Pound, Ezra

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[[Image:Pound.jpg|right|frame|Ezra Pound in 1913.]]  
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'''Ezra Weston Loomis Pound''' ([[October 30]] [[1885]] – [[November 1]] [[1972]]) was an [[United States|American]] [[expatriate]], [[poetry|poet]], [[musician]] and [[critic]] who, along with [[T. S. Eliot]], was a major figure of the [[Modernist poetry|modernist]] movement in early [[20th century]] [[poetry]]. He was the driving force behind several modernist movements, notably [[Imagism]] and [[Vorticism]]. The critic [[Hugh Kenner]] said on meeting Pound: "I suddenly knew that I was in the presence  of the center of modernism." He is credited most specifically with combining a vast knowledge of existing European traditions with modern, experimental practices. Although he is rarely considered the greatest poet of the modern period, he is almost unanimously believed to be the most important teacher and catalyst among the writers and artists of his time.
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[[Image:Pound.jpg|right|thumb|Ezra Pound in 1913.]]  
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'''Ezra Weston Loomis Pound''' (October 30, 1885 – November 1, 1972) was an [[United States|American]] [[expatriate]], [[poetry|poet]], [[musician]] and [[critic]] who was a major figure of the [[Modernist poetry|modernist]] movement in early twentieth-century poetry. Combining an extensive knowledge of literary history with an eye toward modern experimentalism and acting as an instigator, patron, and formidable author in his own right, Pound laid the foundation for almost all the new directions poetics would take on in the twentieth century. He is a lasting role model for the integration of new and old ways of thought, including traditions from China and Japan. In his mature work, ''The Cantos,'' Pound eschewed antiquated "poetic" language in hopes of inventing a new poetic, one that could pierce the mind with what Pound called “clear song”—a sort of instantaneous understanding of the world and all its connectedness. In search of this, Pound revolutionized poetry by using free verse, collage-like structure, and a [[Marcel Duchamp|Duchamp]]-esque attitude towards quotation and the integration of other art forms into poetry.  
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Ironically, while a modernist in style and technique, Pound rejected much of the modern world, especially capitalism and the modern [[bank|banking]] system that allowed for the creation of wealth through what he disparagingly referred to as [[usury]]. In Europe where he lived as an expatriate, banking was dominated by Jews, and Pound's criticisms of usury were sometimes virulently [[anti-Semitism|anti-Semitic]]. Together with his embrace of Mussolini, Pound often found himself on the "wrong side of history," and after the war he paid for it, suffering incarceration in a mental hospital. But his aberrant politics have only slightly diminished his reputation as one of America's greatest poets.  
  
 
==Early life and contemporaries==
 
==Early life and contemporaries==
  
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Pound was born in [[Hailey, Idaho]], [[United States]]. He studied for two years at the [[University of Pennsylvania]] and later received his B.A. from [[Hamilton College]] in [[1905]]. During studies at Penn, he met and befriended [[William Carlos Williams]] and [[H.D.]], to whom he was engaged for a time. He taught at [[Wabash College]] in [[Crawfordsville%2C_Indiana|Crawfordsville, Indiana]] for less than a year, and left as the result of a minor scandal. In [[1908]] he traveled to Europe, settling in [[London]] after spending several months in [[Venice]].
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Pound was born in [[Hailey, Idaho]], [[United States]]. He studied for two years at the [[University of Pennsylvania]] and later received his B.A. from [[Hamilton College]] in 1905. During studies at Penn, he met and befriended [[William Carlos Williams]], and [[H.D.]] (Hilda Doolittle), to whom he was engaged for a time. He taught at [[Wabash College]] in [[Crawfordsville%2C_Indiana|Crawfordsville, Indiana]] for less than a year, and left as the result of a minor scandal. In 1908 Pound traveled to Europe, settling in [[London]] after spending several months in [[Venice]].
  
 
==Pound and Yeats==
 
==Pound and Yeats==
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[[Image:Blast2.jpg|left|thumbnail|The cover of the 1915  wartime number of the Vorticist magazine ''[[BLAST (journal)|BLAST]]''.]]
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Pound's early poetry was inspired by his reading of the [[pre-Raphaelite]]s and other 19th century poets and medieval [[Romance (genre)|Romance]] literature, as well as much neo-Romantic and occult/mystical philosophy. When he moved to London, under the influence of [[Ford Madox Ford]] and [[T. E. Hulme ]], he began to cast off overtly archaic poetic language and forms in an attempt to remake himself as a poet. He believed [[W. B. Yeats]] was the greatest living poet, and befriended him in England, eventually being employed as the Irish poet's secretary. He was also interested in Yeats's [[occult]] beliefs. Yeats and Pound were instrumental in helping each other modernise their poetry. During the war, Pound and Yeats lived together at Stone Cottage in [[Sussex]], England, studying [[Japanese literature|Japanese]], especially [[Noh]] plays. They paid particular attention to the works of [[Ernest Fenollosa]], an American professor in Japan, whose [[The Chinese Written work on Chinese characters Pound developed into what he called the Ideogrammic Method.  
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Pound's early poetry was inspired by his reading of the [[Pre-Raphaelite]]s and other nineteenth-century poets, as well as medieval [[Romance (genre)|Romances]]. He was also deeply influenced by neo-Romanticism and [[occult]]/[[mysticism|mystical philosophy]]. When he moved to London, Pound began to cast off archaic, overtly poetic language and forms in an attempt to remake himself as a poet under the influence of [[Ford Madox Ford]] and [[T. E. Hulme]]. Believing [[William Butler Yeats]] to be the greatest living poet of his time, Pound sought him out in England, and was eventually employed as his secretary for two years. In 1914 Pound married the artist Dorothy Shakespear.
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During this time, Yeats and Pound were instrumental in helping each other modernize English [[poesy]]. The two writers lived together at Stone Cottage in [[Sussex]], England, studying [[Japanese literature]], especially [[Noh]] plays. They paid particular attention to the translations of [[Sinology|Sinologist] [[Ernest Fenollosa]], an American professor in Japan, whose work on Chinese characters was developed by Pound into what he called the Ideogrammic Method, a visual-poetic technique that would be fundamental for his subsequent poems and thought. In translating or interpreting Chinese poetry, into English, Pound dropped the use of formal structures of meter and rhyme, and introduced [[free verse]].
  
 
===The Ideogrammic Method===
 
===The Ideogrammic Method===
  
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'''The Ideogrammic Method''' was an technique expounded by Pound which allowed [[poetry]] to deal with abstract content through concrete images. The idea was based on Pound's reading of the work of [[Ernest Fenollosa]], and in particular his notes on the [[Chinese]] ideogram. 
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The concept of Pound's Ideogrammic Method was that it allowed [[poetry]] to address abstract content through concrete images. The idea was based on Pound's reading of Fenollosa, and in particular his notes on the Chinese ideogram:
  
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Pound gives a brief account of it in his instructional booklet ''[[The ABC of Reading]]''.  He explains his understanding of the way Chinese characters were formed by drawing pictures of concrete things. He uses the example of the character for 'dawn'—a word which in a non-ideogrammatic language like English is almost always as metaphorical as it is literal—in Chinese is represented by a superposition of the characters for 'tree' and 'sun'; that is, a picture of the sun tangled in a tree's branches. He then suggests how, with such a system where concepts are built up from concrete instances, the concept of 'red' might be presented: by putting together the pictures of:
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Pound gives a brief account of the idea in his instructional booklet ''[[The ABC of Reading]].'' He explains his admiration for the way abstract Chinese characters were formed by drawing pictures of concrete things. He uses the example of the character for 'dawn' (a word which in a non-ideogrammatic language like English is almost always as much a cliché as it is a noun.) In Chinese, 'dawn' is represented by the superposition of the characters for 'tree' and 'sun'; that is, a picture of the sun tangled in a tree's branches. Pound found this compression of a complex concept like "dawn" through images to be an incredibly useful tool for poets. He suggested how, with such a system, the concept of 'red' might be presented by putting together the pictures of:
 
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This was a key idea in the development of [[Imagism]], because, according to Pound, it allowed for poets to communicate about abstractions and generalities (even something as general as the color red) without losing touch with the real world and the things in it.
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This was a key idea in the development of [[Imagism]], because, according to Pound, it allowed for poets to communicate about [[abstraction]]s and generalities (even something as general as the color red) without losing touch with the real world and the things in it.
  
 
==Imagism==
 
==Imagism==
  
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In the years before the [[World War I|First World War]], Pound was largely responsible for the appearance of [[Imagism]] and [[Vorticism]], philosophies and art and poetics deeply rooted in the ideogrammatic method he had developed in his earlier years. These two movements, which helped bring to notice the work of poets and artists like [[James Joyce]], [[Wyndham Lewis]], [[William Carlos Williams]], [[H.D.]], [[Richard Aldington]], [[Marianne Moore]], [[Rebecca West]] and [[Henri Gaudier-Brzeska]], can be seen as perhaps the central events in the birth of English-language modernism. Pound also edited his friend Eliot's ''[[The Waste Land]]'', the poem that was to force the new poetic sensibility into public attention.  
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In the years before the [[World War I|First World War]], Pound was largely responsible for the appearance of [[Imagism]] and [[Vorticism]], philosophies and art and poetics deeply rooted in the ideogrammatic method he had developed through his study of Chinese and Japanese forms. These two movements, published in his Vorticist magazine ''BLAST'' and his editorial work with literary magazines ''Egoist'' and ''Poetry,'' helped bring to notice the work of new poets and artists like [[James Joyce]], [[Wyndham Lewis]], [[William Carlos Williams]], [[H.D.]], [[Richard Aldington]], [[Marianne Moore]], [[Rebecca West]] and [[Henri Gaudier-Brzeska]], can be seen as perhaps the central events in the birth of English-language [[modernism]]. Pound also edited his friend [[T.S. Eliot]]'s ''[[The Waste Land]],'' the poem that was to force the new poetic sensibility into broader public attention.  
  
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However, the war shattered Pound's belief in modern western civilization and he abandoned London soon after for Italy, but not before he published ''Homage to Sextus Propertius'' (1919) and ''Hugh Selwyn Mauberley'' (1920). If these poems together form a farewell to Pound's London career, ''[[The Cantos]]'', which he began in [[1915]], pointed his way forward.  
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The war, however, shattered Pound's belief in modern western civilization and he abandoned London soon after for Europe, but not before he published “Homage to Sextus Propertius” (1919) and “Hugh Selwyn Mauberley” (1920). If these poems together form a farewell to Pound's London career, ''[[The Cantos]],'' which he began in 1915, pointed his way forward. The years from 1920 to 1924 Pound spent in [[Paris]], mixing and mingling with other writers and artists.
  
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In Italy, Pound continued to act as a patron and catalyst to numerous artists. The young sculptor [[Heinz Henghes]] came to see Pound, arriving penniless. He was given lodging and marble to carve, and quickly learned to work in stone. The poet [[James Laughlin]], who lodged with Pound, was also inspired at this time to start the publishing company New Directions which would become a vehicle for many new authors. Pound also organised an annual series of concerts in Rapallo where a wide range of classical and contemporary music was performed. In particular this musical activity contributed to the 20th century revival of interest in [[Vivaldi]], who had been neglected since his death. Throughout all of this, Pound continued to work incessantly on ''The Cantos'', an epic poem which would eventually become far and away the poet's most important work, and one of the longest and most influential poems in the English language.  
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In Italy, Pound lived with his wife Dorothy and continued to act as a patron and catalyst to numerous artists. The young sculptor [[Heinz Henghes]] came to see Pound, arriving penniless. He was given lodging and marble to carve, and quickly learned to work in stone. The poet [[James Laughlin]], who lodged with Pound, was also inspired at this time to start the publishing company New Directions that would become a vehicle for many new authors. Pound also organized an annual series of concerts in Rapallo where a wide range of classical and contemporary music was performed. In particular this musical activity contributed to the 20th century revival of interest in [[Vivaldi]], who had been neglected since his death. Throughout all of this, Pound continued to work incessantly on ''The Cantos,'' an epic poem which would eventually become far and away the poet's most important work, and one of the longest and most influential poems in the English language.
  
 
==''The Cantos''==
 
==''The Cantos''==
  
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'''''The Cantos''''' by [[Ezra Pound]] is a long, incomplete [[poem]] in 120 sections, each of which is a ''[[canto]]''. 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 one of the most significant works of [[modernist poetry]] of the [[twentieth century]]. As in Pound's prose writing, the themes of [[economics]], [[governance]], and [[culture]] are integral to its content.
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'''''The Cantos''''' consist of a long, incomplete [[poem]] in 120 sections. Each of these sections is referred to as a ''[[canto]],'' Italian for ''song.'' Most of the cantos were 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, and is widely considered to be one of the most formidable poems in the English language and among the most significant works of [[poetry]] in the twentieth century. The poem is dense and abstract, with no single narrative or narrator, resembling more a [[collage]] of disparate but thematically related fragments. In particular, the themes of [[economics]], [[governance]], and [[culture]] and their relation to the creative activity of the poet are all constants throughout the piece.
  
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The most striking feature of the text, to a casual browser, is the inclusion of [[Chinese character]]s as well as quotations in European [[language]]s other than English. Recourse to scholarly commentaries is almost inevitable for a [[Close reading|close reader]]. The range of allusion to historical events is very broad, and abrupt changes occur with the minimum of stage directions.
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The difficulty of the poem is apparent even to a casual browser; a cursory reader will notice that the poem includes [[Chinese character]]s as well as lengthy quotations in various European languages besides English. Recourse to scholarly commentaries is almost inevitable for any reader. The range of allusion to historical events is very broad in both time and place. Pound added to his earlier interests in the ancient cultures of the [[Mediterranean]] and [[East Asia]] by selecting topics ranging from [[medieval]] and early modern [[Italy]] and [[Provence, France|Provence]] to the beginnings of the [[United States]], the state of [[England]] in the seventeenth century, and details from [[African cultures]] he had obtained from [[Leo Frobenius]]. References left without explanation abound.
  
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There is also a wide geographical spread; 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 Frobenius]]. References left without explanation abound.
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===Structure===
  
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===Controversy===
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As it lacks any plot or definite ending, ''The Cantos'' can appear on first reading to be chaotic or structureless. The issue of incoherence of the work is reflected in the equivocal note sounded in the final two more-or-less completed cantos, which lament Pound's inability to ''make'' his materials cohere, while insisting that the world itself still does.
  
