1492), originally named Piero di Benedetto, was an Italian painter of the Early Renaissance. To contemporaries he was also known as a mathematician and geometer. Nowadays Piero della Francesca i ...
and
Agostino di Duccio
Agostino di Duccio (1418 – ) was an early Renaissance Italian sculptor.
Born in Florence, he worked in Prato with Donatello and Michelozzo, who influenced him greatly. In 1441, he was accused of stealing precious materials from a Florenti ...
, this was a landmark Renaissance building, being the first church to use the Roman
triumphal arch
A triumphal arch is a free-standing monumental structure in the shape of an archway with one or more arched passageways, often designed to span a road. In its simplest form a triumphal arch consists of two massive piers connected by an arch, cro ...
as part of its structure. For Pound, who spent a good deal of time seeking patrons for himself,
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of ...
,
Eliot and a string of
little magazine
In the United States, a little magazine is a magazine genre consisting of "artistic work which for reasons of commercial expediency is not acceptable to the money-minded periodicals or presses", according to a 1942 study by Frederick J. Hoffman, ...
s and
small presses, the role of the patron was a crucial cultural question, and Malatesta is the first in a line of ruler-patrons to appear in ''The Cantos''.
Canto XII consists of three moral tales on the subject of profit. The first and third of these treat of the creation of profit ''
ex nihilo
(Latin for "creation out of nothing") is the doctrine that matter is not eternal but had to be created by some divine creative act. It is a theistic answer to the question of how the universe comes to exist. It is in contrast to ''Ex nihilo ...
'' by exploiting the
money supply
In macroeconomics, the money supply (or money stock) refers to the total volume of currency held by the public at a particular point in time. There are several ways to define "money", but standard measures usually include currency in circul ...
, comparing this activity with "unnatural" fertility. The central parable contrasts this with wealth-creation based on the creation of useful goods. Canto XIII then introduces
Confucius
Confucius ( ; zh, s=, p=Kǒng Fūzǐ, "Master Kǒng"; or commonly zh, s=, p=Kǒngzǐ, labels=no; – ) was a Chinese philosopher and politician of the Spring and Autumn period who is traditionally considered the paragon of Chinese sages. C ...
, or Kung, who is presented as the embodiment of the ideal of social order based on ethics.
This section of ''The Cantos'' concludes with a vision of hell. Cantos XIV and XV use the convention of the ''Divine Comedy'' to present Pound/Dante moving through a hell populated by bankers, newspaper editors, hack writers and other 'perverters of language' and the social order. In Canto XV,
Plotinus
Plotinus (; grc-gre, Πλωτῖνος, ''Plōtînos''; – 270 CE) was a philosopher in the Hellenistic tradition, born and raised in Roman Egypt. Plotinus is regarded by modern scholarship as the founder of Neoplatonism. His teacher wa ...
takes the role of guide played by
Virgil
Publius Vergilius Maro (; traditional dates 15 October 7021 September 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil ( ) in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He composed three of the most famous poems in Latin literature: th ...
in Dante's poem. In Canto XVI, Pound emerges from Hell and into an earthly paradise where he sees some of the personages encountered in earlier cantos. The poem then moves to recollections of
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
, and of Pound's writer and artist friends who fought in it. These include
Richard Aldington
Richard Aldington (8 July 1892 – 27 July 1962), born Edward Godfree Aldington, was an English writer and poet, and an early associate of the Imagist movement. He was married to the poet Hilda Doolittle (H. D.) from 1911 to 1938. His 50-year w ...
,
Henri Gaudier-Brzeska
Henri Gaudier-Brzeska (né Gaudier; 4 October 1891 – 5 June 1915) was a French artist and sculptor who developed a rough-hewn, primitive style of direct carving.
Biography
Henri Gaudier was born in Saint-Jean-de-Braye near Orléans. In 1910, ...
,
Wyndham Lewis
Percy Wyndham Lewis (18 November 1882 – 7 March 1957) was a British writer, painter and critic. He was a co-founder of the Vorticist movement in art and edited ''BLAST,'' the literary magazine of the Vorticists.
His novels include ''Tarr'' ( ...
,
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and journalist. His economical and understated style—which he termed the iceberg theory—had a strong influence on 20th-century f ...
and
Fernand Léger, whose war memories the poem includes a passage from (in French). Finally, there is a transcript of
Lincoln Steffens
Lincoln Austin Steffens (April 6, 1866 – August 9, 1936) was an American investigative journalist and one of the leading muckrakers of the Progressive Era in the early 20th century. He launched a series of articles in '' McClure's'', called " ...
' account of the
Russian Revolution. These two events, the war and revolution, mark a decisive break with the historic past, including the early
modernist
Modernism is both a philosophy, philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western world, Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new fo ...
period when these writers and artists formed a more-or-less coherent movement.
XVII–XXX
:XVII–XXVII published in 1924/5 as ''A Draft of XVI Cantos'' by the
Three Mountains Press
William Augustus Bird (1888–1963) was an American journalist, now remembered for his Three Mountains Press, a small press he ran while in Paris in the 1920s for the Consolidated Press Association. Taken over by Nancy Cunard in 1928, it becam ...
in Paris. Cantos I–XXX published in 1930 in ''A Draft of XXX Cantos'' by
Nancy Cunard
Nancy Clara Cunard (10 March 1896 – 17 March 1965) was a British writer, heiress and political activist. She was born into the British upper class, and devoted much of her life to fighting racism and fascism. She became a muse to some of the ...
's
Hours Press.
Originally, Pound conceived of Cantos XVII–XXVII as a group that would follow the first volume by starting with the Renaissance and ending with the Russian Revolution. He then added a further three cantos and the whole eventually appeared as ''A Draft of XXX Cantos'' in an edition of 200 copies. The major locus of these cantos is the city of Venice.
Canto XVII opens with the words "So that", echoing the end of Canto I, and then moves on to another Dionysus-related metamorphosis story. The rest of the canto is concerned with Venice, which is portrayed as a stone forest growing out of the water. Cantos XVIII and XIX return to the theme of financial exploitation, beginning with the Venetian explorer
Marco Polo's account of
Kublai Khan's paper money. Canto XIX deals mainly with those who profit from war, returning briefly to the Russian Revolution, and ends on the stupidity of wars and those who promote them.
Canto XX opens with a grouping of phrases, words and images from Mediterranean poetry, ranging from Homer through
Ovid
Pūblius Ovidius Nāsō (; 20 March 43 BC – 17/18 AD), known in English as Ovid ( ), was a Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a contemporary of the older Virgil and Horace, with whom he is often ranked as one of the th ...
,
Propertius and
Catullus
Gaius Valerius Catullus (; 84 - 54 BCE), often referred to simply as Catullus (, ), was a Latin poet of the late Roman Republic who wrote chiefly in the neoteric style of poetry, focusing on personal life rather than classical heroes. His ...
to the ''
Song of Roland'' and
Arnaut Daniel
Arnaut Daniel (; fl. 1180–1200) was an Occitan troubadour of the 12th century, praised by Dante as "the best smith" (''miglior fabbro'') and called a "grand master of love" (''gran maestro d'amore'') by Petrarch. In the 20th century he was la ...
. These fragments constellate to form an exemplum of what Pound calls "clear song". There follows another exemplum, this time of the
linguistic
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...
scholarship that enables us to read these old poetries and the specific attention to words this study requires. Finally, this "clear song" and intellectual activity is implicitly contrasted with the inertia and indolence of the
lotus eaters
In Greek mythology, the lotus-eaters ( grc-gre, λωτοφάγοι, lōtophágoi) were a race of people living on an island dominated by the lotus tree, a plant whose botanical identity is uncertain. The lotus fruits and flowers were the primary ...
, whose song completes the canto. There are references to the Malatesta family and to
Borso d'Este Borso d'Este, attributed to Vicino da Ferrara, Pinacoteca of the Castello Sforzesco">Sforza Castle in Milan, Italy.
Borso d'Este (1413 – August 20, 1471) was Duke of Ferrara, and the first Duchy of Modena and Reggio, Duke of Modena, which he rul ...
, who tried to keep the peace between the warring Italian
city state
A city-state is an independent sovereign city which serves as the center of political, economic, and cultural life over its contiguous territory. They have existed in many parts of the world since the dawn of history, including cities such as ...
s.
Canto XXI deals with the machinations of the
Medici bank
The Medici Bank (Italian: ''Banco dei Medici'' ) was a financial institution created by the Medici family in Italy during the 15th century (1397–1494). It was the largest and most respected bank in Europe during its prime. There are some estima ...
, especially with the
Medici
The House of Medici ( , ) was an Italian banking family and political dynasty that first began to gather prominence under Cosimo de' Medici, in the Republic of Florence during the first half of the 15th century. The family originated in the Mu ...
's effect on Venice. These are contrasted with the actions of
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson (April 13, 1743 – July 4, 1826) was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, architect, philosopher, and Founding Father who served as the third president of the United States from 1801 to 1809. He was previously the natio ...
, who is shown as a cultured leader with an interest in the arts. A phrase from one of Sigismondo Pandolfo's letters inserted into the Jefferson passage draws an explicit parallel between the two men, a theme that is to recur later in the poem. The next canto continues the focus on finance by introducing the
Social Credit
Social credit is a distributive philosophy of political economy developed by C. H. Douglas. Douglas attributed economic downturns to discrepancies between the cost of goods and the compensation of the workers who made them. To combat what he ...
theories of
C.H. Douglas for the first time.
Canto XXIII returns to the world of the troubadours via Homer and Renaissance neo-platonism. Pound saw
Provençal culture as a nexus of survival of the old pagan beliefs, and the destruction of the
Cathar
Catharism (; from the grc, καθαροί, katharoi, "the pure ones") was a Christian dualist or Gnostic movement between the 12th and 14th centuries which thrived in Southern Europe, particularly in northern Italy and southern France. Follo ...
stronghold at
Montsegur at the end of the
Albigensian Crusade is held up as an example of the tendency of authority to crush all such alternative cultures. The destruction of Mont Segur is implicitly compared with the destruction of Troy in the closing lines of the canto. Canto XXIV then returns to 15th-century Italy and the
d'Este family, again focusing on their Venetian activities and
Niccolo d'Este's voyage to the
Holy Land.
Cantos XXV and XXVI draw on the Book of the Council Major in Venice and Pound's personal memories of the city. Anecdotes on
Titian
Tiziano Vecelli or Vecellio (; 27 August 1576), known in English as Titian ( ), was an Italian (Venetian) painter of the Renaissance, considered the most important member of the 16th-century Venetian school. He was born in Pieve di Cadore, nea ...
and
Mozart deal with the relationship between artist and patron. Canto XXVII returns to the Russian Revolution, which is seen as being destructive, not constructive, and echoes the ruin of Eblis from Canto VI. XXVIII returns to the contemporary scene, with a passage on
transatlantic flight
A transatlantic flight is the flight of an aircraft across the Atlantic Ocean from Europe, Africa, South Asia, or the Middle East to North America, Central America, or South America, or ''vice versa''. Such flights have been made by fixed-wing air ...
. The last two cantos in the series return to the world of "clear song". In Canto XXIX, a story from their visit to the Provençal site at
Excideuil contrasts Pound and Eliot on the subject of
Christianity
Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. It is the world's largest and most widespread religion with roughly 2.38 billion followers representing one-third of the global pop ...
, with Pound implicitly rejecting that religion. Finally, the series closes with a glimpse of the printer
Hieronymus Soncinus of
Fano
Fano is a town and ''comune'' of the province of Pesaro and Urbino in the Marche region of Italy. It is a beach resort southeast of Pesaro, located where the '' Via Flaminia'' reaches the Adriatic Sea. It is the third city in the region by po ...
preparing to print the works of
Petrarch
Francesco Petrarca (; 20 July 1304 – 18/19 July 1374), commonly anglicized as Petrarch (), was a scholar and poet of early Renaissance Italy, and one of the earliest humanists.
Petrarch's rediscovery of Cicero's letters is often credited ...
.
XXXI–XLI (XI New Cantos)
![Mather Brown - Thomas Jefferson - Google Art Project](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d4/Mather_Brown_-_Thomas_Jefferson_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg)
:Published as ''Eleven New Cantos XXXI–XLI''. New York: Farrar & Rinehart Inc., 1934.
The first four cantos of this volume (Cantos XXXI–XXXVI) quote extensively from the letters and other writings of Jefferson,
John Adams
John Adams (October 30, 1735 – July 4, 1826) was an American statesman, attorney, diplomat, writer, and Founding Father who served as the second president of the United States from 1797 to 1801. Before his presidency, he was a leader of t ...
,
John Quincy Adams
John Quincy Adams (; July 11, 1767 – February 23, 1848) was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, and diarist who served as the sixth president of the United States, from 1825 to 1829. He previously served as the eighth United States ...
,
Andrew Jackson
Andrew Jackson (March 15, 1767 – June 8, 1845) was an American lawyer, planter, general, and statesman who served as the seventh president of the United States from 1829 to 1837. Before being elected to the presidency, he gained fame as ...
,
Martin Van Buren
Martin Van Buren ( ; nl, Maarten van Buren; ; December 5, 1782 – July 24, 1862) was an American lawyer and statesman who served as the eighth president of the United States from 1837 to 1841. A primary founder of the Democratic Party, he ...
and others to deal with the emergence of the fledgling United States and, particularly, the American banking system. Canto XXXI opens with the Malatesta family motto ''Tempus loquendi, tempus tacendi'' ("a time to speak, a time to be silent") to link again Jefferson and Sigismondo as individuals and the Italian and American "rebirths" as historical movements.
