- For details of persons, places, etc., mentioned, see List of cultural references in The Cantos.
The Cantos by
Ezra PoundEzra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet, critic and intellectual who was a major figure of the Modernist movement in the first half of the 20th century. He is generally considered the poet most responsible for defining and promoting a modernist aesthetic in poetry...
is a long, incomplete
poemPoetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
in 120 sections, each of which is a
cantoThe canto is a principal form of division in a long poem, especially the epic. The word comes from Italian, from the Latin canto, meaning "I sing," and has a corollary in the Sanskrit , or "chapter." Famous examples of epic poetry which employ the canto division are Valmiki's The Ramayana ,...
. 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 poetryModernist poetry refers to poetry written between 1890 and 1930 in the tradition of modernist literature; 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 critic setting the dates...
of the twentieth century. As in Pound's prose writing, the themes of economics,
governanceGovernance relates to decisions that define expectations, grant power, or verify performance. It consists either of a separate process or of a specific part of management or leadership processes...
, and culture are integral to its content.
The most striking feature of the text, to a casual browser, is the inclusion of
Chinese characterA Chinese character, also known as a Han character , is a logogram used in writing Chinese , Japanese , less frequently Korean , and formerly Vietnamese , and other languages...
s as well as quotations in European languages other than English. Recourse to scholarly commentaries is almost inevitable for a
close readerIn literary criticism, close reading describes the careful, sustained interpretation of a brief passage of text. Such a reading places great emphasis on the particular over the general, paying close attention to individual words, syntax, and the order in which sentences and ideas unfold as they...
. 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 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 FrobeniusLeo Viktor Frobenius was an 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 Maggiore, Piedmont, Italy...
. References without explanation abound. Pound initially believed that he possessed poetic and rhetorical techniques which would themselves generate significance, but as time passed he became more concerned with the messages he wished to convey. " I got more interested in the meaning of what I got on the page."
The section he wrote at the end of World War II, begun while he was interned in American-occupied Italy, has become known as
The Pisan Cantos, is often considered to be self-sufficient. It was awarded the first
Bollingen PrizeThe Bollingen Prize, which is presently awarded every two years by Beinecke Library of Yale University, is a prestigious 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.-Inception and controversy:The...
in 1948. There were many repercussions, since this in effect honoured a poet who had been condemned as a traitor in his native country, and who had been diagnosed with a serious
mental illnessA mental disorder or mental illness is a psychological or behavioral pattern that occurs in an individual and is thought to cause distress or disability that is not expected as part of normal development or culture. The recognition and understanding of mental disorders has changed over time and...
.
Structure
The Cantos can appear on first reading to be chaotic or structureless because it lacks plot or a definite ending. R.P. Blackmur, an early critic, wrote,
The Cantos are not complex, they are complicated; they are not arrayed by logic or driven by pursuing emotion, they are connected because they follow one another, are set side by side, and because an anecdote, an allusion or a sentence begun in one Canto may be continued in another and may never be completed at all; and as for a theme to be realized, they seem to have only, like MauberleyHugh Selwyn Mauberley is a long poem by Ezra Pound. It has been regarded as a turning point in Pound's career , and its completion was swiftly followed by his departure from England. The name "Selwyn" might have been an homage to Rhymers' Club member Selwyn Image. The name and personality of the...
, the general sense of continuity — not unity — which may arise in the mind when read seriatimSeriatim, Latin for "in series," is a legal term typically used to indicate that a court is addressing multiple issues in a certain order, such as the order that the issues were originally presented to the court....
. The Cantos are what Mr Pound himself called them in a passage now excised from the canon, a rag-bag.
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
William CooksonWilliam Cookson was a British poet, writer on poetry and literary editor, best-known for his influential poetry magazine Agenda....
, 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. EliotThomas Stearns Eliot, OM , was a poet, playwright, and literary critic. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948. Among his most famous writings are The Love Song of J...
had previously approached the subject of fragmentation of human experience: while Eliot was writing, and Pound editing,
The Waste LandThe Waste Land[A] is a 434 line[B] modernist poem by T. S. Eliot published in 1922...
, 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
magnetA magnet is a material or object that produces a magnetic field. This magnetic field is invisible but is responsible for the most notable property of a magnet: a force that pulls on other ferromagnetic materials and attracts or repels other magnets.A permanent magnet is an object made from a...
.
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 KennerWilliam Hugh Kenner , was a Canadian literary scholar, critic and professor.Kenner was born in Peterborough, Ontario on January 7, 1923; his father taught classics...
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.
[The 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 MysteriesThe Eleusinian Mysteries were initiation ceremonies held every year for the cult of Demeter and Persephone based at Eleusis in ancient Greece. Of all the mysteries celebrated in ancient times, these were held to be the ones of greatest importance. These myths and mysteries, begun in the Mycenean...
;
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
troubadourA troubadour was a composer and performer of Occitan lyric poetry during the High Middle Ages . Since the word "troubadour" is etymologically masculine, a female troubadour is usually called a trobairitz....
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
neoplatonicNeoplatonism is the modern term for a school of religious and mystical philosophy that took shape in the 3rd century AD, founded by Plotinus and based on the teachings of Plato and earlier Platonists...
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 numeralsRoman numerals are a numeral system of ancient Rome based on letters of the alphabet, which are combined to signify the sum of their values. The first ten Roman numerals are:...
(except cantos 85–109, first published with
Arabic numeralsThe Arabic numerals are the ten digits . They are descended from Indian numerals and the Hindu-Arabic numeral system developed by Indian mathematicians, by which a sequence of digits such as "975" is read as a whole number...
). 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
codaCoda is a term used in music in a number of different senses, primarily to designate a passage which brings a piece to a conclusion.-Coda as a section of a movement:...
or fragment, dated 24 August 1966). In 2002 a bilingual edition of "Posthumous Cantos" (
Canti postumi)
http://www.raintaxi.com/online/2003summer/cantipostumi.shtmlappeared in Italy. This is a concise selection from the mass of drafts (circa 1915–1965) uncollected or unpublished by Pound, and contains many passages of intrinsic merit that also throw light on
The Cantos as we have it.
I–XVI
- Published in 1924/5 as A Draft of XVI Cantos by the Three Mountains Press in Paris.
Pound had been considering 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
PoetryPoetry, published in Chicago, Illinois since 1912, is one of the leading monthly poetry journals in the English-speaking world. Edited by Christian Wiman, the magazine has a circulation of 30,000 and prints 300 poems per year out of approximately 90,000 submissions.Poetry has been financed since...
. In this version, the poem began as an address by the poet to the ghost of
Robert BrowningRobert Browning was an English poet and milly playwright whose mastery of dramatic verse, especially dramatic monologues, made him one of the foremost Victorian poets.-Early years:...
. Pound came to believe that this narrative voice compromised the revolutionary intent of his poetic vision, and these first three ur-cantos were soon abandoned and a new starting point sought. The answer was a Latin version of
HomerHomer is a legendary ancient Greek epic poet, traditionally said to be the author of the epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey...
's
OdysseyThe Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is, in part, a sequel to the Iliad, the other work traditionally ascribed to Homer. The poem is fundamental to the modern Western canon. Indeed it is the second—the Iliad being the first—extant work of...
by the
RenaissanceThe Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Florence in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe...
scholar
Andreas DivusAndreas Divus was a Renaissance scholar whose Latin translations of Homer published in 1538 were used by George Chapman in his translations of the Iliad and Odyssey and by Ezra Pound in his long poem The Cantos....
that Pound had bought in Paris sometime between 1906 and 1910. Using the
metreThe metre or meter is the basic unit of length in the International System of Units . Historically, the metre was defined by the French Academy of Sciences as the length between two marks on a platinum-iridium bar, which was designed to represent one ten-millionth of the distance from the Equator...
and
syntaxIn linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing sentences in natural languages...
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
OdysseusOdysseus or Ulysses , in Greek mythology , was a legendary Greek king of Ithaca and the hero of Homer's epic poem, The Odyssey...
and his companions sail to
HadesHades refers both to the ancient Greek underworld, the abode of Hades, and to the god of the underworld. Hades in Homer referred just to the god; the genitive , Haidou, was an elision to denote locality: "[the house/dominion] of 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 the present and future. He also echoes
DanteDurante degli Alighieri , commonly known as Dante, was an Italian poet of the Middle Ages. His central work, the Divina Commedia , is often considered the greatest literary work composed in the Italian language and a masterpiece of world literature.In...
's opening to
The Divine ComedyThe Divine Comedy , written by Dante Alighieri between 1308 and his death in 1321, is widely considered the central epic poem of Italian literature, and is seen as one of the greatest works of world literature. The poem's imaginative and allegorical vision of the Christian afterlife is a...
in which the poet also descends into hell to interrogate the dead. The canto concludes with some fragments from the
Second Homeric Hymn to AphroditeAphrodite is the Greek goddess of love, beauty and raw sexuality. According to Greek poet Hesiod, she was born when Cronus cut off Ouranos's genitals and threw them into the sea, and from the aphros arose Aphrodite.Because of her beauty other gods feared that jealousy would interrupt the peace...
, 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
SordelloSordello da Goito or Sordel de Goit was a 13th-century Lombard troubadour, born in the municipality of Goito in the province of Mantua...
: 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
LirIn Irish mythology, Lir or Ler was the god of the sea, father of Manannan mac Lir, and a son of Elatha. In early genealogies, he is named Allód, and corresponds to Llŷr in Welsh mythology...
, and other figures associated with the sea:
Eleanor of AquitaineEleanor of Aquitaine was one of the wealthiest and most powerful women in Western Europe during the High Middle Ages...
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
TroyTroy is a legendary city and center of the Trojan War, as described in the Epic Cycle and especially in the Iliad, one of the two epic poems attributed to Homer...
who want to send Helen back over the sea, and an extended, Imagistic retelling of the story of the abduction of
DionysusIn classical mythology, Dionysus or Dionysos is the god of wine, the inspirer of ritual madness and ecstasy, and a major figure of Greek mythology, and one of the twelve Olympians, amongst whom Greek mythology treated him as a late arrival...
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
OvidPublius Ovidius Naso , known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who wrote about love, seduction, and mythological transformation....
's poem
MetamorphosesThe Metamorphoses by the Roman poet Ovid is a narrative poem in fifteen books that describes the creation and history of the world. Completed in 8 AD, it has remained one of the most popular works of mythology, being the Classical work best known to medieval writers and thus having a great deal of...
, 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 mythologyThe terms "classical mythology" and "Greco-Roman mythology" usually refer to the mythology, and the associated polytheistic rituals and practices, of Classical Antiquity. Originally cognate but still markedly different, Roman religion converged with Greek over time, beginning when Greeks first...
