This one addresses a new (for the Cantos) period in Italian history, beginning in 1766 and moving up through 1814. The latter being important, of course, as the date of Napoleon’s first fall (when he was temporarily imprisoned on Elba, rather than his final fall and imprisonment in the island of St. Helena).

But, of course, it all comes back to finance:

‘ The foundation, Siena, has been to keep bridle on usury.’
Nicoló Piccolomini, Provveditore.

I found this one a little confusing. The language is exceptionally fragmented and well salted with Latin phrases, Pound’s tendency towards eclectic spellings and mixtures of various histories.

This one does have some of the balance sheet style musings that touch on early banking, but also many, many references to the Church and Catholicism, with ‘characters’ frequently invoking the Virgin Mary.

While mainly taking place in Renaissance Italy, there are several references to ‘fatherland’ and I don’t think I’m alone in relating that phrase to the German speaking world.

This one is another attempt to merge Pound’s historical interest in finance with what I have been referring to as the poetic (which is an amazingly inadequate and problematic term to be using in this context. does using it this way suggest, for example, that the work of Kenneth Goldsmith is not ‘poetic’ and hence not poetry? should I used another phrase, like lyrical? but that word also is problematic, too, isn’t it?). Certainly it is more successful than many such efforts.

The second stanza has the first instance of a word, which appears in various forms throughout, and which I have identified as key:

FIXED in the soul, nell’ anima, of the Illustrious College
They had been ten years proposing such a Monte,
That is a species of bank–damn good bank, in Siena

To me, the key word is “Monte” (which also appears as ‘mount’ and ‘mont’).

I think that this is actually intended to reference the word ‘mountebank,’ which of course means a financial swindler or fraud, which naturally follows from Pound’s opinion of the world of finance and banking.

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.

The Thirty-Sixth Canto moves far differently than the previous one. The style is archaic, though it strikes me as more recent than the Renaissance style of earlier Cantos. Seventeenth century perhaps. Though it ends with a discussion of medievalism, including what I take to be a reference to Charles I of Anjou, who was the King of Sicily and Naples and Count of Anjou and Provence (there is a long history of French adventurers seizing for themselves some duchy or the like in a very disjointed medieval Italy), so perhaps assigning a time period to what Pound is attempting is pointless?

Cometh he to be
                 when the will
From overplus
Twisteth out of natural measure,
Never adorned with rest  Moveth he changing colour
Either to laugh or weep
Contorting the face with fear
                    resteth but a little