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''The Cantos'' has always been a controversial work, initially so because of the experimental nature of the writing. The controversy has intensified since [[1940]] when Pound's very public stance on the war in Europe and his support for [[Mussolini]]'s [[fascism]]  became widely known. Much critical discussion of the poem has focused on the relationship between, on the one hand, the economic thesis on ''[[Usury|usura]]'', Pound's [[anti-Semitism]], 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 end of the spectrum, [[George P. Elliot]] has drawn a parallel between Pound and [[Adolph Eichmann]] based on their anti-Semitism (in an essay called ''Poet of Many Voices'' reprinted in [[The Cantos#References|Sullivan]]) while at the other [[Marjorie Perloff]] places Pound's anti-Semitism in a wider context by pointing up the political views 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]] 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 ([[The Cantos#References|Flory (1999)]]).
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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:
  
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Pound has always had serious if select defenders and disciples. [[Louis Zukofsky]] was both, and also [[Jew]]ish; according to [[William Cookson]] he defended Pound on the basis of personal knowledge from anti-Semitism on the level of human exchange, even though, as reported by [[Basil Bunting]], 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''.  
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<blockquote>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.</blockquote>
  
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The section he wrote at the end of [[World War II]], a composition started while he was interned by American occupying forces in Italy, has become known as ''The Pisan Cantos'', and is the part of the work most often viewed as free-standing.  It was awarded the first [[Bollingen Prize]] in 1948. The repercussions were widespread, since this in effect honoured a poet who had lost all stature as a citizen of his native country, and was also diagnosed as prey to a serious and disabling [[mental illness]].
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Critics like [[Hugh Kenner]] who take a more positive view of ''The Cantos'' have tended to follow this hint, seeing the poem as a poetic record of Pound's life that sends out new branches as new needs arise, like a tree, displaying a kind of unpredictable inevitability.
  
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===Structure===
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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:
  
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As it lacks any plot or definite ending, ''The Cantos'' can appear on first reading to be chaotic or structureless. One early critic, [[R.P. Blackmur]], wrote, in his [[1934]] essay ''Masks of Ezra Pound'' (reprinted in [[The Cantos#References|Sullivan]]) "The work of Ezra Pound has been for most people almost as difficult to understand as Soviet Russia&hellip; ''The Cantos'' are not complex, they are complicated".  The issue of incoherence of the work is reflected in the equivocal note sounded in the final two more-or-less completed cantos; according to the [[William Cookson]] guide (p.264), they show that Pound has been unable to ''make'' his materials cohere, while they insist that the world itself still does cohere. Pound and [[T. S. Eliot]] had both approached the subject of fragmentation of human experience. While Eliot was writing, and Pound editing, ''[[The Waste Land]]'', Pound had said that he looked upon experience as similar to a series of iron filings on a mirror. Each is disconnected, but the iron filings are drawn into the shape of a rose by the presence of a [[magnet]]. ''The Cantos'', then, can be seen as taking 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.
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<blockquote>A. A. Live man goes down into world of dead.  
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C. B. 'The repeat in history.'  
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B. C. The 'magic moment' or moment of metamorphosis, bust through from quotidian into 'divine or permanent world.' Gods, etc.</blockquote>
  
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Nevertheless, there are indications in Pound's other writings that there may have been some formal plan underlying the work. In his [[1918]] essay ''A Retrospect'', Pound wrote "I think there is a 'fluid' as well as a 'solid' content, that some poems may have form as a tree has form, some as water poured into a vase. That most symmetrical forms have certain uses. That a vast number of subjects cannot be precisely, and therefore not properly rendered in symmetrical forms". Critics like [[Hugh Kenner]] who take a more positive view of ''The Cantos'' have tended to follow this hint, seeing the poem as a poetic record of Pound's life and reading that sends out new branches as new needs arise with the final poem, like a tree, displaying a kind of unpredictable inevitability.  
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The poem's symbolic structure also makes use of an opposition between darkness and light. Images of light are used variously, and may represent [[Neoplatonism|neoplatonic]] 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—social commerce and poetic genius—into a unified whole.
  
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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:
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''The Cantos'' was initially published in the form of separate sections, each containing several cantos that were numbered sequentially using [[Roman numerals]]. The original publication dates for the groups of cantos are as given below. The complete collection of cantos was published together in 1987 (including a final short [[coda (music)|coda]] or fragment, dated 24 August, 1966).
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:A. A. Live man goes down into world of dead.
 
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:C. B. 'The repeat in history.'
 
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:B. C. The 'magic moment' or moment of metamorphosis, bust through from quotidian into 'divine or permanent world.' Gods, etc.
 
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[The letters ABC/ACB indicate the sequences in which the concepts could be presented.]
 
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In the light of cantos written later than this letter, it would be possible to add other recurring motifs to this list, such as: ''periploi'' ('voyages around'); vegetation rituals such as the [[Eleusinian Mysteries]]; ''usura'', banking and credit; and the drive towards clarity in art, such as the 'clear line' of Renaissance painting and the 'clear song' of the [[troubadour]]s.
 
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The poem's symbolic structure also makes use of an opposition between darkness and light. Images of light are used variously, and may represent [[Neoplatonism|neoplatonic]] 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.
 
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''The Cantos'' was initially published in the form of separate sections, each containing several cantos that were numbered sequentially using [[Roman numerals]]. The original publication dates for the groups of cantos are as given below. The complete collection of cantos was published together in [[1987]] (including a final short [[coda (music)|coda]] or fragment, dated [[24 August]] [[1966]]).
 
  
 
===I – XVI===
 
===I – XVI===
  
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:Published in [[1924]]/[[1925|5]] as ''A Draft of XVI Cantos'' by the [[Three Mountains Press]] in [[Paris]].
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The first canto begins with Pound's translation of a [[Latin]] version of [[Homer]]'s ''[[Odyssey]]'' by the [[Renaissance]] scholar [[Andreas Divus]]. Using the [[meter]] and syntax of his 1911 version of the [[Anglo-Saxon]] poem ''[[The Seafarer]],'' Pound made an English version of Divus' rendering of the ''[[Nekuia]]'' episode in which [[Odysseus]] and his companions sail to [[Hades]] in order to find out what their future holds. In using this passage to open the poem, Pound introduces a major theme: the excavating of the 'dead' past to illuminate both present and future. He also echoes [[Dante Alighieri|Dante]]'s opening to ''[[The Divine Comedy]]'' in which the poet also descends into hell to interrogate the dead. The canto concludes with some fragments from the ''Second Homeric Hymn to [[Aphrodite]],'' in a Latin version by [[Georgius Dartona]] which Pound found in the Divus volume, followed by "So that:"&mdash;an invitation to read on.
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[[Image:Malatesta.jpg|right|thumb|150px|Portrait of [[Sigismondo Malatesta]] who ''built a temple so full of pagan works'' (Canto XI) (Portrait by [[Piero della Francesca]])]]
 
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Pound had been discussing the possibility of writing a long poem since around [[1905]], but work did not begin until sometime between [[1912]] and [[1917]], when the initial versions of the first three cantos of the proposed 'poem of some length' were published in the journal ''[[Poetry (magazine)|Poetry]]''. In this version, the poem began very much as a direct address by the poet, not to the reader but to the ghost of [[Robert Browning]]. Pound came to realise that this need to be a controlling narrative voice was working against the revolutionary intent of his own poetic position, and these first three ur-cantos were soon abandoned and a new starting point sought. The answer was a [[Latin]] version of [[Homer]]'s ''[[Odyssey]]'' by the [[Renaissance]] scholar [[Andreas Divus]] that Pound had bought in Paris sometime between [[1906]] and [[1910]]. Using the [[metre]] and [[syntax]] of his [[1911]] version of the [[Anglo-Saxon]] poem ''[[The Seafarer]]'', Pound made an English version of Divus' rendering of the ''[[Nekuia]]'' episode in which [[Odysseus]] and his companions sail to [[Hades]] in order to find out what their future holds. In using this passage to open the poem, Pound introduces a major theme; the excavating of the 'dead' past to illuminate both present and future. He also echoes [[Dante Alighieri|Dante]]'s opening to ''[[The Divine Comedy]]'' in which the poet also descends into hell to interrogate the dead. The canto concludes with some fragments from the ''Second Homeric Hymn to [[Aphrodite]]'', in a Latin version by [[Georgius Dartona]] which Pound found in the Divus volume, followed by "So that:", an invitation to read on.
 
  
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''Canto II'' opens with some lines rescued from the ur-cantos in which Pound reflects on the indeterminacy of identity by setting side by side four different versions of the troubadour poet [[Sordello]]: Browning's poem of that name, the actual Sordello of flesh and blood, Pound's own version of the poet and the Sordello of the brief life appended to manuscripts of his poems. These lines are followed by a sequence of identity shifts involving a seal, the daughter of [[Lir]] and other figures associated with the sea: [[Eleanor of Aquitaine]] who, through a pair of Homeric epithets that echo her name, shifts into [[Helen of Troy]], Homer with his ear for the 'sea surge', the old men of [[Troy]] who want to send Helen back over the sea, and an extended, imagistic retelling of the story of the abduction of [[Dionysus]] by sailors and his transformation of his abductors into dolphins. Although this last story is found in the ''Homeric Hymn to Dionysus'', also contained in the Divus volume, Pound draws on the version in [[Ovid]]'s poem ''[[Metamorphoses (poem)|Metamorphoses]]'', thus introducing the world of ancient [[Rome]] into the poem.
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Cantos VIII - XI draw on the story of [[Sigismondo Malatesta]], [[quattrocento]] poet, soldier, lord of [[Rimini]] and patron of the arts. Pound especially focuses on the building of the church of San Francesco. Designed by [[Leon Battista Alberti]] and decorated by artists including [[Piero della Francesca]] and [[Agostino di Duccio]], this was a landmark Renaissance building&mdash;the first church to use the Roman [[triumphal arch]] as part of its structure. For Pound, 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.''
  
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The next 6 cantos (III-VII), again drawing heavily on Pound's [[Imagist]] past for their technique, are essentially based in the [[Mediterranean]], drawing on [[classical mythology]], [[Renaissance]] history, the world of the [[troubadour]]s, [[Sappho]]'s poetry, a scene from the legend of [[El Cid]] that introduces the theme of [[banking]] and [[credit]], and Pound's own visits to [[Venice]] to create a textual collage saturated with [[neoplatonist]] images of [[clarity]] and [[light]].
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The remainder of this section of ''The Cantos'' concludes with a vision of capitalism and [[Hell]]. Canto XIV and Canto XV use the convention of the ''Divine Comedy'' to present Pound/Dante moving through a hell populated by bankers, newspaper editors, hack writers and other 'perverters of language' and the social order. In Canto XV, [[Plotinus]] takes the role of guide played by [[Virgil]] in Dante's poem. These visions are followed by a transcript of [[Lincoln Steffens]]' account of the [[Russian Revolution of 1917|Russian Revolution]]. 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.
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Cantos VIII - XI draw on the story of [[Sigismondo Malatesta]], [[quattrocento]] poet, soldier, lord of [[Rimini]] and patron of the arts. Quoting extensively from primary sources, including Malatesta's letters, Pound especially focuses on the building of the church of San Francesco, also known as the [[Tempio Malatestiano]]. Designed by [[Leon Battista Alberti]] and decorated by artists including [[Piero della Francesca]] and [[Agostino di Duccio]], this was a landmark Renaissance building, being the first church to use the Roman [[triumphal arch]] as part of its structure. For Pound, who spent a good deal of time seeking patrons for himself, [[James Joyce|Joyce]], [[T. S. Eliot|Eliot]] and a string of [[little magazine]]s and [[small press]]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 nihilo]]'' by exploiting the [[money supply]], comparing this activity with 'unnatural' fertility. The central parable contrasts this with wealth-creation based on the creation of useful goods. ''Canto XIII'' then introduces [[Confucius]], or Kung, who is presented as the embodiment of the ideal of social order based on [[ethics]].
 
−
 
 
−
This section of ''The Cantos'' concludes with a vision of [[Hell]]. ''Cantos XIV'' and ''XV'' use the convention of the ''Divine Comedy'' to present Pound/Dante moving through a hell populated by bankers, newspaper editors, hack writers and other 'perverters of language' and the social order. In ''Canto XV'', [[Plotinus]] takes the role of guide played by [[Virgil]] 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 Aldington]], [[Henri Gaudier-Brzeska]], [[Wyndham Lewis]], [[Ernest Hemingway]] and [[Fernand Leger]], whose war memories the poem includes a passage from (in French). Finally, there is a transcript of [[Lincoln Steffens]]' account of the [[Russian Revolution of 1917|Russian Revolution]]. 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 – XXX===
−
:XVII - XXVII published in 1924/5 as ''A Draft of XVI Cantos'' by the [[Three Mountains Press]] in Paris. Cantos XXVII - XXX published in [[1930]] in ''A Draft of XXX Cantos'' by [[Nancy Cunard]]'s [[Hours Press]].
 
−
[[Image:gondola.arp.750pix.jpg|thumb|250px|Venice: "Flat water before me, / and the trees growing in water, / Marble trunks out of stillness, / On past the palazzi, / in the stillness, The light now, not of the sun" (Canto XVII)]]
 
−
Originally, Pound conceived of Cantos XVII - XXVII as a group that would follow the first volume by starting with the Renaissance and ending with the Russian Revolution. He then added a further three cantos and the whole eventually appeared as ''A Draft of XXX Cantos'' in an edition of 200 copies. The major locus of these cantos is the city of Venice.
 
−
 
−
Canto XVII opens with the words 'So that', echoing the end of Canto I, and then moves on to another Dionysus-related metamorphosis story. The rest of the canto is concerned with Venice, which is portrayed as a stone forest growing out of the water. Cantos XVIII and XIX return to the theme of financial exploitation, beginning with the Venetian explorer [[Marco Polo]]'s account of [[Kublai Khan]]'s paper money. Canto XIX deals mainly with those who profit from war, returning briefly to the Russian Revolution, and ends on the stupidity of wars and those who promote them.
 
−
 
−
Canto XX opens with a grouping of phrases, words and images from Mediterranean poetry, ranging from Homer through [[Ovid]], [[Propertius]] and [[Catullus]] to the ''[[Song of Roland]]'' and [[Arnaut Daniel]]. These fragments constellate to form an exemplum of what Pound calls 'clear song'. There follows another exemplum, this time of the [[linguistic]] 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'Este]], who tried to keep the peace between the warring Italian [[city state]]s.
 
−
 
−
Canto XXI deals with the machinations of the [[Medici]] bank, especially with their effect on Venice. These are contrasted with the actions of [[Thomas Jefferson]], who is shown as a cultured leader with an interest in the arts. A phrase from one of Sigismondo Malatesta's letters inserted into the Jefferson passage draws an explicit parallel between the two men, a theme that is to recur later in the poem. The next canto continues the focus on finance by introducing the [[Social Credit]] theories of [[C.H. Douglas]] for the first time.
 
−
 
−
Canto XXIII returns to the world of the troubadours via Homer and Renaissance neo-platonism. Pound saw [[Provençal]] culture as a nexus of survival of the old pagan beliefs, and the destruction of the [[Cathar]] stronghold at [[Montsegur]] at the end of the [[Albigensian Crusade]] is held up as an example of the tendency of authority to crush all such alternative cultures. The destruction of Mont Segur is implicitly compared with the destruction of Troy in the closing lines of the canto. Canto XXIV then returns to [[15th-century]] Italy and the peace-making [[d'Este]] family, again focusing on their Venetian activities and [[Niccolo d'Este]]'s voyage to the [[Holy Land]].
 