,
RenaissanceThe Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Florence in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe...
history, the world of the
troubadourA troubadour was a composer and performer of Occitan lyric poetry during the High Middle Ages . Since the word "troubadour" is etymologically masculine, a female troubadour is usually called a trobairitz....
s,
SapphoSappho was an Ancient Greek poet, born on the island of Lesbos. Later Greeks included her in the canonical list of nine lyric poets. Her birth was sometime between 630 and 612 BC, and it is said that she died around 570 BC, but little is known for certain about her life...
's poetry, a scene from the legend of
El CidRodrigo Díaz de Vivar , known as El Cid Campeador, was a Castilian nobleman, a military leader and diplomat who, after being exiled, conquered and governed the city of Valencia...
that introduces the theme of banking and
creditCredit is the provision of resources by one party to another party where that second party does not reimburse the first party immediately, thereby generating a debt, and instead arranges either to repay or return those resources at a later date. It is any form of deferred payment...
, and Pound's own visits to
VeniceVenice is a city in northern Italy, the capital of the region Veneto, a population of 271,367 . Together with Padua, the city is included in the Padua-Venice Metropolitan Area . The city historically was an independent nation...
to create a textual collage saturated with neoplatonist images of clarity and light.
Cantos VIII–XI draw on the story of Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, 15th-century poet, condottiero, lord of
RiminiRimini is a city in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy and capital city of the Province of Rimini. It is located on the Adriatic Sea, near the coast between the rivers Marecchia and Ausa...
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 MalatestianoThe Tempio Malatestiano is the cathedral church of Rimini, Italy. Officially entitled to St. Francis, it takes the popular name from Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, who commissioned its reconstruction from the famous Renaissance theorist and architect Leon Battista Alberti c. 1450.-History:San...
. Designed by Leon Battista Alberti and decorated by artists including
Piero della FrancescaPiero della Francesca was an Italian artist of the Early Renaissance. To contemporaries, he was known as a mathematician and geometer as well as an artist, though now he is chiefly appreciated for his art. His painting was characterized by its serene humanism and its use of geometric forms,...
and
Agostino di DuccioAgostino di Duccio was an Italian early Renaissance 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 monastery in Florence and was banished from his native city as a result...
, this was a landmark Renaissance building, being the first church to use the Roman
triumphal archA triumphal arch is a structure in the shape of a monumental archway, in theory built to celebrate a victory in war, but often used to celebrate a ruler....
as part of its structure. For Pound, who spent a good deal of time seeking patrons for himself,
JoyceJames Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish expatriate author, playwright and poet of the 20th century. He is known for his landmark novel Ulysses and its controversial successor Finnegans Wake , as well as the short story collection Dubliners and the semi-autobiographical novel A Portrait of...
,
EliotThomas Stearns Eliot, OM , was a poet, playwright, and literary critic. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948. Among his most famous writings are The Love Song of J...
and a string of little magazines and
small pressSmall press is a term often used to describe publishers with annual sales below a certain level. Commonly, in the United States, this is set at $50 million, after returns and discounts...
es, 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 nihiloThe Latin phrase ex nihilo means "out of nothing". It often appears in conjunction with the concept of creation, as in creatio ex nihilo, meaning "creation out of nothing" — chiefly in in philosophical or theological contexts, but also occurs in other fields.In theology, the common phrase creatio...
by exploiting the
money supplyIn economics, money supply or money stock, is the total amount of money available in an economy at a particular point in time. There are several ways to define "money", but standard measures usually include currency in circulation and demand deposits....
, 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
ConfuciusConfucius , lit. "Master Kong," was a Chinese thinker and social philosopher, whose teachings and philosophy have deeply influenced Chinese, Korean, Japanese and Vietnamese thought and life....
, or Kung, who is presented as the embodiment of the ideal of social order based on
ethicsEthics is a branch of philosophy which seeks to address questions about morality, such as what the fundamental semantic, ontological, and epistemic nature of ethics or morality is , how moral values should be determined , how a moral outcome can be achieved in specific situations , how moral...
.
This section of
The Cantos concludes with a vision of
HellIn many religious traditions, Hell is a place of suffering and punishment in the afterlife, often in the underworld. Religions with a linear divine history often depict Hell as endless...
. 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,
PlotinusPlotinus was a major philosopher of the ancient world who is widely considered the founder of Neoplatonism . Neoplatonism was an influential philosophy in Late Antiquity. Much of our biographical information about Plotinus comes from Porphyry's preface to his edition of Plotinus' Enneads...
takes the role of guide played by
VirgilPublius Vergilius Maro was a classical Roman poet, best known for three major works—the Eclogues , the Georgics, and the Aeneid—although several minor poems are also attributed to him.The son of a farmer, Virgil came to be...
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, and of Pound's writer and artist friends who fought in it. These include
Richard AldingtonRichard Aldington born Edward Godfree Aldington, was an English writer and poet.Aldington was best known for his World War I poetry, the 1929 novel, Death of a Hero, and the controversy arising from his 1955 Lawrence of Arabia: A Biographical Inquiry...
,
Henri Gaudier-BrzeskaHenri Gaudier-Brzeska was a French sculptor who developed a rough hewn, primitive style of direct carving....
,
Wyndham LewisPercy Wyndham Lewis was an English painter and author . He was a co-founder of the Vorticist movement in art, and edited the literary magazine of the Vorticists, BLAST...
,
Ernest HemingwayErnest Miller Hemingway was an American writer and journalist. He was part of the 1920s expatriate community in Paris, and one of the veterans of World War I later known as "the Lost Generation." He received the Pulitzer Prize in 1953 for The Old Man and the Sea, and the Nobel Prize in Literature...
and
Fernand LégerJoseph Fernand Henri Léger was a French painter, sculptor, and filmmaker.-Biography:Léger was born in the Argentan, Orne, Basse-Normandie, where his father raised cattle. Fernand Léger initially trained as an architect from 1897-1899 before moving in 1900 to Paris, where he supported himself as an...
, whose war memories the poem includes a passage from (in French). Finally, there is a transcript of
Lincoln SteffensJoseph Lincoln Steffens was an American journalist and one of the most famous practitioners of the journalistic style called muckraking...
' account of the
Russian RevolutionThe Russian Revolution is the collective term for the series of revolutions in Russia in 1917, which destroyed the Tsarist autocracy and led to the creation of the Soviet Union. In the first revolution of February 1917 the Czar was deposed and replaced by a Provisional government...
. These two events, the war and revolution, mark a decisive break with the historic past, including the early modernist 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 in Paris. Cantos I–XXX published in 1930 in A Draft of XXX Cantos by Nancy Cunard
Nancy Clara Cunard was a writer, heiress and political activist. She was born into the British upper class but strongly rejected her family's values, devoting much of her life to fighting racism and fascism...
'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 PoloMarco Polo was a merchant from the Venetian Republic who wrote Il Milione, which introduced Europeans to Central Asia and China. He learned about trading whilst his father and uncle, Niccolò and Maffeo, voyaged through Asia and met Kublai Khan. In 1269, they returned to Venice to meet Marco for...
's account of
Kublai KhanKublai or Khubilai Khan , was the fifth Great Khan of the Mongol Empire from 1260 to 1294 and the founder of the Yuan Dynasty...
'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
OvidPublius Ovidius Naso , known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who wrote about love, seduction, and mythological transformation....
, Propertius and
CatullusGaius Valerius Catullus was a Roman poet of the 1st century BC. His surviving works are still read widely, and continue to influence poetry and other forms of art. Catullus invented the "angry love poem."-Biography:...
to the
Song of Roland and
Arnaut DanielArnaut Daniel de Riberac was an Occitan troubadour of the 12th century, praised by Dante as "il miglior fabbro" and called "Grand Master of Love" by Petrarch...
. These fragments constellate to form an exemplum of what Pound calls "clear song". There follows another exemplum, this time of the
linguisticLinguistics is the scientific study of natural language. Linguistics encompasses a number of sub-fields. An important topical division is between the study of language structure and the study of meaning...
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, whose song completes the canto. There are references to the Malatesta family and to
Borso d'Estethumb|Borso d'Este, attributed to [[Vicino da Ferrara]], [[Pinacoteca]] of the [[Castello Sforzesco|Sforza Castle]] in [[Milan]], [[Italy]].Borso d'Este was the first Duke of Ferrara, which he ruled from 1450 until his death...
, who tried to keep the peace between the warring Italian city states.
Canto XXI deals with the machinations of the
Medici bankThe Medici Bank was the largest and most respected bank in Europe during the 15th century. There are some estimates that the Medici family was for a period of time the wealthiest family in Europe...
, especially with the
MediciThe House of Medici was a political dynasty, banking family and later royal house who first began to gather prominence under Cosimo de' Medici in the Republic of Florence during the late 14th century. The family originated in the Mugello region of the Tuscan countryside, gradually rising until...
's effect on Venice. These are contrasted with the actions of
Thomas JeffersonThomas Jefferson was the third President of the United States , the principal author of the Declaration of Independence , and one of the most influential Founding Fathers for his promotion of the ideals of republicanism in the United States...
, 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 CreditSocial Credit is described by its originator, C. H. Douglas , as "the policy of a philosophy". Douglas called his philosophy "practical Christianity". This philosophy is interdisciplinary in nature, encompassing the fields of economics, political science, history, accounting, and physics...
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
ProvençalProvence is a region of southeastern France on the Mediterranean adjacent to Italy. It is part of the administrative région of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur...
culture as a nexus of survival of the old pagan beliefs, and the destruction of the
CatharCatharism was a name given to a Christian religious sect with dualistic and gnostic elements that appeared in the Languedoc region of France and other parts of Europe in the 11th century and flourished in the 12th and 13th centuries. Catharism had its roots in the Paulician movement in Armenia and...
stronghold at
MontsegurMontségur is a commune in the Ariège department in south-western France.It is famous for its fort and was one of the last strongholds of the Cathars. The present fortress on the site, though described as one of the "Cathar castles," is actually of a later period...
at the end of the
Albigensian CrusadeThe Albigensian Crusade or Cathar Crusade was a 20-year military campaign initiated by the Catholic Church to eliminate the Cathar heresy in Languedoc...
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'EsteNiccolò III d'Este was Marquess of Ferrara from 1393 until his death. He was also a condottiero.-Biography:...
's voyage to the
Holy LandThe Holy Land , generally refers to the geographical region of the Levant called Land of Canaan or Land of Israel in the Bible, and constitutes the Promised 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 Tiziano Vecellio, born 1473/1490 , died 27 August 1576, better known as Titian , was the leading painter of the 16th-century Venetian school of the Italian Renaissance. He was born in Pieve di Cadore, near Belluno , in the Republic of Venice...
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 flightTransatlantic flight is the flight of an aircraft, whether fixed-wing aircraft, balloon or other device, which involves crossing the Atlantic Ocean — with a starting point in North America or South America and ending in Europe or Africa, or vice versa....
