Ezra
Pound and the Past
Stephen W. Gilbert
Universidad de Guadalajara
In Guide to Kulchur, a 1938 work, Ezra
Pound suggests, “There is no mystery about The Cantos, they are the tale of
the tribe….”[1]. Taken alone,
or as an introduction to The Cantos, this might mislead many. Perhaps a more tempting statement, one that might
seem more useful as an aid to consideration of The Canto’s unity, is from a
1927 leter to his father, Homer L. Pound:
Afraid the whole damn poem is rather obscure,
especially in fragments. Have I ever given you
outline of main scheme ::: or whatever it is?
1. Rather like, or unlike subject and response and
counter subject in fuge.
A.A. Live man goes down into world of
Dead.
C.B. The ‘repeat in history’
B.B. The ‘magic moment’ or
moment of metamorphosis, bust thru from quotidien into ‘divine or permanent
world.’ Gods, etc.[2]
Again, taken alone, the statement could lead
to generalization or mistaken oversimplification. But
in both cases, Pound follows his large statement with clarification of particular images,
identification of particular figures, and the like. After
asserting the lack of mystery to The Cantos, he immediately illuminates the
particular intention of the Malatesta cantos: “They
are openly volitionist, establishing, I think clearly, the effect of the factive
personality, Sigismundo, an entire man.”[3] He
follows that with statements on the importance of the founding of the Monte dei Paschi,
clarifying thereby the healthy and natural mode of exchanging money by rejection of which
the world has been forced into usurious modes of monetary exchange.
Of course, Pound could be accused here of
misleading the reader who is sincerely hoping to unravel the complexities of The Cantos.
To maintain that there is no mystery about
them, and to offer as proof of that statement two of the clearest images of the whole poem
might seem to be an attempt to satisfy only the most easily placated reader and to further
frustrate those who have passed the first stages of initiation but are yet wandering in a
labyrinth of unexplained particulars.
But it might occur to us that Pound here (as
he often does) offers light on more than one isolated though central image. By inviting us to consider the Malatesta cantos as
“openly volitionist” and Sigismundo as a particular kind of character, a
“factive personality,” Pound offers us an opportunity to check our reading of
other sections of the poem. With Pound’s
perception of Sigismundo as a “factive personality,” do we not discover added
dimensions to the
In the essay entitled “Canti” from
the Guide to Kulchur, we find the dictum: Gli
indifferenti non hanno mai fatto la storia.[4] In
conjunction with his previous statement about Sigismundo Malatesta, we might consider the
possibility that the fascination with the Malatesti (particularly Sigismundo) is based on
some fundamental precept like the one expressed by the notion that the making of history
is performed by the interested or committed, never by the indifferent. But Pound’s
choices of images, events, and characters for his poem are based on more than a desire to
select and examine or recreate moments of involvement in the history of the world. Also implied is the notion that the poet’s or
chronicler’s selections must not be a matter of indifference. The Italian proverb is followed in the essay by
Pound’s comment on the process of writing history:
“The indifferent or ‘cold’ historian may leave a more accurate
account of what happens, but he will never understand WHY it happens.”[5]
On dealing with a poem like The Cantos,
talk about intention is unavoidable. Many of
the choices made in the poem are only understandable if one considers the purpose they
were intended to fulfill. Reference to
Pound’s critical writings becomes indispensable, guesswork concerning his singular
reading of historical context and his views on older literatures becomes part of
one’s reading of the poem. Hunding
sources becomes a major occupation.
We might recall in this context that Dante
placed the indifferent entirely outside the evaluative context of the Divina Commedia:
Questo misero modo
Tengon l’anime triste di coloro
Che visser sanza infamia e sanza lodo
Mishiate sono a quel cattivo coro
delli angeli che non furon
ribelli
ne fur fedeli a Dio, ma per se foro.
Caccianli i ciel per non esser men belli,
ne lo profondo inferno li riceve,
ch’alcuna gloria i rei avrebber d’elli.
(Inferno III, 34-42.)
The process of focus in The
Cantos, the manner in which our minds ae directed towards certain events or
characters, places or ideas, becomes a process of evaluation. Indifference toward event or character on the part
of the poet is impossible to assume; indifference on the reader’s part is equivalent
to lack of attnetion. Of course, it is
apparent thaqt the evaluations we are invited to perform as we read The Cantos are
Pound’s as often as they are our own. It
is his vision of the world’s history that we are shon; he does not pretend merely to
hold up a mirror to the world or simply chronicle its significant moments.