  
−
Cantos XXV and XXVI draw on the Book of the Council Major in Venice and Pound's personal memories of the city. Anecdotes on [[Titian]] and [[Mozart]] deal with the relationship between artist and patron. Canto XXVII returns to the Russian Revolution, which is seen as being destructive, not constructive, and echoes the ruin of Eblis from Canto VI. XXVIII returns to the contemporary scene, with a passage on [[transatlantic flight]]. The last two cantos in the series return to the world of 'clear song'. In Canto XXIX, a story from their visit to the Provençal site at [[Excideuil]] contrasts Pound and Eliot on the subject of [[Christianity]], with Pound implicitly rejecting that religion. Finally, the series closes with a glimpse of the printer [[Hieronymus Soncinus]] of [[Fano]] preparing to print the works of [[Petrarch]].
+
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. They are primarily concerned with the formation of banking and the rise of social decay, a concomitant trend that Pound calls 'usury', in medieval Europe.  
  
 
===XXXI – XLI (XI New Cantos)===
 
===XXXI – XLI (XI New Cantos)===
−
[[Image:TJeff.jpe|thumb|150px|right|Thomas Jefferson, who was a new Sigismondo Malatesta, in Pound's view.]]
+
:Published as ''Eleven New Cantos XXXI-XLI.'' New York: Farrar & Rinehart Inc., 1934.
−
:Published as ''Eleven New Cantos XXXI-XL''I. New York: Farrar & Rinehart Inc., 1934.
+
The first four cantos of this volume (Cantos XXXI - XXXVI) use extensive quotations from the letters and other writings of [[Thomas Jefferson]], [[John Adams]], [[John Quincy Adams]], [[Andrew Jackson]], [[Martin Van Buren]] and others to deal with the emergence of the fledgling United States and, particularly, the American banking system. All eleven of these Cantos continue on with Pound's ruminations on 'usury' in the context of the new American republic.
−
The first four cantos of this volume (Cantos XXXI - XXXVI) use extensive quotations from the letters and other writings of [[Thomas Jefferson]], [[John Adams]], [[John Quincy Adams]], [[Andrew Jackson]], [[Martin Van Buren]] 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 Sigismundo as individuals and the Italian and American 'rebirths' as historical movements.
 
−
 
 
−
Canto XXXV contrasts the dynamism of Revolutionary America with the 'general indefinite wobble' of the decaying aristocratic society of [[Mitteleuropa]]. This canto contains some distinctly unpleasant expressions of anti-Semitic opinions. Canto XXXVI opens with a translation of Cavalcanti's [[canzone]] ''Donna mi pregha'' ("A lady asks me"). This poem, a lyric meditation of the nature and philosophy of love, was a touchstone text for Pound. He saw it as an example of the post-Montsegur survival of the Provençal tradition of 'clear song', precision of thought and language, and nonconformity of belief. The canto then closes with the figure of the [[9th-century]] [[Irish people|Irish]] [[philosopher]] and [[poet]] [[Johannes Scotus Eriugena|John Scotus Eriugena]], who was an influence on the Cathars and whose writings were condemned as heretical in both the [[11th century|11th]] and [[13th century|13th centuries]]. Canto XXXVII then turns to Jackson, Van Buren, [[Nicholas Biddle (1786-1844)|Nicholas Biddle]], [[Alexander Hamilton]] and the [[Bank Wars]] and also contains a reference to the [[Peggy Eaton]] affair.
 
−
 
 
−
Canto XXXVIII opens with a quotation from Dante in which he accuses [[Albert of Germany]] of falsifying the coinage. The canto then turns to modern commerce and the arms trade and introduces Frobenius as "the man who made the tempest". There is also a passage on Douglas' account of the problem of purchasing power. Canto XXXIX returns to the island of [[Circe]] and the events before the voyage undertaken in Canto one and unfolds as a hymn to natural fertility and ritual sex.  Canto XL opens with [[Adam Smith]] on trade as a conspiracy against the general public, followed by another periplus, a condensed version of [[Hanno the Navigator]]'s account of his voyage along the west coast of [[Africa]]. The book closes with an account of [[Benito Mussolini]] as a man of action and another lament on the waste of war.
 
−
 
 
−
===XLII – LI (Fifth Decad, called also Leopoldine Cantos)===
 
−
[[Image:Pietro_leopoldo.JPG|thumb|150px|right|Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo, who, sought to end state debt and protected agricultural implements from sequestration for personal debt. (Portrait by [[Stefano Gaetano Neri]])]]
 
−
:Published as ''The Fifth Decad of the Cantos XLII-LI''. London: Faber & Faber, 1937.
 
  
−
Cantos XLII, XLIII and XLIV move to the [[Siena|Sienese]]  bank the [[Monte dei Paschi]]. Under the rule of the Arch Duke [[Pietro Leopoldo]], this became 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 XIII). As such, it represents a Poundian non-capitalist ideal.  
+
===XLII – LI (Fifth Decad, also called the Leopoldine Cantos)===
 +
:Published as ''The Fifth Decad of the Cantos XLII-LI.'' London: Faber & Faber, 1937.
  
−
Canto XLV is a [[litany]] against ''Usura'' or [[usury]], which Pound defines 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.
+
Cantos XLII, XLIII and XLIV move to the [[Siena|Sienese]] bank of the [[Monte dei Paschi]]. Under the rule of the Arch Duke [[Pietro Leopoldo]] it represents for Pound a non-capitalist ideal. Canto XLV is a [[litany]] against ''Usura'' or [[usury]], which Pound defines 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. Canto XLVI contrasts what has gone before with the practices of institutions such as the [[Bank of England]] that are designed to exploit the issuing of credit to make profits.
  
−
Canto XLVI contrasts what has gone before with the practices of institutions such as the [[Bank of England]] that are designed to exploit the issuing of credit to make profits, thereby, in Pound's view, contributing to poverty, social deprivation, crime and the production of "bad" art as exemplified by the [[baroque]].  
+
The poem returns to the island of Circe and Odysseus about to "sail after knowledge" in Canto XLVII. There follows a long lyrical passage in which a ritual of floating [[votive]] candles on the bay at [[Rapallo]] near Pound's home merges with the cognate myths of [[Tammuz]] and [[Adonis]], depicting agricultural activity set in a calendar based on natural cycles, and fertility rituals.
  
−
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 [[Rapallo]]  near Pound's home every July merges with the cognate myths of [[Tammuz]] and [[Adonis]], 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. The canto then moves via Montsegur to the village of St-Bertrand-de-Comminges. Canto XIL is a poem of tranquil nature derived from a [[China|Chinese]] picturebook. Canto L, which contains virulent anti-Semitic statements, moves from John Adams to the failure of the [[Medici bank]]. The final canto in this sequence returns to the usura litany of Canto XLV, followed by detailed instructions on making flies for fishing, and ends with the first Chinese written characters to appear in the poem, representing the Rectification of Names from the ''[[Analects of Confucius]].''
−
 
 
−
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 XIL is a poem of tranquil nature derived from a [[China|Chinese]] picture book that Pound's parents brought with them when they retired to Rapallo. Canto L, which again contains anti-Semitic statements, moves from John Adams to the failure of the [[Medici bank]] and more general images of European decay since the time of [[Napoleon]]. 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)===
 
===LII – LXI (The China Cantos)===
−
[[Image:Confucius_02.gif|right|thumb|150px|Confucius ''cut 3000 odes to 300'']]
+
:Published as ''Cantos LII-LXXI.'' Norfolk Conn.: New Directions, 1940.
−
:First published in ''Cantos LII-LXXI''. Norfolk Conn.: New Directions, [[1940]].
+
These eleven cantos are based on the ''Histoire generale de la Chine'' by [[Joseph-Anna-Marie de Moyriac de Mailla]], an eleven volume history plus index. De Mailla was a French [[Society of Jesus|Jesuit]] 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 [[Age of Enlightenment|Enlightenment]] figure and his view of [[Chinese history]] reflects his views. He found Confucian political philosophy, with its emphasis on rational order, very much to his liking. He also disliked what he saw as the superstitious pseudo-mysticism promulgated by both [[Buddhist]]s and [[Taoist]]s, 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.  
−
These eleven cantos are based on the first eleven volumes of the twelve-volume ''Histoire generale de la Chine'' by [[Joseph-Anna-Marie de Moyriac de Mailla]] (volume 12 being an index). De Mailla was a French [[Society of Jesus|Jesuit]] 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 [[Age of Enlightenment|Enlightenment]] figure and his view of [[Chinese history]] reflects this. He found Confucian political philosophy, with its emphasis on rational order, very much to his liking. He also disliked what he saw as the superstitious pseudo-mysticism promulgated by both [[Buddhist]]s and [[Taoist]]s, to the detriment of rational politics. Pound, in turn, fitted de Mailla's take on China into his own views on Christianity, the need for strong leadership to address [[20th-century]] fiscal and cultural problems and his support of Mussolini. In an introductory note to the section, Pound is at pains to point out that the ideograms and other fragments of foreign-language text incorporated in ''The Cantos'' should not put the reader off as they serve to underline things that are in the English text.
 
−
 
 
−
Canto LII opens with references to Duke Leopoldo, John Adams and [[Gertrude Bell]], before sliding into a particularly virulent anti-Semitic passage, directed mainly at the [[Rothschild]] family. The remainder of the canto is concerned with the classic Chinese text known as the ''Li Ki'' or ''[[Classic of Rites]]'', especially those parts that deal with agriculture and natural increase. The diction is the same as that used in earlier cantos on similar subjects.
 
−
 
 
−
Canto LIII covers the period from the founding of the [[Xia dynasty|Hai dynasty]] to the life of Confucius and up to circa [[225 B.C.E.]]. Special mention is made of emperors that Confucius approved of and the sage's interest in cultural matters is stressed. For example, we are told that he edited the ''[[Book of Odes]]'', cutting it from 3000 to 300 poems. The canto also ascribes the Poundian motto (and title of a [[1934]] collection of essays) ''Make it New'' to the emperor [[Tang (Shang dynasty ruler)|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.
 
−
 
 
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Canto LV is mainly concerned with the rise of the [[Tartar]]s and the Tartar Wars, ending about [[1200]]. There is a lot on money policy in this canto and Pound quotes approvingly the Tartar ruler [[Oulo]] who noted that the people "cannot eat jewels". This is echoed in Canto LVI when [[KinKwa]] remarks that both gold and jade are inedible. This canto is mainly concerned with [[Ghengis Khan|Ghengis]] and Kublai Khan and the rise of their [[Yuan dynasty|Yeun dynasty]]. The canto closes with the overthrow of the Yeun and the establishment of the [[Ming dynasty]], bringing us up to [[1400]], approximately.
 
−
 
 
−
Canto LVII opens with the story of the flight of the emperor [[Jianwen Emperor|Kien Ouen Ti]] in [[1402]] or [[1403]] and continues with the history of the Ming up to the middle of the [[16th century]]. Canto LVIII opens with a condensed history of [[Japan]] from the legendary first emperor, [[Emperor Jimmu]], who supposedly ruled in the [[7th century B.C.E.]], to the late [[16th century]] [[Toyotomi Hideyoshi]] (anglicised by Pound as Messier Undertree), who issued edicts against Christianity and raided  [[Korea]], 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 [[Qing Dynasty|Manchu dynasty]].
 
−
 
 
−
The translation of the Confucian classics into Manchu opens the following canto, Canto LIX. The canto is then concerned with the increasing European interest in China, as evidenced by a Sino-Russian border treaty and the founding of the Jesuit mission in [[1685]] under [[Jean-François Gerbillon]]. Canto LX deals with the activities of the Jesuits, who, we are told, introduced [[astronomy]], western [[music]], [[physics]] and the use of [[quinine]]. The canto ends with limitations being placed on Christians, who had come to be seen as enemies of the state.
 
−
 
 
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The final canto in the sequence, Canto LXI, covers the reigns of [[Yongzheng Emperor|Yong Tching]] and [[Qianlong Emperor|Kien Long]], bringing the story up to the end of de Mailla's account. Yong Tching is shown banning Christianity as "immoral" and "seeking to uproot Kung's laws". He also established just prices for foodstuffs, bringing us back to the ideas of Social Credit. There are also references to the Italian [[Risorgimento]], John Adams, and [[Dom Metello de Souza]], who gained some measure of relief for the Jesuit mission.
 
  
 
===LXII – LXXI (The Adams Cantos)===
 
===LXII – LXXI (The Adams Cantos)===
−
[[image:johnadamsvp.flipped.jpg|thumb|150px|John Adams: "the man who at certain points/made us/at certain points/saved us" Canto LXII]]
+
:Published as ''Cantos LII-LXXI.'' Norfolk Conn.: New Directions, 1940.
−
:First published in ''Cantos LII-LXXI''. Norfolk Conn.: New Directions, 1940.
+
This section of the cantos is, for the most part, made up of fragmentary citations from the writings of [[John Adams]]. Pound's intentions appear to be to show Adams as an example of the rational Enlightenment leader, continuing the primary theme of the preceding China Cantos sequence. Adams is depicted as a rounded figure; he is a strong leader with interests in political, legal and cultural matters in much the same way that Malatesta and Mussolini are portrayed elsewhere in the poem.
−
This section of the cantos is, for the most part, made up of fragmentary citations from the writings of [[John Adams]]. Pound's intentions appear to be to show Adams as an example of the rational Enlightenment leader, thereby continuing the primary theme of the preceding China Cantos sequence which these cantos also follow from chronologically. Adams is depicted as a rounded figure; he is a strong leader with interests in political, legal and cultural matters in much the same way that Malatesta and Mussolini are portrayed elsewhere in the poem. The English [[jurist]] Sir [[Edward Coke]], who is an important figure in some later cantos, first appears in this section of the poem. Given the fragmentary nature of the citations used, these cantos can be quite difficult to follow for the reader with no knowledge of the history of the United States in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
 
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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 [[George Washington|Washington's]] administration. Alexander Hamilton reappears, again cast as the villain of the piece. The appearance of the single Greek word "THUMON", meaning heart, returns us to the world of Homer's ''Odyssey'' and Pound's use of Odysseus as a model for all his heroes, including Adams. The word is used of Odysseus in the fourth line of the ''Odyssey''; "he suffered woes in his heart on the seas".
 
−
 
 
−
The next canto, Canto LXIII, is concerned with Adams' career as a lawyer and especially his reports of the legal arguments presented by  [[James Otis]] in the [[Writs of Assistance]] case and their importance in the build-up to the revolution. The Latin phrase '' Eripuit caelo fulmen'' ("He snatched the thunderbolt from heaven") is taken from an inscription on a bust of [[Benjamin Franklin]]. Cavalcanti's canzone, Pound's touchstone text of clear intellection and precision of language, reappears with the insertion of the lines ''In quella parte/dove sta memoria'' into the text.
 