Canto XXXV contrasts the dynamism of Revolutionary America with the "general indefinite wobble" of the decaying aristocratic society of
Mitteleuropa
(), meaning Middle Europe, is one of the German terms for Central Europe. The term has acquired diverse cultural, political and historical connotations. University of Warsaw, Johnson, Lonnie (1996) ''Central Europe: Enemies, Neighbors, Friends'p ...
. This canto contains some distinctly unpleasant expressions of anti-Semitic opinions. Canto XXXVI opens with a translation of Cavalcanti's
canzone
Literally "song" in Italian, a ''canzone'' (, plural: ''canzoni''; cognate with English ''to chant'') is an Italian or Provençal song or ballad. It is also used to describe a type of lyric which resembles a madrigal. Sometimes a composition w ...
''Donna mi pregha'' ("A lady asks me"). This poem, a lyric meditation of the nature and philosophy of love, was a touchstone text for Pound. He saw it as an example of the post-Montsegur survival of the Provençal tradition of "clear song", precision of thought and language, and nonconformity of belief. The canto then closes with the figure of the 9th-century Irish philosopher and poet
John Scotus Eriugena
John Scotus Eriugena, also known as Johannes Scotus Erigena, John the Scot, or John the Irish-born ( – c. 877) was an Irish Neoplatonist philosopher, theologian and poet of the Early Middle Ages. Bertrand Russell dubbed him "the most ...
, who was an influence on the Cathars and whose writings were condemned as heretical in both the 11th and 13th centuries. Canto XXXVII then turns to Jackson, Van Buren,
Nicholas Biddle
Nicholas Biddle (January 8, 1786February 27, 1844) was an American financier who served as the third and last president of the Second Bank of the United States (chartered 1816–1836). Throughout his life Biddle worked as an editor, diplomat, au ...
,
Alexander Hamilton and the
Bank War
The Bank War was a political struggle that developed over the issue of rechartering the Second Bank of the United States (B.U.S.) during the presidency of Andrew Jackson (1829–1837). The affair resulted in the shutdown of the Bank and its re ...
and also contains a reference to the
Peggy Eaton
Margaret O'Neill (or O'Neale) Timberlake Eaton (December 3, 1799 – November 8, 1879), was the wife of John Henry Eaton, a United States senator from Tennessee and United States Secretary of War, and a confidant of Andrew Jackson. Their mar ...
affair.
Canto XXXVIII opens with a quotation from Dante in which he accuses
Albert of Germany of falsifying the coinage. The canto then turns to modern commerce and the arms trade and introduces Frobenius as "the man who made the tempest". There is also a passage on Douglas' account of the problem of purchasing power. Canto XXXIX returns to the island of
Circe
Circe (; grc, , ) is an enchantress and a minor goddess in ancient Greek mythology and religion. She is either a daughter of the Titan Helios and the Oceanid nymph Perse or the goddess Hecate and Aeëtes. Circe was renowned for her vas ...
and the events before the voyage undertaken in the first canto unfolds as a hymn to natural fertility and ritual sex. Canto XL opens with
Adam Smith on trade as a conspiracy against the general public, followed by another
periplus
A periplus (), or periplous, is a manuscript document that lists the ports and coastal landmarks, in order and with approximate intervening distances, that the captain of a vessel could expect to find along a shore. In that sense, the periplus wa ...
, a condensed version of
Hanno the Navigator's account of his voyage along the west coast of Africa. The book closes with an account of
Benito Mussolini as a man of action and another lament on the waste of war.
XLII–LI (Fifth Decad, called also Leopoldine Cantos)
:Published as ''The Fifth Decad of the Cantos XLII–LI''. London: Faber & Faber, 1937.
Cantos XLII, XLIII and XLIV move to the
Sienese bank, the
Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena and to the 18th-century reforms of
Pietro Leopoldo
Leopold II (Peter Leopold Josef Anton Joachim Pius Gotthard; 5 May 1747 – 1 March 1792) was Holy Roman Emperor, King of Hungary and Bohemia, and Archduke of Austria from 1790 to 1792, and Grand Duke of Tuscany from 1765 to 1790. He was a son ...
, Habsburg Arch Duke of Tuscany. Founded in 1624, the Monte dei Paschi was a low-interest, not-for-profit credit institution whose funds were based on local productivity as represented by the natural increase generated by the grazing of sheep on community land (the "BANK of the grassland" of Canto XLIII). As such, it represents a Poundian non-capitalist ideal.
Canto XLV is a
litany
Litany, in Christian worship and some forms of Judaic worship, is a form of prayer used in services and processions, and consisting of a number of petitions. The word comes through Latin '' litania'' from Ancient Greek λιτανεία (''lit ...
against ''Usura'' or
usury
Usury () is the practice of making unethical or immoral monetary loans that unfairly enrich the lender. The term may be used in a moral sense—condemning taking advantage of others' misfortunes—or in a legal sense, where an interest rate is c ...
, which Pound later defined as a charge on credit regardless of potential or actual production and the creation of wealth ''ex nihilo'' by a bank to the benefit of its shareholders. The canto declares this practice as both contrary to the laws of nature and inimical to the production of good art and culture. Pound later came to see this canto as a key central point in the poem. It contrasts what has gone before with the practices of institutions such as the
Bank of England that are designed to exploit the issuing of credit to make profits, thereby, in Pound's view, contributing to poverty, social deprivation, crime and the production of "bad" art as exemplified by the
baroque.
The poem returns to the island of Circe and Odysseus about to "sail after knowledge" in Canto XLVII. There follows a long lyrical passage in which a ritual of floating
votive
A votive offering or votive deposit is one or more objects displayed or deposited, without the intention of recovery or use, in a sacred place for religious purposes. Such items are a feature of modern and ancient societies and are generally ...
candles on the bay at
Rapallo
Rapallo ( , , ) is a municipality in the Metropolitan City of Genoa, located in the Liguria region of northern Italy.
As of 2017 it had 29,778 inhabitants. It lies on the Ligurian Sea coast, on the Tigullio Gulf, between Portofino and Chiav ...
near Pound's home every July merges with the cognate myths of
Tammuz
Dumuzid or Tammuz ( sux, , ''Dumuzid''; akk, Duʾūzu, Dûzu; he, תַּמּוּז, Tammûz),; ar, تمّوز ' known to the Sumerians as Dumuzid the Shepherd ( sux, , ''Dumuzid sipad''), is an ancient Mesopotamian god associated with shep ...
and
Adonis
In Greek mythology, Adonis, ; derived from the Canaanite word ''ʼadōn'', meaning "lord". R. S. P. Beekes, ''Etymological Dictionary of Greek'', Brill, 2009, p. 23. was the mortal lover of the goddess Aphrodite.
One day, Adonis was gored by ...
, agricultural activity set in a calendar based on natural cycles, and fertility rituals.
Canto XLVIII presents more instances of what Pound considers to be usury, some of which display signs of his anti-Semitic position. The canto then moves via Montsegur to the village of St-Bertrand-de-Comminges, which stands on the site of the ancient city of
Lugdunum Convenarum. The destruction of this city represents, for the poet, the treatment of civilisation by those he considers barbarous.
The a poem is of tranquil nature derived from a Chinese picture book that Pound's parents brought with them when they retired to Rapallo. Canto L, which again contains anti-Semitic statements, moves from John Adams to the failure of the Medici bank and more general images of European decay since the time of
Napoleon
Napoleon Bonaparte ; it, Napoleone Bonaparte, ; co, Napulione Buonaparte. (born Napoleone Buonaparte; 15 August 1769 – 5 May 1821), later known by his regnal name Napoleon I, was a French military commander and political leader who ...
. The final canto in this sequence returns to the usura litany of Canto XLV, followed by detailed instructions on making flies for fishing (man in harmony with nature) and ends with a reference to the anti-Venetian League of Cambrai and the first Chinese written characters to appear in the poem, representing the Rectification of Names from the ''
Analects'' of Confucius (the ideogram representing honesty at the end of Canto XLI was added when ''The Cantos'' was published as a single volume).
LII–LXI (The China Cantos)
:First published in ''Cantos LII–LXXI''. Norfolk Conn.: New Directions, 1940.
These eleven cantos are based on the first eleven volumes of the twelve-volume ''Histoire generale de la Chine'' by
Joseph-Anna-Marie de Moyriac de Mailla. De Mailla was a French
Jesuit who spent 37 years in
Peking
}
Beijing ( ; ; ), alternatively romanized as Peking ( ), is the capital of the People's Republic of China. It is the center of power and development of the country. Beijing is the world's most populous national capital city, with over 21 ...
and wrote his history there. The work was completed in 1730 but not published until 1777–1783. De Mailla was very much an
Enlightenment figure and his view of
Chinese history reflects this; he found Confucian political philosophy, with its emphasis on rational order, much to his liking. He also disliked what he saw as the superstitious pseudo-mysticism promulgated by both
Buddhists and
Taoists
Taoism (, ) or Daoism () refers to either a school of philosophical thought (道家; ''daojia'') or to a religion (道教; ''daojiao''), both of which share ideas and concepts of Chinese origin and emphasize living in harmony with the ''Tao ...
, to the detriment of rational politics. Pound, in turn, fitted de Mailla's take on China into his own views on Christianity, the need for strong leadership to address 20th-century fiscal and cultural problems, and his support of Mussolini. In an introductory note to the section, Pound is at pains to point out that the ideograms and other fragments of foreign-language text incorporated in ''The Cantos'' should not put the reader off, as they serve to underline things that are in the English text.
Canto LII opens with references to Duke Leopoldo, John Adams and
Gertrude Bell
Gertrude Margaret Lowthian Bell, CBE (14 July 1868 – 12 July 1926) was an English writer, traveller, political officer, administrator, and archaeologist. She spent much of her life exploring and mapping the Middle East, and became highl ...
, before sliding into a particularly virulent anti-Semitic passage, directed mainly at the
Rothschild family. The remainder of the canto is concerned with the classic Chinese text known as the ''Li Ki'' or ''
Book of Rites
The ''Book of Rites'', also known as the ''Liji'', is a collection of texts describing the social forms, administration, and ceremonial rites of the Zhou dynasty as they were understood in the Warring States and the early Han periods. The ''Book ...
'', especially those parts that deal with agriculture and natural increase. The diction is the same as that used in earlier cantos on similar subjects.
Canto LIII covers the period from the founding of the
Xia dynasty
The Xia dynasty () is the first dynasty in traditional Chinese historiography. According to tradition, the Xia dynasty was established by the legendary Yu the Great, after Shun, the last of the Five Emperors, gave the throne to him. In tradit ...
to the life of Confucius and up to circa 225 BCE. Special mention is made of emperors that Confucius approved of and the sage's interest in cultural matters is stressed. For example, we are told that he edited the ''
Book of Odes'', cutting it from 3000 to 300 poems. The canto also ascribes the Poundian motto (and title of a 1934 collection of essays) ''Make it New'' to the emperor
Tching Tang. Canto LIV moves the story on to around 805 CE. The line "Some cook, some do not cook, / some things can not be changed" refers to Pound's domestic situation and recurs, in part, in Canto LXXXI.
Canto LV is mainly concerned with the rise of the
Tatars
The Tatars ()[Tatar]
in the Collins English Dictionary is an umbrella term for different and the Tartar Wars, ending about 1200. There is a lot on money policy in this canto and Pound quotes approvingly the Tartar ruler
Oulo who noted that the people "cannot eat jewels". This is echoed in Canto LVI when
KinKwa remarks that both gold and jade are inedible. This canto is mainly concerned with
Ghengis and Kublai Khan and the rise of their
Yeun dynasty. The canto closes with the overthrow of the Yeun and the establishment of the
Ming dynasty
The Ming dynasty (), officially the Great Ming, was an imperial dynasty of China, ruling from 1368 to 1644 following the collapse of the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. The Ming dynasty was the last orthodox dynasty of China ruled by the Han peo ...
, bringing us to around 1400.
Canto LVII opens with the story of the flight of the emperor
Kien Ouen Ti in 1402 or 1403 and continues with the history of the Ming up to the middle of the 16th century. Canto LVIII opens with a condensed history of Japan from the legendary first emperor,
Emperor Jimmu
was the legendary first emperor of Japan according to the '' Nihon Shoki'' and ''Kojiki''. His ascension is traditionally dated as 660 BC.Kelly, Charles F"Kofun Culture"
Toyotomi Hideyoshi
, otherwise known as and , was a Japanese samurai and ''daimyō'' (feudal lord) of the late Sengoku period regarded as the second "Great Unifier" of Japan.Richard Holmes, The World Atlas of Warfare: Military Innovations that Changed the Cour ...
(anglicised by Pound as Messier Undertree), who issued edicts against Christianity and raided
Korea
Korea ( ko, 한국, or , ) is a peninsular region in East Asia. Since 1945, it has been divided at or near the 38th parallel, with North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) comprising its northern half and South Korea (Republic o ...
, thus putting pressure on China's eastern borders. The canto then goes on to outline the concurrent pressure placed on the western borders by activities associated with the great Tartar horse fairs, leading to the rise of the
Manchu dynasty
The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing,, was a Manchu-led imperial dynasty of China and the last orthodox dynasty in Chinese history. It emerged from the Later Jin dynasty founded by the Jianzhou Jurchens, a Tungusic-speak ...
.
The translation of the Confucian classics into Manchu opens the following canto, Canto LIX. The canto is then concerned with the increasing European interest in China, as evidenced by a Sino-Russian border treaty and the founding of the Jesuit mission in 1685 under
Jean-François Gerbillon
Jean-François Gerbillon (4 June 1654, Verdun, France – 27 March 1707, Peking, China) was a French missionary who worked in China.
He entered the Society of Jesus, 5 Oct, 1670, and after completing the usual course of study taught grammar and ...
