The Fifteenth Canto continues in that same profane, jeremiadic style now associated with Ginsberg that we saw in the previous Canto.

The fragmented, angry lines are filled with images of the body in decline (“Infinite pus flakes, scabs of a lasting pox“). Again, the target is the financial, best expressed by the line crying “the beast with a hundred legs, USURA” (I take “USURA” to be a reference to “usury”).

This Canto does a better job of bringing the “traditional” Poundian form to than the last one. The language is more erudite and reference laden, and even at its most vulgar, remains more measured and does not sacrifice aesthetics for anger (nor did Ginsberg, by the way – in case my words might be interpreted that way).

The Fourteenth Canto is something very new compared to the earlier Cantos – an enraged jeremiad against aspects of the modern age.

The particular aspects are dealing with financial dealings. Knowing what we know now, it is obvious that Pound saw the source of the corruption caused by finance and banking as being connected with Europe’s Jewish community (particularly the Jewish banking family, the Rothschilds).

But reading it while trying to hold off preconceptions, you would not be surprised to be told that the author was Communist or Anarcho-Syndicalist.

In addition, as a jeremiad, this Canto seems to lead in a direct line to Ginsberg’s Howl (though I couldn’t say whether Ginsberg specifically read The Cantos, though he was a well read poet).

Who disliked colloquial language,
Stiff-starched, but soiled, collars
                   circumscribing his legs,
The pimply and hairy skin
                   pushing over the collar’s edge,
Profiteers drinking blood sweetened with s–t,

Please note, it was Pound himself (or at least my edition of him) and not me that wrote “s–t” for “shit.”

Ok. The Thirteenth Canto  consisted entirely of a conversation covering some small section of Chinese history. While mildly interesting, it was not particularly poetic nor particularly innovative.

The Twelfth Canto moves closer to modern times and certainly well away from Renaissance Italy. The focus is on finance (insurance, securities, speculation), specifically some speculation by a Manhattan firm in Cuba.

In one sense, this is enjoyable to read. Pound compares finance to more honest labor. But knowing what we know about Pound, this enjoyment is outweighed by a deep and nagging discomfort, knowing as we do that Pound’s bias against banking and finance was driven by a terrible and unforgivable commitment to anti-Semitism.

The Eleventh Canto continues with the fragments of Renaissance history. The recurring character we encounter is “Sigismundo.” Pound reflects on his career as a condotierre (mercenary), working for the various city states (including the Papacy) that vied for ascendancy in Italy.

Though not here, in the previous Canto, he was portrayed as a touch irreligious, but in truth, his life’s work was the reconstruction of a church in the town in Rimini.

Pound’s focus on things like the numbers of soldiers and mounted calvary on the various sides of the conflicts in which Sigismundo participated gives a nice touch of the quotidian to the whole matter. Not the grand sweep of history, but the logistical issues of a minor figure trying to get by in a land filled with great men.

I didn’t really get the Tenth Canto. You see some forms repeated: the appearance of lines and stanzas that resemble fragments from letters explaining one’s progress on a project; abbreviations (“wd.” for “would”) derived from telegrams; a mixture of Renaissance Italy and hints of the modern world. There’s also a touch of irreligiosity:

Empty the fonts of the chiexa of holy water
And fill up the same full with ink

This also seems to suggest a stance of replacing traditional religion with the god of literature, does it not?

The Ninth Canto is an improvement over the Eighth Canto, but still lacks (in my mind) any of the transcendent passages we sometimes saw earlier.

What makes it interesting is the impressionistic and broken construction of, not first person, but third person narrations limited to a single person at a time. Also, he uses (and he has used this before, but not to this extent) these broken and incomplete quotes, most of which read like fragments of progress reports (some read more as oral reports, other as written reports).

As in the previous Canto, the “setting” is clearly Renaissance Italy.

Also, and purely as a bit of trivia, at seven and a half pages, it is the longest Canto thus far (most of the others were just two or three pages).

The Eighth Canto is by far my least favorite of those I have read so far. The style is neither particularly interesting nor inventive and the content is 95% just some lazy recitations of incidents from the political and military history of the Italy during the Renaissance. Next, please.

I suspect this will become a pattern, but once again, I am understanding less of what Pound is saying. And I am not taking the time really study up on the references he drops nor to translate all the lines written in Italian, French, and ancient Greek.

But despite it all, without such labors, one also finds passages of great transcendence:

And the life goes, mooning upon bare hills;
Flame leaps from the hand, the rain is listless,
Yet drinks the thirst from our lips,
                   solid as echo,
Passion to breed a form in shimmer of rain-blue;
But Eros drowned, drowned, heavy-half dead with tears
                  For dead Sicheus. 

I’m also seeing more and more contrapositions of the ancient and medieval past with contemporary language and objects (jazz, for example, rears its head).

I’m not ashamed to admit that I understand less and less as we move on (and we are only a tiny fraction of the way through the Cantos).

The Sixth Canto features references to Eleanor of Aquitaine and her first husband, King Louis II of France (as did the Fifth Canto) and to her husbands’ (she had three – including King Henry II of England) and children’s (including King Richard I, Coeur-de-Lion, of England) relationship to the Outremer and the Crusades, including to Acre, the last of the cities held by western Crusaders to fall.

In fact, insofar as I comprehend this, it seems to be entirely about the fascinating life of Eleanor.