The Forty-First Canto is an odd duck. It is a series of conversations about work and finance in Italy and Germany, with numerous statements by “characters” in Italian.

There is some play with form here, with bits like this:

delivered in ports of France @ 8 sous
                                                               9 million 600 thousand
at the rate  6 sous to manufacture
                                                               7 million and something
revenue to the King                       30 million
to the consumer                              72

The style is a balance sheet, of course.

This Canto marks the end of… well, something, because the page after this one reads:

THE FIFTH DECAD
OF CANTOS
XLII-LI

We had not seem such a demarcation at the beginning of our readings.

The Fortieth Canto is a mixed bag. It dwells much on Pound’s interest in banking, but also contains those Greek references we all so enjoy. Overall, it is far more “poetic” (what does that mean? what do I mean when I say it?) than most previous finance-centric Cantos.

Early on, it has a quote (suitably broken up into lines) from the Scottish economist Adam Smith:

” Of the same trade, ” Smith, Adam, ” men
” never gather together
” without a conspiracy against the general public.”

This quote also contains the first instance of Pound putting the quotation mark directly next something else (see the placement of the closing quotation mark and look at where all the others are located).

The Thirty-Ninth Canto represents exactly why one reads the Cantos in the first place: beautiful, poetic and allusive language and a certain obscurity that manages not to obscure the pleasures of reading it.

There are so many passages I could quote to give an example of what I am talking about, but since I don’t want to just reprint the whole piece, here’s a taste:

Desolate is the roof where the cat sat,
Desolate is the iron rail that he walked
And the corner post whence he greeted the sunrise.
In the hill path: ” thkk, thgk “
                                                   of the loom
” Thgk, thkk ” and the sharp sound of a song
                under olives
When I lay in the ingle of Circe
I heard of song of that kind. 

The “thkk” reminds of Joyce and his efforts to capture the actual sounds of animals instead just using cheap short hand like “meow.”

Also, this line, “Betuene Aprile and Merche” reminds of L-A-N-G-U-A-G-E poetry, particularly Silliman’s Tjanting, which uses misspellings to draw attention to the words themselves.

The Thirty-Eighth Canto moves  back to Europe – primarily to Italy – and also moves to more contemporary times.

It’s not a particularly poetic section, but it does add something to Pound’s “thesis” (if we can call it that) with what could be considered a sort of comparison between making money via financial/banking instruments and making money via manufacturing.

I’m not sure when this Canto was written, but we read a lot about war and the profits that can be made from war (though not necessarily talking the unethical practice usually called “war profiteering”), with a lengthy digression into Krupp and his arms. I would guess, too, that this one was written at least as late as the days leading up to the Second World War, with its references to Japan, as well as references to war that lack the anachronistic ring of the days leading up to the First World War I (when folks could not yet fathom that war in the twentieth century would be so different and so much devastating than most nineteenth century conflicts).

I took the liberty of taking a glance at the next Canto and, artistically speaking, it looks much more promising than any of the ones we’ve read recently.

The Thirty-Seventh Canto once again is set (if setting is the right term to use) in America. It opens with Martin Van Buren, which is appropriate for his obsessions. During the aristocratic Van Buren’s presidency, the national bank (established by Founding Father and then Secretary of the Treasury). It goes on about the early days of financial speculation of in America.

Frankly, when Pound moves away from classical references and to his spiritual home in Italy, he becomes less interesting.