−
 
 
−
Canto LXIV covers the [[Stamp Act]] and other resistance to British taxation of the American colonies. It also shows Adams defending the accused in the [[Boston Massacre]] and engaging in agricultural experiments to ascertain the suitability of Old-World crops for American conditions. The phrases ''Cumis ego oculis meis'', ''tu theleis'', ''respondebat illa'' and ''apothanein'' are from the passage (taken from [[Petronius]]' ''[[Satyricon]]'') that T.S. Eliot used as epigraph to ''The Waste Land'' at Pound's suggestion. The passage translates as "For with my own eyes I saw the Sibyl hanging in a jar at Cumae, and when the boys said to her, 'Sibyl, what do you want?' she replied, 'I want to die.'"
 
−
 
 
−
The nomination of Washington as president dominates the opening pages of Canto LXV. The canto shows Adams concerned with the practicalities of waging war, particularly of establishing a [[navy]]. Following a passage on the drafting of the [[Declaration of Independence]], the canto returns to Adams' mission to France, focusing on his dealings with the American legation in that country, consisting of Franklin, [[Silas Deane]] and [[Edward Bancroft]] and with the French foreign minister, the  [[Comte de Vergennes]]. Intertwined with this is the fight to save the rights of Americans to fish the Atlantic coastline. A passage on Adams' opposition to American involvement in European wars, echoing Pound's position on his own times, is highlighted. In Canto LXVI, we see Adams in London serving as minister to the [[Court of St. James's]]. The body of the canto consists of quotations from Adams' writings on the legal basis for the Revolution, including citations from [[Magna Carta]] and Coke and on the importance of [[trial by jury]] (''per pares et legem terrae'').
 
−
 
 
−
Canto LXVII opens with a passage on the limits on the powers of the British monarch drawn from Adams' writings under the pseudonym Novanglus. The rest of the canto is concerned with the study of government and with the requirements of the franchise. The following canto, LXVIII, begins with a meditation on the tripartite division of society into the one, the few and the many. A parallel is drawn between Adams and [[Lycurgus]], the just king of [[Sparta]]. Then the canto returns to Adams' notes on the practicalities of funding the war and the negotiation of a loan from the [[Holland|Dutch]].
 
−
 
 
−
Canto LXIX continues the subject of the Dutch loan and then turns to Adams' fear of the emergence of a native aristocracy in America, as noted in his remark that Jefferson feared rule by "the one" (monarch or dictator), while he, Adams, feared "the few". The remainder of the canto is concerned with Hamilton, [[James Madison]] and the affair of the assumption of debt certificates by Congress which resulted in a significant shift of economic power to the federal government from the individual states.
 
−
 
 
−
Canto LXX deals mainly with Adams' time as vice-president and president, focusing on his statement "I am for balance", highlighted in the text by the addition of the ideogram for balance. The section ends with Canto LXXI, which summarises many of the themes of the foregoing cantos and adds material on Adams' relationship with [[Native Americans in the United States|Native Americans]] and their treatment by the British during the [[Indian Wars]]. The canto closes with the opening lines of [[Epictetus]]' ''Hymn of Cleanthus'', which Pound tells us formed part of Adams' ''paideuma''. These lines invoke [[Zeus]] as one "who rules by law", a clear parallel to the Adams presented by Pound.
 
  
 
===LXXII – LXXIII===
 
===LXXII – LXXIII===
−
:Written between [[1940]] and [[1944]].
+
:Written between 1940 and 1944.
−
These two cantos, written in Italian, were not published until their posthumous inclusion in the [[1987]] revision of the complete text of the poem. They cover much familiar ground; Sigismondo, Dante and Cavalcanti appear, as does Pound's linking of usury and Jews in another anti-Semitic rant aimed at [[Franklin Delano Roosevelt|Franklin D. Roosevelt]], [[Winston Churchill]] and [[Anthony Eden]]. In contrast with some of his earlier critical writings, Pound praises the [[Futurist]] writer [[Filippo Tommaso Marinetti]].
+
These two cantos, written in Italian, were not published until their posthumous inclusion in the 1987 revision of the complete text of the poem. They cover much familiar ground; Sigismondo, Dante and Cavalcanti appear, as does Pound's linking of usury and Jews in another anti-Semitic rant aimed at [[Franklin Delano Roosevelt|Franklin D. Roosevelt]], [[Winston Churchill]] and [[Anthony Eden]]. In contrast with some of his earlier critical writings, Pound praises the [[Futurist]] writer [[Filippo Tommaso Marinetti]].
  
 
===LXXIV – LXXXIV (The Pisan Cantos)===
 
===LXXIV – LXXXIV (The Pisan Cantos)===
−
[[Image:AubreyBeardsley.png|thumb|150px|[[Aubrey Beardsley]]: "Beauty is difficult, Yeats' said Aubrey Beardsley/when Yeats asked why he drew horrors/or at least not Burne-Jones/and Beardsley knew he was dying and had to/make his hit quickly .../So very difficult, Yeats, beauty so difficult".  (Canto LXXX)]]
+
:First published as ''The Pisan Cantos.'' New York: New Directions, 1948.
−
:First published as ''The Pisan Cantos''. New York: New Directions, 1948.
+
Pound was arrested by Italian partisans in April 1945 and was eventually transferred to the American Disciplinary Training Center (DTC) on May 22. Here he was held in a specially reinforced cage, initially sleeping on the ground in the open air. After some time he was given a cot and pup tent. After three months, he had a breakdown that resulted in his being moved to the medical compound. Here, he gained access to a typewriter. For reading matter, he had a regulation-issue [[Bible]] along with three books he was allowed to bring in as his own "religious" texts: a Chinese text of Confucius, [[James Legge]]'s translation of the same, and a Chinese dictionary. The only other thing he brought with him was a [[eucalyptus]] pipe. Throughout the Pisan sequence, Pound repeatedly likens the camp to [[Francesco del Cossa]]'s ''March'' [[fresco]] depicting men working at a grape arbor.
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With the outbreak of war in [[1939]], Pound was in Italy, where he remained, despite a request for repatriation he made after [[Pearl Harbor]]. During this period, his main source of income was a series of radio broadcasts he made on [[Rome Radio]]. He used these broadcasts to express his full range of opinions on culture, politics and economics, including his opposition to American involvement in a European war and his anti-Semitism. In [[1943]], he was indicted for treason in his absence, and wrote a letter to the indicting judge in which he claimed the right to [[freedom of speech]] in his defence.
 
  
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Pound was arrested by Italian partisans in April [[1945]] and was eventually transferred to the American Disciplinary Training Center (DTC) on [[May 22]]. Here he was held in a specially reinforced cage, initially sleeping on the ground in the open air. After some time he was given a cot and pup tent. After three months, he had a breakdown that resulted in his being moved to the medical compound. Here, he gained access to a typewriter. For reading matter, he had a regulation-issue ''[[Bible]]'' along with three books he was allowed to bring in as his own "religious" texts: a Chinese text of Confucius, [[James Legge]]'s translation of the same, and a Chinese dictionary. He later found a copy of the ''Pocket Book of Verse'', edited by [[Morris Edmund Speare]], in the latrine. The only other thing he brought with him was a [[eucalyptus]] pip. Throughout the Pisan sequence, Pound repeatedly likens the camp to [[Francesco del Cossa]]'s ''March'' [[fresco]] depicting men working at a grape arbour.
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===The Rock-Drill Section: LXXXV – XCV===
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:First published as ''Section: Rock-Drill, 85-95 de los Cantares.'' New York: New Directions, 1956.
  
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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. As already mentioned, the awarding of the Bollingen Prize to the book caused considerable controversy, with many people objecting to the honouring of someone they saw as a madman and/or traitor. However, the ''Pisan Cantos'' is generally the most admired and read section of the work. It is also among the most influential, having impacted on poets as different as [[H.D.]] and [[Gary Snyder]].
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Pound was flown from Pisa to [[Washington, DC]] 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 Saint Elizabeth's Hospital, where he was to remain until 1958. Here he began to entertain writers and academics with an interest in his work. He also began working on translations of the Confucian ''[[Book of Odes]]'' and of [[Sophocles]]' play the ''Women of Trachis'' as well as two new sections of ''The Cantos''; the first of these was ''Rock Drill.''
  
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Canto LXXIV immediately introduces the reader to the method used in the Pisan Cantos, which is one of interweaving themes somewhat in the manner of a [[fugue]]. These themes pick up on many of the concerns of the earlier cantos and frequently run across sections of the Pisan sequence. This canto begins with Pound looking out of the DTC at peasants working in the fields nearby and reflecting on the news of the death of Mussolini, "hung by the heels".
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The two main written sources for the ''Rock Drill'' cantos are the Confucian ''[[Classic of History]],'' in an edition by the French Jesuit [[Séraphin Couvreur]], which contained the Chinese text and translations into Latin and French under the title ''Chou King'' (which Pound uses in the poem), and Senator [[Thomas Hart Benton (senator)|Thomas Hart Benton]]'s ''Thirty Years View: Or A History of the American Government for Thirty Years From 1820-1850,'' which covers the period of the bank wars. In as interview given in 1962, and reprinted by J.P. Sullivan (see [[The Cantos#References|References]]), Pound said that the title ''Rock Drill'' "was intended to imply the necessary resistance in getting a main thesis across—hammering."
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In the first thread, the figure of Pound/Odysseus reappears in the guise of "OY TIS", or no man, the name the hero uses in the ''[[Cyclops]]'' episode of the ''Odyssey''. This figure blends into the [[Australia]] rain god [[Wanjina]], 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 Joyce]], [[Ford Maddox Ford]], [[Victor Plarr]] and [[Henry James]]. Finally, Pound/Odysseus is seen "on a raft blown by the wind".
 
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Another major theme running through this canto is that of the vision of a goddess in the poet's tent. This starts from the identification of a nearby mountain with the Chinese holy mountain [[Taishan]] and the naming of the moon as ''sorella la luna'' (sister moon). This thread then runs through the appearance of [[Kuan Yin|Kuanon]], the Buddhist goddess of mercy, the moon spirit from ''Hagaromo'' (a [[Noh]] play translated by Pound some 40 years earlier), Sigismondo's lover [[Isotta degli Atti|Ixolta]] (linked in the text with [[Aphrodite]] via a reference to the goddess' birthplace [[Cythera]]), a girl painted by [[Manet]] 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 ''bhododactylous'' (rose-fingered) applied by Homer to the dawn but given here in the dialect of Sappho and used by her in a poem of unrequited love. These images are often intimately associated with the poet's close observation of the natural world as it imposes itself on the camp; birds, a lizard, clouds, the weather and other images of nature run through the canto.
 
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Images of light and brightness associated with these goddesses come to focus in the phrase "all things that are, are lights" quoted from John Scotus Eriugena. He, in turn, brings us back to the Albigensian Crusade and the troubadour world of [[Bernard de Ventadorn]]. Another theme sees [[Ecbatana]], the seven-walled "city of Dioce", blend with the city of [[Wagadu]], from the tale of ''Gassire's Lute'' that Pound learned from Frobenius. This city, four times rebuilt, with its four walls, four gates and four towers at the corners is a symbol for spiritual endurance. It, in turn, blends with the DTC in which the poet is imprisoned.
 
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The question of banking and money also recurs, with an anti-Semitic passage aimed at the banker [[Meyer Anselm]]. Pound brings in biblical injunctions on usury and a reference to the issuing of a [[stamp script]] currency in the [[Austrian]] town of Wörgl. The canto then moves on to a longish passage of memories of the moribund literary scene Pound encountered in London when he first arrived, with the phrase "beauty is difficult", quoted from [[Aubrey Beardsley]] acting as a refrain. After more memories of America and Venice, the canto ends in a passage that brings together Dante's celestial rose, the rose formed by the effect of a magnet on iron filings, an image from [[Paul Verlaine]] of the human soul as a fountain and a reference to a poem by [[Ben Jonson]] in a composite image of hope for "those who have passed over [[Lethe]]".
 
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Canto LXXV is mainly a transcription of the German violinist [[Gerhart Münch]]'s violin setting of [[16th-century]] [[France|French]] [[composer]] [[Clement Janequin]]'s choral arrangement of  ''Le Chant des oiseaux'', a Provençal song recalled to Pound's mind by the singing of birds on the fence of the DTC. Münch was a friend of Pound's and the short prose section at the beginning of the canto celebrates his work on other early music figures.
 
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Canto LXXVI opens with a vision of a group of goddesses in Pound's room and then moves, via Mont Segur, to memories of Paris and [[Jean Cocteau]]. There follows a passage in which the poet recognises the Jewish authorship of the prohibition on usury found in [[Leviticus]]. Conversations in the camp are then cross-cut into memories of Provençe and Venice, details of the American Revolution and further visions. These memories lead to 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.
 
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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 Michito Itô, who worked with Pound and Yeats in London, a Dublin cab driver, Aristotle, Basil Bunting, Yeats, Joyce and the vocabulary of the U.S. Army. The goddess in her various guises appears again, as does Awoi's ''hennia'', the spirit of jealousy  from "AOI NO UE", a Noh play translated by Pound. The canto closes with an invocation of [[Dionysus]] (''Zagreus'').
 
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After opening with a glimpse of [[Mount Ida]], an important locus for the history of the Trojan war, 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 [[Justinian I|Justinian]], [[Titus]] and [[Antoninus]], Mussolini), usury and stamp scripts culminating in the [[Nausicaa]] episode from the ''Odyssey'' and a reference to the Confucian classic ''[[Annals of Spring and Autumn]]'' in which "there are no righteous wars".
 
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The moon and clouds appear at the opening of Canto LXXIX, which then moves on through a passage in which birds on the wire fence recall musical notation and the sounds of the camp and thoughts of [[Mozart]], del Cossa and [[Marshal Pétain]] meld to form musical counterpoint. After references to politics, economics, and the nobility of the world of the Noh and the ritual dance of the moon-nymph in Hagaromo that dispels mortal doubt, the canto closes with an extended fertility hymn to Dionysus in the guise of his sacred [[lynx]].
 
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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 Lewis]], [[Laurence Binyon]] and others. The canto is concerned with the aftermath of war, drawing on Yeats' experiences after the [[Irish Civil War]] as well as the contemporary situation. Hagoromo appears again before the poem returns to Beardsley, also in the shadow of death, declaring the difficulty of beauty with a phrase from Symons and Sappho/Homer's rosy-fingered dawn woven through the passage.
 
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Pound writes of the decline of the sense of the spirit in painting from a high-point in [[Sandro Botticelli]] to the fleshiness of [[Rubens]] and its recovery in the 20th century as evidenced in the works of [[Marie Laurencin]] and others. This is set between two further references to Mont Segur. Pound/Odysseus is then saved from his sinking raft by [[Walt Whitman]] and [[Richard Lovelace]] as discovered in the anthology of poetry found in the camp toilet and the other prisoners are compared with Odysseus' crew, "men of no fortune". The canto then closes with two passages, one a pastiche of Browning, the other of Tudor lyric, lamenting the lost London of Pound's youth and an image of nature as designer.
 
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Canto LXXXI opens with a complex image that illustrates Pound's technical approach well. The opening line, "[[Zeus]] 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 sun on crops in the landscape outside the camp. This is followed by an image of the local mountain that reminded the poet of Taishan surrounded by stars, the brightest of which is the planet [[Venus (planet)|Venus]] ("Taishan is attended of loves/under Cythera, before sunrise").
 