. Canto LX deals with the activities of the Jesuits, who, we are told, introduced astronomy, western music, physics and the use of
quinine
Quinine is a medication used to treat malaria and babesiosis. This includes the treatment of malaria due to '' Plasmodium falciparum'' that is resistant to chloroquine when artesunate is not available. While sometimes used for nocturnal le ...
. The canto ends with limitations being placed on Christians, who had come to be seen as enemies of the state.
The final canto in the sequence, Canto LXI, covers the reigns of
Yong Tching and
Kien Long, bringing the story up to the end of de Mailla's account. Yong Tching is shown banning Christianity as "immoral" and "seeking to uproot Kung's laws". He also established just prices for foodstuffs, bringing us back to the ideas of Social Credit. There are also references to the Italian
Risorgimento
The unification of Italy ( it, Unità d'Italia ), also known as the ''Risorgimento'' (, ; ), was the 19th-century political and social movement that resulted in the consolidation of different states of the Italian Peninsula into a single ...
, John Adams, and
Dom Metello de Souza, who gained some measure of relief for the Jesuit mission.
LXII–LXXI (The Adams Cantos)
:First published in ''Cantos LII–LXXI''. Norfolk Conn.: New Directions, 1940.
This section of the cantos is, for the most part, made up of fragmentary citations from the writings of John Adams. Pound's intentions appear to be to show Adams as an example of the rational Enlightenment leader, thereby continuing the primary theme of the preceding China Cantos sequence, which these cantos also follow from chronologically. Adams is depicted as a rounded figure; he is a strong leader with interests in political, legal and cultural matters in much the same way that Malatesta and Mussolini are portrayed elsewhere in the poem. The English jurist Sir
Edward Coke, who is an important figure in some later cantos, first appears in this section of the poem. Given the fragmentary nature of the citations used, these cantos can be quite difficult to follow for the reader with no knowledge of the history of the United States in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
Canto LXII opens with a brief history of the Adams family in America from 1628. The rest of the canto is concerned with events leading up to the revolution, Adams' time in France, and the formation of
Washington's administration. Alexander Hamilton reappears, again cast as the villain of the piece. The appearance of the single Greek word "THUMON", meaning heart, returns us to the world of Homer's ''Odyssey'' and Pound's use of Odysseus as a model for all his heroes, including Adams. The word is used of Odysseus in the fourth line of the ''Odyssey'': "he suffered woes in his heart on the seas".
The next canto, Canto LXIII, is concerned with Adams' career as a lawyer and especially his reports of the legal arguments presented by
James Otis in the
Writ of assistance
A writ of assistance is a written order (a writ) issued by a court instructing a law enforcement official, such as a sheriff or a tax collector, to perform a certain task. Historically, several types of writs have been called "writs of assistance" ...
case and their importance in the build-up to the revolution. The Latin phrase '' Eripuit caelo fulmen'' ("He snatched the thunderbolt from heaven") is taken from an inscription on a bust of
Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin ( April 17, 1790) was an American polymath who was active as a writer, scientist, inventor, statesman, diplomat, printer, publisher, and political philosopher. Encyclopædia Britannica, Wood, 2021 Among the leading inte ...
. Cavalcanti's canzone, Pound's touchstone text of clear intellection and precision of language, reappears with the insertion of the lines "''In quella parte / dove sta memoria''" into the text.
Canto LXIV covers the
Stamp act and other resistance to British taxation of the American colonies. It also shows Adams defending the accused in the
Boston Massacre
The Boston Massacre (known in Great Britain as the Incident on King Street) was a confrontation in Boston on March 5, 1770, in which a group of nine British soldiers shot five people out of a crowd of three or four hundred who were harassing t ...
and engaging in agricultural experiments to ascertain the suitability of Old-World crops for American conditions. The phrases ''Cumis ego oculis meis'', ''tu theleis'', ''respondebat illa'' and ''apothanein'' are from the passage (taken from
Petronius' ''
Satyricon
The ''Satyricon'', ''Satyricon'' ''liber'' (''The Book of Satyrlike Adventures''), or ''Satyrica'', is a Latin work of fiction believed to have been written by Gaius Petronius, though the manuscript tradition identifies the author as Titus Petr ...
'') that T.S. Eliot used as epigraph to ''The Waste Land'' at Pound's suggestion. The passage translates as "For with my own eyes I saw the Sibyl hanging in a jar at Cumae, and when the boys said to her, 'Sibyl, what do you want?' she replied, 'I want to die.'"
The nomination of Washington as president dominates the opening pages of Canto LXV. The canto shows Adams concerned with the practicalities of waging war, particularly of establishing a navy. Following a passage on the drafting of the
Declaration of Independence
A declaration of independence or declaration of statehood or proclamation of independence is an assertion by a polity in a defined territory that it is independent and constitutes a state. Such places are usually declared from part or all of th ...
, the canto returns to Adams' mission to France, focusing on his dealings with the American legation in that country, consisting of Franklin,
Silas Deane
Silas Deane (September 23, 1789) was an American merchant, politician, and diplomat, and a supporter of American independence. Deane served as a delegate to the Continental Congress, where he signed the Continental Association, and then became the ...
and
Edward Bancroft and with the French foreign minister, the
Comte de Vergennes. Intertwined with this is the fight to save the rights of Americans to fish the Atlantic coastline. A passage on Adams' opposition to American involvement in European wars is highlighted, echoing Pound's position on his own times. In Canto LXVI, we see Adams in London serving as minister to the
Court of St James's. The body of the canto consists of quotations from Adams' writings on the legal basis for the Revolution, including citations from
Magna Carta and Coke and on the importance of
trial by jury
A jury trial, or trial by jury, is a legal proceeding in which a jury makes a decision or findings of fact. It is distinguished from a bench trial in which a judge or panel of judges makes all decisions.
Jury trials are used in a significan ...
(''per pares et legem terrae'').
Canto LXVII opens with a passage on the limits on the powers of the British monarch drawn from Adams' writings under the pseudonym Novanglus. The rest of the canto is concerned with the study of government and with the requirements of the franchise. The following canto, LXVIII, begins with a meditation on the tripartite division of society into the one, the few and the many. A parallel is drawn between Adams and
Lycurgus
Lycurgus or Lykourgos () may refer to:
People
* Lycurgus (king of Sparta) (third century BC)
* Lycurgus (lawgiver) (eighth century BC), creator of constitution of Sparta
* Lycurgus of Athens (fourth century BC), one of the 'ten notable orators' ...
, king of
Sparta
Sparta ( Doric Greek: Σπάρτα, ''Spártā''; Attic Greek: Σπάρτη, ''Spártē'') was a prominent city-state in Laconia, in ancient Greece. In antiquity, the city-state was known as Lacedaemon (, ), while the name Sparta referre ...
. Then the canto returns to Adams' notes on the practicalities of funding the war and the negotiation of a loan from the Dutch.
Canto LXIX continues the subject of the Dutch loan and then turns to Adams' fear of the emergence of a native aristocracy in America, as noted in his remark that Jefferson feared rule by "the one" (monarch or dictator), while he, Adams, feared "the few". The remainder of the canto is concerned with Hamilton,
James Madison
James Madison Jr. (March 16, 1751June 28, 1836) was an American statesman, diplomat, and Founding Father. He served as the fourth president of the United States from 1809 to 1817. Madison is hailed as the "Father of the Constitution" for h ...
and the affair of the assumption of debt certificates by Congress which resulted in a significant shift of economic power to the federal government from the individual states.
Canto LXX deals mainly with Adams' time as vice-president and president, focusing on his statement "I am for balance", highlighted in the text by the addition of the ideogram for balance. The section ends with Canto LXXI, which summarises many of the themes of the foregoing cantos and adds material on Adams' relationship with
Native Americans and their treatment by the British during the
Indian Wars
The American Indian Wars, also known as the American Frontier Wars, and the Indian Wars, were fought by European governments and colonists in North America, and later by the United States and Canadian governments and American and Canadian settle ...
. The canto closes with the opening lines of
Epictetus
Epictetus (; grc-gre, Ἐπίκτητος, ''Epíktētos''; 50 135 AD) was a Greek Stoic philosopher. He was born into slavery at Hierapolis, Phrygia (present-day Pamukkale, in western Turkey) and lived in Rome until his banishment, when ...
' ''Hymn of Cleanthus'', which Pound tells us formed part of Adams' ''paideuma''. These lines invoke
Zeus
Zeus or , , ; grc, Δῐός, ''Diós'', label= genitive Boeotian Aeolic and Laconian grc-dor, Δεύς, Deús ; grc, Δέος, ''Déos'', label= genitive el, Δίας, ''Días'' () is the sky and thunder god in ancient Greek reli ...
as one "who rules by law", a clear parallel to the Adams presented by Pound.
LXXII–LXXIII (The Italian Cantos)
:Written between 1944 and 1945.
These two cantos, written in Italian, were not collected until their posthumous inclusion in the 1987 revision of the complete text of the poem. Pound reverts to the model of
Dante
Dante Alighieri (; – 14 September 1321), probably baptized Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri and often referred to as Dante (, ), was an Italian people, Italian Italian poetry, poet, writer and philosopher. His ''Divine Comedy'', origin ...
’s ''
Divine Comedy
The ''Divine Comedy'' ( it, Divina Commedia ) is an Italian narrative poem by Dante Alighieri, begun 1308 and completed in around 1321, shortly before the author's death. It is widely considered the pre-eminent work in Italian literature ...
'' and casts himself as conversing with ghosts from Italy’s remote and recent past.
In Canto LXXII, imitative of Dante’s
tercet
A tercet is composed of three lines of poetry, forming a stanza or a complete poem.
Examples of tercet forms
English-language haiku is an example of an unrhymed tercet poem. A poetic triplet is a tercet in which all three lines follow the same ...
s (''terza rima''), Pound meets the recently dead Futurist writer
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti
Filippo Tommaso Emilio Marinetti (; 22 December 1876 – 2 December 1944) was an Italian poet, editor, art theorist, and founder of the Futurist movement. He was associated with the utopian and Symbolist artistic and literary community Abbaye d ...
, and they discuss the current war and their excessive love of the past (Pound) and of the future (Marinetti). Then the violent ghost of Dante’s
Ezzelino III da Romano
Ezzelino III da Romano (25 April 1194, Tombolo7 October 1259) was an Italian feudal lord, a member of the Ezzelino family, in the March of Treviso (in modern Veneto). He was a close ally of the emperor Frederick II ( r. 1220–1250), and ruled ...
, brother of Cunizza of Cantos VI and XXIX, explains to Pound that he has been misrepresented as an evil tyrant only because he was against the Pope’s party, and goes on to attack the present Pope
Pius XII
Pius ( , ) Latin for "pious", is a masculine given name. Its feminine form is Pia.
It may refer to:
People Popes
* Pope Pius (disambiguation)
* Antipope Pius XIII (1918-2009), who led the breakaway True Catholic Church sect
Given name
* Pius ...
and "traitors" (like king
Victor Emmanuel III
The name Victor or Viktor may refer to:
* Victor (name), including a list of people with the given name, mononym, or surname
Arts and entertainment
Film
* ''Victor'' (1951 film), a French drama film
* ''Victor'' (1993 film), a French shor ...
) who betrayed Mussolini, and to promise that the Italian troops will eventually "return" to
El Alamein.
Canto LXXIII is subtitled "Cavalcanti – Republican Correspondence" and is written in the style of Cavalcanti's "Donna mi prega" of Canto XXXVI.
Guido Cavalcanti appears on horseback to tell Pound about a heroic deed of a girl from Rimini who led a troop of Canadian soldiers to a mined field and died with the "enemy". (This was a propaganda story featured in Italian newspapers in October 1944; Pound was interested in it because of the connection with Sigismondo Malatesta's Rimini.) Both cantos end on a positive and optimistic note, typical of Pound, and are unusually straightforward. Except for a scathing reference (by Cavalcanti's ghost) to "Roosevelt, Churchill and Eden / bastards and small Jews", and for a denial (by Ezzelino) that "the world was created by a Jew", they are notably free of anti-Semitic content, although it must be said that there are several positive references to
Italian fascism and some racist expressions (e.g., "pieno di marocchini ed altra immondizia"—"full of Moroccans and other crap", Canto LXXII). Italian scholars have been intrigued by Pound's idiosyncratic recreation of the poetry of Dante and
Cavalcanti.
LXXIV–LXXXIV (The Pisan Cantos)
:First published as ''The Pisan Cantos''. New York: New Directions, 1948.
With the outbreak of war in 1939, Pound was in Italy, where he remained, despite a request for repatriation he made after
Pearl Harbor
Pearl Harbor is an American lagoon harbor on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, west of Honolulu. It was often visited by the Naval fleet of the United States, before it was acquired from the Hawaiian Kingdom by the U.S. with the signing of the R ...
. During this period, his main source of income was a series of radio broadcasts he made on
Rome Radio. He used these broadcasts to express his full range of opinions on culture, politics and economics, including his opposition to American involvement in a European war and his anti-Semitism. In 1943, he was indicted for treason in his absence, and wrote a letter to the indicting judge in which he claimed the right to
freedom of speech in his defence.
Pound was arrested by Italian partisans in April 1945 and was eventually transferred to the American Disciplinary Training Center (DTC) on May 22. Here he was held in a specially reinforced cage, initially sleeping on the ground in the open air. After three weeks, he had a breakdown that resulted in his being given a cot and pup tent in the medical compound. Here, he gained access to a typewriter. For reading matter, he had a regulation-issue Bible along with three books he was allowed to bring in as his own "religious" texts: a Chinese text of Confucius,
James Legge
James Legge (; 20 December 181529 November 1897) was a Scottish linguist, missionary, sinologist, and translator
who was best known as an early translator of Classical Chinese texts into English. Legge served as a representative of the London ...