. 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
ExcideuilExcideuil is a commune in the Dordogne department in Aquitaine in south-western France.-Geography:It should not be confused with Exideuil in the Charente department....
contrasts Pound and Eliot on the subject of
ChristianityChristianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as presented by the revelations in the New Testament....
, with Pound implicitly rejecting that religion. Finally, the series closes with a glimpse of the printer Hieronymus Soncinus of
FanoFano is a town and comune of the province of Pesaro and Urbino in the Marche region of Italy. It is a beach resort 12 km southeast of Pesaro, located where the Via Flaminia reaches the Adriatic Sea...
preparing to print the works of
PetrarchFrancesco Petrarca , known in English as Petrarch, was an Italian scholar, poet and one of the earliest Renaissance humanists. Petrarch is often called the "Father of Humanism"...
.
XXXI–XLI (XI New Cantos)
- 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
Thomas JeffersonThomas Jefferson was the third President of the United States , the principal author of the Declaration of Independence , and one of the most influential Founding Fathers for his promotion of the ideals of republicanism in the United States...
,
John AdamsJohn Adams was an American politician and the second President of the United States , after being the first Vice President for two terms. He is regarded as one of the most influential Founding Fathers of the United States.Adams came to prominence in the early stages of the American Revolution...
,
John Quincy AdamsJohn Quincy Adams was the sixth President of the United States from March 4, 1825 to March 4, 1829. He was also an American diplomat and served in both the Senate and House of Representatives...
,
Andrew JacksonAndrew Jackson was the seventh President of the United States . He was military governor of Florida , commander of the American forces at the Battle of New Orleans , and eponym of the era of Jacksonian democracy...
,
Martin Van BurenMartin Van Buren was the eighth President of the United States from 1837 to 1841. Before his presidency, he served as the eighth Vice President and the 10th Secretary of State under Andrew Jackson...
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
MitteleuropaMitteleuropa is the German term equal to Central Europe.The word has political, geographic and cultural meaning...
. This canto contains some distinctly unpleasant expressions of anti-Semitic opinions. Canto XXXVI opens with a translation of Cavalcanti's
canzoneLiterally "song" in Italian, a canzone is an Italian or Provençal song or ballad. It is also used to describe a type of lyric which resembles a madrigal...
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
IrishThe Irish people are a Western European ethnic group who originate in Ireland, in north western Europe. Ireland has been populated for around 9,000 years , with the Irish people's earliest ancestors recorded as the Nemedians, Fomorians, Fir Bolgs, Tuatha Dé Danann and the Milesians The Irish...
philosopher and
poetA poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
John Scotus EriugenaJohannes Scotus Eriugena , was an Irish theologian, Neoplatonist philosopher, and poet...
, 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,
Alexander HamiltonAlexander Hamilton was the first United States Secretary of the Treasury, a Founding Father, economist, and political philosopher...
and the
Bank WarThe Bank War is the name given to controversy over the Second Bank of the United States and the attempts to destroy it by then-president Andrew Jackson. At that time, the bank was the only nationwide bank and exerted tremendous influences over the nation's financial system. However, in 1832 Andrew...
and also contains a reference to the Peggy Eaton affair.
Canto XXXVIII opens with a quotation from Dante in which he accuses
Albert of GermanyAlbert I of Habsburg was King of the Romans, Duke of Austria, and eldest son of German King Rudolph I of Habsburg and Gertrude of Hohenburg....
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
CirceIn Greek mythology, Circe is a minor goddess of magic living on the island of Aeaea....
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 SmithAdam Smith was a Scottish moral philosopher and a pioneer of political economy. One of the key figures of the Scottish Enlightenment, Smith is the author of The Theory of Moral Sentiments and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations...
on trade as a conspiracy against the general public, followed by another
periplusPeriplus is the Latinization of an ancient Greek word, περίπλους , literally "a sailing-around." Both segments, peri- and -plous, were independently productive: the ancient Greek speaker understood the word in its literal sense; however, it developed a few specialized meanings, one of which became...
, a condensed version of
Hanno the NavigatorHanno the Navigator was a Carthaginian explorer c. 500 BC, best known for his naval exploration of the African coast.- Etymology :...
's account of his voyage along the west coast of Africa. The book closes with an account of
Benito MussoliniBenito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini,
KSMOM GCTE was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism. He became the Prime Minister of Italy in 1922 and began using the title Il Duce by...
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
SieneseSiena is a city in Tuscany, Italy. It is the capital of the province of Siena.The historic centre of Siena has been declared by UNESCO a World Heritage Site.- History :...
bank, the
Monte dei Paschi di SienaBanca Monte dei Paschi di Siena S.p.A. is the oldest surviving bank in the world. Founded in 1472 by the Magistrate of the city state of Siena, Italy as a mount of piety, it has been operating ever since. Today it consists of approximately 3 thousand branches, 33 thousand employees and 4.5 million...
and to the 18th-century reforms of
Pietro LeopoldoLeopold II , born Peter Leopold Joseph Anton Joachim Pius Gotthard, was Holy Roman Emperor from 1790 to 1792, King of Hungary, archduke of Austria, and Grand Duke of Tuscany from 1765 to 1790. He was a son of Emperor Francis I and his wife, Empress Maria Theresa...
, 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
litanyA litany, in Christian worship, is a form of prayer used in church services and processions, and consisting of a number of petitions. The word comes from the Latin litania, from the Greek λιτή , meaning "prayer" or "supplication"....
against
Usura or
usuryUsury originally meant the charging of interest on loans. This would have included charging a fee for the use of money, such as at a bureau de change. After countries legislated to limit the rate of interest on loans, usury came to mean the interest above the lawful rate...
, 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.
Canto XLVI contrasts what has gone before with the practices of institutions such as the
Bank of EnglandThe Bank of England is, despite its name, the central bank of the whole of the United Kingdom and is the model on which most modern, large central banks have been based. It was established in 1694 to act as the English Government's banker, and to this day it still acts as the banker for the UK...
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
baroqueBaroque is an artistic style prevalent from the late 16th century to the early 18th century. The popularity and success of the Baroque style was encouraged by the Roman Catholic Church, which had decided at the time of the Council of Trent that the arts should communicate religious themes in...
.
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 candles on the bay at
RapalloRapallo is a municipality in the province of Genoa, in Liguria, northern Italy. As of 2007 it counts approximately 34,000 inhabitants, it is part of the Tigullio Gulf and is located in between Portofino and Chiavari....
near Pound's home every July merges with the cognate myths of Tammuz and
AdonisAdonis is a figure of West Semitic origin, where he is a central cult figure in various mystery religions, who entered Greek mythology. He is closely related to the Egyptian Osiris, the Semitic Tammuz and Baal Hadad, the Etruscan Atunis and the Phrygian Attis, all of whom are deities of rebirth...
, 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.
Canto XLIX is a poem of tranquil nature derived from a
ChineseChina is a cultural region, an ancient civilization, and, depending on perspective, a national or multinational entity extending over a large area in East Asia....
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 bankThe Medici Bank was the largest and most respected bank in Europe during the 15th century. There are some estimates that the Medici family was for a period of time the wealthiest family in Europe...
and more general images of European decay since the time of Napoleon. 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 MaillaJoseph-Anne-Marie de Moyriac de Mailla was a French Jesuit missionary to China.-Biography:...
. De Mailla was a French
JesuitThe Society of Jesus is a Catholic religious order of clerks regular whose members are called Jesuits.Jesuits are the largest male religious order in the Catholic Church, with 18,815 members—13,305 priests, 2,295 scholastic students, 1,758 brothers and 827 novices—as of January 2008, although the...
who spent 37 years in Peking and wrote his history there. The work was completed in 1730 but not published until 1777–1783. De Mailla was very much an
EnlightenmentThe Age of Enlightenment, or simply The Enlightenment, is a term used to describe a time in Western philosophy and cultural life, centered upon the eighteenth century, in which reason was advocated as the primary source and legitimacy for authority....
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, 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 BellGertrude Margaret Lowthian Bell CBE was a British writer, traveller, political analyst, administrator in Arabia, and an archaeologist who mapped and identified Anatolian and Mesopotamian ruins. She was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1917.Bell and T. E...
, before sliding into a particularly virulent anti-Semitic passage, directed mainly at the
Rothschild familyThe Rothschild family is an international dynasty of German Jewish origin that established worldwide banking and finance operations and was ennobled by Austria and the United Kingdom.-Origins:...
. The remainder of the canto is concerned with the classic Chinese text known as the
Li Ki or
Classic of RitesThe Classic of Rites , also known as the Book of Rites, the Record of Rites, Liki, or Li Ch'i, was one of the Chinese Five Classics of the Confucian canon. It described the social forms, governmental system, and ancient/ceremonial rites of the Zhou Dynasty...
, 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
Hai dynastyThe Xia Dynasty of China is the first dynasty to be described in ancient historical records such as Records of the Grand Historian and Bamboo Annals. The Xia Dynasty was established by the legendary Yu the Great after Shun gave his throne to him...
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 OdesThe Book of Odes may refer to one of the following:*The Chinese Shi Jing*The Christian Book of Odes *The Arabic Kitab al-Aghani...
, 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 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
GhengisGenghis Khan , ; 1162–1227), born , was the founder, Khan and Khagan of the Mongol Empire, the largest contiguous empire in history....
and Kublai Khan and the rise of their
Yeun dynastyThe Yuan Dynasty , or Great Yuan Empire was both the continuation of the Mongol Empire and the Mongol founded historical state in Mongolia and China, lasting officially from 1271 to 1368. Although the dynasty was established by Kublai Khan, he had his grandfather Genghis Khan placed on the...
. The canto closes with the overthrow of the Yeun and the establishment of the
Ming dynastyThe Ming Dynasty , or Empire of the Great Ming , was the ruling dynasty of China from 1368 to 1644, following the collapse of the Mongol-led Yuan Dynasty. The Ming, "one of the greatest eras of orderly government and social stability in human history," was the last dynasty in China ruled by ethnic...
, bringing us to around 1400.
Canto LVII opens with the story of the flight of the emperor
Kien Ouen TiThe Jianwen Emperor , with the personal name Zhu Yunwen, reigned as the second Emperor of the Ming dynasty. His reign Jianwen name meant "Establishment of the civil virtue"....
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; also known as: Kamuyamato Iwarebiko; given name: Wakamikenu no Mikoto or Sano no Mikoto, was the mythical founder of Japan and is the first emperor named in the traditional lists of emperors....
, who supposedly ruled in the 7th century BCE, to the late 16th-century
Toyotomi Hideyoshiwas a daimyo in the Sengoku period who unified Japan. He succeeded his former liege lord, Oda Nobunaga, and brought an end to the Sengoku period. The period of his rule is often called the Momoyama period, named after Hideyoshi's castle. He is noted for a number of cultural legacies, including the...