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The canto then moves through memories of Spain, a story told by Basil Bunting, and anecdotes of a number of familiar personages and of [[George Santayana]]. At the core of this passage is the line "(to break the pentameter, that was the first heave)", Pound's comment on the "revolution of the word" that led to the emergence of Modernist poetry in the early years of the century.
 
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Then the goddess of love returns after a lyric passage situating Pound's work in the great tradition of English lyric, in the sense of words intended to be sung. This heralds perhaps the most widely quoted passages in ''The Cantos'' in which Pound expresses his realisation that "What thou lovest well remains,/the rest is dross" and an acceptance of the need for human humility in the face of the natural world that prefigures some of the ideas associated with the [[deep ecology]] movement.
 
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The opening of Canto LXXXII marks a return to the camp and its inmates. This is followed by a passage that draws on Pound's London memories and his reading of  the ''Pocket Book of Verse''. Pound laments his failure to recognise the Greek qualities of [[Swinburne]]'s work and celebrates [[Wilfred Scawen Blunt]], [[Rudyard Kipling]], [[Ford Madox Ford]], [[Walt Whitman]], Yeats and others. After an expanded clarification of the ''Annals of Spring and Autumn'' / "there are no righteous wars" passage from Canto LXXVIII, this canto culminates in images of the poet drowning in earth and a recurrence of the Greek word for weeping, ending with more bird-notes seen as a periplum.
 
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After a number of cantos in which the elements of earth and air feature so strongly, Canto LXXXIII opens with images of water and light, drawn from [[Pindar]], [[George Gemistos Plethon]],  John Scotus Eriugena, the mermaid carvings of [[Pietro Lombardo]] and [[Heraclitus]]' phrase ''panta rei'' ("everything flows"). A passage addressed to a [[Dryad]] speaks out against the [[death sentence]] and cages for wild animals and is followed by lines on equity in government and natural processes based on the writings of [[Mencius]]. The tone of placid acceptance is underscored by three Chinese characters that translate as "don't help to grow that which will grow of itself" followed by another appearance of the Greek word for weeping in the context of remembered places.
 
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Close observation of a wasp building a mud nest returns the canto to earth and to the figure of [[Tiresias]], last encountered in Canto I. 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 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.
 
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Canto LXXXIV opens with the delivery of Dorothy Pound's first letter to the DTC on [[October 8th]]. This letter contained news of the death in the war of [[J.P. Angold]], a young English poet who Pound admired. This news is woven through phrases from a lament by the troubadour [[Bertran de Born]] (which Pound had once translated as "Planh for the Young English King") and a double occurrence of the Greek word ''tethneke'' ("is dead") remembered from the story of the death of [[Pan (mythology)|Pan]].
 
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This death, reviving memories of the poet's dead friends from World War I, is followed by a passage on Pound's [[1939]] visit to [[Washington, D.C.]] to try to avert American involvement in the forthcoming European war. Much of the rest of the canto is concerned with the economic basis of war and the general lack of interest in this subject on the part of historians and politicians; John Adams is again held up as an ideal. The canto also contains a reproduction, in Italian, of a conversation between a shepherd and his sister overheard 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.
 
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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.
 
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===LXXXV – XCV (Section: Rock-Drill)===
 
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[[image:Senator thomas hart benton.jpg|thumb|150pxl|Senator Thomas Hart Benton, who opposed the establishment of the [[Bank of the United States]]. His ''Thirty Years View'' is a key source for this section of ''The Cantos''.]]
 
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:Published in 1956 as ''Section: Rock-Drill, 85-95 de los cantares'' by New Directions, New York.
 
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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. Elizabeth's Hospital, where he was to remain until [[1958]]. Here he began to entertain writers and academics with an interest in his work and to write, working on translations of the Confucian ''[[Book of Odes]]'' and of [[Sophocles]]' play the ''Women of Trachis'' as well as two new sections of the cantos; the first of these was ''Rock Drill''.
 
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The two main written sources for the ''Rock Drill'' cantos are the Confucian ''[[Classic of History]]'', in an edition by the French Jesuit [[Séraphin Couvreur]], which contained the Chinese text and translations into Latin and French under the title ''Chou King'' (which Pound uses in the poem), and Senator [[Thomas Hart Benton (senator)|Thomas Hart Benton]]'s ''Thirty Years View: Or A History of the American Government for Thirty Years From 1820-1850'', which covers the period of the bank wars. In as interview given in [[1962]], and reprinted by J.P Sullivan (see [[The Cantos#References|References]]), Pound said that the title ''Rock Drill'' "was intended to imply the necessary resistance in getting a main thesis across — hammering."
 
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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 along side a copy of Couvreur's text.
 
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The core meaning is summed up in Pound's footnote to the effect that the History Classic contains the essentials of the Confucian view of good government. In the canto, these are summed up in the line "Our dynasty came in because of a great sensibility", where sensibility translates the key character Ling, and in the reference to the four Tuan, or foundations, benevolence, rectitude, manners and knowledge. Rulers who Pound viewed as embodying some or all of these characteristics are adduced: Queen [[Elizabeth I of England|Elizabeth I]], [[Cleopatra VII of Egypt|Cleopatra]], [[Alexander the Great]], as are [[Napoleon III]], [[Franklin Delano Roosevelt|Franklin D. Roosevelt]] and [[Harry Dexter White]], who stand for everything Pound opposes in government and finance.
 
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The world of nature, Pound's source of wealth and spiritual nourishment, also features strongly; images of roots, grass and surviving traces of fertility rites in Catholic Italy cluster around the sacred tree [[Yggdrasil]]. The natural world and the world of government are related to ''tekhne'' or art. [[Richard of St. Victor]], with his emphasis on modes of thinking, makes an appearance, in close company with Eriugena, the philosopher of light.
 
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Canto LXXXVI opens with a passage on the [[Congress of Vienna]] 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.
 
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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 Binyon]]'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 Molay]], 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 Heyden]] (who Pound remembered from his days working with Yeats) and other images relation to the worship of light including "'MontSegur, sacred to [[Helios]]". The canto then closes with more on economics.
 
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The following canto, Canto LXXXVIII, is almost entirely derived from Benton's book and focuses mainly on [[John Randolph of Roanoke]] and the campaign against the establishment of the [[Bank of the United States]]. Pound viewed the setting up of this bank as a selling out of the principles of economic equity on which the U.S. Constitution was based. At the centre of the canto there is a passage on monopolies that draws on the lives and writings of [[Thales of Miletus]], the emperor [[Antoninus Pius]] and [[St. Ambrose]], amongst others.
 
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Canto LXXXIX continues with Benton and also draws on [[Alexander del Mar]]'s ''A History of Money Systems''. The same examples of good rule are drawn on, with the addition of the Emperor [[Aurelian]]. Possibly in defence of his focus on so much "unpoetical" material, Pound quotes [[Rodolphus Agricola]] to the effect that one writes "to move, to teach or to delight" (''ut moveat, ut doceat, ut delectet''), with the implication that the present cantos are designed to teach. The naturalists [[Alexander von Humboldt]] and [[Louis Agassiz]] are mentioned in passing.
 
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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 Ygdrasil, the poet introduces [[Baucis]] and [[Philemon]], an aged couple who, in a story from Ovid's ''Metamorphoses'', 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.
 
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This canto then moves to the fountain of [[Castalia]] on [[Parnassus]]. This fountain was sacred to the [[Muse]]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.
 
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Pound then invokes [[Amphion]], the mythical founder of music, before recalling the San Ku/St Hilaire/Jacques de Molay/Eriugena/Sagetrieb cluster from Canto LXXXVII. Then the goddess appears in a number of guises: the moon, Mother Earth (in the Randolph reference), the Sibyl (last encountered in the context of the American Revolution in Canto LXIV), [[Isis]] and Kuanon. In a litany, she is thanked for raising Pound up (''m'elevasti'', a reference to Dante's praise of his beloved Beatrice in the ''Paradiso'') out of hell ([[Erebus]]).
 
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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.
 
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Canto XCI continues the paradisiacal theme, opening with a snatch of the "clear song" of Provençe. The central images are the invented figure [[Ra]]-[[Set]], 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 [[17th-century]] mystic [[John Heydon]], secretary of nature, who Pound first encountered via Yeats, the air in Dante's ''Paradiso'', and the mirror of crystal in the ''Chou King'' amongst other sources. [[Apollonius of Tyana]] appears, as do [[Helen of Tyre]], partner of [[Simon Magus]] and the emperor [[Justinian I|Justinian]] and his consort [[Theodora]]. These couples can be seen as variants on Ra-Set.
 
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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 (goddess)|Diana]] from [[Layamon]]'s [[12th-century]] poem ''Brut''. An italicised section, claiming that the [[1913]] foundation of the [[Federal Reserve Bank]], 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 Benda]] 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 5 of the ''Odyssey'' tells of the winds breaking up the hero's boat and is followed shortly by [[Leucothea]], "Kadamon thugater" or [[Cadamon]]'s daughter) offering him her veil to carry him to shore ("my bikini is worth yr raft").
 
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An image of the distribution of seeds from the sacred mountain opens Canto XCII, continuing the concern with the relationship between natural process and the divine. The kernel of this canto is the idea that the [[Roman Empire]]'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 1000 years. A number of neoplatonic philosophers, familiar from earlier cantos but with the addition of [[Avicenna]], are listed as representing a fine thread of light in these dark ages.
 
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Canto XCIII opens with a quote, "A man's paradise is his good nature", taken from ''The Maxims of King [[Kati]] to His Son [[Merikara]]''. The canto then proceeds to look at examples of benevolent action by public figures that, for Pound, illustrate this maxim. These include Apollonius making his peace with animals, [[Augustine of Hippo|Saint Augustine]] 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.
 
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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 me fai rimembrar'' translates as "you remind me" and comes from a passage in which Dante addresses Matilda, the presiding spirit of the [[Garden of Eden]]. What she reminds him of is Persephone at the moment that she is abducted by Hades and the spring flowers fell from her lap. This blending of a pagan sense of the divine into a Christian context stands for much of what appealed to Pound in medieval mysticism.
 
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We return to the world of books in Canto XCIV. The canto opens with the name of Hendrik van Brederode, a lost leader of the [[Dutch Revolution]], forgotten while [[William I, Prince of Orange]] is remembered. This name is lifted from correspondence between John Adams and [[Benjamin Rush]] which was finally published in [[1898]] by [[Alexander Biddle]], a descendant of Pound's 'villain' Nicholas. The rest of the canto consists mainly of paraphrases and quotations from [[Philostratus]]' ''Life of Apollonius''. At its conclusion, the poem returns to the world of light via Ra-Set and Ocellus.
 
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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 Leucothoe.
 
  
 
===XCVI – CIX (Thrones)===
 
===XCVI – CIX (Thrones)===
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:First published as ''Thrones: 96-109 de los cantares''. New York: New Directions, 1959.
 
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[[image:Coke.JPG|thumb|150pxl|Sir Edward Coke: "the clearest mind ever in England" (Canto CVII.]]
 
 
''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."
 
''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."
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The opening canto of the sequence, Canto XCVI, begins with a fragmentary synopsis of the [[decline of the Roman Empire]] and the rise of the [[Byzantine Empire]] in the east and of the [[Carolingian Empire]], [[Germanic]] [[monarchy|kingdoms]] and the [[Lombards]] in [[Western Europe]]. This culminates in a detailed passage on the ''[[Book of the Prefect]]'' (or Eparch), in Greek the ''Eparchikon Biblion'', a [[9th-century]] edict of the Emperor [[Leo VI]]. This document, which was based on Roman law, lays out the rules that governed the Byzantine [[Guild]] system, including the setting of just prices and so on. The original Greek is quoted extensively and an aside claiming the right to write for a specialist audience is included. The close attention paid to the actual words prefigures the closer focus on [[philology]] in this section of the poem. This focus on words ties in closely with what Pound referred to as the method of "luminous detail", in which fragments of language intended to form the most compressed expression of an image or idea act as [[tessera]]e in the making of these late cantos.
 
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Canto XCVII draws heavily on [[Alexander del Mar]]'s ''History of Monetary Systems'' in a survey ranging from [[Abd al Melik]], the first [[Caliph]] to strike distinctly [[Islamic]] coinage, through [[Athelstan]], who helped introduce the guild system into England, to the American Revolution. The canto closes with a passage that sees the return of the goddess as moon and [[Fortuna]] together with Greek forms of [[solar worship]] and the [[Flamen Dialis]]  that is intended to integrate gold and silver as attributes of coin and the divine.
 
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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''.
 
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K'ang Hsi's son [[Yongzheng Emperor|Iong Cheng]] published commentaries on his father's maxims and these form the basis for Canto XCIX. The main theme of this canto is one of harmony between human society and the natural order, and a number of passing references are made to related items from earlier cantos: Confucius, Kati, Dante on citizenship, the ''Book of the Prefect'' and Plotinus amongst them. Canto C covers a range of examples of European and American statesman who Pound sees as exemplifying the maxims of the ''Sacred Edict'' to a greater or lesser extent. At the core of this canto, the motif of Luecothoe's veil (kredemnon)  resurfaces; this time, the hero has reached the safety of the shore and returns the magic garment to the goddess.
 
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The main focus of Canto CI is around the Greek phrase ''kalon kagathon'' (the beautiful and good), which calls to mind Plotinus' attitude to the world of things and the more general Greek belief in the moral aspect of beauty. This canto introduces the figure of St. [[Anselm of Canterbury]], who is to feature over the rest of this section of the long poem. Canto CII returns to the island of Calypso and Odysseus' voyage to Hades from Book 10 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.
 
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Cantos CIII and CIV range over a number of examples of the relationships between war, money and government drawn from American and European history and 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.
 
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At the core of Canto CV are a number of citations and quotations from the writings of St. Anselm. This [[11th-century]] philosopher and inventor of the [[ontological argument]] for the existence of God who wrote poems in [[rhymed prose]] appealed to Pound because of his emphasis on the role of reason in religion and his envisioning of the divine essence as light. In the 1962 interview already quoted, Pound points to Anselm's clash with [[William Rufus]] 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 [[Francois Villon]].
 
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Canto CVI turns to visions of the goddess as fertility symbol via Demeter and Persephone, in her lunar, love aspect as [[Selena]], 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.
 
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Another such figure, the English [[jurist]] and champion of civil liberties Sir [[Edward Coke]], dominates the final three cantos of this section. These cantos, CVII, CVIII, CIX, consist mainly of 'luminous details' lifted from Coke's ''Institutes'', a comprehensive study of English law up to his own time.  In Canto CVII, Coke is placed in a ''river of light'' tradition that also includes Confucius, Ocellus and Agassiz. This canto also refers to Dante's vision of philosophers that reveal themselves as light in the ''Paradiso''. In Canto CVIII, Pound highlights Coke's view that minting coin "Pertain(s) to the King onely" and passages on sources of state revenue. He also draws a comparison between Coke and [[Yongzheng Emperor|Iong Cheng]]. A similar parallel between Coke and the author of the ''Book of the Eparch'' is highlighted in Canto CIX.
 