's translation of the same, and a Chinese dictionary. He later found a copy of the ''Pocket Book of Verse'', edited by
Morris Edmund Speare, in the latrine. The only other thing he brought with him was a
eucalyptus
''Eucalyptus'' () is a genus of over seven hundred species of flowering trees, shrubs or mallees in the myrtle family, Myrtaceae. Along with several other genera in the tribe Eucalypteae, including '' Corymbia'', they are commonly known as e ...
pip. Throughout the Pisan sequence, Pound repeatedly likens the camp to
Francesco del Cossa's ''March''
fresco depicting men working at a grape arbour.
With his political certainties collapsing around him and his library inaccessible, Pound turned inward for his materials and much of the Pisan sequence is concerned with memory, especially of his years in London and Paris and of the writers and artists he knew in those cities. There is also a deepening of the ecological concerns of the poem. The awarding of the Bollingen Prize to the book caused considerable controversy, with many people objecting to the honouring of someone they saw as a madman and/or traitor. However, ''The Pisan Cantos'' is generally the most admired and read section of the work. It is also among the most influential, having affected poets as different as
H.D. and
Gary Snyder.
Canto LXXIV immediately introduces the reader to the method used in the Pisan Cantos, which is one of interweaving themes somewhat in the manner of a
fugue. These themes pick up on many of the concerns of the earlier cantos and frequently run across sections of the Pisan sequence. This canto begins with Pound looking out of the DTC at peasants working in the fields nearby and reflecting on the news of the death of Mussolini, "hung by the heels".
In the first thread, the figure of Pound/Odysseus reappears in the guise of "OY TIS", or no man, the name the hero uses in the
Cyclops episode of the ''Odyssey''. This figure blends into the Australia rain god
Wanjina
The Wandjina, also written Wanjina and Wondjina and also known as Gulingi, are cloud and rain spirits from Australian Aboriginal mythology that are depicted prominently in rock art in Australia. Some of the artwork in the Kimberley region of Wes ...
, who had his mouth closed up by his father (was deprived of freedom of speech) because he "created too many things". He, in turn, becomes the Chinese ''Ouan Jin'', or man with an education. This theme recurs in the line "a man on whom the sun has gone down", a reference to the ''
nekuia'' from Canto I, which is then explicitly referred to. This recalls ''The Seafarer'', and Pound quotes a line from his translation, "Lordly men are to earth o'ergiven", lamenting the loss of the exiled poet's companions. This is then applied to a number of Pound's dead friends from the London/Paris years, including
W. B. Yeats
William Butler Yeats (13 June 186528 January 1939) was an Irish poet, dramatist, writer and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival and became a pillar of the Irish liter ...
, Joyce,
Ford Madox Ford
Ford Madox Ford (né Joseph Leopold Ford Hermann Madox Hueffer ( ); 17 December 1873 – 26 June 1939) was an English novelist, poet, critic and editor whose journals '' The English Review'' and ''The Transatlantic Review'' were instrumental in ...
,
Victor Plarr
Victor Gustave Plarr (21 June 1863 – 28 January 1929) was an English poet; he is probably best known for the poem ''Epitaphium Citharistriae''.
Life
He was born near Strasbourg, France, of a French father from Alsace, Gustave Plarr, and an En ...
and
Henry James
Henry James ( – ) was an American-British author. He is regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism, and is considered by many to be among the greatest novelists in the English language. He was the ...
. Finally, Pound/Odysseus is seen "on a raft blown by the wind".
Another major theme running through this canto is that of the vision of a goddess in the poet's tent. This starts from the identification of a nearby mountain with the Chinese holy mountain
Taishan __NOTOC__
Taishan may refer to:
*Mount Tai or Taishan (), Shandong, China
* Taishan District, Tai'an (), named after the Mount Tai, a district in Tai'an, Shandong, China
*Taishan, Guangdong (), a county-level city of Jiangmen, Guangdong, China
** G ...
and the naming of the moon as ''sorella la luna'' (sister moon). This thread then runs through the appearance of
Kuanon, the Buddhist goddess of mercy, the moon spirit from ''Hagaromo'' (a
Noh
is a major form of classical Japanese dance-drama that has been performed since the 14th century. Developed by Kan'ami and his son Zeami, it is the oldest major theatre art that is still regularly performed today. Although the terms Noh and ' ...
play translated by Pound some 40 years earlier), Sigismondo's lover
Ixotta (linked in the text with Aphrodite via a reference to the goddess' birthplace
Cythera), a girl painted by
Édouard Manet
Édouard Manet (, ; ; 23 January 1832 – 30 April 1883) was a French modernist painter. He was one of the first 19th-century artists to paint modern life, as well as a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism.
Bo ...
and finally Aphrodite herself, rising from the sea on her shell and rescuing Pound/Odysseus from his raft. The two threads are further linked by the placement of the Greek word ''brododactylos'' ("rosy-fingered") applied by Homer to the dawn but given here in the dialect of Sappho and used by her in a poem of unrequited love. These images are often intimately associated with the poet's close observation of the natural world as it imposes itself on the camp; birds, a lizard, clouds, the weather and other images of nature run through the canto.
Images of light and brightness associated with these goddesses come to focus in the phrase "all things that are, are lights" quoted from John Scotus Eriugena. He, in turn, brings us back to the Albigensian Crusade and the troubadour world of
Bernard de Ventadorn. Another theme sees
Ecbatana, the seven-walled "city of Dioce", blend with the city of
Wagadu
The Ghana Empire, also known as Wagadou ( ar, غانا) or Awkar, was a West African empire based in the modern-day southeast of Mauritania and western Mali that existed from c. 300 until 1100. The Empire was founded by the Soninke people, and ...
, from the tale of ''Gassire's Lute'' that Pound learned from Frobenius. This city, four times rebuilt, with its four walls, four gates and four towers at the corners is a symbol for spiritual endurance. It, in turn, blends with the DTC in which the poet is imprisoned.
The question of banking and money also recurs, with an anti-Semitic passage aimed at the banker
Meyer Anselm. Pound brings in biblical injunctions on usury and a reference to the issuing of a
stamp script currency in the Austrian town of
Wörgl
Wörgl () is a city in the Austrian state of Tyrol, in the Kufstein district. It is from the international border with Bavaria, Germany.
Population
Transport
Wörgl is an important railway junction between the line from Innsbruck to Munich, an ...
. The canto then moves on to a longish passage of memories of the moribund literary scene Pound encountered in London when he first arrived, with the phrase "beauty is difficult", quoted from
Aubrey Beardsley
Aubrey Vincent Beardsley (21 August 187216 March 1898) was an English illustrator and author. His black ink drawings were influenced by Japanese woodcuts, and depicted the grotesque, the decadent, and the erotic. He was a leading figure in the ...
, acting as a refrain. After more memories of America and Venice, the canto ends in a passage that brings together Dante's celestial rose, the rose formed by the effect of a magnet on iron filings, an image from
Paul Verlaine
Paul-Marie Verlaine (; ; 30 March 1844 – 8 January 1896) was a French poet associated with the Symbolist movement and the Decadent movement. He is considered one of the greatest representatives of the '' fin de siècle'' in international and ...
of the human soul as a fountain and a reference to a poem by
Ben Jonson
Benjamin "Ben" Jonson (c. 11 June 1572 – c. 16 August 1637) was an English playwright and poet. Jonson's artistry exerted a lasting influence upon English poetry and stage comedy. He popularised the comedy of humours; he is best known for t ...
in a composite image of hope for "those who have passed over
Lethe
In Greek mythology, Lethe (; Ancient Greek: ''Lḗthē''; , ), also referred to as Lemosyne, was one of the five rivers of the underworld of Hades. Also known as the ''Ameles potamos'' (river of unmindfulness), the Lethe flowed around the cav ...
".
Canto LXXV is mainly a facsimile of the German pianist
Gerhart Münch's violin setting of the 16th-century Italian Francesco Da Milano's transcription for lute of
French composer Clément Janequin
Clément Janequin (c. 1485 – 1558) was a French composer of the Renaissance. He was one of the most famous composers of popular chansons of the entire Renaissance, and along with Claudin de Sermisy, was hugely influential in the development o ...
's choral work ''Le Chant des oiseaux'', an ancient song recalled to Pound's mind by the singing of birds on the fence of the DTC, and a symbol for him of an indestructible form preserved and transmitted through many versions, times, nations and artists. (Compare the ''nekuia'' of canto I.) Münch was a friend and collaborator of Pound in Rapallo, and the short prose section at the beginning of the canto celebrates his work on other early music figures.
Canto LXXVI opens with a vision of a group of goddesses in Pound's room on the Rapallo hillside and then moves, via Mont Segur, to memories of Paris and
Jean Cocteau
Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau (, , ; 5 July 1889 – 11 October 1963) was a French poet, playwright, novelist, designer, filmmaker, visual artist and critic. He was one of the foremost creatives of the s ...
. There follows a passage in which the poet recognises the Jewish authorship of the prohibition on usury found in
Leviticus. Conversations in the camp are then cross-cut into memories of Provence and Venice, details of the American Revolution and further visions. These memories lead to a consideration of what has or may have been destroyed in the war. Pound remembers the moment in Venice when he decided not to destroy his first book of verse, ''A Lume Spento'', an affirmation of his decision to become a poet and a decision that ultimately led to his incarceration in the DTC. The canto ends with the goddess, in the form of a butterfly, leaving the poet's tent amid further references to Sappho and Homer.
The main focus of Canto LXXVII is accurate use of language, and at its centre is the moment when Pound hears that the war is over. Pound draws on examples of language use from Confucius, the Japanese dancer Michio Itô, who worked with Pound and Yeats in London, a Dublin cab driver, Aristotle, Basil Bunting, Yeats, Joyce and the vocabulary of the U.S. Army. The goddess in her various guises appears again, as does Awoi's ''hennia'', the spirit of jealousy from "AOI NO UE", a Noh play translated by Pound. The canto closes with an invocation of Dionysus (''Zagreus'').
After opening with a glimpse of
Mount Ida, an important locus for the history of the
Trojan War
In Greek mythology, the Trojan War was waged against the city of Troy by the Achaeans (Greeks) after Paris of Troy took Helen from her husband Menelaus, king of Sparta. The war is one of the most important events in Greek mythology and ...
, Canto LXXVIII moves through much that is familiar from the earlier cantos in the sequence: del Cossa, the economic basis of war, Pound's writer and artist friends in London, "virtuous" rulers (
Lorenzo de' Medici
Lorenzo di Piero de' Medici (; 1 January 1449 – 8 April 1492) was an Italian statesman, banker, ''de facto'' ruler of the Florentine Republic and the most powerful and enthusiastic patron of Renaissance culture in Italy. Also known as Lorenzo ...
, the emperors
Justinian
Justinian I (; la, Iustinianus, ; grc-gre, Ἰουστινιανός ; 48214 November 565), also known as Justinian the Great, was the Byzantine emperor from 527 to 565.
His reign is marked by the ambitious but only partly realized ''renovat ...
,
Titus
Titus Caesar Vespasianus ( ; 30 December 39 – 13 September 81 AD) was Roman emperor from 79 to 81. A member of the Flavian dynasty, Titus succeeded his father Vespasian upon his death.
Before becoming emperor, Titus gained renown as a mili ...
and
Antoninus, Mussolini), usury and stamp scripts culminating in the
Nausicaa episode from the ''Odyssey'' and a reference to the Confucian classic ''
Annals of Spring and Autumn
The ''Spring and Autumn Annals'' () is an ancient Chinese chronicle that has been one of the core Chinese classics since ancient times. The ''Annals'' is the official chronicle of the State of Lu, and covers a 241-year period from 722 to 481 ...
'' in which "there are no righteous wars".
The moon and clouds appear at the opening of Canto LXXIX, which then moves on through a passage in which birds on the wire fence recall musical notation and the sounds of the camp and thoughts of Mozart, del Cossa and
Marshal Pétain meld to form musical counterpoint. After references to politics, economics, and the nobility of the world of the Noh and the ritual dance of the moon-nymph in Hagaromo that dispels mortal doubt, the canto closes with an extended fertility hymn to Dionysus in the guise of his sacred
lynx.
Canto LXXX opens in the camp in the shadow of death and soon turns to memories of London, Paris and Spain, including a recollection of
Walter Rummel, who worked with Pound on troubadour music before World War I and of Eliot, Lewis,
Laurence Binyon and others. The canto is concerned with the aftermath of war, drawing on Yeats' experiences after the
Irish Civil War as well as the contemporary situation. Hagoromo appears again before the poem returns to Beardsley, also in the shadow of death, declaring the difficulty of beauty with a phrase from Symons and Sappho/Homer's rosy-fingered dawn woven through the passage.
Pound writes of the decline of the sense of the spirit in painting from a high-point in
Sandro Botticelli
Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi ( – May 17, 1510), known as Sandro Botticelli (, ), was an Italian Renaissance painting, Italian painter of the Early Renaissance. Botticelli's posthumous reputation suffered until the late 19th cent ...
to the fleshiness of
Rubens and its recovery in the 20th century as evidenced in the works of
Marie Laurencin
Marie Laurencin (31 October 1883 – 8 June 1956) was a French painter and printmaker. She became an important figure in the Parisian avant-garde as a member of the Cubists associated with the Section d'Or.
Biography
Laurencin was born in Paris ...
and others. This is set between two further references to Mont Segur. Pound/Odysseus is then saved from his sinking raft by
Walt Whitman
Walter Whitman (; May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among ...
and
Richard Lovelace as discovered in the anthology of poetry found in the camp toilet and the other prisoners are compared with Odysseus' crew, "men of no fortune". The canto then closes with two passages, one a pastiche of Browning, the other of
Edward Fitzgerald's ''
Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
''Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám'' is the title that Edward FitzGerald gave to his 1859 translation from Persian to English of a selection of quatrains (') attributed to Omar Khayyam (1048–1131), dubbed "the Astronomer-Poet of Persia".
