This one has Pound’s knowledge of classical literature in full bloom – including a reference to Tiresias.

I mention him/her (Tiresias spent seven years as a woman, according to Greek mythology, in addition to being the seer who identified the truth behind the prophecy that so baffled Oedipus) because Tiresias was prominent in Eliot’s The Wasteland. Pound was heavily involved in the editing and revising of that poem and one wonders if Pound had anything to with his insertion into the poem – or whether Eliot’s inspirational use of that classical figure inspired Pound to include him.

However, compared to Tiresias, more of the poem is devoted to references to Odysseus, though the overall feel is more pastoral than epic. In fact, the overall feel reminds me more of Virgil’s Georgics than Homer. The style is very much in keeping with nineteenth and early twentieth century translations of classical literature.

Being away from Pound has renewed my affections for him. I was on a series of vacations – one visiting family followed by another with my significant other. On each, I made the decision to leave my computer behind.

While lounging in Florida and doing little of value, I came across a quote by the poet Robert Duncan, noting that in the Cantos  ‘all ages are contemporaneous.’

This reminded me of the immense scope of Pound’s achievement and the huge challenge its existence presents to future poets, much as Proust and Joyce challenged future novelists in regards to the scope available to the writer, no matter how quotidian his subject (Joyce, a single eventful, though hardly world shattering, day in the life of two Dubliners; Proust, the life of an upper middle class Parisian interacting with his contemporaries).

Today’s Canto is a strident and attention demanding jeremiad. Indeed, it is almost a sermon.

He rails against ‘usura’ and the troubles it has caused, using a style drawn from King James Bible.

The very end, though, diverges to a modernist (postmodernist) stunt of unexpectedly shifting tone and and style, thusly:

                                        CONTRA NATURAM
They have brought whores for Eleusis
Corpses are set to banquet
at behest of usura.

N.B.  Usury:  A charge for the use of purchasing power,  levied
without  regard  to  production;   often  without  regard  to the
possibilities  of  production.   (Hence  the  failure of the Medici
bank.)

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.