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The canto, and section, ends with a reference to the following lines from the second canto of the ''Paradiso'':
 
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:O voi che siete in piccioletta barca,
 
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:desiderosi d’ascoltar, seguiti
 
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:dietro al mio legno che cantando varca,
 
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:tornate a riveder li vostri liti:
 
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:non vi mettete in pelago, ché forse,
 
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:perdendo me, rimarreste smarriti.''
 
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("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." Translation by [[Charles Eliot Norton]])
 
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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===
 
===Drafts and fragments of Cantos CX - CXVII===
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[[Image:Voltaire.jpg|thumb|200px|Voltaire, who said "I hate no one/not even Fréron" (Canto CXIV), reflecting the theme of confronting hatred in this section of the poem.]]
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:First published as ''Drafts and Fragments of Cantos CX - CXVII.'' New York: New Directions, 1969.
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:''First published as ''Drafts and Fragments of Cantos CX - CXVII. ''New York: New Directions, [[1969]].''
 
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In [[1958]], Pound was declared incurably insane and permanently incapable of standing trial. Consequent on this, he was released from St Elizabeth's on condition that he return to Europe, which he promptly did. At first, he lived with his daughter Mary in the [[Tyrol]], but soon returned to Rapallo. A crisis of belief (In November [[1959]], Pound wrote to his publisher [[James Laughlin]] that he "has forgotten what or which politics he ever had. Certainly has none now."), together with the effects of aging meant that the proposed paradise cantos were slow in coming and turned out to be radically different to anything the poet had envisaged.
 
  
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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 titled Canto CXX at one point, on no particular authority. This title was later removed.
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In 1958, Pound was declared incurably insane and permanently incapable of standing trial. Consequent to this, he was released from Saint Elizabeth's Hospital in Washington, DC, on condition that he return to Europe, which he promptly did. At first, he lived with his daughter Mary in [[Tyrol]], but soon returned to Rapallo, Italy, where he would remain until his death. Depression over his long imprisonment and advancing age meant that the proposed paradise cantos with which Pound had planned to end the poem were slow in coming and turned out to be radically different from anything the poet had envisaged.
  
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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 intruded. These include the poet's coming to terms with a sense of artistic failure, and jealousies and hatreds that must be faced and expiated.
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Pound was reluctant to publish these late cantos, but the appearance in 1967 of a pirated edition of ''Cantos 110-116'' forced his hand. Laughlin pushed Pound to publish an authorized edition, and the poet responded by supplying the more-or-less abandoned drafts and fragments, plus two fragments dating from 1941. The resulting book can hardly be described as representing Pound's definitively 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 titled Canto CXX at one point, on no particular authority. This title was later removed.
  
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Canto CX opens with a pun on the word ''wake'', conflating the wake of the little boat from the end of the previous canto and an image of Pound waking in his daughter's house in the Tyrol both from sleep and, by extension, from the nightmare of his prolonged incarceration. The goddess appears as Kuanon, Artemis and [[Hebe (mythology)|Hebe]] (through her characteristic epithet ''Kallistragalos'', "of fair ankles"), the goddess of youth. The Buddhist painter [[Toba Sojo]] represents directness of artistic handling.  
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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.
  
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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.
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The last canto completed by Pound opens with a passage in which we see the homecoming of the Odysseus/Pound figure. However, the "home" is not the place intended when the poem was begun, but the ''terzo cielo'' ("third heaven") of human love. The canto contains the following well-known lines:  
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Pound's "nice, quite paradise" is seen, in the Notes for Canto CXI, to be based on serenity, pity, intelligence and individual acceptance of responsibility as illustrated by [[Talleyrand]]. This theme is continued in the short extract titled from Canto CXII, which also draws on the wok of the anthropologist and explorer [[Joseph F. Rock]] in recording legends and religious rituals from China and [[Tibet]]. Again, this section of the poem closes with an image of the moon.
 
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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 the Tyrol further complicated the already strained relationships between the poet, his wife Dorothy and his lover Olga Rudge, 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.
 
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The theme of hatred is addressed directly at the opening of Canto CXIV where [[Voltaire]] is quoted to the effect that he hates nobody, not even his archenemy [[Elie Freron]]. The remainder of this canto is primarily concerned with recognising indebtedness to the poet's genetic and cultural ancestors. The short extract from Canto CXV is a reworking from an earlier version first published in the [[Belfast]]-based magazine ''Threshold'' in [[1962]] and centres around two main ideas. The first of these is the hostilities that existed between Pound's modernist friends and the negative impact that this 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''.
 
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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;
 
:I have brought the great ball of crystal;
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:I cannot make it cohere.
 
:I cannot make it cohere.
  
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This passage has often been taken as an admission of failure on Pound's part, but the reality may be more complex. The crystal image relates back to the ''Sacred Edict'' on self-knowledge and the demigod/cohere lines relate directly to Pound's translation of the ''Women of Trachis''. In this, the [[demigod]] [[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 towards 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 that 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.
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This passage has often been taken as an admission of failure on Pound's part, but the reality may be more complex. The [[crystal]] image relates back to the ''Sacred Edict'' on self-knowledge and the "demigod/cohere" lines relate directly to Pound's translation of the ''Women of Trachis.'' In this, the [[demigod]] [[Herakles]] cries out as he is dying, "WHAT SPLENDOUR / IT ALL COHERES." These lines read in conjunction with some later ones in reference to his own verse, "i.e. it coheres all right/even if my notes do not cohere," suggest that towards the end of his effort, Pound was coming to accept not only his own "errors" and "madness" but the conclusion that to do justice to the coherence of the universe was beyond him, and possibly beyond poetry. 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.
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This final complete canto is followed by the two [[1940s]] fragments. 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.
 
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Notes for Canto CXVII ''et seq''. originally consisted of three fragments, with a fourth, the sometimes Canto CXX, added after Pound's death. The first of these has the poet raising an altar to Bacchus (Zagreus) and his mother [[Semele]], whose death was as a result of jealousy. The second centres on the lines "that I lost my center/fighting the world". 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 from Canto CXV, and has Pound asking forgiveness for his actions from both the gods and those he loves. The final fragment returns to beginnings with the name of François Bernonad, the French printer of ''A Draft of XVI Cantos''. After quoting two phrases from Bernart de Ventadorn's ''Can vei la lauzeta mover'', a poem in which the speaker determines to abandon love because he has been rejected, the fragment closes with the line "To be men, not destroyers." This stood as the close of ''The Cantos'' until later editions appended the two Italian cantos LXXII and LXXIII and a brief dedicatory fragment addressed to Olga Rudge.
 
  
 
===Legacy===
 
===Legacy===
  
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Despite all the controversy surrounding both poem and poet, ''The Cantos'' has been influential in the development of English-language long poems since the appearance of the early sections during the [[1920s]]. Amongst poets of Pound's own generation, both [[H.D.]] and [[William Carlos Williams]] wrote long poems that show this influence.
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In 1946 Pound was arrested, and tried for treason, and spent 12 years in Saint Elizabeth's hospital for the criminally insane. Despite all the controversy surrounding both poem and poet, ''The Cantos'' has been influential in the development of long poems in the English language since the appearance of the early sections during the 1920s. Amongst poets of Pound's own generation, both [[H.D.]] and [[William Carlos Williams]] wrote long poems that show this influence.  
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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.
 
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Pound was a major influence on the [[Objectivist poets]], and the impact of ''The Cantos'' on Zukofsky's ''"A"'' has already been noted. The other major long work by an Objectivist, [[Charles Reznikoff]]'s ''Testimony'', ([[1934]] – [[1978]]) follows Pound in the direct use of primary source documents as its raw material. In the next generation of American poets, [[Charles Olson]] also drew on Pound's example in writing his own unfinished Modernist epic ''The Maximus Poems''.
 
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Pound was also an important figure for the poets of the [[Beat generation]], especially [[Gary Snyder]] and [[Allen Ginsberg]]. Snyder's interest in things Chinese and Japanese stemmed from his early reading of Pound's writings and his long poem ''Mountains and Rivers Without End'' ([[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, [[Walt Whitman|Whitmanesque]] lines of his early poetry, including  towards the more varied metric and inclusive approach to a variety of subjects in the single poem that is to be found especially in his book-length sequences ''Planet News'' ([[1968]]) and ''The Fall of America: Poems of These States'' ([[1973]]).
 
  
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More generally, ''The Cantos'', with its wide range of references and inclusion of primary sources including prose texts can be seen as prefiguring [[found poetry]]. Pound's tacit insistence that this material becomes poetry because of his action in including it in a text he chose to call a poem also prefigures the attitudes and practices that underlie 20th-century [[Conceptual art]].
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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. 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.
  
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==Pound's Institutionalization and Decline==
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Pound was a major influence on the [[Objectivist poets]], and the impact of ''The Cantos'' on [[Zukofsky]]'s ''"A"'' is clearly noticeable. The other major long work by an Objectivist, [[Charles Reznikoff]]'s ''Testimony,'' (1934&ndash;1978) follows Pound in the direct use of primary source documents as its raw material. In the next generation of American poets, [[Charles Olson]] also drew on Pound's example in writing his own unfinished Modernist epic ''The Maximus Poems.''
  
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After the war, Pound was brought back to the United States to face charges of [[treason]]. He was found unfit to face trial because of insanity and sent to [[St. Elizabeths Hospital]] in Washington, D.C., where he remained for 12 years from 1946 to 1958. Following his release, he was sent back to Italy, where he remained until his death in 1972.  Pound was conceited and flamboyant, to say the least, which in psychiatric terms became "grandiosity of ideas and beliefs". The insanity case against Pound is widely believed to be an example of state abuse, effectively imprisoning Pound without a trial.  By contrast, [[E. Fuller Torrey]] believed that Mussolini's propagandist was coddled by Winfred Overholser, the superintendent of St. Elizabeths.  Overholser admired Pound's poetry and allowed him to live in a private room at the hospital, where he wrote three books, received visits from literary celebrities and enjoyed conjugal relations with his wife and several mistresses.  (Torrey exposed the relationship between Overholser and Pound in a 1981 ''Psychology Today'' and later, the book ''The Roots of Treason''.)  At St. Elizabeths, Pound was surrounded by poets and other admirers and continued working on ''The Cantos'' as well as translating the [[Confucian]] classics. Many of the poets and artists who visited Pound would probably have been horrified to learn that another of his most frequent visitors was the then-chairman of the [[States' Rights Democratic Party]], with whom Pound used to discuss strategy and tactics on how best to rally public support for the preservation of racial segregation in the American South. Pound was befriended there by [[Guy Davenport]], who subsequently wrote his Harvard dissertation on Pound's poetry (published as ''Cities on Hills'' in 1983), a work that was highly influential in causing a re-assessment of Pound's poetry. Pound was finally released after a concerted campaign by many of his fellow poets and artists, particularly [[Robert Frost]]. He was still considered incurably insane, but not dangerous to others. [[Elizabeth Bishop]] referred to this period of Pound's life in her poem "[[Visits to St. Elizabeth's]]."
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Pound was also an important figure for the poets of the [[Beat generation]], especially [[Gary Snyder]] and [[Allen Ginsberg]]. Snyder's interest in things Chinese and Japanese stemmed from his early reading of Pound's writings and his long poem ''Mountains and Rivers Without End'' (1965 &ndash; 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, [[Walt Whitman|Whitmanesque]] lines of his early poetry, and towards the more varied lines found in his book-length sequences ''Planet News'' (1968) and ''The Fall of America: Poems of These States'' (1973).
  
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On his release, Pound returned to Italy where he continued writing, but his old certainties had deserted him. Although he continued working on ''The Cantos'', he seemed to view them as an artistic failure. He also seemed to regret many of his past actions, and in a [[1967]] interview with [[ Allen Ginsberg]] he apologised for "that stupid, suburban prejudice of anti-Semitism", although contemporaneous letters published in recent years indicate that he was still unrepentently anti-semitic. He died in [[Venice]] in 1972.
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More generally, ''The Cantos,'' with its wide range of references and inclusion of primary sources including prose texts can be seen as prefiguring [[found poetry]]. 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 twentieth century [[Conceptual art]].
  
 
==Pound's Importance==
 
==Pound's Importance==
  
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Because of his political views, especially his support of Mussolini and his anti-Semitism, Pound continues to attract much criticism. While it is almost impossible to ignore the vital role he played in the modernist revolution in 20th century literature in English, Pound's perceived importance has varied over the years. The location of Pound — as opposed to other writers such as [[T.S. Eliot]] — at the center of the Anglo-American Modernist tradition was famously asserted by the critic [[Hugh Kenner]], most fully in his account of the Modernist movement titled ''The Pound Era''. The critic [[Marjorie Perloff]] has also insisted upon the centrality of Pound to numerous traditions of "experimental" poetry in the 20th century.
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Because of his political views, especially his support of [[Mussolini]] and his anti-Semitism, Pound continues to attract much criticism. While it is almost impossible to ignore the vital role he played in the modernist revolution of twentieth century literature, Pound's perceived importance has varied over the years. At times he has been considered the genius of his age; at others, he has been discarded as little more than an egocentric madman.
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As a poet, Pound was one of the first to successfully employ [[free verse]] in extended compositions. His Imagist poems influenced, among others, the [[Objectivist poets|Objectivists]] and ''The Cantos'' were a touchstone for Ginsberg and other [[Beat generation|Beat]] poets. Almost every 'experimental' poet in English since the early 20th century has been considered by some to be in his debt.
 
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As critic, editor and promoter, Pound helped the careers of [[W.B. Yeats|Yeats]], [[T.S. Eliot|Eliot]], [[James Joyce|Joyce]], [[Wyndham Lewis]], [[Robert Frost]], [[William Carlos Williams]], [[H.D.]], [[Marianne Moore]], [[Ernest Hemingway]], [[D. H. Lawrence]], [[Louis Zukofsky]], [[Basil Bunting]], [[George Oppen]], [[Charles Olson]] and other modernist writers too numerous to mention as well as neglected earlier writers like [[Walter Savage Landor]] and [[Gavin Douglas]].
 
  
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Immediately before the first world war Pound became interested in art when he was associated with the [[Vorticists]] (Pound coined the word). Pound did much to publicize the movement and was instrumental in bringing it to the attention of the wider public (he was particularly important in the artistic careers of [[Henri Gaudier-Brzeska]] and [[Wyndham Lewis]]).  
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Despite the vicissitudes of public opinion, as a poet, Pound endures. He was one of the first to successfully employ [[free verse]] in extended compositions. Almost every 'experimental' poet in English since the early twentieth century has been considered to be in his debt.
  