Altho ...
'', lamenting the lost London of Pound's youth and an image of nature as designer.
Canto LXXXI opens with a complex image that illustrates Pound's technical approach well. The opening line, "Zeus lies in
Ceres
Ceres most commonly refers to:
* Ceres (dwarf planet), the largest asteroid
* Ceres (mythology), the Roman goddess of agriculture
Ceres may also refer to:
Places
Brazil
* Ceres, Goiás, Brazil
* Ceres Microregion, in north-central Goiás ...
bosom", merges the conception of Demeter, passages in previous cantos on ritual copulation as a means of ensuring fertility, and the direct experience of the sun (Zeus) still hidden at dawn by two hills resembling breasts in the Pisan landscape. This is followed by an image of the other mountain that reminded the poet of Taishan surrounded by vapors and surmounted by the planet
Venus
Venus is the second planet from the Sun. It is sometimes called Earth's "sister" or "twin" planet as it is almost as large and has a similar composition. As an interior planet to Earth, Venus (like Mercury) appears in Earth's sky never f ...
("Taishan is attended of loves / under Cythera, before sunrise").
The canto then moves through memories of Spain, a story told by Basil Bunting, and anecdotes of a number of familiar personages and of
George Santayana
Jorge Agustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana y Borrás, known in English as George Santayana (; December 16, 1863 – September 26, 1952), was a Spanish and US-American philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist. Born in Spain, Santayana was raised ...
. At the core of this passage is the line "(to break the pentameter, that was the first heave)", Pound's comment on the "revolution of the word" that led to the emergence of
Modernist poetry
Modernist poetry refers to poetry written between 1890 and 1950 in the tradition of modernist literature, but the dates of the term depend upon a number of factors, including the nation of origin, the particular school in question, and the biases ...
in the early years of the century.
The goddess of love then returns after a lyric passage situating Pound's work in the great tradition of English lyric, in the sense of words intended to be sung. This heralds perhaps the most widely quoted passages in ''The Cantos'', in which Pound expresses his realisation that "What thou lovest well remains, / the rest is dross" and an acceptance of the need for human humility in the face of the natural world that prefigures some of the ideas associated with the
deep ecology movement.
The opening of Canto LXXXII marks a return to the camp and its inmates. This is followed by a passage that draws on Pound's London memories and his reading of the ''Pocket Book of Verse''. Pound laments his failure to recognise the Greek qualities of
Swinburne's work and celebrates
Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
Wilfrid Scawen Blunt (17 August 1840 – 10 September 1922), sometimes spelt Wilfred, was an English poet and writer. He and his wife Lady Anne Blunt travelled in the Middle East and were instrumental in preserving the Arabian horse bloodlines ...
,
Rudyard Kipling
Joseph Rudyard Kipling ( ; 30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936)''The Times'', (London) 18 January 1936, p. 12. was an English novelist, short-story writer, poet, and journalist. He was born in British India, which inspired much of his work.
...
, Ford, Whitman, Yeats and others. After an expanded clarification of the ''Annals of Spring and Autumn'' / "there are no righteous wars" passage from Canto LXXVIII, this canto culminates in images of the poet drowning in earth and a recurrence of the Greek word for weeping, ending with more bird-notes seen as a periplum.
After a number of cantos in which the elements of earth and air feature so strongly, Canto LXXXIII opens with images of water and light, drawn from
Pindar
Pindar (; grc-gre, Πίνδαρος , ; la, Pindarus; ) was an Ancient Greek lyric poet from Thebes. Of the canonical nine lyric poets of ancient Greece, his work is the best preserved. Quintilian wrote, "Of the nine lyric poets, Pindar ...
,
George Gemistos Plethon
Georgios Gemistos Plethon ( el, Γεώργιος Γεμιστός Πλήθων; la, Georgius Gemistus Pletho /1360 – 1452/1454), commonly known as Gemistos Plethon, was a Greek scholar and one of the most renowned philosophers of the late Byza ...
, John Scotus Eriugena, the mermaid carvings of
Pietro Lombardo
Monument of the Doge Pietro Mocenigo 1481
:''Pietro Lombardo is also the Italian version of the name of the theologian Peter Lombard.''
Pietro Lombardo (1435–1515) was an Italian Renaissance sculptor and architect; born in Carona (Ticino), he ...
and
Heraclitus
Heraclitus of Ephesus (; grc-gre, Ἡράκλειτος , "Glory of Hera"; ) was an ancient Greek pre-Socratic philosopher from the city of Ephesus, which was then part of the Persian Empire.
Little is known of Heraclitus's life. He wrot ...
' phrase ''panta rei'' ("everything flows"). A passage addressed to a
Dryad
A dryad (; el, Δρυάδες, ''sing''.: ) is a tree nymph or tree spirit in Greek mythology. ''Drys'' (δρῦς) signifies " oak" in Greek, and dryads were originally considered the nymphs of oak trees specifically, but the term has evolved t ...
speaks out against the death sentence and cages for wild animals and is followed by lines on equity in government and natural processes based on the writings of
Mencius. The tone of placid acceptance is underscored by three Chinese characters that translate as "don't help to grow that which will grow of itself" followed by another appearance of the Greek word for weeping in the context of remembered places.
Close observation of a wasp building a mud nest returns the canto to earth and to the figure of
Tiresias
In Greek mythology, Tiresias (; grc, Τειρεσίας, Teiresías) was a blind prophet of Apollo in Thebes, famous for clairvoyance and for being transformed into a woman for seven years. He was the son of the shepherd Everes and the nym ...
, last encountered in Cantos I and XLVII. The canto moves on through a long passage remembering Pound's time as Yeats' secretary in 1914 and a shorter meditation on the decline in standards in public life deriving from a remembered visit to the senate in the company of Pound's mother while that house was in session. The closing lines, "Down derry-down / Oh let an old man rest", return the poem from the world of memory to the poet's present plight.
Canto LXXXIV opens with the delivery of Dorothy Pound's first letter to the DTC on October 8. This letter contained news of the death in the war of
J.P. Angold, a young English poet whom Pound admired. This news is woven through phrases from a lament by the troubadour
Bertran de Born (which Pound had once translated as "Planh for the Young English King") and a double occurrence of the Greek word ''tethneke'' ("is dead") remembered from the story of the death of
Pan in Canto XXIII.
This death, reviving memories of the poet's dead friends from World War I, is followed by a passage on Pound's 1939 visit to Washington, D.C. to try to avert American involvement in the forthcoming European war. Much of the rest of the canto is concerned with the economic basis of war and the general lack of interest in this subject on the part of historians and politicians; John Adams is again held up as an ideal. The canto also contains a reproduction, in Italian, of a conversation between the poet and a "swineherd's sister" through the DTC fence. He asks her if the American troops behave well and she replies OK. He then asks how they compare to the Germans and she replies that they are the same.
The moon/goddess reappears at the core of the canto as "pin-up" and "chronometer" close to the line "out of all this beauty something must come". The closing lines of the canto, and of the sequence, "If the hoar frost grip thy tent / Thou wilt give thanks when night is spent", sound a final note of acceptance and resignation, despite the return to the sphere of action, prompted by the death of Angold, that marks most of the canto.
LXXXV–XCV (Section: Rock-Drill)
:Published in 1956 as ''Section: Rock-Drill, 85–95 de los cantares'' by New Directions, New York.
Pound was flown from Pisa to Washington to face trial on a charge of treason in 1946. Found unfit to stand trial because of the state of his mental health, he was incarcerated in
St. Elizabeths Hospital, where he was to remain until 1958. Here he began to entertain writers and academics with an interest in his work and to write, working on translations of the Confucian ''Book of Odes'' and of
Sophocles
Sophocles (; grc, Σοφοκλῆς, , Sophoklễs; 497/6 – winter 406/5 BC)Sommerstein (2002), p. 41. is one of three ancient Greek tragedians, at least one of whose plays has survived in full. His first plays were written later than, or c ...
' play ''
Women of Trachis
''Women of Trachis'' or ''The Trachiniae'' ( grc, Τραχίνιαι, ) c. 450–425 BC, is an Athenian tragedy by Sophocles.
''Women of Trachis'' is generally considered to be less developed than Sophocles' other works, and its dating has been ...
'' and two new sections of the cantos; the first of these was ''Rock Drill''.
The two main written sources for the ''Rock Drill'' cantos are the Confucian ''
Book of Documents'', in an edition by the French Jesuit
Séraphin Couvreur
Séraphin Couvreur (; EFEO Chinese transcription: kóu sái fēn; 14 January 1835 – 19 November 1919) was a French Jesuit missionary to China, sinologist, and creator of the EFEO Chinese transcription. The system devised by Couvreur of the ...
, which contained the Chinese text and translations into Latin and French under the title ''Chou King'' (which Pound uses in the poem), and Senator
Thomas Hart Benton's ''Thirty Years View: Or A History of the American Government for Thirty Years From 1820–1850'', which covers the period of the bank wars. In an interview given in 1962, and reprinted by J. P. Sullivan, Pound said that the title ''Rock Drill'' "was intended to imply the necessary resistance in getting a main thesis across — hammering."
The first canto in the sequence, Canto LXXXV, contains 104 Chinese characters from the ''Chou King'', in addition to a number of Latin phrases, mostly taken from Couvreur's translation. There are also a small number of Greek words. The overall effect for the English-speaking reader is one of unreadability, and the canto is hard to elucidate unless read alongside a copy of Couvreur's text.
The core meaning is summed up in Pound's footnote to the effect that the History Classic contains the essentials of the Confucian view of good government. In the canto, these are summed up in the line "Our dynasty came in because of a great sensibility", where sensibility translates the key character Ling, and in the reference to the four Tuan, or foundations, benevolence, rectitude, manners and knowledge. Rulers who Pound viewed as embodying some or all of these characteristics are adduced: Queen
Elizabeth I
Elizabeth I (7 September 153324 March 1603) was List of English monarchs, Queen of England and List of Irish monarchs, Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death in 1603. Elizabeth was the last of the five House of Tudor monarchs and is ...
,
Cleopatra,
Alexander the Great
Alexander III of Macedon ( grc, Ἀλέξανδρος, Alexandros; 20/21 July 356 BC – 10/11 June 323 BC), commonly known as Alexander the Great, was a king of the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedon. He succeeded his father Philip II to ...
, as are
Napoleon III
Napoleon III (Charles Louis Napoléon Bonaparte; 20 April 18089 January 1873) was the first President of France (as Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte) from 1848 to 1852 and the last monarch of France as Emperor of the French from 1852 to 1870. A nephew ...
,
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (; ; January 30, 1882April 12, 1945), often referred to by his initials FDR, was an American politician and attorney who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. As the ...
and
Harry Dexter White
Harry Dexter White (October 29, 1892 – August 16, 1948) was a senior U.S. Treasury department official. Working closely with the Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau Jr., he helped set American financial policy toward the Allies of World ...
, who stand for everything Pound opposes in government and finance.
The world of nature, Pound's source of wealth and spiritual nourishment, also features strongly; images of roots, grass and surviving traces of fertility rites in Catholic Italy cluster around the sacred tree
Yggdrasil
Yggdrasil (from Old Norse ), in Norse cosmology, is an immense and central sacred tree. Around it exists all else, including the Nine Worlds.
Yggdrasil is attested in the ''Poetic Edda'' compiled in the 13th century from earlier traditional ...
. The natural world and the world of government are related to ''tekhne'' or art.
Richard of Saint Victor
Richard of Saint Victor (died 1173) was a Medieval Scottish philosopher and theologian and one of the most influential religious thinkers of his time. A canon regular, he was a prominent mystical theologian, and was prior of the famous Augustin ...
, with his emphasis on modes of thinking, makes an appearance, in close company with Eriugena, the philosopher of light.
Canto LXXXVI opens with a passage on the
Congress of Vienna
The Congress of Vienna (, ) of 1814–1815 was a series of international diplomatic meetings to discuss and agree upon a possible new layout of the European political and constitutional order after the downfall of the French Emperor Napoleon B ...
and continues to hold up examples of good and bad rulers as defined by the poet with Latin and Chinese phrases from Couvreur woven through them. The word ''Sagetrieb'', meaning something like the transmission of tradition, apparently coined by Pound, is repeated after its first use in the previous canto, underlining Pound's belief that he is transmitting a tradition of political ethics that unites China, Revolutionary America and his own beliefs.
Canto LXXXVII opens on usury and moves through a number of references to "good" and "bad" leaders and lawgivers interwoven with neo-platonist philosophers and images of the power of natural process. This culminates in a passage bringing together Binyon's dictum ''slowness is beauty, golden ratio, a room in the church of
St. Hilaire, Poitiers built to that rule where one can stand without throwing a shadow, Mencius on natural phenomena, the 17th-century English mystic
John Heydon (who Pound remembered from his days working with Yeats) and other images relating to the worship of light including "'MontSegur, sacred to
Helios". The canto then closes with more on economics.
The following canto, Canto LXXXVIII, is almost entirely derived from Benton's book and focuses mainly on
John Randolph of Roanoke
John Randolph (June 2, 1773May 24, 1833), commonly known as John Randolph of Roanoke,''Roanoke'' refers to Roanoke Plantation in Charlotte County, Virginia, not to the city of the same name. was an American planter, and a politician from Virg ...
and the campaign against the establishment of the
Bank of the United States. Pound viewed the setting up of this bank as a selling out of the principles of economic equity on which the U.S. Constitution was based. At the centre of the canto there is a passage on monopolies that draws on the lives and writings of
Thales of Miletus
Thales of Miletus ( ; grc-gre, Θαλῆς; ) was a Greek mathematician, astronomer, statesman, and pre-Socratic philosopher from Miletus in Ionia, Asia Minor. He was one of the Seven Sages of Greece. Many, most notably Aristotle, regarded ...