(anglicised by Pound as Messier Undertree), who issued edicts against Christianity and raided
KoreaKorea is a civilization and formerly unified nation currently divided into two states. Located on the Korean Peninsula, it borders China to the northwest, Russia to the northeast, and is separated from Japan to the east by the Korea Strait....
, 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 dynastyThe Qing Dynasty , also known as the Manchu Dynasty, was the last ruling dynasty of China, ruling from 1644 to 1912...
.
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 GerbillonJean-François Gerbillon 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 humanities for seven years...
. Canto LX deals with the activities of the Jesuits, who, we are told, introduced
astronomyAstronomy is the scientific study of celestial objects and phenomena that originate outside the Earth's atmosphere...
, western music, physics and the use of
quinineQuinine is a natural white crystalline alkaloid having antipyretic , antimalarial, analgesic , and anti-inflammatory properties and a bitter taste. It is a stereoisomer of quinidine....
. 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 TchingThe Yongzheng Emperor , born Yinzhen was the fourth emperor of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, and the third Qing emperor to rule over China, from 1722 to 1735. A hard-working ruler, Yongzheng's main goal was to create an effective government at minimum expense...
and
Kien LongThe Qianlong Emperor was the fifth emperor of the Manchu-led Qing Dynasty, and the fourth Qing emperor to rule over China...
, 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, 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 AdamsJohn Adams was an American politician and the second President of the United States , after being the first Vice President for two terms. He is regarded as one of the most influential Founding Fathers of the United States.Adams came to prominence in the early stages of the American Revolution...
. 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 well-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
juristA jurist or jurisconsult is a professional who studies, develops, applies, or otherwise deals with the law. The term is widely used in American English, but in the United Kingdom and many Commonwealth countries it has only historical and specialist usage...
Sir
Edward CokeSir Edward Coke , was a seventeenth-century English jurist and Member of Parliament whose writings on the common law were the definitive legal texts for nearly 150 years. Born into a family of minor Norfolk gentry, Coke traveled to London as a young man to make his living as a barrister...
, 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'sGeorge Washington was the commander of the Continental Army in the American Revolutionary War and served as the first President of the United States of America...
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 OtisJames Otis, Jr. was a lawyer in colonial Massachusetts who was an early advocate of the political views that led to the American Revolution. The phrase "Taxation without Representation is Tyranny" is usually attributed to him.He was born in Barnstable, Massachusetts, to James Otis, Sr...
in the 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 FranklinBenjamin Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America. A noted polymath, Franklin was a leading author and printer, satirist, political theorist, politician, scientist, inventor, civic activist, statesman, soldier, and diplomat...
. 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 ActA stamp act is a law enacted by government that requires a tax to be paid on the transfer of certain documents. The stamp act was considered upsetting to some people. Those that pay the tax receive an official stamp on their documents. The tax raised, called stamp duty, was first devised in the...
and other resistance to British taxation of the American colonies. It also shows Adams defending the accused in the
Boston MassacreThe Boston Massacre was an incident that led to the deaths of five civilians at the hands of British troops on March 5, 1770, the legal aftermath of which helped spark the rebellion in some of the British American colonies, which culminated in the American Revolution...
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
PetroniusGaius Petronius Arbiter was a Roman courtier during the reign of Nero. He is speculated to be the author of the Satyricon, a satirical novel believed to have been written during the Neronian age.-Life:...
'
SatyriconSatyricon is a Latin work of fiction in a mixture of prose and poetry. It is believed to have been written by Gaius Petronius, though the manuscript tradition identifies the author as a certain Titus Petronius...
) 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
navyA navy is the branch of a nation's armed forces principally designated for naval warfare and amphibious warfare; namely, lake- or ocean-borne combat operations and related functions...
. Following a passage on the drafting of the
Declaration of IndependenceThe United States Declaration of Independence is a statement adopted by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, which announced that the thirteen American colonies then at war with Great Britain were now independent states, and thus no longer a part of the British Empire...
, the canto returns to Adams' mission to France, focusing on his dealings with the American
legationA legation was the term used in diplomacy to denote a diplomatic representative office lower than an embassy. The distinction between a legation and embassy was dropped following the Second World War, as all diplomatic representative offices were now designated as embassies, or high commissions.A...
in that country, consisting of Franklin,
Silas DeaneSilas Deane , was a delegate to the American Continental Congress and later the United States' first foreign diplomat.-Biography:Deane was born in Groton, Connecticut, the son of a blacksmith...
and
Edward BancroftEdward Bancroft was an American physician and double-agent spy during the American Revolution.Born in Westfield, Massachusetts, he worked as a spy for Benjamin Franklin while he was secretary to the American Commission in Paris...
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'sThe Court of St. James's is the name of the royal court of the United Kingdom.- Overview :The Court of St. James's is named after St. James's Palace which is the senior Palace of the Sovereign, currently Queen Elizabeth II. It remains the official residence of the British Monarchy despite Queen...
. The body of the canto consists of quotations from Adams' writings on the legal basis for the Revolution, including citations from
Magna CartaMagna Carta, also called Magna Carta Libertatum , is an English legal charter, originally issued in the year 1215. It was written in Latin and is known by its Latin name...
and Coke and on the importance of
trial by juryTrial by Jury is a comic opera in one act, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It was first produced on 25 March 1875, at London's Royalty Theatre, where it initially ran for 131 performances and was considered a hit, receiving critical praise and outrunning its...
(
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
LycurgusLycurgus or Lykurgus may refer to:* People:** Lycurgus of Sparta, creator of constitution of Sparta** Lycurgus of Athens, one of the ten notable orators at Athens, ** Lycurgus , king** Lycurgus , king...
, the just king of
SpartaSparta was a city-state in ancient Greece, situated on the River Eurotas in the southern part of the Peloponnese. From c. 650 BC it rose to become the dominant military power in the region and as such was recognized as the overall leader of the combined Greek forces during the Greco-Persian Wars...
. 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 MadisonJames Madison was an American politician and political philosopher who served as the fourth President of the United States , and was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States....
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 AmericansNative Americans in the United States is the phrase that describes indigenous peoples from North America now encompassed by the continental United States, including parts of Alaska and the island state of Hawaii. They comprise a large number of distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of...
and their treatment by the British during the
Indian WarsIndian Wars is the name used in the United States to describe a series of conflicts between the colonial or federal government and the native people of North America....
. The canto closes with the opening lines of
EpictetusEpictetus was a Greek Stoic philosopher. He was probably born a slave at Hierapolis, Phrygia , and lived in Rome until his exile to Nicopolis in northwestern Greece, where he lived most of his life and died. His teachings were noted down and published by his pupil Arrian in his Discourses...
'
Hymn of Cleanthus, which Pound tells us formed part of Adams'
paideuma. These lines invoke
ZeusIn Greek mythology, Zeus is the king of the gods, the ruler of Mount Olympus and the god of the sky and thunder. His symbols are the thunderbolt, eagle, bull, and oak. In addition to his Indo-European inheritance, the classical "cloud-gatherer" also derives certain iconographic traits from the...
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
DanteDANTE is a not-for-profit organisation that plans, builds and operates the international networks that interconnect the various National Research and Education Networks in Europe and surrounding regions...
's
Divine Comedy and casts himself as conversing with ghosts from Italy's remote and recent past.
In Canto LXXII, imitative of Dante's
tercetA tercet is composed of three lines of poetry, forming a stanza or a complete poem. English-language haiku is an example of an unrhymed tercet poem...
s (
terza rima), Pound meets the recently dead Futurist writer
Filippo Tommaso MarinettiFilippo Tommaso Emilio Marinetti was an Italian ideologue, poet, editor, and founder of the Futurist movement.-Childhood and adolescence:...
, 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 RomanoEzzelino III da Romano was a feudal lord in the March of Treviso who was a close ally of the emperor Frederick II and ruled Verona, Vicenza and Padua for almost two decades...
, 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 and "traitors" (like king Victor Emmanuel III) who betrayed Mussolini, and to promise that the Italian troops will eventually "return" to
El AlameinEl Alamein is a town in northern Egypt on the Mediterranean Sea coast in Matruh Governorate. It is west of Alexandria and northwest of Cairo...
.
Canto LXXIII is subtitled "Cavalcanti – Republican Correspondence" and is written in the style of Cavalcanti's "Donna mi prega" of Canto XXXVI.
Guido CavalcantiGuido Cavalcanti was a Florentine poet, as well as an intellectual influence on his best friend, Dante. His poems in their original Italian are available on Wikisource .- Historical Background :...
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 FascismThe term Italian Fascism denotes the authoritarian nationalist Fascismo political movement that ruled Kingdom of Italy from 1922 until 1943 under leader Benito Mussolini...
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
DanteDANTE is a not-for-profit organisation that plans, builds and operates the international networks that interconnect the various National Research and Education Networks in Europe and surrounding regions...
and
CavalcantiCavalcanti is an Italian surname, also common in Portugal and Brazil where it is used by people of ancient Italian origin. In Italy, Portugal and Brazil the variant Cavalcante is also used...
. For example, Furio Brugnolo claims that these cantos are "the only notable example of
epic poetry in 20th-century Italian literature".
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 HarborPearl Harbor is a harbor on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, west of Honolulu. Much of the harbor and surrounding lands is a United States Navy deep-water naval base. It is also the headquarters of the U.S. Pacific Fleet...
. 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 absence, and wrote a letter to the indicting judge in which he claimed the right to
freedom of speechFreedom of speech is the freedom to speak without censorship or limitation. The synonymous term freedom of expression is sometimes used to indicate not only freedom of verbal speech but any act of seeking, receiving and imparting information or ideas, regardless of the medium used...
in his defence.
Pound was arrested in Rapallo by Italian partisans on May 3, 1945, was detained in Genoa, and was eventually transferred to the American Disciplinary Training Center (DTC) north of Pisa 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 LeggeJames Legge was a noted Scottish sinologist, a Scottish Congregationalist, representative of the London Missionary Society in Malacca and Hong Kong , and first professor of Chinese at Oxford University...
'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
eucalyptusEucalyptus is a diverse genus of flowering trees in the myrtle family, Myrtaceae. Members of the genus dominate the tree flora of Australia. There are more than 700 species of Eucalyptus, mostly native to Australia, and a very small number are found in adjacent parts of New Guinea and Indonesia...
pip. Throughout the Pisan sequence, Pound repeatedly likens the camp to
Francesco del CossaFrancesco del Cossa was an Italian early-Renaissance painter of the School of Ferrara.-Biography:...
's
March frescoFresco is any of several related painting types, done on plaster on walls or ceilings. The word fresco comes from the Italian word affresco which derives from the adjective fresco , which has Latin origins...