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As translator, although his mastery of languages is open to question, Pound did much to introduce [[Provençal]] and [[Chinese literature|Chinese]] poetry, the [[Noh]], [[Anglo-Saxon]] poetry and the [[Confucius|Confucian]] classics to a Western audience. He also translated and championed [[Greek language|Greek]] and [[Latin]] classics and helped keep these alive for poets at a time when classical education was in decline.
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As a critic, editor and promoter, Pound helped the careers of [[William Butler Yeats|Yeats]], [[T.S. Eliot|Eliot]], [[James Joyce|Joyce]], [[Wyndham Lewis]], [[Robert Frost]], [[William Carlos Williams|Williams]], [[H.D.]], [[Marianne Moore]], [[Ernest Hemingway]], [[D. H. Lawrence]], [[Louis Zukofsky]], [[Basil Bunting]], [[George Oppen]], [[Charles Olson]] and other modernist writers too numerous to mention, as well as earlier, neglected writers such as [[Walter Savage Landor]] and [[Gavin Douglas]].
  
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In the early [[1920s]] in Paris, Pound became interested in music, and was probably the first serious writer in the 20th century to praise the work of the long-neglected Italian [[composer]] [[Antonio Vivaldi]] and to promote [[early music]] generally. He also helped the early career of [[George Antheil]], and collaborated with him on various projects.  
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As a translator&mdash;although his mastery of languages is open to question&mdash;Pound did much to introduce [[Provençal]] and [[Chinese literature|Chinese]] poetry, the [[Noh]], [[Anglo-Saxon]] poetry and the [[Confucius|Confucian]] classics to a Western audience. He also translated and championed [[Greek language|Greek]] and [[Latin]] classics and helped keep these alive for poets at a time when classical education was in decline.
  
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The secret to Pound's seemingly bizarre theories and political commitments perhaps lie in his occult and mystical interests, which biographers have only recently begun to document. 'The Birth of Modernism' by Leon Surette is perhaps the best introduction to this aspect of Pound's thought.
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In all, Pound's wake ranges wide. His influence as an artist and [[intellectual]] is inseparable from modernism and the early twentieth century itself. His genius is undeniable, and although at times the ferocity of his inquisitiveness led him into "wrecks and errors," Pound remains one of the most important figures in [[American literature]].
  
 
==Selected works==
 
==Selected works==
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* 1915 ''Cathay'', poems / translations.
 
* 1915 ''Cathay'', poems / translations.
 
* 1916 ''Certain noble plays of Japan: from the manuscripts of Ernest Fenollosa'', chosen and finished by Ezra Pound, with an introduction by William Butler Yeats.
 
* 1916 ''Certain noble plays of Japan: from the manuscripts of Ernest Fenollosa'', chosen and finished by Ezra Pound, with an introduction by William Butler Yeats.
−
* 1916 ''"Noh", or, Accomplishment: a study of the classical stage of Japan'', by Ernest Fenollosa and Ezra Pound.
+
* 1916 ''"Noh," or, Accomplishment: a study of the classical stage of Japan'', by Ernest Fenollosa and Ezra Pound.
 
* 1917 ''Lustra of Ezra Pound'', poems.
 
* 1917 ''Lustra of Ezra Pound'', poems.
 
* 1917 ''Twelve Dialogues of Fontenelle'', translations.
 
* 1917 ''Twelve Dialogues of Fontenelle'', translations.
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==References==
 
==References==
  
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* [[Humphrey Carpenter|Carpenter, Humphrey]] (1988). ''A Serious Character: The Life of Ezra Pound.'' Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
+
* [[Humphrey Carpenter|Carpenter, Humphrey]]. 1988. ''A Serious Character: The Life of Ezra Pound.'' Boston: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 0395416787
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* [[Hugh Kenner|Kenner, Hugh]] (1973). ''The Pound Era''. Berkeley: University of California Press.
+
* [[Hugh Kenner|Kenner, Hugh]]. 1973. ''The Pound Era.'' Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0520024273
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* Bacigalupo, Massimo (1980). ''The Forméd Trace: The Later Poetry of Ezra Pound.'' New York: Columbia University Press.  
+
* Bacigalupo, Massimo. 1980. ''The Forméd Trace: The Later Poetry of Ezra Pound.'' New York: Columbia University Press.  
−
* Longenbach, James (1991). ''Stone Cottage: Pound, Yeats and Modernism.'' New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
+
* Longenbach, James. [1980] 1991. ''Stone Cottage: Pound, Yeats and Modernism.'' New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195066626
−
* Oderman, Kevin (1986). ''Ezra Pound and the Erotic Medium.'' Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.
+
* Moody, A. David. ''Ezra Pound: Poet I: The Young Genius 1885-1920.'' Oxford University Press, USA, 2007. ISBN 019921557X  (most recent biography)
−
* Redman, Tim (1991). ''Ezra Pound and Italian Fascism.'' Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
+
* Oderman, Kevin. 1986. ''Ezra Pound and the Erotic Medium.'' Durham, NC: Duke University Press. ISBN 0822306727
−
* Stock, Noel (1970). ''Life of Ezra Pound.'' London: Routledge & Kegan Paul
+
* Pound, Ezra, and Dorothy Pound. ''Ezra and Dorothy Pound: Letters in Captivity, 1945-1946,'' ed. by Omar Pound and Robert Spoo. Oxford University Press, USA, 1999. ISBN 0195107934 
−
* Surette, Leon (1994). ''The Birth of Modernism: Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, W.B. Yeats, and the Occult.'' McGill-Queen's University Press.
+
* Redman, Tim. 1991. ''Ezra Pound and Italian Fascism.'' Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521373050
 +
* Stock, Noel. [1970] 1982). ''Life of Ezra Pound.'' reprint ed. North Point Press, ISBN 0865470758
 +
* Surette, Leon. 1994. ''The Birth of Modernism: Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, W.B. Yeats, and the Occult.'' McGill-Queen's University Press. ISBN 0773512438
  
 
==External links==
 
==External links==
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*[http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/m_r/pound/pound.htm Pound at Modern American Poetry]
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All links retrieved March 23, 2024.
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*[http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/authors/pound/ Pound at EPC]
+
 
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*[http://www.cwru.edu/artsci/engl/VSALM/mod/ballentine/ Pound and the Occult]
 
 
*[http://www.pinyin.info/readings/texts/ezra_pound_chinese.html Fenollosa, Pound and the Chinese Character]
 
*[http://www.pinyin.info/readings/texts/ezra_pound_chinese.html Fenollosa, Pound and the Chinese Character]
 
*[http://www.internal.org/list_poems.phtml?authorID=1 A collection of Pound's poetry]
 
*[http://www.internal.org/list_poems.phtml?authorID=1 A collection of Pound's poetry]
 
* {{gutenberg author|id=Ezra_Pound|name=Ezra Pound}}
 
* {{gutenberg author|id=Ezra_Pound|name=Ezra Pound}}
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* {{gutenberg|no=7275|name=Ezra Pound: His Metric and Poetry}}, by [[T. S. Eliot]]
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* {{gutenberg|no=7275|name=Ezra Pound: His Metric and Poetry}}, by T. S. Eliot
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==Audio recordings==
 
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*[http://anon.salon.speedera.net/anon.salon/mp3s/pound.mp3 Recording of "Usura" Canto XLV], read by Pound (mp3).
 
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*[http://www.audiobooksonline.com/shopsite/audio/0694524301.ram Recording of sections from ''Hugh Selwyn Mauberley'' and others], read by Pound (RealAudio).
 
  
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Latest revision as of 00:02, 25 March 2024

Ezra Pound in 1913.

Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (October 30, 1885 – November 1, 1972) was an American expatriate, poet, musician and critic who was a major figure of the modernist movement in early twentieth-century poetry. Combining an extensive knowledge of literary history with an eye toward modern experimentalism and acting as an instigator, patron, and formidable author in his own right, Pound laid the foundation for almost all the new directions poetics would take on in the twentieth century. He is a lasting role model for the integration of new and old ways of thought, including traditions from China and Japan. In his mature work, The Cantos, Pound eschewed antiquated "poetic" language in hopes of inventing a new poetic, one that could pierce the mind with what Pound called “clear song”—a sort of instantaneous understanding of the world and all its connectedness. In search of this, Pound revolutionized poetry by using free verse, collage-like structure, and a Duchamp-esque attitude towards quotation and the integration of other art forms into poetry.

Ironically, while a modernist in style and technique, Pound rejected much of the modern world, especially capitalism and the modern banking system that allowed for the creation of wealth through what he disparagingly referred to as usury. In Europe where he lived as an expatriate, banking was dominated by Jews, and Pound's criticisms of usury were sometimes virulently anti-Semitic. Together with his embrace of Mussolini, Pound often found himself on the "wrong side of history," and after the war he paid for it, suffering incarceration in a mental hospital. But his aberrant politics have only slightly diminished his reputation as one of America's greatest poets.

Early life and contemporaries

Pound was born in Hailey, Idaho, United States. He studied for two years at the University of Pennsylvania and later received his B.A. from Hamilton College in 1905. During studies at Penn, he met and befriended William Carlos Williams, and H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), to whom he was engaged for a time. He taught at Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Indiana for less than a year, and left as the result of a minor scandal. In 1908 Pound traveled to Europe, settling in London after spending several months in Venice.

Pound and Yeats

Pound's early poetry was inspired by his reading of the Pre-Raphaelites and other nineteenth-century poets, as well as medieval Romances. He was also deeply influenced by neo-Romanticism and occult/mystical philosophy. When he moved to London, Pound began to cast off archaic, overtly poetic language and forms in an attempt to remake himself as a poet under the influence of Ford Madox Ford and T. E. Hulme. Believing William Butler Yeats to be the greatest living poet of his time, Pound sought him out in England, and was eventually employed as his secretary for two years. In 1914 Pound married the artist Dorothy Shakespear.

During this time, Yeats and Pound were instrumental in helping each other modernize English poesy. The two writers lived together at Stone Cottage in Sussex, England, studying Japanese literature, especially Noh plays. They paid particular attention to the translations of [[Sinology|Sinologist] Ernest Fenollosa, an American professor in Japan, whose work on Chinese characters was developed by Pound into what he called the Ideogrammic Method, a visual-poetic technique that would be fundamental for his subsequent poems and thought. In translating or interpreting Chinese poetry, into English, Pound dropped the use of formal structures of meter and rhyme, and introduced free verse.

The Ideogrammic Method

The concept of Pound's Ideogrammic Method was that it allowed poetry to address abstract content through concrete images. The idea was based on Pound's reading of Fenollosa, and in particular his notes on the Chinese ideogram:

Pound gives a brief account of the idea in his instructional booklet The ABC of Reading. He explains his admiration for the way abstract Chinese characters were formed by drawing pictures of concrete things. He uses the example of the character for 'dawn' (a word which in a non-ideogrammatic language like English is almost always as much a cliché as it is a noun.) In Chinese, 'dawn' is represented by the superposition of the characters for 'tree' and 'sun'; that is, a picture of the sun tangled in a tree's branches. Pound found this compression of a complex concept like "dawn" through images to be an incredibly useful tool for poets. He suggested how, with such a system, the concept of 'red' might be presented by putting together the pictures of:

ROSE CHERRY
IRON RUST FLAMINGO

This was a key idea in the development of Imagism, because, according to Pound, it allowed for poets to communicate about abstractions and generalities (even something as general as the color red) without losing touch with the real world and the things in it.

Imagism

In the years before the First World War, Pound was largely responsible for the appearance of Imagism and Vorticism, philosophies and art and poetics deeply rooted in the ideogrammatic method he had developed through his study of Chinese and Japanese forms. These two movements, published in his Vorticist magazine BLAST and his editorial work with literary magazines Egoist and Poetry, helped bring to notice the work of new poets and artists like James Joyce, Wyndham Lewis, William Carlos Williams, H.D., Richard Aldington, Marianne Moore, Rebecca West and Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, can be seen as perhaps the central events in the birth of English-language modernism. Pound also edited his friend T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, the poem that was to force the new poetic sensibility into broader public attention.

The war, however, shattered Pound's belief in modern western civilization and he abandoned London soon after for Europe, but not before he published “Homage to Sextus Propertius” (1919) and “Hugh Selwyn Mauberley” (1920). If these poems together form a farewell to Pound's London career, The Cantos, which he began in 1915, pointed his way forward. The years from 1920 to 1924 Pound spent in Paris, mixing and mingling with other writers and artists.

In Italy, Pound lived with his wife Dorothy and continued to act as a patron and catalyst to numerous artists. The young sculptor Heinz Henghes came to see Pound, arriving penniless. He was given lodging and marble to carve, and quickly learned to work in stone. The poet James Laughlin, who lodged with Pound, was also inspired at this time to start the publishing company New Directions that would become a vehicle for many new authors. Pound also organized an annual series of concerts in Rapallo where a wide range of classical and contemporary music was performed. In particular this musical activity contributed to the 20th century revival of interest in Vivaldi, who had been neglected since his death. Throughout all of this, Pound continued to work incessantly on The Cantos, an epic poem which would eventually become far and away the poet's most important work, and one of the longest and most influential poems in the English language.

The Cantos

The Cantos consist of a long, incomplete poem in 120 sections. Each of these sections is referred to as a canto, Italian for song. Most of the cantos were 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, and is widely considered to be one of the most formidable poems in the English language and among the most significant works of poetry in the twentieth century. The poem is dense and abstract, with no single narrative or narrator, resembling more a collage of disparate but thematically related fragments. In particular, the themes of economics, governance, and culture and their relation to the creative activity of the poet are all constants throughout the piece.

The difficulty of the poem is apparent even to a casual browser; a cursory reader will notice that the poem includes Chinese characters as well as lengthy quotations in various European languages besides English. Recourse to scholarly commentaries is almost inevitable for any reader. The range of allusion to historical events is very broad in both time and place. Pound added to his earlier interests in the ancient cultures of the Mediterranean and East Asia by selecting topics ranging from medieval and early modern Italy and Provence to the beginnings of the United States, the state of England in the seventeenth century, and details from African cultures he had obtained from Leo Frobenius. References left without explanation abound.

Structure

As it lacks any plot or definite ending, The Cantos can appear on first reading to be chaotic or structureless. The issue of incoherence of the work is reflected in the equivocal note sounded in the final two more-or-less completed cantos, which lament Pound's inability to make his materials cohere, while insisting that the world itself still does.

Nevertheless, there are indications in Pound's other writings that there may have been some formal plan underlying the work. In his 1918 essay A Retrospect, Pound wrote:

I think there is a 'fluid' as well as a 'solid' content, that some poems may have form as a tree has form, some as water poured into a vase. That most symmetrical forms have certain uses. That a vast number of subjects cannot be precisely, and therefore not properly rendered in symmetrical forms.

Critics like Hugh Kenner who take a more positive view of The Cantos have tended to follow this hint, seeing the poem as a poetic record of Pound's life that sends out new branches as new needs arise, 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 poem's symbolic structure also makes use of an opposition between darkness and light. Images of light are used variously, and may represent neoplatonic 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—social commerce and poetic genius—into a unified whole.

The Cantos was initially published in the form of separate sections, each containing several cantos that were numbered sequentially using Roman numerals. The original publication dates for the groups of cantos are as given below. The complete collection of cantos was published together in 1987 (including a final short coda or fragment, dated 24 August, 1966).