Since mention has been made of Dante´s Commedia, I may as well take this
opportunity to express the belief that a fairly coherent first reading of Pound’s
epic might be constructed in terms of an understanding of the ways in which Pound uses
Dante. Both poems have been called “epics
of judgement.”[6] It might be
considered that Dante examines the results of human will in a universe ordered by
God’s justice, while Pound must examine the effect of human will without reference to
a coherent external order, but with a determined insistance that the concept of justice is
not an empty one. Pound’s heroes, like
Dante’s, are often secular men, men committed to statecraft and perfection of the
sodial order. But too often Pound’s
vision of the moral and effective state gros dim, it doesn’t have the clearly
dilineated pattern of the celestial order to give it assurance. Consequently, a comparison between Pound’s
epic and Dante’s would seem to be finally a comparison of an achievement with an
attempt. Perhaps the reason Pound’s poem
is seen so often as a failure is simply that this comparison is carried to far. The Divina Commedia is not a model for The
Cantos. Pound’s vision is is own, his
use of older literature is not use of extablished pattern or philosophy lifted whole from
one age to another, but is a search for particular truths, or developments and
culminations of truths.
The more valuable study of The Canto’s relation to the Divina
Commedia might rather be conducted in terms of particular modes of moral perception
which Pound discovered in Dante than in terms of structural or poetic arrangements of the
two great works. Both Pound’s and
Dante’s works are moral works. The kinds
of heroes both poets choose for their poems (both in terms of heroic achievement of the
two “narrators” and the objective canonization of secular figures from history)
along with the poetic imagery with which these heroes are associated might illuminate much
of the problem.
A comparison of the sort outlined above would be valuable primarily in that it
would shed light on the larger moral problems of The Cantos and would illuminate
details of the poem from that perspective. This
is a project begun by James Wilhelm in 1974;
an approach to the problem within the current considerations of ethics and literature
would prove most rewarding. An excellent
example is a recent article by Reed Way Dasenbrock, “Paradiso ma non troppo: The
Place of the Lyric Dante in the Late Cantos of Ezra Pound”.[7]
The ways into The Cantos are many; the ways out, I suspect, are somewhat
fewer in number. Paths in, leads followed,
often end before the poem does. It is
possible, of course, to pursue Pound’s treatment or development of one theme without
considering its effect on or relation to the rest of the poem as a whole, and these
studies are valuable. But of equal value, I
popose, is the attempt to investigate a limited aspect of the poem with the intnetion of
using that study as a means of recognizing some aspects of the poem as a whole. (The phrase “poem as a whole” when
speaking of The Cantos does not have the innocence it does when one speaks of
almost any other poem, the notion being surrounded by some debate.)
Pound’s fascination with Provençal poetry began early in his career as a
student. It lasts through the entirety of The
Cantos. By examining his use of that
tradition, that literature, we may discover aspects of his habit of mind that would
illuminate his use of other traditions, other literatures, other moments in the
world’s history. For it seems, at least
initially, that of primary importance in understanding The Cantos is the issue of
Pound’s attitudes towards the materials he selects as the stuff of the poem. And, as he is a supreme craftsman, examination of
placement of separate materials in the fabric of the whole should serve as a basis for
some interpretive statement concerning the craft.
I shall refer to some points early in The Cantos that make use of the lyric
tradition of the Provençal troubadours. Occasional
reference will be made to the Tuscan poets whose literature immediately followed and
responded to the Troubadour legacy.
Two issues concerning Pound’s use of Provençal poetry in The Cantos
should be touched on immediately. First, we
notice that often his references to the poetry consist of no more than quotation of a few
lines (sometimes a single word) of a given poet or mention of his name. Second, attention must be paid to the fact that
names of places occur almost as often as references to the poets or their work. We must bear in mind that references to the
troubadours in The Cantos may be functioning in several ways. At least three uses of Provençal material can be
easily detected. They may function in
Pound’s poem as poetry, history or biography. The
quotation from poems of the troubadours often supply Pound’s Cantos with a
desired image or rhythm; the references to place and person often establish the
contributions of Provence to European history; and since much of the Provençal material
consists of stories from the razos and vidas of the Troubadour poets, the value of this
material to The Cantos operates within the framework of biography. We are justified in looking for heroes (and
villains as well) among the poets of
In discovering relationship between these diverse functions of the Provençal
material in The Cantos, we will hopefully have dcome upon a way of examining other
processes of evaluation in The Cantos as regards poetry, the history of literature,
and the relationship between art and society, all main concerns in the poem, all essencial
factors in the development of Pound’s vision. One
further, and perhaps more important, element of Pound’s crafted references to
Provençal poetry is in their relationship to the poet’s own development as poet,
scholar, translator, historian, linguist. Mature
reading of The Cantos of Ezra Pound must involve an appreciation (if not sympathy)
for the poet’s growth, the development of his mind, as recorded in the poem. Clearly his love for the poetry of old Provence,
one of his first and most abiding loves, reflects one face of the poet which is capable of
reassuring the reader during those times in the poem when he must face “errors and
wrecks,” confusion, even incoherence.
The initial references to the Provençal tradition that occur in the first three
cantos lay the groundwork, establish theme, and contribute to the creation of the world
and time, a textworld, of those cantos.