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 honoring 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.H.D. was an American poet, novelist and memoirist best known for her association with the early 20th century avant-garde Imagist group of poets such as Ezra Pound and Richard Aldington...
and
Gary SnyderGary Snyder is an American poet , as well as an essayist, lecturer, and environmental activist . Snyder is a winner of a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry...
.
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
fugueIn music, a fugue is a type of contrapuntal composition or technique of composition for a fixed number of parts, normally referred to as "voices". In the Middle Ages, the term was widely used to denote any works in canonic style; by the Renaissance, it had come to denote specifically imitative works...
. 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
CyclopsIn Greek mythology and later Roman mythology, a cyclops , is a member of a primordial race of giants, each with a single eye in the middle of its forehead. The classical plural is cyclopes , though the conventional plural cyclopses is also used in English...
episode of the
Odyssey. This figure blends into the Australia rain god Wanjina, 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,
James JoyceJames Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish expatriate author, playwright and poet of the 20th century. He is known for his landmark novel Ulysses and its controversial successor Finnegans Wake , as well as the short story collection Dubliners and the semi-autobiographical novel A Portrait of...
,
Ford Madox FordFord Madox Ford was an English novelist, poet, critic and editor whose journals, The English Review and The Transatlantic Review, were instrumental in the development of early 20th-century English literature...
,
Victor PlarrVictor Gustave Plarr was an English poet; he is probably best known for the poem Epitaphium Citharistriae.He was born near Strasbourg, France, of a French father from Alsace, and an English mother. He was brought up in England after his family moved at the time of the Franco-Prussian War...
and
Maurice HewlettMaurice Henry Hewlett , was an English historical novelist, poet and essayist. He was born at Weybridge, the eldest son of Henry Gay Hewlett, of Shaw Hall, Addington, Kent. He was educated at the London International College, Spring Grove, Isleworth, and was called to the bar in 1891. He gave up...
. 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
TaishanTaishan is a coastal county-level city in Guangdong Province, China. The city is located in the Pearl River Delta, southwest of Jiangmen and 140 kilometers west of Hong Kong, with a population of approximately 1 million...
and the naming of the moon as
sorella la luna (sister moon). This thread then runs through the appearance of
KuanonGuanyin is the bodhisattva associated with compassion as venerated by East Asian Buddhists, usually as a female...
, the Buddhist goddess of mercy, the moon spirit from
Hagaromo (a
Noh, or is a major form of classical Japanese musical drama that has been performed since the 14th century. Many characters are masked, with men playing both the male and female roles. The repertoire is normally limited to a specific set of historical plays...
play translated by Pound some 40 years earlier), Sigismondo's lover Ixotta (linked in the text with
AphroditeAphrodite is the Greek goddess of love, beauty and raw sexuality. According to Greek poet Hesiod, she was born when Cronus cut off Ouranos's genitals and threw them into the sea, and from the aphros arose Aphrodite.Because of her beauty other gods feared that jealousy would interrupt the peace...
via a reference to the goddess' birthplace Cythera), a girl painted by
ManetManet is Édouard Manet, a 19th-century French painter.MANET is a mobile ad hoc network, a self-configuring mobile wireless network.Manet or MANET may also refer to:*MANET database or Molecular Ancestry Network, bioinformatics database...
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
SapphoSappho was an Ancient Greek poet, born on the island of Lesbos. Later Greeks included her in the canonical list of nine lyric poets. Her birth was sometime between 630 and 612 BC, and it is said that she died around 570 BC, but little is known for certain about her life...
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 VentadornBernart de Ventadorn , also known as Bernard de Ventadour or Bernat del Ventadorn, was a prominent troubador of the classical age of troubadour poetry...
. Another theme sees
EcbatanaPlease update as needed.Ecbatana is supposed to be the capital of Astyages , which was taken by the Persian emperor Cyrus the Great...
, the seven-walled "city of Dioce", blend with the city of Wagadu, from the African tale of
Gassire's Lute that Pound derived 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 Rothschild. Pound brings in biblical injunctions on usury and a reference to the issuing of a stamp script currency in the Austrian town of
WörglWörgl is a town in Tyrol, Austria, in the Kufstein district. It is 20 km from the state border with Bavaria.-Transport:Wörgl is an important railway junction between the line from Innsbruck to Munich, and the inner-Austrian line to Salzburg....
. 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 BeardsleyAubrey Vincent Beardsley was an English illustrator and author. His emphasis of the erotic element is present in many of his drawings, but nowhere as boldly as in his illustrations for Lysistrata which were done for a privately printed edition at a time when he was totally out of favor with polite...
, 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 VerlainePaul-Marie Verlaine was a French poet associated with the Symbolist movement. He is considered one of the greatest representatives of the fin de siècle in international and French poetry.-Early life:...
of a fountain playing in the moonlight, and a reference to a poem by
Ben JonsonBenjamin Jonson was an English Renaissance dramatist, poet and actor. A contemporary of William Shakespeare, he is best known for his satirical plays, particularly Volpone, The Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair, which are considered his best, and his lyric poems...
in a composite image of hope for "those who have passed over
LetheIn Classical Greek, Lethe literally means "forgetfulness" or "concealment". It is related to the Greek word for "truth": a-lethe-ia , meaning "un-forgetfulness" or "un-concealment". In Greek mythology, Lethe is one of the several rivers of Hades: those who drank from it experienced complete...
".
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
composerA composer is a person who creates music, usually by musical notation, for interpretation and performance. The level of distinction between composers and other musicians varies, which affects issues such as copyright and the deference given to individual interpretations of a particular piece of...
Clément JanequinClément Janequin 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 of the Parisian chanson, especially the programmatic type...
'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 CocteauJean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau was a French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager, playwright, artist and filmmaker...
. There follows a passage in which the poet recognises the Jewish authorship of the prohibition on usury found in
LeviticusLeviticus or Vayikra is the third book of the Hebrew Bible/Christian Old Testament, and the third of five books of the Jewish Torah or Pentateuch....
. 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
DionysusIn classical mythology, Dionysus or Dionysos is the god of wine, the inspirer of ritual madness and ecstasy, and a major figure of Greek mythology, and one of the twelve Olympians, amongst whom Greek mythology treated him as a late arrival...
(
Zagreus).
After opening with a glimpse of
Mount IdaIn Greek mythology, two sacred mountains are called Mount Ida, the "Mountain of the Goddess": Mount Ida in Crete, and Mount Ida in Turkey, which known as Phrygian Ida in Classical times...
, an important locus for the history of the
Trojan WarIn Greek mythology, the Trojan War was waged against the city of Troy by the Achaeans after Paris of Troy stole Helen from her husband Menelaus, the king of Sparta. The war is among the most important events in Greek mythology and was narrated in many works of Greek literature, including the Iliad...
, 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, the emperors
JustinianFlavius Petrus Sabbatius Iustinianus ; AD 483 – 13 or 14 November 565, known in English as Justinian I or Justinian the Great, was the second member of the Justinian Dynasty and Eastern Roman Emperor from 527 until his death...
,
TitusTitus Flavius Vespasianus, commonly known as Titus , was a Roman Emperor who briefly reigned from 79 until his death in 81...
and
AntoninusTitus Aurelius Fulvus Boionius Arrius Antoninus , generally known in English as Antoninus Pius was Roman emperor from 138 to 161. He was the fourth of the Five Good Emperors and a member of the Aurelii. He did not possess the sobriquet "Pius" until after his accession to the throne...
, Mussolini), usury and stamp scripts culminating in the
NausicaaIn ancient Greek literature, Nausicaa is the daughter of King Alcinous of the Phaeacians and Queen Arete in Homer's Odyssey , Book Six. Her name means, in Greek, "burner of ships"....
episode from the
Odyssey and a reference to the Confucian classic
Annals of Spring and Autumn 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
Philippe PétainHenri Philippe Benoni Omer Joseph Pétain , generally known as Philippe Pétain or Marshal Pétain , was a French general who reached the distinction of Marshal of France, and was later Chief of State of Vichy France , from 1940 to 1944...
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
lynxA lynx is any of four big-sized wild cats. All are members of the genus Lynx, but there is considerable confusion about the best way to classify felids at present, and some authorities classify them as part of the genus Felis...
.
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,
Wyndham LewisPercy Wyndham Lewis was an English painter and author . He was a co-founder of the Vorticist movement in art, and edited the literary magazine of the Vorticists, BLAST...
,
Laurence BinyonRobert Laurence Binyon was an English poet, dramatist, and art scholar. His most famous work, For the Fallen, is well known for being used in Remembrance Sunday services....
and others. The canto is concerned with the aftermath of war, drawing on Yeats' experiences after the
Irish Civil WarThe Irish Civil War was a conflict that accompanied the establishment of the Irish Free State as an entity independent from the United Kingdom within the British Empire....
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 BotticelliAlessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi, better known as Sandro Botticelli or Il Botticello was an Italian painter of the Florentine school during the Early Renaissance...
to the fleshiness of
RubensSir Peter Paul Rubens was a prolific seventeenth-century Flemish Baroque painter, and a proponent of an exuberant Baroque style that emphasized movement, color, and sensuality...
and its recovery in the 20th century as evidenced in the works of
Marie LaurencinMarie Laurencin was a French painter and printmaker.-Biography:Laurencin was born in Paris where she was raised by her mother and lived much of her life. When she was 18 years old, she studied porcelain painting in Sèvres...
and others. This is set between two further references to Mont Segur. Pound/Odysseus is then saved from his sinking raft by
Walt WhitmanWalter Whitman was an American poet, essayist, journalist, and humanist. He was a part of the transition between Transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse...
and
Richard LovelaceRichard Lovelace was an English poet in the seventeenth century.-Early life and family:Richard Lovelace was born in 1618. His exact birthplace is unknown, but it is documented that it was either Woolwich, Kent, or Holland . He was the oldest son of Sir William Lovelace and Anne Barne Lovelace and...
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 FitzgeraldEdward Fitzgerald may refer to:* Edward FitzGerald, 7th Duke of Leinster* Lord Edward FitzGerald, Irish revolutionary* Edward FitzGerald * Edward Fitzgerald * Edward Fitzgerald * Edward Fitzgerald Beale...
's
Rubaiyat of Omar KhayyamRubaiyat of Omar Khayyam is the title that Edward FitzGerald gave to his translation of a selection of poems, originally written in the Persian language and of which there are about a thousand, attributed to Omar Khayyám , a Persian poet, mathematician and astronomer...
, lamenting the lost London of Pound's youth and an image of nature as designer.