, the emperor
Antoninus Pius
Antoninus Pius ( Latin: ''Titus Aelius Hadrianus Antoninus Pius''; 19 September 86 – 7 March 161) was Roman emperor from 138 to 161. He was the fourth of the Five Good Emperors from the Nerva–Antonine dynasty.
Born into a senatori ...
and St.
Ambrose, amongst others.
Canto LXXXIX continues with Benton and also draws on
Alexander del Mar's ''A History of Money Systems''. The same examples of good rule are drawn on, with the addition of the Emperor
Aurelian. Possibly in defence of his focus on so much "unpoetical" material, Pound quotes
Rodolphus Agricola
Rodolphus Agricola ( la, Rudolphus Agricola Phrisius; August 28, 1443, or February 17, 1444 – October 27, 1485) was a pre- Erasmian humanist of the Northern Low Countries, famous for his knowledge of Latin and Greek. He was an educator, music ...
to the effect that one writes "to move, to teach or to delight" (''ut moveat, ut doceat, ut delectet''), with the implication that the present cantos are designed to teach. The naturalists
Alexander von Humboldt
Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt (14 September 17696 May 1859) was a German polymath, geographer, naturalist, explorer, and proponent of Romantic philosophy and science. He was the younger brother of the Prussian minister, ...
and
Louis Agassiz are mentioned in passing.
Apart from a passing reference to Randolph of Roanoke, Canto XC moves to the world of myth and love, both divine and sexual. The canto opens with an epigraph in Latin to the effect that while the human spirit is not love, it delights in the love that proceeds from it. The Latin is paraphrased in English as the final lines of the canto. Following a reference to signatures in nature and Yggdrasil, the poet introduces
Baucis and Philemon, an aged couple who, in a story from Ovid's ''
Metamorphoses
The ''Metamorphoses'' ( la, Metamorphōsēs, from grc, μεταμορφώσεις: "Transformations") is a Latin narrative poem from 8 CE by the Roman poet Ovid. It is considered his ''magnum opus''. The poem chronicles the history of the ...
'', offer hospitality to the gods in their humble house and are rewarded. In this context, they may be intended to represent the poet and his wife.
This canto then moves to the fountain of
Castalia
Castalia ( grc, Κασταλία), in Greek mythology, was a naiad-nymph, a daughter of Achelous who inhabited the Castalian spring in Delphi. In older traditions, Castalian spring already existed by the time Apollo came to Delphi searching f ...
on
Parnassus
Mount Parnassus (; el, Παρνασσός, ''Parnassós'') is a mountain range of central Greece that is and historically has been especially valuable to the Greek nation and the earlier Greek city-states for many reasons. In peace, it offers ...
. This fountain was sacred to the
Muse
In ancient Greek religion and mythology, the Muses ( grc, Μοῦσαι, Moûsai, el, Μούσες, Múses) are the inspirational goddesses of literature, science, and the arts. They were considered the source of the knowledge embodied in the ...
s and its water was said to inspire poetry in those who drank it. The next line, "Templum aedificans not yet marble", refers to a period when the gods were worshiped in natural settings prior to the rigid codification of religion as represented by the erection of marble temples. The "fount in the hills fold" and the erect temple (''Templum aedificans'') also serve as images of sexual love.
Pound then invokes
Amphion
There are several characters named Amphion in Greek mythology:
* Amphion, son of Zeus and Antiope, and twin brother of Zethus (see Amphion and Zethus). Together, they are famous for building Thebes. Pausanias recounts an Egyptian legend accor ...
, the mythical founder of music, before recalling the San Ku/St Hilaire/Jacques de Molay/Eriugena/Sagetrieb cluster from Canto LXXXVII. Then the goddess appears in a number of guises: the moon, Mother Earth (in the Randolph reference), the Sibyl (last encountered in the context of the American Revolution in Canto LXIV),
Isis
Isis (; ''Ēse''; ; Meroitic: ''Wos'' 'a''or ''Wusa''; Phoenician: 𐤀𐤎, romanized: ʾs) was a major goddess in ancient Egyptian religion whose worship spread throughout the Greco-Roman world. Isis was first mentioned in the Old Kin ...
and Kuanon. In a litany, she is thanked for raising Pound up (''m'elevasti'', a reference to Dante's praise of his beloved Beatrice in the ''Paradiso'') out of hell (
Erebus
In Greek mythology, Erebus (; grc, Ἔρεβος, Érebos, "deep darkness, shadow".), or Erebos, is the personification of darkness and one of the primordial deities. Hesiod's ''Theogony'' identifies him as one of the first five beings in exis ...
).
The canto closes with a number of instances of sexual love between gods and humans set in a paradisiacal vision of the natural world. The invocation of the goddess and the vision of paradise are sandwiched between two citations of Richard of St. Victor's statement ''ubi amor, ibi oculuc est'' ("where love is, there the eye is"), binding together the concepts of love, light and vision in a single image.
Canto XCI continues the paradisiacal theme, opening with a snatch of the "clear song" of Provençe. The central images are the invented figure
Ra-
Set
Set, The Set, SET or SETS may refer to:
Science, technology, and mathematics Mathematics
*Set (mathematics), a collection of elements
*Category of sets, the category whose objects and morphisms are sets and total functions, respectively
Electro ...
, a composite sun/moon deity whose boat floats on a river of crystal. The crystal image, which is to remain important until the end of ''The Cantos'', is a composite of frozen light, the emphasis on inorganic form found in the writings of the mystic Heydon, the air in Dante's ''Paradiso'', and the mirror of crystal in the ''Chou King'' amongst other sources.
Apollonius of Tyana
Apollonius of Tyana ( grc, Ἀπολλώνιος ὁ Τυανεύς; c. 3 BC – c. 97 AD) was a Greek Neopythagorean philosopher from the town of Tyana in the Roman province of Cappadocia in Anatolia. He is the subject of '' ...
appears, as do
Helen of Tyre, partner of
Simon Magus
Simon Magus (Greek Σίμων ὁ μάγος, Latin: Simon Magus), also known as Simon the Sorcerer or Simon the Magician, was a religious figure whose confrontation with Peter is recorded in Acts . The act of simony, or paying for position, is ...
and Justinian and his consort
Theodora
Theodora is a given name of Greek origin, meaning "God's gift".
Theodora may also refer to:
Historical figures known as Theodora
Byzantine empresses
* Theodora (wife of Justinian I) ( 500 – 548), saint by the Orthodox Church
* Theodora o ...
. These couples can be seen as variants on Ra-Set.
Much of the rest of the canto consists of references to mystic doctrines of light, vision and intellection. There is an extract from a hymn to
Diana from
Layamon
Layamon or Laghamon (, ; ) – spelled Laȝamon or Laȝamonn in his time, occasionally written Lawman – was an English poet of the late 12th/early 13th century and author of the ''Brut'', a notable work that was the first to present the legend ...
's 12th-century poem ''Brut''. An italicised section, claiming that the 1913 foundation of the
Federal Reserve Bank
A Federal Reserve Bank is a regional bank of the Federal Reserve System, the central banking system of the United States. There are twelve in total, one for each of the twelve Federal Reserve Districts that were created by the Federal Reserve ...
, which took power over interest rates away from Congress, and the teaching of
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...
and
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating pathologies explained as originating in conflicts ...
in American universities ("beaneries") are examples of what
Julien Benda
Julien Benda (26 December 1867 – 7 June 1956) was a French philosopher and novelist, known as an essayist and cultural critic. He is best known for his short book, ''La Trahison des Clercs'' from 1927 (''The Treason of the Intellectuals'' or '' ...
termed ''La trahison des clercs'', contains anti-Semitic language. Towards the close of the canto, the reader is returned to the world of Odysseus; a line from Book Five of the ''Odyssey'' tells of the winds breaking up the hero's boat and is followed shortly by
Leucothea
In Greek mythology, Leucothea (; grc-gre, Λευκοθέα, Leukothéa, white goddess), sometimes also called Leucothoe ( grc-gre, Λευκοθόη, Leukothóē), was one of the aspects under which an ancient sea goddess was recognized, in this ...
, "Kadamon thugater" or
Cadmon's daughter) offering him her veil to carry him to shore ("my bikini is worth yr raft").
An image of the distribution of seeds from the sacred mountain opens Canto XCII, continuing the concern with the relationship between natural process and the divine. The kernel of this canto is the idea that the
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire ( la, Imperium Romanum ; grc-gre, Βασιλεία τῶν Ῥωμαίων, Basileía tôn Rhōmaíōn) was the post- Republican period of ancient Rome. As a polity, it included large territorial holdings around the Mediter ...
's preference for Christianity over Apollonius and its lack respect for its currency resulted in the almost total loss of the "true" religious tradition for a thousand years. A number of neoplatonic philosophers, familiar from earlier cantos but with the addition of
Avicenna, are listed as representing a fine thread of light in these Dark Ages.
Canto XCIII opens with a quote, "A man's paradise is his good nature", taken from ''The Maxims of King
Kati
KATI (94.3 FM), branded as 94.3 KAT Country, is a radio station which broadcasts country music and St. Louis Cardinals baseball. Licensed to California, Missouri, the station serves the Jefferson City
Jefferson City, informally Jeff City, i ...
to His Son
Merikara''. The canto then proceeds to look at examples of benevolent action by public figures that, for Pound, illustrate this maxim. These include Apollonius making his peace with animals,
Saint Augustine
Augustine of Hippo ( , ; la, Aurelius Augustinus Hipponensis; 13 November 354 – 28 August 430), also known as Saint Augustine, was a theologian and philosopher of Berber origin and the bishop of Hippo Regius in Numidia, Roman North Afr ...
on the need to feed people before attempting to convert them, and Dante and
Shakespeare
William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's natio ...
writing on distributive justice, an aspect of their work that the poet points out is generally overlooked. Central to this aspect is a fragment from Dante, ''non fosse cive'', taken from a passage in ''Paradiso'', Canto VIII, in which Dante is asked "would it be worse for man on earth if he were not a citizen?" and unhesitatingly answers in the affirmative.
Towards the end of the canto, the ''Make it new'' ideograms from Canto LIII reappear as the poem moves back towards the world of myth, closing with another phrase from the ''Divine Comedy'', this time from ''Purgatorio'', Canto XXVIII. The phrase ''tu mi fai rimembrar'' translates as "you remind me" and comes from a passage in which Dante addresses Matilda, the presiding spirit of the
Garden of Eden. What she reminds him of is Persephone at the moment that she is abducted by Hades and the spring flowers fell from her lap. This blending of a pagan sense of the divine into a Christian context stands for much of what appealed to Pound in medieval mysticism.
We return to the world of books in Canto XCIV. The canto opens with the name of Hendrik van Brederode, a lost leader of the
Dutch Revolution, forgotten while
William I, Prince of Orange is remembered. This name is lifted from correspondence between John Adams and
Benjamin Rush
Benjamin Rush (April 19, 1813) was a Founding Father of the United States who signed the United States Declaration of Independence, and a civic leader in Philadelphia, where he was a physician, politician, social reformer, humanitarian, educa ...
which was finally published in 1898 by
Alexander Biddle
Alexander Williams Biddle (April 29, 1819 – May 2, 1899) was an American businessman from Pennsylvania. He was a member of the prominent and wealthy Biddle family and the grandson of American Revolutionary War soldier Clement Biddle. He served a ...
, a descendant of Pound's "villain" Nicholas. The rest of the canto consists mainly of paraphrases and quotations from
Philostratus
Philostratus or Lucius Flavius Philostratus (; grc-gre, Φιλόστρατος ; c. 170 – 247/250 AD), called "the Athenian", was a Greek sophist of the Roman imperial period. His father was a minor sophist of the same name. He was born probab ...
' ''Life of Apollonius''. At its conclusion, the poem returns to the world of light via Ra-Set and Ocellus.
Canto XLV opens with the word "LOVE" in block capitals and recaps many of the ''Rock Drill'' examples of the relationship between love, light and politics. A passage deriving ''polis'' from a Greek root word for ploughing also returns us to Pound's belief that society and economic activity are based on natural productivity. The canto, and sequence, then closes with an extended treatment of the passage from the fifth book of the ''Odyssey'' in which a drowning Odysseus/Pound is rescued by Leucothea.
XCVI–CIX (Thrones)
:First published as ''Thrones: 96–109 de los cantares''. New York: New Directions, 1959.
''Thrones'' was the second volume of cantos written while Pound was incarcerated in St. Elizabeth's. In the same 1962 interview, Pound said of this section of the poem: "The thrones in Dante's ''Paradiso'' are for the spirits of the people who have been responsible for good government. The thrones in ''The Cantos'' are an attempt to move out from egoism and to establish some definition of an order possible or at any rate conceivable on earth … ''Thrones'' concerns the states of mind of people responsible for something more than their personal conduct."
The opening canto of the sequence, Canto XCVI, begins with a fragmentary synopsis of the
decline of the Roman Empire and the rise of the
Byzantine Empire
The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinopl ...
in the east and of the
Carolingian Empire
The Carolingian Empire (800–888) was a large Frankish-dominated empire in western and central Europe during the Early Middle Ages. It was ruled by the Carolingian dynasty, which had ruled as kings of the Franks since 751 and as kings of the ...
,
Germanic kingdoms
Kingdom commonly refers to:
* A monarchy ruled by a king or queen
* Kingdom (biology), a category in biological taxonomy
Kingdom may also refer to:
Arts and media Television
* ''Kingdom'' (British TV series), a 2007 British television drama s ...
and the
Lombards
The Lombards () or Langobards ( la, Langobardi) were a Germanic people who ruled most of the Italian Peninsula from 568 to 774.