What the first lines of the first canto establish, as a result of Odysseus talking,
is the immediacy of historical event and personage. Essential
to the poem, the authenticity of this immediacy is promptly questioned or placed in more
accurate perspective. It is not Odysseus
speaking, the process is not that created by an invisible author inspiring or setting
loose the character and speech of one long dead. Pound
is translating, “Andreas Divus / In officina Wecheli, 1538, out of Homer.” [8] Not only
accuracy and authenticity, but a new vortex is a result of this process. The chain of events, or spiral of time touches a
single point three times. Homer – Andreas
– Pound: Odysseus in hell each time the
story is told. Not only are we invited to
consider the survival of a story, but the preservation of a story by language, even the
growth of cultures as reflected by language.
The “tale of the tribe” is here – at least in the sense that while
the story and character remain the same, the telling undergoes changes as the tribe
changes. From the Greek of Homer to the
Rennaissance Latin of Andreas, to the English of Pound tinged with Anglo-Saxon rhythms. And no pretense here that Pound’s Odysseus is
more, or more real, than the Odysseus of Andreas. Yet
he is Odysseus. The note struck here becomes
insistent with the opening lines of the second canto:
Hang it all, Robert Browning
there can be but the one “Sordello.”
But Sordello, and my Sordello?
Lo sordels si fo di Mantovana.
2/6
Pound authenticates his reference here in a more
arresting and different manner than he did in the preceding canto. The awareness of necessarily dealing with literary
tradition, the handing down from one time to another of the story, event told and retold,
which awareness intrudes abruptly into the last lines of canto 1, has become in the
opening lines of the next canto the awareness, equally abrupt (partially because it is
expressed in Provençal) that there existed an historical personage, Sordello. Pound’s rebuke to Browning is effectually a
rebuke to the intolerance with fragmentary knowledge which plagued the entire nineteenth
century. Browning’s “Sordello”
is guided by the desire to behold or create the entire man, to “pursue his fortunes
to the end.”[9] That is to say, the fragment could not suffice for
Browning; the past, in its pastness, was seen as incomplete.
The response was to re-create, by using all the materials of the present, a more
available past, one which became, inevitably, merely another face of the present.
Pound’s response to this impulse, “Lo Sordels si fo di Mantovana,”
is simple enough, straightforward, but its implications for The Cantos, the
amplification of significance that it entails, go far beyond the insistance that the poet
be obliged to recognize and accept the fragmentary nature of his knowledge of history. The knowledge that Sordello was an authentic
historical person is a part of the means whereby The Cantos becomes a poem
“including history.” By refusing to
rely totally on the imaginative fictionalizing powers of the poetic process, the realities
of the past become more valuable to the poem, more than they would if they were summoned
or conjured (as in Browning) into the present. By
maintaining their pastness, Pound allows events and personages of the past to carry
weightier significance for the present insofar as they are described, evaluated within a
context which is built on a belief that events, persons, moments, are repeatable in time. It is in this manner and within these limits that
Pound’s characters are allowed to function figurally for each other. This kind of figuration is perhaps less
straightforward than the allegorical variety in Dante, but like Dante’s, it creates a
kind of moral perspective on character.
It is necessary to note that the long poem begins with this complex laying out of
the problem of perspective on past literatures, a perspective on the problem of tradition. The admission that past literatures are perceived
clearly only in their pastness, in as original a form as possible, seems a keynote of The
Cantos. Apparently, this was a difficult
notion to accept for critics contemporary with Pound.
Raised with the Browning style (not to mention Tennyson), they were uncomfortable
with the notion of an authentic (if fragmented) past.
In the original and more garrulous draft of the first three cantos, Quia Pauper
Amavi, Pound’s rebuke of Browning, the rejection of an imagined history created
or completed by the poet’s mind, is more elaborate and quite revealing. As Hugh Kenner points out in The Pound Era,
“He knew Guido Cavalcanti probably better than Browning knew Sordello,”[10] yet Pound questions:
What have I of this life,
Or even of Guido?
Sweet lie! – Was I there truly?
Did I know Or San Michele?[11]
We could suppose that it was more than simple impatience
with Browning’s inventive treatment of history that led Pound to these questions. Despondence over the inability to get at all the
truth leads to deeper knowledge of how the fragmentary truth honestly possessed may serve:
No, take it all for lies.
I have but smelt this life, a whiff of it –
The box of scented wood
Recalls cathedrals. [12]
[1] Ezra Pound, Guide to Kulchur.
[2] D.D. Paige, ed., The Letters of Ezra
Pound, 1907-1941,
[3]
Guide to Kulchur, p.194.
[4]
Ibid.,
p. 195.
[5]
Ibid.,
p. 195
[6] James J. Wilhelm, “Review of Ezra Pound and the Troubadour Tradition by Stuart
Y. McDougal.” Paideuma, Vol. 2,
No. 1, (Spring 1973), pp. 133-137.
[7] Reed Way Dasenbrock, “Parradiso ma non
troppo: The Place of the Lyric Dante in the Late Cantos of Ezra Pound,” Comparative
Literature, Winter 2005.
[8] Ezra Pound. The Cantos of Ezra Pound.
[9] Robert Browning. The Complete Poetic and Dramatic Works.
[10] Hugh Kenner.
The Pound Era. Berkely and
[11] Ezra Pound.
Quia Pauper Amavi.
[12]
Ibid.