Canto LXXXI opens with a complex image that illustrates well Pound's technical approach. The opening line, "
ZeusIn Greek mythology, Zeus is the king of the gods, the ruler of Mount Olympus and the god of the sky and thunder. His symbols are the thunderbolt, eagle, bull, and oak. In addition to his Indo-European inheritance, the classical "cloud-gatherer" also derives certain iconographic traits from the...
lies in Ceres 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
TaishanTaishan is a coastal county-level city in Guangdong Province, China. The city is located in the Pearl River Delta, southwest of Jiangmen and 140 kilometers west of Hong Kong, with a population of approximately 1 million...
surrounded by vapors and surmounted by the planet
VenusVenus is the second-closest planet to the Sun, orbiting it every 224.7 Earth days. The planet is named after Venus, the Roman goddess of love and beauty. After the Moon, it is the brightest natural object in the night sky, reaching an apparent magnitude of −4.6...
("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 SantayanaGeorge Santayana , was a philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist. A lifelong Spanish citizen, Santayana was raised and educated in the United States, wrote in English and is generally considered an American man of letters. Of his nearly 89 years, he spent 39 in the U.S...
. 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 poetryModernist poetry refers to poetry written between 1890 and 1930 in the tradition of modernist literature; 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 critic setting the dates...
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 ecologyDeep ecology is a somewhat recent branch of ecological philosophy that considers humankind as an integral part of its environment. The philosophy emphasizes the equal value of human and non-human life as well as the importance of the ecosystem and natural processes...
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
SwinburneSwinburne may refer to:* A place:**Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia**Swinburne University of Technology Sarawak Campus in Kuching, Malaysia**Swinburne Senior Secondary College in Melbourne, Australia...
's work and celebrates Wilfred Scawen Blunt,
Rudyard KiplingRudyard Kipling was a British author and poet. Born in Bombay, British India, he is best known for his works of fiction The Jungle Book , Kim , many short stories, including The Man Who Would Be King ; and his poems, including...
,
Ford Madox FordFord Madox Ford was an English novelist, poet, critic and editor whose journals, The English Review and The Transatlantic Review, were instrumental in the development of early 20th-century English literature...
,
Walt WhitmanWalter Whitman was an American poet, essayist, journalist, and humanist. He was a part of the transition between Transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse...
, 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 (in a quasi-sexual embrace) 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
PindarPindar , was an Ancient Greek lyric poet. Of the canonical nine lyric poets of ancient Greece, Pindar is the one whose work is best preserved...
, George Gemistos Plethon, John Scotus Eriugena, the mermaid carvings of
Pietro LombardoPietro Lombardo was an Italian Renaissance sculptor and architect; born in Carona , he was the father of Tullio Lombardo and Antonio Lombardo....
and
HeraclitusHeraclitus of Ephesus was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, a native of Ephesus, Ionia, on the coast of Asia Minor. He was of distinguished parentage. Little is known about his early life and education, but he regarded himself as self-taught and a pioneer of wisdom...
' phrase
panta rei ("everything flows"). A passage addressed to a
DryadDryads are tree spirits in Greek mythology. In Greek drys signifies 'oak,' from an Indo-European root *derew- 'tree' or 'wood'. Thus dryads are specifically the nymphs of oak trees, though the term has come to be used for all tree nymphs in general...
speaks out against the
death sentence"Death Sentence" is a short story by the American science-fiction writer Isaac Asimov. It was first published in the November 1943 issue of Astounding Science Fiction and reprinted in the 1972 collection The Early Asimov....
and cages for wild animals and is followed by lines on equity in government and natural processes based on the writings of
MenciusMencius , most accepted dates: 372 – 289 BCE; other possible dates: 385 – 303/302 BCE) was a Chinese philosopher who was arguably the most famous Confucian after Confucius himself.-Life:...
. 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
TiresiasIn Greek mythology, Tiresias was a blind prophet of Thebes, famous for being transformed into a woman for seven years...
, 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 BornBertran de Born was a baron from the Limousin in France, and one of the major Occitan troubadours of the twelfth century.-Life and works:...
(which Pound had once translated as "Planh for the Young English King") and a double occurrence of the Greek word
tethneke ("died") remembered from the story of the death of
PanPan , in Greek religion and mythology, is the companion of the nymphs, god of shepherds and flocks, of mountain wilds, hunting and rustic music. His name originates within the Greek language, from the word paein, meaning "to pasture". He has the hindquarters, legs, and horns of a goat, in the same...
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.Washington, D.C. , formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, the District, or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States, founded on July 16, 1790...
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 HospitalSt. Elizabeths [sic] Hospital, located in Washington, D.C., was the first large-scale, federally-run psychiatric hospital in the United States. It is known colloquially as "St. E's"....
, 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 OdesThe Book of Odes may refer to one of the following:*The Chinese Shi Jing*The Christian Book of Odes *The Arabic Kitab al-Aghani...
and of
SophoclesSophocles was the second of the three ancient Greek tragedians whose work has survived. His first plays were written later than those of Aeschylus and earlier than those of Euripides...
' play
Women of TrachisWomen of Trachis is an Athenian tragedy by Sophocles.-Synopsis:The story begins with Deianeira, the wife of Heracles, relating the story of her early life, and her plight adjusting to married life. She is now distraught over her husband's neglect of her family. Often involved in some adventure,...
as well as 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
Classic of HistoryThe Classic of History is a compilation of documentary records related to events in ancient history of China. It is also commonly known as the Shàngshū , or simply Shū...
, in an edition by the French Jesuit
Séraphin CouvreurSéraphin Couvreur was a French Jesuit missionary to China, sinologist and creator of the EFEO Chinese transcription in 1902...
, 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 BentonThomas Hart Benton , nicknamed "Old Bullion", was a U.S. Senator from Missouri and a staunch advocate of westward expansion of the United States. He served in the Senate from 1821 to 1851, becoming the first member of that body to serve five terms...
'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 (see References), 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 IElizabeth I was Queen of England and Queen of Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death. Sometimes called the Virgin Queen, Gloriana, or Good Queen Bess, Elizabeth was the fifth and last monarch of the Tudor dynasty...
,
CleopatraCleopatra VII Philopator was the last effective pharaoh of Egypt's Ptolemaic dynasty. She originally shared power with her father Ptolemy XII and later with her brothers Ptolemy XIII and Ptolemy XIV, whom she also married, but eventually gained sole rule...
,
Alexander the GreatAlexander III of Macedon, popularly known as Alexander the Great , was an Ancient Greek king of Macedon who created one of the largest empires in ancient history...
, as are Napoleon III, Franklin D. Roosevelt and
Harry Dexter WhiteHarry Dexter White was an American economist and senior U.S. Treasury department official. He was a primary participant in the Bretton Woods conference and the formation of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank...
, 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
YggdrasilIn Norse mythology, Yggdrasil is the world tree. Yggdrasil is central in Norse cosmology, and around it exists Nine Worlds....
. The natural world and the world of government are related to
tekhne or art.
Richard of St. VictorRichard of Saint Victor , was one of the most important mystical theologians of 12th century Paris, then the intellectual center of Europe. Richard, a Scot, was prior of the famous Augustinian abbey of Saint-Victor in Paris from 1162 until his death in 1173.Richard was a student of the great...
, 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 ViennaThe Congress of Vienna was a conference of ambassadors of European states chaired by the Austrian statesman Klemens Wenzel von Metternich, and held in Vienna from November, 1814 to June, 1815. Its objective was to settle the many issues arising from the French Revolutionary Wars, the Napoleonic...
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
Laurence BinyonRobert Laurence Binyon was an English poet, dramatist, and art scholar. His most famous work, For the Fallen, is well known for being used in Remembrance Sunday services....
's dictum
slowness is beauty, the San Ku, or three sages, figures from the
Chou King who are responsible for the balance between heaven and earth,
Jacques de MolayJacques de Molay was the 23rd and officially last Grand Master of the Knights Templar, leading the Order from approximately 1292 until the Order was dissolved by order of the Pope in 1312. He is probably the best known Templar, along with the Order's founder and first Grand Master, Hugues de Payens...
, the golden section, 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 HeydonJohn Heydon was a Neoplatonist occult philosopher and Rosicrucian.-Life:Rosicrucian sources, including Heydon's own English Physician's Guide and Frederick Talbot's The Wise Man's Crown, give a florid biography for Heydon, in which he is descended from a King of Hungary...
(who Pound remembered from his days working with Yeats) and other images relating to the worship of light including "'MontSegur, sacred to
HeliosIn Greek mythology the sun was personified as Helios Homer often calls him simply Titan or Hyperion, while Hesiod and the Homeric Hymn separate him as a son of the Titans Hyperion and Theia or Euryphaessa and brother of the goddesses Selene, the moon, and Eos, the dawn...
". 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 RoanokeJohn Randolph , known as John Randolph of Roanoke, was a leader in Congress from Virginia and spokesman for the "Old Republican" or "Quids" faction of the Democratic-Republican Party that wanted to restrict the role of the federal government.-Biography:He was born at Cawsons, Virginia , he was the...
and the campaign against the establishment of the
Bank of the United StatesBank of the United States may refer to:* First Bank of the United States * Second Bank of the United States * Bank of United States , a commercial bank not affiliated with the government-See also:...
. 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, the emperor
Antoninus PiusTitus Aurelius Fulvus Boionius Arrius Antoninus , generally known in English as Antoninus Pius was Roman emperor from 138 to 161. He was the fourth of the Five Good Emperors and a member of the Aurelii. He did not possess the sobriquet "Pius" until after his accession to the throne...
and St. Ambrose, amongst others.
Canto LXXXIX continues with Benton and also draws on
Alexander del MarAlexander del Mar was an American political economist, historian, numismatist and author. He was an organizer and director of the U.S. Bureau of Statistics in 1866-69.-Biography:...
's
A History of Money Systems. The same examples of good rule are drawn on, with the addition of the Emperor
AurelianLucius Domitius Aurelianus , known in English as Aurelian, Roman Emperor , was the second of several highly successful "soldier-emperors" who helped the Roman Empire regain its power during the latter part of the third century and the beginning of the fourth.During his reign, the Empire was...
. Possibly in defence of his focus on so much "unpoetical" material, Pound quotes
Rodolphus AgricolaRodolphus Agricola was a pre-Erasmian humanist of the northern Low Countries, famous for his supple Latin and one of the first north of the Alps to know Greek well...
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 Humboldtwas a German naturalist and explorer, and the younger brother of the Prussian minister, philosopher, and linguist, Wilhelm von Humboldt...
and
Louis AgassizJean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz was a paleontologist, glaciologist, and geologist, and was a prominent innovator in the study of the Earth's natural history. He grew up in Switzerland and became a professor of natural history at University of Neuchâtel...
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 PhilemonIn Ovid's moralizing fable , which stands on the periphery of Greek mythology and Roman mythology, Baucis and Philemon were an old married couple in the region of Tyana, which Ovid places in Phrygia, and the only ones in their town to welcome disguised gods Zeus and Hermes , thus embodying the...
, an aged couple who, in a story from
OvidPublius Ovidius Naso , known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who wrote about love, seduction, and mythological transformation....