The medieval Lombard historian Paul the Deacon wrote in the '' History of the Lombards'' (written between 787 an ...
in
Western Europe
Western Europe is the western region of Europe. The region's countries and territories vary depending on context.
The concept of "the West" appeared in Europe in juxtaposition to "the East" and originally applied to the ancient Mediterranean ...
. This culminates in a detailed passage on the ''
Book of the Prefect'' (or Eparch; in Greek the ''Eparchikon Biblion''), a 9th-century edict of the Emperor
Leo VI the Wise
Leo VI, called the Wise ( gr, Λέων ὁ Σοφός, Léōn ho Sophós, 19 September 866 – 11 May 912), was Byzantine Emperor from 886 to 912. The second ruler of the Macedonian dynasty (although his parentage is unclear), he was very well ...
. This document, which was based on Roman law, lays out the rules that governed the Byzantine
Guild
A guild ( ) is an association of artisans and merchants who oversee the practice of their craft/trade in a particular area. The earliest types of guild formed as organizations of tradesmen belonging to a professional association. They sometimes ...
system, including the setting of just prices and so on. The original Greek is quoted extensively and an aside claiming the right to write for a specialist audience is included. The close attention paid to the actual words prefigures the closer focus on
philology
Philology () is the study of language in oral and written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defined as th ...
in this section of the poem. This focus on words ties in closely with what Pound referred to as the method of "luminous detail", in which fragments of language intended to form the most compressed expression of an image or idea act as
tessera
A tessera (plural: tesserae, diminutive ''tessella'') is an individual tile, usually formed in the shape of a square, used in creating a mosaic. It is also known as an abaciscus or abaculus.
Historical tesserae
The oldest known tesserae ...
e in the making of these late cantos.
Canto XCVII draws heavily on Alexander del Mar's ''History of Monetary Systems'' in a survey ranging from
Abd al Melik, the first
Caliph
A caliphate or khilāfah ( ar, خِلَافَة, ) is an institution or public office under the leadership of an Islamic steward with the title of caliph (; ar, خَلِيفَة , ), a person considered a political-religious successor to th ...
to strike distinctly
Islamic coinage, through
Athelstan, who helped introduce the guild system into England, to the American Revolution. The canto closes with a passage that sees the return of the goddess as moon and
Fortuna
Fortuna ( la, Fortūna, equivalent to the Greek goddess Tyche) is the goddess of fortune and the personification of luck in Roman religion who, largely thanks to the Late Antique author Boethius, remained popular through the Middle Ages until at ...
together with Greek forms of
solar worship and the
Flamen Dialis
In ancient Roman religion, the was the high priest of Jupiter. The term ''Dialis'' is related to ''Diespiter'', an Old Latin form of the name ''Jupiter''. There were 15 '' flamines'', of whom three were ''flamines maiores'', serving the thre ...
that is intended to integrate gold and silver as attributes of coin and the divine.
After an opening passage that draws together many of the main themes of the poem through images of Ra-Set, Ocellus on light (echoing Eriugena), the tale of ''Gassire's Lute'', Leucothoe's rescue of Odysseus, Helen of Troy, Gemisto, Demeter, and Plotinus, Canto XCVIII turns to the ''Sacred Edict'' of the emperor
K'ang Hsi. This is a 17th-century set of maxims on good government written in a high literary style, but later simplified for a broader audience. Pound draws on one such popular version, by Wang the Commissioner of the Imperial Salt Works in a translation by
F.W. Baller. Comparison is drawn between this Chinese text and the ''Book of the Prefect'', and the canto closes with images of light as divine creation drawn from Dante's ''Paradiso''.
K'ang Hsi's son Iong Cheng published commentaries on his father's maxims and these form the basis for Canto XCIX. The main theme of this canto is one of harmony between human society and the natural order, and a number of passing references are made to related items from earlier cantos: Confucius, Kati, Dante on citizenship, the ''Book of the Prefect'' and Plotinus amongst them. Canto C covers a range of examples of European and American statesman who Pound sees as exemplifying the maxims of the ''Sacred Edict'' to a greater or lesser extent. At the core of this canto, the motif of Luecothoe's veil (''kredemnon'') resurfaces; this time, the hero has reached the safety of the shore and returns the magic garment to the goddess.
The focus of Canto CI is around the Greek phrase ''kalon kagathon'' ("the beautiful and good"), which calls to mind Plotinus' attitude to the world of things and the more general Greek belief in the moral aspect of beauty. This canto introduces the figure of St.
Anselm of Canterbury, who is to feature over the rest of this section of the long poem. Canto CII returns to the island of Calypso and Odysseus' voyage to Hades from Book Ten of the ''Odyssey''. There are a number of references to vegetation cults and sacrifices, and the canto closes by returning to the world of Byzantium and the decline of the Western Empire.
Cantos CIII and CIV range over a number of examples of the relationships between war, money and government drawn from American and European history, mostly familiar from earlier sections of the work. The latter canto is notable for Pound's suggestion that both
Honoré Mirabeau
Honoré is a name of French origin and may refer to several people or places:
Given name
Sovereigns of Monaco
Lords of Monaco
* Honoré I of Monaco
Princes of Monaco
* Honoré II of Monaco
* Honoré III of Monaco
* Honoré IV of Monaco
* Honor ...
in his imprisonment and Ovid in his exile "had it worse" than Pound in his incarceration.
At the core of Canto CV are a number of citations and quotations from the writings of St. Anselm. This 11th-century philosopher and inventor of the
ontological argument for the existence of God who wrote poems in rhymed prose appealed to Pound because of his emphasis on the role of reason in religion and his envisioning of the divine essence as light. In the 1962 interview already quoted, Pound points to Anselm's clash with
William Rufus
William II ( xno, Williame; – 2 August 1100) was King of England from 26 September 1087 until his death in 1100, with powers over Normandy and influence in Scotland. He was less successful in extending control into Wales. The third so ...
over his investiture as part of the history of the struggle for individual rights. Pound also claims in this canto that Anselm's writings influenced Cavalcanti and
François Villon
François Villon ( Modern French: , ; – after 1463) is the best known French poet of the Late Middle Ages. He was involved in criminal behavior and had multiple encounters with law enforcement authorities. Villon wrote about some of these ...
.
Canto CVI turns to visions of the goddess as fertility symbol via Demeter and Persephone, in her lunar, love aspect as
Selena
Selena Quintanilla Pérez (; April 16, 1971 – March 31, 1995), known mononymously as Selena, was an American Tejano singer. Called the " Queen of Tejano music", her contributions to music and fashion made her one of the most celebrated Mex ...
, Helen and Aphrodite Euploia ("of safe voyages") and as hunter Athene (Proneia: "of forethought," the form in which she is worshiped at Delphi) and Diana (through quotes from Layamon). The sun as Zeus/Helios also features. These vision fragments are cross-cut with an invocation of the
Taoist
Taoism (, ) or Daoism () refers to either a school of philosophical thought (道家; ''daojia'') or to a religion (道教; ''daojiao''), both of which share ideas and concepts of Chinese origin and emphasize living in harmony with the '' Tao ...
''Kuan Tzu'' (''Book of Master Kuan''). This work argues that the mind should rule the body as the basis of good living and good governance.
Another such figure, Sir Edward Coke, dominates the final three cantos of this section. These cantos, CVII, CVIII, CIX, consist mainly of "luminous details" lifted from Coke's ''Institutes'', a comprehensive study of English law up to his own time. In Canto CVII, Coke is placed in a ''river of light'' tradition that also includes Confucius, Ocellus and Agassiz. This canto also refers to Dante's vision of philosophers that reveal themselves as light in the ''Paradiso''. In Canto CVIII, Pound highlights Coke's view that minting coin "Pertain(s) to the King onely" and has passages on sources of state revenue. He also draws a comparison between Coke and Iong Cheng. A similar parallel between Coke and the author of the ''Book of the Eparch'' is highlighted in Canto CIX.
The canto and section end with a reference to the following lines from the second canto of the ''Paradiso''—
:O voi che siete in piccioletta barca,
:desiderosi d’ascoltar, seguiti
:dietro al mio legno che cantando varca,
:tornate a riveder li vostri liti:
:non vi mettete in pelago, ché forse,
:perdendo me, rimarreste smarriti.
—which read, in the translation by
Charles Eliot Norton
Charles Eliot Norton (November 16, 1827 – October 21, 1908) was an American author, social critic, and Harvard professor of art based in New England. He was a progressive social reformer and a liberal activist whom many of his contemporaries c ...
, "O ye, who are in a little bark, desirous to listen, following behind my craft which singing passes on, turn to see again Your shores; put not out upon the deep; for haply losing me, ye would remain astray." This reference signalled Pound's intent to close the poem with a final volume based on his own paradisiacal vision.
Drafts and fragments of Cantos CX–CXVII
:First published as ''Drafts and Fragments of Cantos CX–CXVII.'' New York: New Directions, 1969.
In 1958, Pound was declared incurably insane and permanently incapable of standing trial. Consequent on this, he was released from St Elizabeth's on condition that he return to Europe, which he promptly did. At first, he lived with his daughter Mary in the
Tyrol
Tyrol (; historically the Tyrole; de-AT, Tirol ; it, Tirolo) is a historical region in the Alps - in Northern Italy and western Austria. The area was historically the core of the County of Tyrol, part of the Holy Roman Empire, Austrian Emp ...
, but soon returned to Rapallo. In November 1959, Pound wrote to his publisher
James Laughlin
James Laughlin (October 30, 1914 – November 12, 1997) was an American poet and literary book publisher who founded New Directions Publishing.
Early life
He was born in Pittsburgh, the son of Henry Hughart and Marjory Rea Laughlin. Laughlin ...
(speaking in the third person) that he "has forgotten what or which politics he ever had. Certainly has none now". His crisis of belief, together with the effects of aging, meant that the proposed paradise cantos were slow in coming and turned out to be radically different from anything the poet had envisaged.
Pound was reluctant to publish these late cantos, but the appearance in 1967 of a pirate edition of ''Cantos 110–116'' forced his hand. Laughlin pushed Pound to publish an authorised edition, and the poet responded by supplying the more-or-less abandoned drafts and fragments he had, plus two fragments dating from 1941. The resulting book, therefore, can hardly be described as representing Pound's definitive planned ending to the poem. This situation has been further complicated by the addition of more fragments in editions of the complete poem published after the poet's death. One of these was labelled "Canto CXX" at one point, on no particular authority. This title was later removed.
Although some of Pound's intention to "write a paradise" survives in the text as we have it, especially in images of light and of the natural world, other themes also intrude. These include the poet's coming to terms with a sense of artistic failure, and jealousies and hatreds that must be faced and expiated.
Canto CX opens with a pun on the word ''wake'', conflating the wake of the little boat from the end of the previous canto and an image of Pound waking in his daughter's house in the Tyrol, both from sleep and, by extension, from the nightmare of his prolonged incarceration. The goddess appears as Kuanon, Artemis and
Hebe (through her characteristic epithet ''Kallistragalos'', "of fair ankles"), the goddess of youth. The Buddhist painter
Toba Sojo represents directness of artistic handling.
The Noh figure of Awoi (from ''AOI NO UE''), ravaged by jealousy, reappears together with the poet Ono no Komachi, the central character in two more Noh plays translated by Pound. She represents a life spent meditating on beauty which resulted in vanity and ended in loss and solitude. The canto draws to a close with the phrase ''Lux enim'' ("light indeed") and an image of the oval moon.
Pound's "nice, quiet paradise" is seen, in the notes for Canto CXI, to be based on serenity, pity, intelligence and individual acceptance of responsibility as illustrated by the French diplomat
Talleyrand. This theme is continued in the short extract titled from Canto CXII, which also draws on the work of the anthropologist and explorer
Joseph F. Rock in recording legends and religious rituals from China and
Tibet
Tibet (; ''Böd''; ) is a region in East Asia, covering much of the Tibetan Plateau and spanning about . It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people. Also resident on the plateau are some other ethnic groups such as Monpa, Taman ...
. Again, this section of the poem closes with an image of the moon.
Canto CXIII opens with an image of the sun moving through the zodiac, the first of a number of cycle images that occur through the canto, recalling a line from Pound's version of ''AOI NO UE'': "Man's life is a wheel on the axle, there is no turn whereby to escape". A reference to
Marcella Spann
Marcella is a Roman cognomen and Italian given name, the feminine version of Marcello (Mark in English). Marcella means warlike, martial, and strong. It could also mean 'young warrior'. The origin of the name Marcella is Latin.
Marcella may refer ...
, a young woman whose presence in the Tyrol further complicated the already strained relationships between the poet, his wife Dorothy and his lover
Olga Rudge
Olga Rudge (April 13, 1895 – March 15, 1996) was an American-born concert violinist, now mainly remembered as the long-time mistress of the poet Ezra Pound, by whom she had a daughter, Mary.
A gifted concert violinist of international repu ...
, casts further light on the recurrent jealousy theme. The phrase "Syrian onyx" lifted from his 1919 ''Homage to Sextus Propertius'', where it occurs in a section that paraphrases Propertius' instructions to his lover on how to behave after his death, reflects the elderly Pound's sense of his own mortality.
The theme of hatred is addressed directly at the opening of Canto CXIV, where
Voltaire
François-Marie Arouet (; 21 November 169430 May 1778) was a French Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher. Known by his ''nom de plume'' M. de Voltaire (; also ; ), he was famous for his wit, and his criticism of Christianity—es ...
is quoted to the effect that he hates nobody, not even his archenemy
Elie Fréron. The remainder of this canto is primarily concerned with recognising indebtedness to the poet's genetic and cultural ancestors. The short extract from Canto CXV is a reworking from an earlier version first published in the
Belfast
Belfast ( , ; from ga, Béal Feirste , meaning 'mouth of the sand-bank ford') is the capital and largest city of Northern Ireland, standing on the banks of the River Lagan on the east coast. It is the 12th-largest city in the United Kingdom ...