I – XVI

The first canto begins with Pound's translation of a Latin version of Homer's Odyssey by the Renaissance scholar Andreas Divus. Using the meter and syntax of his 1911 version of the Anglo-Saxon poem The Seafarer, Pound made an English version of Divus' rendering of the Nekuia episode in which Odysseus and his companions sail to Hades in order to find out what their future holds. In using this passage to open the poem, Pound introduces a major theme: the excavating of the 'dead' past to illuminate both present and future. He also echoes Dante's opening to The Divine Comedy in which the poet also descends into hell to interrogate the dead. The canto concludes with some fragments from the Second Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, in a Latin version by Georgius Dartona which Pound found in the Divus volume, followed by "So that:"—an invitation to read on.

Cantos VIII - XI draw on the story of Sigismondo Malatesta, quattrocento poet, soldier, lord of Rimini and patron of the arts. Pound especially focuses on the building of the church of San Francesco. Designed by Leon Battista Alberti and decorated by artists including Piero della Francesca and Agostino di Duccio, this was a landmark Renaissance building—the first church to use the Roman triumphal arch as part of its structure. For Pound, 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.

The remainder of this section of The Cantos concludes with a vision of capitalism and Hell. Canto XIV and Canto XV use the convention of the Divine Comedy to present Pound/Dante moving through a hell populated by bankers, newspaper editors, hack writers and other 'perverters of language' and the social order. In Canto XV, Plotinus takes the role of guide played by Virgil in Dante's poem. These visions are followed by a transcript of Lincoln Steffens' account of the Russian Revolution. 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

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. They are primarily concerned with the formation of banking and the rise of social decay, a concomitant trend that Pound calls 'usury', in medieval Europe.

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) use extensive quotations from the letters and other writings of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren and others to deal with the emergence of the fledgling United States and, particularly, the American banking system. All eleven of these Cantos continue on with Pound's ruminations on 'usury' in the context of the new American republic.

XLII – LI (Fifth Decad, also called the Leopoldine Cantos)

Published as The Fifth Decad of the Cantos XLII-LI. London: Faber & Faber, 1937.

Cantos XLII, XLIII and XLIV move to the Sienese bank of the Monte dei Paschi. Under the rule of the Arch Duke Pietro Leopoldo it represents for Pound a non-capitalist ideal. Canto XLV is a litany against Usura or usury, which Pound defines 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. Canto XLVI contrasts what has gone before with the practices of institutions such as the Bank of England that are designed to exploit the issuing of credit to make profits.

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 Rapallo near Pound's home merges with the cognate myths of Tammuz and Adonis, depicting 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. The canto then moves via Montsegur to the village of St-Bertrand-de-Comminges. Canto XIL is a poem of tranquil nature derived from a Chinese picturebook. Canto L, which contains virulent anti-Semitic statements, moves from John Adams to the failure of the Medici bank. The final canto in this sequence returns to the usura litany of Canto XLV, followed by detailed instructions on making flies for fishing, and ends with the first Chinese written characters to appear in the poem, representing the Rectification of Names from the Analects of Confucius.

LII – LXI (The China Cantos)

Published as Cantos LII-LXXI. Norfolk Conn.: New Directions, 1940.

These eleven cantos are based on the Histoire generale de la Chine by Joseph-Anna-Marie de Moyriac de Mailla, an eleven volume history plus index. De Mailla was a French Jesuit 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 Enlightenment figure and his view of Chinese history reflects his views. He found Confucian political philosophy, with its emphasis on rational order, very 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.

LXII – LXXI (The Adams Cantos)

Published as Cantos LII-LXXI. Norfolk Conn.: New Directions, 1940.

This section of the cantos is, for the most part, made up of fragmentary citations from the writings of John Adams. Pound's intentions appear to be to show Adams as an example of the rational Enlightenment leader, continuing the primary theme of the preceding China Cantos sequence. Adams is depicted as a rounded figure; he is a strong leader with interests in political, legal and cultural matters in much the same way that Malatesta and Mussolini are portrayed elsewhere in the poem.

LXXII – LXXIII

Written between 1940 and 1944.

These two cantos, written in Italian, were not published until their posthumous inclusion in the 1987 revision of the complete text of the poem. They cover much familiar ground; Sigismondo, Dante and Cavalcanti appear, as does Pound's linking of usury and Jews in another anti-Semitic rant aimed at Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Anthony Eden. In contrast with some of his earlier critical writings, Pound praises the Futurist writer Filippo Tommaso Marinetti.

LXXIV – LXXXIV (The Pisan Cantos)

First published as The Pisan Cantos. New York: New Directions, 1948.

Pound was arrested by Italian partisans in April 1945 and was eventually transferred to the American Disciplinary Training Center (DTC) on May 22. Here he was held in a specially reinforced cage, initially sleeping on the ground in the open air. After some time he was given a cot and pup tent. After three months, he had a breakdown that resulted in his being moved to the medical compound. Here, he gained access to a typewriter. For reading matter, he had a regulation-issue Bible along with three books he was allowed to bring in as his own "religious" texts: a Chinese text of Confucius, James Legge's translation of the same, and a Chinese dictionary. The only other thing he brought with him was a eucalyptus pipe. Throughout the Pisan sequence, Pound repeatedly likens the camp to Francesco del Cossa's March fresco depicting men working at a grape arbor.

The Rock-Drill Section: LXXXV – XCV

First published as Section: Rock-Drill, 85-95 de los Cantares. New York: New Directions, 1956.

Pound was flown from Pisa to Washington, DC 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 Saint Elizabeth's Hospital, where he was to remain until 1958. Here he began to entertain writers and academics with an interest in his work. He also began working on translations of the Confucian Book of Odes and of Sophocles' play the Women of Trachis 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 History, in an edition by the French Jesuit Séraphin Couvreur, which contained the Chinese text and translations into Latin and French under the title Chou King (which Pound uses in the poem), and Senator Thomas Hart Benton's Thirty Years View: Or A History of the American Government for Thirty Years From 1820-1850, which covers the period of the bank wars. In as 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."

XCVI – CIX (Thrones)

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."

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 to this, he was released from Saint Elizabeth's Hospital in Washington, DC, on condition that he return to Europe, which he promptly did. At first, he lived with his daughter Mary in Tyrol, but soon returned to Rapallo, Italy, where he would remain until his death. Depression over his long imprisonment and advancing age meant that the proposed paradise cantos with which Pound had planned to end the poem 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 pirated edition of Cantos 110-116 forced his hand. Laughlin pushed Pound to publish an authorized edition, and the poet responded by supplying the more-or-less abandoned drafts and fragments, plus two fragments dating from 1941. The resulting book can hardly be described as representing Pound's definitively 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 titled 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.

The last canto completed by Pound opens with a passage in which we see the homecoming of the Odysseus/Pound figure. However, the "home" is not the place intended when the poem was begun, but the terzo cielo ("third heaven") of human love. The canto contains the following well-known lines:

I have brought the great ball of crystal;
Who can lift it?
Can you enter the great acorn of light?
But the beauty is not the madness
Tho' my errors and wrecks lie about me.
And I am not a demigod,
I cannot make it cohere.

This passage has often been taken as an admission of failure on Pound's part, but the reality may be more complex. The crystal image relates back to the Sacred Edict on self-knowledge and the "demigod/cohere" lines relate directly to Pound's translation of the Women of Trachis. In this, the demigod Herakles cries out as he is dying, "WHAT SPLENDOUR / IT ALL COHERES." These lines read in conjunction with some later ones in reference to his own verse, "i.e. it coheres all right/even if my notes do not cohere," suggest that towards the end of his effort, Pound was coming to accept not only his own "errors" and "madness" but the conclusion that to do justice to the coherence of the universe was beyond him, and possibly beyond poetry. 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.

Legacy

In 1946 Pound was arrested, and tried for treason, and spent 12 years in Saint Elizabeth's hospital for the criminally insane. Despite all the controversy surrounding both poem and poet, The Cantos has been influential in the development of long poems in the English language since the appearance of the early sections during the 1920s. Amongst poets of Pound's own generation, both H.D. and William Carlos Williams 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. In the case of Williams, his Paterson (1963) follows Pound in using incidents and documents from the early history of the United States as part of its material. As with Pound, Williams includes Alexander Hamilton as the villain of the piece.

Pound was a major influence on the Objectivist poets, and the impact of The Cantos on Zukofsky's "A" is clearly noticeable. The other major long work by an Objectivist, Charles Reznikoff's Testimony, (1934–1978) follows Pound in the direct use of primary source documents as its raw material. In the next generation of American poets, Charles Olson also drew on Pound's example in writing his own unfinished Modernist epic The Maximus Poems.

Pound was also an important figure for the poets of the Beat generation, especially Gary Snyder and Allen Ginsberg. Snyder's interest in things Chinese and Japanese stemmed from his early reading of Pound's writings and his long poem Mountains and Rivers Without End (1965 – 1996) reflects his reading of The Cantos in many of the formal devices used. In Ginsberg's development, reading Pound was influential in his move away from the long, Whitmanesque lines of his early poetry, and towards the more varied lines found in his book-length sequences Planet News (1968) and The Fall of America: Poems of These States (1973).

More generally, The Cantos, with its wide range of references and inclusion of primary sources including prose texts can be seen as prefiguring found poetry. 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 twentieth century Conceptual art.

Pound's Importance

Because of his political views, especially his support of Mussolini and his anti-Semitism, Pound continues to attract much criticism. While it is almost impossible to ignore the vital role he played in the modernist revolution of twentieth century literature, Pound's perceived importance has varied over the years. At times he has been considered the genius of his age; at others, he has been discarded as little more than an egocentric madman.

Despite the vicissitudes of public opinion, as a poet, Pound endures. He was one of the first to successfully employ free verse in extended compositions. Almost every 'experimental' poet in English since the early twentieth century has been considered to be in his debt.

As a critic, editor and promoter, Pound helped the careers of Yeats, Eliot, Joyce, Wyndham Lewis, Robert Frost, Williams, H.D., Marianne Moore, Ernest Hemingway, D. H. Lawrence, Louis Zukofsky, Basil Bunting, George Oppen, Charles Olson and other modernist writers too numerous to mention, as well as earlier, neglected writers such as Walter Savage Landor and Gavin Douglas.

As a translator—although his mastery of languages is open to question—Pound did much to introduce Provençal and Chinese poetry, the Noh, Anglo-Saxon poetry and the Confucian classics to a Western audience. He also translated and championed Greek and Latin classics and helped keep these alive for poets at a time when classical education was in decline.

In all, Pound's wake ranges wide. His influence as an artist and intellectual is inseparable from modernism and the early twentieth century itself. His genius is undeniable, and although at times the ferocity of his inquisitiveness led him into "wrecks and errors," Pound remains one of the most important figures in American literature.

Selected works

  • 1908 A Lume Spento, poems.
  • 1908 A Quinzaine for This Yule, poems.
  • 1909 Personae, poems.
  • 1909 Exultations, poems.
  • 1910 Provenca, poems.
  • 1910 The Spirit of Romance, essays.
  • 1911 Canzoni, poems.
  • 1912 Ripostes of Ezra Pound, poems.
  • 1912 Sonnets and ballate of Guido Cavalcanti, translations.
  • 1915 Cathay, poems / translations.
  • 1916 Certain noble plays of Japan: from the manuscripts of Ernest Fenollosa, chosen and finished by Ezra Pound, with an introduction by William Butler Yeats.
  • 1916 "Noh," or, Accomplishment: a study of the classical stage of Japan, by Ernest Fenollosa and Ezra Pound.
  • 1917 Lustra of Ezra Pound, poems.
  • 1917 Twelve Dialogues of Fontenelle, translations.
  • 1918 Quia Pauper Amavi, poems.
  • 1918 Pavannes and Divisions, essays.
  • 1919 The Fourth Canto, poems.
  • 1920 Umbra, poems and translations.
  • 1920 Hugh Selwyn Mauberley, poems.
  • 1921 Poems, 1918-1921, poems.
  • 1922 The Natural Philosophy of Love, by Rémy de Gourmont, translations.
  • 1923 Indiscretions, essays.
  • 1924 Antheil and the Treatise on Harmony, essays.
  • 1925 A Draft of XVI Cantos, poems.
  • 1927 Exile, poems
  • 1928 A Draft of the Cantos 17-27, poems.
  • 1928 Ta hio, the great learning, newly rendered into the American language, translation.
  • 1930 Imaginary Letters, essays.
  • 1931 How to Read, essays.
  • 1933 A Draft of XXX Cantos, poems.
  • 1933 ABC of Economics, essays.
  • 1934 Homage to Sextus Propertius, poems.
  • 1934 Eleven New Cantos: XXXI-XLI, poems.
  • 1934 ABC of Reading, essays.
  • 1935 Make It New, essays.
  • 1936 Chinese written character as a medium for poetry, by Ernest Fenollosa, edited and with a foreword and notes by Ezra Pound.
  • 1936 Jefferson and/or Mussolini, essays.
  • 1937 The Fifth Decade of Cantos, poems.
  • 1937 Polite Essays, essays.
  • 1937 Digest of the Analects, by Confucius, translation.
  • 1938 Culture, essays.
  • 1939 What Is Money For?, essays.
  • 1940 Cantos LII-LXXI, poems.
  • 1944 L'America, Roosevelt e le Cause della Guerra Presente, essays.
  • 1944 Introduzione alla Natura Economica degli S.U.A., prose.
  • 1947 Confucius: the Unwobbling pivot & the Great digest, translation.
  • 1948 The Pisan Cantos, poems.
  • 1950 Seventy Cantos, poems.
  • 1951 Confucian analects, translated by Ezra Pound.
  • 1956 Section Rock-Drill, 85-95 de los Cantares, poems.
  • 1956 Women of Trachis, by Sophocles, translation.
  • 1959 Thrones: 96-109 de los Cantares, poems.
  • 1968 Drafts and Fragments: Cantos CX-CXVII, poems.

References
ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

  • Carpenter, Humphrey. 1988. A Serious Character: The Life of Ezra Pound. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 0395416787
  • Kenner, Hugh. 1973. The Pound Era. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0520024273
  • Bacigalupo, Massimo. 1980. The Forméd Trace: The Later Poetry of Ezra Pound. New York: Columbia University Press.
  • Longenbach, James. [1980] 1991. Stone Cottage: Pound, Yeats and Modernism. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195066626
  • Moody, A. David. Ezra Pound: Poet I: The Young Genius 1885-1920. Oxford University Press, USA, 2007. ISBN 019921557X (most recent biography)
  • Oderman, Kevin. 1986. Ezra Pound and the Erotic Medium. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. ISBN 0822306727
  • Pound, Ezra, and Dorothy Pound. Ezra and Dorothy Pound: Letters in Captivity, 1945-1946, ed. by Omar Pound and Robert Spoo. Oxford University Press, USA, 1999. ISBN 0195107934
  • Redman, Tim. 1991. Ezra Pound and Italian Fascism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521373050
  • Stock, Noel. [1970] 1982). Life of Ezra Pound. reprint ed. North Point Press, ISBN 0865470758
  • Surette, Leon. 1994. The Birth of Modernism: Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, W.B. Yeats, and the Occult. McGill-Queen's University Press. ISBN 0773512438

External links

All links retrieved March 23, 2024.

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