's
MetamorphosesThe Metamorphoses by the Roman poet Ovid is a narrative poem in fifteen books that describes the creation and history of the world. Completed in 8 AD, it has remained one of the most popular works of mythology, being the Classical work best known to medieval writers and thus having a great deal of...
, 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
CastaliaCastalia , in Greek mythology, was a nymph whom Apollo transformed into a fountain at Delphi, at the base of Mount Parnassos, or at Mount Helicon. Castalia could inspire the genius of poetry to those who drank her waters or listened to their quiet sound; the sacred water was also used to clean the...
on Parnassus. This fountain was sacred to the
MuseThe Muses in Greek mythology, poetry, and literature are the goddesses or spirits who inspire the creation of literature and the arts. They were considered the source of the knowledge, related orally for centuries in the ancient culture, that was contained in poetic lyrics and myths...
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
AmphionThere are several characters named Amphion in Greek mythology:* Amphion, son of Zeus and Antiope, and twin brother of Zethus . Together they are famous for building Thebes. Amphion married Niobe, and killed himself after the loss of his wife and children at the hands of Apollo and Artemis...
, 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),
IsisIsis was a goddess in Ancient Egyptian religious beliefs, whose worship spread throughout the Greco-Roman world. She was worshiped as the ideal mother, wife, patron of nature and magic. She was the friend of slaves, sinners, artisans, the downtrodden, as well as listening to the prayers of the...
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 (
ErebusIn Greek mythology, Erebus , also Erebos or Erebes , was the son of a primordial god, Khaos, and represented the personification of darkness and shadow, which filled in all the corners and crannies of the world. His name is used interchangeably with Tartarus and Hades since Erebus is often thought...
).
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
RaRA is an abbreviation or code which may refer to :Science* Right ascension, an astronomical term for one of the two coordinates of a point on the celestial sphere when using the equatorial coordinate system...
-
SetIn Ancient Egyptian mythology, Set is an ancient god, who was originally the god of the desert, Storms, Darkness, and Chaos...
, 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 TyanaApollonius of Tyana was a Greek Neopythagorean philosopher and teacher. He hailed from the town of Tyana in the Roman province of Cappadocia in Asia Minor. A contemporary of Jesus of Nazareth, the life and wandering mission of Apollonius is often compared to his.After his lifetime, Apollonius'...
appears, as do Helen of Tyre, partner of
Simon MagusSimon Magus , also known as Simon the Sorcerer and Simon of Gitta, was a Samaritan proto-Gnostic and traditional founder of the Simonians in the first century A.D...
and the emperor
JustinianFlavius Petrus Sabbatius Iustinianus ; AD 483 – 13 or 14 November 565, known in English as Justinian I or Justinian the Great, was the second member of the Justinian Dynasty and Eastern Roman Emperor from 527 until his death...
and his consort
TheodoraTheodora can refer to any of the following:* Flavia Maximiana Theodora, daughter of the Roman Emperor Maximian and second wife of the Emperor Constantius I Chlorus....
. 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
LayamonLayamon or Laghamon , occasionally also written Lawman was a poet of the early 13th century and author of the Brut, a notable English poem of the 12th century that was the first English language work to discuss the legends of Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Layamon describes himself...
's 12th-century poem
Brut. An italicised section, claiming that the 1913 foundation of the
Federal Reserve BankThe United States Federal Reserve System consists of twelve Federal Reserve Banks, each responsible for a particular district, and some with branches.-Brief history:...
, which took power over interest rates away from Congress, and the teaching of Marx and Freud in American universities ("beaneries") are examples of what
Julien BendaJulien Benda was a French philosopher and novelist.Born into a Jewish family, Benda became a master of French belles-lettres. Yet he believed that science was superior to literature as a method of inquiry...
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
LeucotheaIn Greek mythology, Leucothea was one of the aspects under which an ancient sea goddess was recognized, in this case as a transformed nymph....
, "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 EmpireThe Roman Empire was the post-Republican phase of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean. The term is used to describe the Roman state during and after the time of the first emperor,...
'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, known as Abū Alī Sīnā or Ibn Sīnā , and commonly known in English by his Latinized name Avicenna , was a Persian polymath and the foremost physician and philosopher of his time...
, 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 to His Son MerikaraThe Teaching for King Merykara , alt. Instruction Addressed to King Merikare, is a literary composition in Middle Egyptian, the classical phase of the Egyptian language, probably of Middle Kingdom date ....
. 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 AugustineAugustine of Hippo , Bishop of Hippo Regius, also known as St. Augustine or St. Austin, was an Algerian Berber philosopher and theologian....
on the need to feed people before attempting to convert them, and Dante and Shakespeare 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 EdenThe Garden of Eden is a location described in the Book of Genesis as being the place where the first man, Adam, and his wife, Eve, lived after they were created by God. Literally, the Bible speaks about a garden in 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 RushBenjamin Rush was a Founding Father of the United States. Rush lived in the state of Pennsylvania and was a physician, writer, educator, humanitarian and a devout Christian, as well as the founder of Dickinson College in Carlisle, PennsylvaniaRush was a signatory of the Declaration of...
which was finally published in 1898 by
Alexander BiddleAlexander Biddle was an officer in the Union Army during the American Civil War.The fourth child of Thomas and Christine Biddle, he was educated in Pennsylvania, enrolling at the University of Pennsylvania in 1834 and graduating in 1838...
, a descendant of Pound's "villain" Nicholas. The rest of the canto consists mainly of paraphrases and quotations from
PhilostratusPhilostratus, was the name of four Greek sophists of the Roman imperial period:# "Philostratus I": Very minor author, known only for a dialogue Nero, possibly written by Philostratus II....
'
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
LeucotheaIn Greek mythology, Leucothea was one of the aspects under which an ancient sea goddess was recognized, in this case as a transformed nymph....
.
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 EmpireThe decline of the Roman Empire refers to both the gradual disintegration of the economy of Rome and the barbarian invasions that were its final doom...
and the rise of the
Byzantine EmpireThe Byzantine Empire or Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire during the Middle Ages, centered on the capital of Constantinople, and ruled by Emperors in direct and de jure succession to the ancient Roman Emperors...
in the east and of the
Carolingian EmpireCarolingian Empire is a historiographical term sometimes used to refer to the realm of the Franks under the Carolingian dynasty. This dynasty is seen as the founders of France and Germany...
,
GermanicThe Germanic peoples are a historical ethno-linguistic group, originating in Northern Europe and identified by their use of the Indo-European Germanic languages which diversified out of Common Germanic in the course of the Pre-Roman Iron Age...
kingdomsThe person who heads a monarchy is called a monarch. It was a common form of government in the world during the ancient and medieval times. A Monarchy is a form of government in which supreme power is absolutely or nominally lodged with an individual, who is the head of state, often for life or...
and the
LombardsThe Lombards were a Germanic people originally from Northern Europe who settled in the valley of the Danube and from there invaded Byzantine Italy in 568 under the leadership of Alboin. They established a Kingdom of Italy which lasted until 774, when it was conquered by the Franks...
in
Western EuropeWestern Europe is the collection of countries in the westernmost region of Europe, though this definition is context-dependent and carries cultural and political connotations. One definition describes Western Europe as a cultural entity—the region lying west of Central Europe...
. This culminates in a detailed passage on the
Book of the PrefectThe Book of the Prefect or Eparch is a Byzantine commercial manual or guide addressed to the eparch of Constantinople...
(or Eparch; in Greek the
Eparchikon Biblion), a 9th-century edict of the Emperor
Leo VI the WiseLeo VI, surnamed the Wise or the Philosopher , was Byzantine emperor with Armenian descent from 886 to 912. The second ruler of the Macedonian dynasty , he was very well-read, leading to his surname...
. This document, which was based on Roman law, lays out the rules that governed the Byzantine
GuildA guild is an association of craftsmen in a particular trade.The earliest guilds were formed as confraternities of workers. They were organized in a manner something between a trade union, a cartel and a secret society...
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
philologyPhilology considers both form and meaning in linguistic expression, combining linguistics and literary studies.Classical philology is the philology of the Greek, Latin and Sanskrit languages...
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
tesseraTessera has different meanings in different contexts.-Art: A tessera is an individual tile in a mosaic, usually formed in the shape of a cube. It is also known as an abaciscus, abaculus, or, in Persian کاشي معرق...
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
CaliphThe Caliph is the head of state in a Caliphate, and the title for the leader of the Islamic Ummah, an Islamic community ruled by the Shari'ah. It is a transliterated version of the Arabic word which means "successor" or "representative"...
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
FortunaIn Roman mythology, Fortuna goddess of fortune, was the personification of luck; hopefully she brought good luck, but she could be represented veiled and blind, as modern depictions of Justice are seen, and came to represent the capriciousness of life...
together with Greek forms of solar worship and the
Flamen DialisThe Flamen Dialis was an important position in Roman religion. There were 15 flamines , including the flamen dialis who was the high priest of Jupiter. The flamen dialis was one of three flamines maiores, the flamines serving the three gods of the Archaic Triad...
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 ChengThe Yongzheng Emperor , born Yinzhen was the fourth emperor of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, and the third Qing emperor to rule over China, from 1722 to 1735. A hard-working ruler, Yongzheng's main goal was to create an effective government at minimum expense...
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 CanterburyAnselm of Canterbury was a Benedictine monk, an Italian medieval philosopher, theologian, and church official who held the office of Archbishop of Canterbury from 1093 to 1109. Called the founder of scholasticism, he is famous in the West as the originator of the ontological argument for the...
, 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 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 argumentAn ontological argument for the existence of God attempts the method of a priori proof, which uses intuition and reason alone. In the context of the Abrahamic religions, ontological arguments were first proposed by the Medieval philosophers Avicenna and Anselm of Canterbury...
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 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 VillonFrançois Villon was a French poet, thief, and vagabond. He is perhaps best known for his Testaments and his Ballade des Pendus, written while in prison...
.
Canto CVI turns to visions of the goddess as fertility symbol via Demeter and Persephone, in her lunar, love aspect as
SelenaSelena Quintanilla-Pérez , best known mononymously as Selena, was a Mexican American singer who has been called "The Queen of Tejano music". The youngest child of a Mexican-American couple, Selena released her first album at the age of twelve...
, 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
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, the English
juristA jurist or jurisconsult is a professional who studies, develops, applies, or otherwise deals with the law. The term is widely used in American English, but in the United Kingdom and many Commonwealth countries it has only historical and specialist usage...
and champion of civil liberties Sir
Edward CokeSir Edward Coke , was a seventeenth-century English jurist and Member of Parliament whose writings on the common law were the definitive legal texts for nearly 150 years. Born into a family of minor Norfolk gentry, Coke traveled to London as a young man to make his living as a barrister...