-based magazine ''Threshold'' in 1962 and centres around two main ideas. The first of these is the hostilities that existed amongst Pound's modernist friends and the negative impact that it had on all their works. The second is the image of the poet as a "blown husk", again a borrowing from the Noh, this time the play ''Kakitsubata''.
Canto CXVI was the last canto completed by Pound. It opens with a passage in which we see the Odysseus/Pound figure, homecoming achieved, reconciled with the sea-god. However, the home achieved is not the place intended when the poem was begun but is the ''terzo cielo'' ("third heaven") of human love. The canto contains the following well-known lines:
:I have brought the great ball of crystal;
:::Who can lift it?
:Can you enter the great acorn of light?
:But the beauty is not the madness
:Tho' my errors and wrecks lie about me.
:And I am not a demigod,
:I cannot make it cohere.
This passage has often been taken as an admission of failure on Pound's part, but the reality may be more complex. The crystal image relates back to the ''Sacred Edict'' on self-knowledge and the demigod/cohere lines relate directly to Pound's translation of the ''Women of Trachis''. In this, the
demigod
A demigod or demigoddess is a part-human and part-divine offspring of a deity and a human, or a human or non-human creature that is accorded divine status after death, or someone who has attained the "divine spark" ( spiritual enlightenment). A ...
Herakles
Heracles ( ; grc-gre, Ἡρακλῆς, , glory/fame of Hera), born Alcaeus (, ''Alkaios'') or Alcides (, ''Alkeidēs''), was a divine hero in Greek mythology, the son of Zeus and Alcmene, and the foster son of Amphitryon.By his adoptive ...
cries out "WHAT SPLENDOUR / IT ALL COHERES" as he is dying. These lines, read in conjunction with the later "i.e. it coheres all right / even if my notes do not cohere", point toward the conclusion that towards the end of his effort, Pound was coming to accept not only his own "errors" and "madness" but the conclusion that it was beyond him, and possibly beyond poetry, to do justice to the coherence of the universe. Images of light saturate this canto, culminating in the closing lines: "A little light, like a rushlight / to lead back to splendour". These lines again echo the Noh of ''Kakitsubata'', the "light that does not lead on to darkness" in Pound's version.
This final complete canto is followed by the two fragments of the 1940s. The first of these, "Addendum for C", is a rant against usury that moves a bit away from the usual anti-Semitism in the line "the defiler, beyond race and against race". The second is an untitled fragment that prefigures the Pisan sequence in its nature imagery and its reference to
Jannequin.
Notes for Canto CXVII ''et seq.'' originally consisted of three fragments, with a fourth, sometimes titled Canto CXX, added after Pound's death. The first of these has the poet raising an altar to Bacchus (Zagreus) and his mother
Semele
Semele (; Ancient Greek: Σεμέλη ), in Greek mythology, was the youngest daughter of Cadmus and Harmonia, and the mother of Dionysus by Zeus in one of his many origin myths.
Certain elements of the cult of Dionysus and Semele came from ...
, whose death was as a result of jealousy. The second centres on the lines "that I lost my center / fighting the world", which were intended as an admission of mistakes made as a younger man. The third fragment is the one that is also known as Canto CXX. It is, in fact, some rescued lines from the earlier version of Canto CXV, and has Pound asking forgiveness for his actions from both the gods and those he loves. The final fragment returns to beginnings with the name of François Bernonad, the French printer of ''A Draft of XVI Cantos''. After quoting two phrases from Bernart de Ventadorn's ''Can vei la lauzeta mover'', a poem in which the speaker determines to abandon love because he has been rejected, the fragment closes with the line "To be men, not destroyers." This stood as the close of ''The Cantos'' until later editions appended the two Italian cantos LXXII and LXXIII and a brief dedicatory fragment addressed to Olga Rudge.
Controversy
''The Cantos'' has always been controversial; initially so because of the experimental nature of the writing. The controversy has intensified since 1940 when Pound's public approval for
Mussolini
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini (; 29 July 188328 April 1945) was an Italian politician and journalist who founded and led the National Fascist Party. He was Prime Minister of Italy from the March on Rome in 1922 until his deposition in 194 ...
's
fascism
Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultra-nationalist political ideology and movement,: "extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and political and cultural liberalism, a belief in natural social hierarchy an ...
became widely known. Much critical discussion of the poem has focused on the relationship between, on the one hand, the economic thesis on ''
usura'', Pound's
anti-Semitism
Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism.
Antis ...
, his adulation of
Confucian
Confucianism, also known as Ruism or Ru classicism, is a system of thought and behavior originating in ancient China. Variously described as tradition, a philosophy, a religion, a humanistic or rationalistic religion, a way of governing, or ...
ideals of government and his attitude towards fascism, and, on the other, passages of lyrical poetry and the historical scene-setting that he performed with his "ideographic" technique. At one extreme,
George P. Elliot has drawn a parallel between Pound and
Adolf Eichmann based on their anti-Semitism while at the other
Marjorie Perloff
Marjorie Perloff (born September 28, 1931) is an Austrian-born poetry scholar and critic in the United States.
Early life
Perloff was born Gabriele Mintz into a secularized Jewish family in Vienna. The annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany exa ...
places Pound's anti-Semitism in a wider context by relating it to the political attitudes of many of his contemporaries, and says, "We have to try to understand why and not say let's get rid of Ezra Pound, who also happens to be one of the greatest poets of the 20th C." In another exercise in contextualisation, Wendy Stallard Flory (1939) made a close study of the poem and concluded that it contains, in all, seven passages of anti-Semitic sentiment in the 803 pages of the edition she used.
Pound has always had serious if select defenders and disciples.
Louis Zukofsky
Louis Zukofsky (January 23, 1904 – May 12, 1978) was an American poet. He was the primary instigator and theorist of the so-called "Objectivist" poets, a short lived collective of poets who after several decades of obscurity would reemerge a ...
was both of these, and also Jewish; according to Cookson he defended Pound
[Pound, Ezra & Zukofsky Louis & Ahearn Barry (ed). "Pound/Zukofsky: Selected Letters of Ezra Pound and Louis Zukofsky". New York: New Directions, 1987. xxi-xxii] on the basis of personal knowledge from anti-Semitism on the level of human exchange, even though, as reported by
Basil Bunting
Basil Cheesman Bunting (1 March 1900 – 17 April 1985) was a British modernist poet whose reputation was established with the publication of '' Briggflatts'' in 1966, generally regarded as one of the major achievements of the modernist traditio ...
, their correspondence contained some of Pound's "offensive" views. What is more, Zukofsky's similarly formidable but distinctive long poem "''A''" follows in its ambitious scope the model of ''The Cantos''.
Legacy
Despite all the controversy surrounding both poem and poet, ''The Cantos'' has been influential in the development of English-language long poems since the appearance of the early sections during the 1920s. Amongst poets of Pound's own generation, both H.D. and
William Carlos Williams
William Carlos Williams (September 17, 1883 – March 4, 1963) was an American poet, writer, and physician closely associated with modernism and imagism.
In addition to his writing, Williams had a long career as a physician practicing both pedia ...
wrote long poems that show this influence. Almost all of H.D.'s poetry from 1940 onwards takes the form of long sequences, and her ''Helen in Egypt'', written during the 1950s, covers much of the same Homeric ground as ''The Cantos'' (but from a feminist perspective), and the three sequences that make up ''Hermetic Definition'' (1972) include direct quotations from Pound's poem. In the case of Williams, his ''Paterson'' (1963) follows Pound in using incidents and documents from the early history of the United States as part of its material. As with Pound, Williams includes Alexander Hamilton as the villain of the piece.
Pound was a major influence on the
Objectivist poets
The Objectivist poets were a loose-knit group of second-generation Modernists who emerged in the 1930s. They were mainly American and were influenced by, among others, Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams. The basic tenets of objectivist poeti ...
, and the effect of ''The Cantos'' on Zukofsky's ''"A"'' has already been noted. The other major long work by an Objectivist,
Charles Reznikoff
Charles Reznikoff (August 31, 1894 – January 22, 1976) was an American poet best known for his long work, ''Testimony: The United States (1885–1915), Recitative'' (1934–1979). The term Objectivist was coined for him. The multi-volume ''Test ...
's ''Testimony'' (1934–1978), follows Pound in the direct use of primary source documents as its raw material. In the next generation of American poets,
Charles Olson
Charles Olson (27 December 1910 – 10 January 1970) was a second generation modern American poet who was a link between earlier figures such as Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams and the New American poets, which includes the New York ...
also drew on Pound's example in writing his own unfinished Modernist epic, ''The Maximus Poems''.
Pound was also an important figure for the poets of the
Beat Generation, especially Snyder and
Allen Ginsberg
Irwin Allen Ginsberg (; June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) was an American poet and writer. As a student at Columbia University in the 1940s, he began friendships with William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, forming the core of the Beat Gener ...
. Snyder's interest in things Chinese and Japanese stemmed from his early reading of Pound's writings. and his long poem ''
Mountains and Rivers Without End
''Mountains and Rivers Without End'' is an epic poem by American poet and essayist Gary Snyder. Snyder began writing the thirty-nine poems contained in the epic in 1956 and published the final version in 1996. The work is divided into four pa ...
'' (1965–1996) reflects his reading of ''The Cantos'' in many of the formal devices used. In Ginsberg's development, reading Pound was influential in his move away from the long, Whitmanesque lines of his early poetry, and towards the more varied metric and inclusive approach to a variety of subjects in the single poem that is to be found especially in his book-length sequences ''
Planet News'' (1968) and ''
The Fall of America: Poems of These States'' (1973). More generally, ''The Cantos'', with its wide range of references and inclusion of primary sources, including prose texts, can be seen as prefiguring
found poetry
Found poetry is a type of poetry created by taking words, phrases, and sometimes whole passages from other sources and reframing them (a literary equivalent of a collage) by making changes in spacing and lines, or by adding or deleting text, thus ...
. Pound's tacit insistence that this material becomes poetry because of his action in including it in a text he chose to call a poem also prefigures the attitudes and practices that underlie 20th-century
Conceptual art
Conceptual art, also referred to as conceptualism, is art in which the concept(s) or idea(s) involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic, technical, and material concerns. Some works of conceptual art, sometimes called insta ...
.
The poetic response to ''The Cantos'' is summed up in Bunting's poem, "On the Fly-Leaf of Pound's Cantos":
:There are the Alps. What is there to say about them?
:They don't make sense. Fatal glaciers, crags cranks climb,
:jumbled boulder and weed, pasture and boulder, scree,
:et l'on entend, maybe, le refrain joyeux et leger.
:Who knows what the ice will have scraped on the rock it is smoothing?
:There they are, you will have to go a long way round
:if you want to avoid them.
:It takes some getting used to. There are the Alps,
:fools! Sit down and wait for them to crumble!
Notes
Sources
Print
*
Ackroyd, Peter. ''Ezra Pound and His World'' (Thames and Hudson, 1980).
*
Bacigalupo, Massimo. ''The Forméd Trace: The Later Poetry of Ezra Pound'' (Columbia University Press, 1980).
*
Cookson, William. ''A Guide to the Cantos of Ezra Pound'' (Anvil, 1985).
* D'Epiro, Peter. ''A Touch of Rhetoric: Ezra Pound's Malatesta Cantos'' (UMI, 1983).
* Eastman, Barbara. ''Ezra Pound's Cantos: The Story of the Text'' (Orono: National Poetry Foundation, 1979).
* Flory, Wendy Stallard. "The Return to Italy: 'To Confess Wrong…'". In ''The American Ezra Pound''. (New Haven:
Yale University Press
Yale University Press is the university press of Yale University. It was founded in 1908 by George Parmly Day, and became an official department of Yale University in 1961, but it remains financially and operationally autonomous.
, Yale Universi ...
, 1989).
* Flory, Wendy Stallard. "Pound and Antisemitism." ''The Cambridge Companion to Ezra Pound''. Ed. Ira B. Nadel (
Cambridge University Press
Cambridge University Press is the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by King Henry VIII in 1534, it is the oldest university press in the world. It is also the King's Printer.
Cambridge University Pre ...
, 1999) ,
* Ellis, Mary. ''Epic reinvented: Ezra Pound and the Victorians''. Cornell University Press, 1995.
*
Kenner, Hugh. ''The Pound Era'' (Faber and Faber, 1975 edition).
* Liebregts, P. Th. M. G. ''Ezra Pound and Neoplatonism''.
Fairleigh Dickinson University Press
Fairleigh Dickinson University Press (FDU Press) is a publishing house under the operation and oversight of Fairleigh Dickinson University, the largest private university in New Jersey, which has international campuses in Vancouver, British Colum ...
, 2004.
* Makin, Peter. ''Pound's Cantos'' (Allen & Unwin, 1985).
* Makin, Peter (ed.). ''Ezra Pound's Cantos: A Casebook'' (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).
* Sullivan, J.P. (ed). ''Ezra Pound'' (Penguin critical anthologies series, 1970).
* Surette, Leon. ''A Light from Eleusis: A Study of the Cantos of Ezra Pound''. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979).
* Terrell, Carroll F. ''A Companion to The Cantos of Ezra Pound'' (University of California Press, 1980).
* Wilhelm, James J. ''The Later Cantos of Ezra Pound'' (Walker, 1977).
Online
Ezra Pound's Cantos 72 and 73: An Annotated Translation by Massimo BacigalupoPound's Pisan Cantos in Process by Massimo BacigalupoClarity from Chaos in the Rock-Drill Cantos Paradise by Christopher Wang
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