, 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 ChengThe Yongzheng Emperor , born Yinzhen was the fourth emperor of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, and the third Qing emperor to rule over China, from 1722 to 1735. A hard-working ruler, Yongzheng's main goal was to create an effective government at minimum expense...
. 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 NortonCharles Eliot Norton, was a leading American author, social critic, and professor of art. He was a militant idealist, a progressive social reformer, and a liberal activist whom many of his contemporaries considered the most cultivated man in the United States.-Biography:Norton was born at...
, "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
TyrolGerman Tyrol is a historical region in the Alps now divided between Austria and Italy. It includes largely ethnic German areas of historical County of Tyrol: the Austrian state of Tyrol and the Italian region known as the Alto Adige/Südtirol but not the largely Italian-speaking Trentino...
, but soon returned to Rapallo. In November 1959, Pound wrote to his publisher
James LaughlinJames Laughlin was an American poet and literary book publisher who founded New Directions Publishers.- Biography :He was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the son of Henry Hughart and Marjory Rea 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 Tyrol, both from sleep and, by extension, from the nightmare of his prolonged incarceration. The goddess appears as Kuanon, Artemis and
HebeIn Greek mythology, Hēbē is the goddess of youth . She is the daughter of Zeus and Hera. Hebe was the cupbearer for the gods and goddesses of Mount Olympus, serving their nectar and ambrosia, until she was married to Heracles, ; her successor was the young Trojan prince Ganymede...
(through her characteristic epithet
Kallistragalos, "of fair ankles"), the goddess of youth. The Buddhist painter
Toba Sojo, also known as , was a Japanese astronomer, an artist-monk, and the son of Minamoto-no-Takakuni.Although he is frequently credited as the artist of the famous picture scroll Chōjū-giga, there is no conclusive proof of this claim....
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
TibetTibet is a plateau region in Asia, north of the Himalayas. It is home to the indigenous Tibetan people, and to some other ethnic groups such as Monpas and Lhobas, and is now also inhabited by considerable numbers of Han Chinese people. Tibet is the highest region on earth, with an average...
. 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, a young woman whose presence in Tyrol further complicated the already strained relationships between the poet, his wife Dorothy and his lover
Olga RudgeOlga Rudge was an American-born concert violinist, now mainly remembered as the long-term mistress of the poet Ezra Pound, by whom she had a daughter, Mary....
, 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
VoltaireFrançois-Marie Arouet , better known by the pen name Voltaire, was a French Enlightenment writer, essayist, and philosopher known for his wit and his defense of civil liberties, including both freedom of religion and free trade.Voltaire was a prolific writer and produced works in almost every...
is quoted to the effect that he hates nobody, not even his archenemy
Elie FréronÉlie Catherine Fréron , was a French critic and controversialist whose career focused on countering the influence of the philosophes of the French Enlightenment, partly thorough his vehicle, the Année littéraire...
. 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
BelfastBelfast is the capital of and the largest city in Northern Ireland, a constituent country of the United Kingdom. It is the seat of devolved government and legislative Northern Ireland Assembly. It is the largest urban area in the province of Ulster, and the second largest city on the island of...
-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
demigodThe term "demi god", meaning "half god", is used to describe mythological figures whose one parent was a god and whose other parent was human. A few examples of demi-gods include the Celtic hero Cúchulainn, Sumerian king Gilgamesh, Ancient-Germanic "woodsman" Ansel and Greek hero Heracles...
Herakles 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
SemeleIn Greek mythology, Semele, daughter of Cadmus and Harmonia, was the mortal mother of Dionysus by Zeus in one of his many origin myths. The name "Semele", like other elements of Dionysiac cult , is manifestly not Greek but apparently Thraco-Phrygian; the myth of...
, 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 contemplates a lark's flight as a token of the coming of spring, the fragment closes with the line "To be men, not destroyers." This stood as the close of
The Cantos until later editions appended a brief dedicatory fragment addressed to Olga Rudge.
Editions
The earliest part of
The Cantos to be published were released by Three Mountains Press in 1925 under the title
A Draft of XVI Cantos. The first complete edition was New Direction's
The Cantos (1-109) (1964).
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's
fascismFascism, , comprises a radical and authoritarian nationalist political ideology and a corporatist economic ideology developed in Italy. Fascists believe that nations and/or races are in perpetual conflict whereby only the strong can survive by being healthy, vital, and by asserting themselves in...
became widely known. Much critical discussion of the poem has focused on the relationship between, on the one hand, the economic thesis on
usuraUsury originally meant the charging of interest on loans. This would have included charging a fee for the use of money, such as at a bureau de change. After countries legislated to limit the rate of interest on loans, usury came to mean the interest above the lawful rate...
, Pound's
anti-SemitismAntisemitism is prejudice against or hostility towards Jews, often rooted in hatred of their ethnic background, culture, or religion....
, his adulation of Confucian 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 Adolph Eichmann based on their anti-Semitism while at the other
Marjorie PerloffMarjorie Perloff is an Austrian-born U.S. poetry critic.Perloff was born Gabriele Mintz into a secularized Jewish family in Vienna. Faced with Nazi terror, her family emigrated in 1938 when she was six-and-a-half, going first to Zürich and then to the United States, settling in Riverdale, New York...
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 ZukofskyLouis Zukofsky was one of the most important second-generation American modernist poets. He was co-founder and primary theorist of the Objectivist group of poets and was to be an important influence on subsequent generations of poets in America and abroad.-Early life and writings:He was born in...
was both of these, and also Jewish; according to
William CooksonWilliam Cookson was a British poet, writer on poetry and literary editor, best-known for his influential poetry magazine Agenda....
he defended Pound on the basis of personal knowledge from anti-Semitism on the level of human exchange, even though, as reported by
Basil BuntingBasil Cheesman Bunting was a significant British modernist poet whose reputation was established with the publication of Briggflatts in 1966. He had a lifelong interest in music that led him to emphasise the sonic qualities of poetry, particularly the importance of reading poetry aloud...
, 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.H.D. was an American poet, novelist and memoirist best known for her association with the early 20th century avant-garde Imagist group of poets such as Ezra Pound and Richard Aldington...
and
William Carlos WilliamsWilliam Carlos Williams , also known as WCW, was an American poet closely associated with modernism and Imagism. He was also a pediatrician and general practitioner of medicine...
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 poetsThe Objectivist poets were a loose-knit group of second-generation Modernists who emerged in the 1930s. They were mainly American and were influenced by, amongst others, Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams...
, and the effect of
The Cantos on Zukofsky's
"A" has already been noted. The other major long work by an Objectivist,
Charles ReznikoffCharles Reznikoff was the poet for whom the term Objectivist was first coined. When asked by Harriet Munroe to provide an introduction to what became known as the Objectivist issue of Poetry, Louis Zukofsky used his essay Sincerity and Objectification: With Special Reference to the Work of Charles...
'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 OlsonCharles Olson , was an important 2nd generation American modernist poet who was a crucial link between earlier figures like Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams and the New American poets, a rubric which includes the New York School, the Black Mountain School, the Beat poets, and the San...
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 generationThe Beat Generation is a term used to describe a group of American writers who came to prominence in the 1950s, and the cultural phenomena that they wrote about and inspired...
, especially
Gary SnyderGary Snyder is an American poet , as well as an essayist, lecturer, and environmental activist . Snyder is a winner of a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry...
and
Allen GinsbergIrwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet. Ginsberg is best known for the poem "Howl" , in which he celebrates fellow members of the Beat Generation and critiques what he saw as the destructive forces of materialism and conformity in the United States.-Early life and family:Ginsberg was born into...
. 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 EndMountains And Rivers Without End is a large 18th century silk painting by Korean artist Yi In-Mun, located in the National Museum of Korea....
(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,
WhitmanesqueWalter Whitman was an American poet, essayist, journalist, and humanist. He was a part of the transition between Transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse...
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 NewsPlanet News is a book of poetry written by Allen Ginsberg and published by City Lights. It is number twenty three in the Pocket Poets series. It contains poems written by Ginsberg between 1961 and 1967, many written during his travels to India, Japan, Europe, Africa, and many other places...
(1968) and
The Fall of America: Poems of These StatesA book of poetry by Allen Ginsberg, published by City Lights in 1973 for which Ginsberg won the National Book Award. It's characterized by a prophetic tone inspired by William Blake and Walt Whitman, as well as an objective view characterized by William Carlos Williams...
(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 poetryFound poetry is a type of poetry created by taking words, phrases, and sometimes whole passages from other sources and reframing them as poetry by making changes in spacing and/or lines , or by altering the text by additions and/or deletions...
. 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 artConceptual art is art in which the concept or idea involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns. Many of the works, sometimes called installations, of the artist Sol LeWitt may be constructed by anyone simply by following a set of written instructions...
.
The poetic response to
The Cantos is summed up in
Basil BuntingBasil Cheesman Bunting was a significant British modernist poet whose reputation was established with the publication of Briggflatts in 1966. He had a lifelong interest in music that led him to emphasise the sonic qualities of poetry, particularly the importance of reading poetry aloud...
'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!
Sources
Print
- Ackroyd, Peter
Peter Ackroyd CBE is an English novelist and biographer with a particular interest in the history and culture of London.-Childhood and education:...
. Ezra Pound and His World (Thames and Hudson, 1980). ISBN 0500130698
- Bacigalupo, Massimo. "America in Ezra Pound's Posthumous Cantos." Journal of Modern Literature 27.1–2 (2003–2004): 90–98.
- Bacigalupo, Massimo. "Ezra Pound's Cantos 72 and 73: An Annotated Translation." Paideuma 20.1–2 (1991): 9–41.
- Cookson, William
William Cookson was a British poet, writer on poetry and literary editor, best-known for his influential poetry magazine Agenda....
. A Guide to the Cantos of Ezra Pound (Anvil, 1985). ISBN 0-89255-246-8
- Flory, Wendy Stallard. "The Return to Italy: 'To Confess Wrong…'". In The American Ezra Pound. (New Haven: Yale UP, 1989).
- Flory, Wendy Stallard. "Pound and Antisemitism." The Cambridge Companion to Ezra Pound. Ed. Ira B. Nadel (Cambridge University Press, 1999) ISBN 0-521-64920-X, ISBN 0-521-43117-4
- Kenner, Hugh
William Hugh Kenner , was a Canadian literary scholar, critic and professor.Kenner was born in Peterborough, Ontario on January 7, 1923; his father taught classics...
. The Pound Era (Faber and Faber, 1975 edition). ISBN 0-571-10668-4
- Liebregts, P. Th. M. G. Ezra Pound and Neoplatonism. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2004. ISBN 0-8386-4011-7
- Sullivan, J.P. (ed). Ezra Pound (Penguin critical anthologies series, 1970). ISBN 0140800336
- Terrell, Carroll F. A Companion to The Cantos of Ezra Pound (University of California Press, 1980). ISBN 0-520-08287-7
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