Notes on Poetry, or an observations of an indefatigable reader, and occasional “rambler,”
I.
Besides Rainer Maria Rilke, T. S. Eliot, and Arthur Rimbaud, one of my favorites is Ezra Pound, and not only his Cantos. I am going through guide-books for his major work, and observing the inner structure of it. First Canto is composed - based on Andreas Divus' Latin translation of 10th book of Odyssey of Homer's, when O. descends to Hades to consult Tiresias for his attempted return home. It's all in an anglo-saxon metre-style, where is not important to deal with rhyme or versification of something of a regular (for us) poetical form, it's something where stress is the most important factor and creates the meter. Rhythm is therefore very important, it's unlike English and iambic pentameter that of Milton or Shakespeare, or even Alexander Pope in his majestic translation of Homer in couples, rhymed. Milton is blank verse, Pound, including his economy of words and extreme references of no sources and sources of no references where moment in each Canto is frozen in time, there is a block between them each; there are connections, but very inaccurate and unpoetic, just like something we would never expect. Almost a deconstructed poetry, as if poetry was deconstructed form of prose, which is for us closed, but that is only a manner of culture, Pound's not teaching, "he's awakening," and here he's showing his vision of poetry as a highest and also then the most primordial face of language, i. e. Homer, as a lover of Ovid and Dante, loved structure, all Cantos looks like a mixture of politics, economics, history, epic of modern civilization twisted alongside with mythology, correspondence, historical facts connected to possibilities and conception of Usura, an antisemitic keyword in Cantos, which made its reputation pending in uncertainty. Pound was moulding 50 years later why he had not changed his Usura to Avarice, and that might have give the work totally new scheme. But as a poetical work, it's a work of a genius and literary encyclopedia with aestetical ideas and innovations; he does what Joyce does in his Ulysses, but the opposite way; if Ulysses is then modernized into prose and by its experiments, Pound's cantos are experiment of awakening the old, modernizing the other way. There ware Ur-Cantos finished in 1917, but abandoned from larger part since Ulysses came out in 1922 in Shakespeare and Company.
II.
Same as a Structure of Ovid, Aeneid, Homer, Dante, the cathedral Dante is the model for Cantos. Psychology is here, but in psychology of poetry, unlike in Aeneid, the first models of psychological depth, heroes with more human faces, Ovid is a structure, same as Pound. Understanding Italian Sonnet in comparison with English one can prove a lot for its undertaking. As motives are drastically switching, connection same as mentioned between each Canto is being MADE. Cantos were made together, in all possible meaning(s), all ways, not only in structure, meaning, but word by word crafted for perfection. For example if I mentioned “Usura,” Pound quoted he “might have done better.” How just one word can change the entire work if not every word is connected then together? - But: Observe this:
Canto II starts where is disconnected by a conjecture “So that:”
it’s a connection which surprises like if we’re expecting ongoing narrative, which is actually happening, but same as in Ulysses, the rapid mixing of styles, as someone called Joyce master of all styles, but no stylist, same especially Pound reawaken his sleep from Personae, a modern guide-book ‘how to become a new Dante,’ (a best definition of this collection of poetry after its fulfilling circa 1949 when last poems were added to conclude a volume containing all written poems besides unfinished Cantos - no wonder that all this work in progress remains unfinished; each Canto is separate, and same stand-alone universe, attached to future and past, past and future, even though they are connected also in sense of continuous narrative). So then, we are following in a sentence, but style, composition entirely, its part overall in general is broken; a new world, a new opinion, a new phrase. Mostly parts remaining troubadours & Browning’s poem Sordello, by P. considered his best, for here R. Browning culminates his ideas of dramatic monologue in all senses; as Pound said: “Dante is a Cathedral, Shakespeare is a Forest,” Pound is searching for an answer in the forrest, the lost path in “history” in Emerson’s sense, our inner creative history we bear and create by - perhaps as oral poetry, by our own “dramatic monologues,” our lives. Thus the greatest and most imaginative -imagism, ego-symbolism, is having its purpose suddenly. “So that:” means: “Things already mentioned are so; which the result of these things are so.” Same as this simple, but very potent explanation of simple phrase that connects Canto I with II - anyway first 4 Cantos are innermost carrying the major motives of the entire work we will elaborate - explains a first (or second) invasion or inversion in the poem. First it appears when P. steps into his own poem in C. I.
III.
…In officina Wecheli, 1538, out of Homer, Andreas Divus. - Source of his “Venerandam Aphrodite prayer from Homer” is Renaissance’ Latinist Georgius Cretensis by which Canto no 1 ends by words precisely:
“Lie quite Divus. I mean, Andreas Divus,
In officina Wecheli, 1538, out of homer.”
Poet still keeps one language, but not longer in a while: by words of explaining where & how he got this passage from Homer,
In officina Wecheli, 1538
Divus's translation of The Odyssey was published in Paris in 1538 by Christian Wecheli.
Here is first reference on literary source of a fact, since all before was a merely Homer & his mythology. Pound render by this barbarous Latin version of Odyssey carefully resembling Homer’s Greek hexameter. But since “So that:” Pound’s asking what kind of ghosts will be walking in my poem? - by whom and who will be my inspiration now on? Uses: Sordello. What is happening is sudden change in language, “Le Solders is fo di Mantovana.” Which simply means “Sordello comes from Mantua.” And poet is stating: same as Browning (perhaps) - and other(s)- not only one language will figure in my poem.
More about texture, history, and so forth— all the related to The Cantos of Ezra Pound, comes later.
—end of my own “Cantos”- fragments for Ezra Pound’s poetry (for now.)
Ideas from Rilke: skipped, offered text for needed corrections in nearest future:
*
IV.
As I mentioned the “Cathedral Dante”, Ovid a celebration of structure, if the Aeneid a first modern psychological study, where Homer is the river, or rather a sea and Virgil the bank(s) for its story of Aeneas and Cartage, “In Juno unrelenting hate,” as we can observe already the Roman forms of Greek gods and archetypal mythological figures, same here in Ovid, the lover of a texture and form as an essence which kept his Metamorphoses where there are, as Dante’s structure of circles (Inferno), terraces (Purgatorio), and finally spheres (Paradiso) as Divine Comedy reveals, same as the e. g. “shades” in The Inferno & their suffering represents almost (nearly fully) entire scope of human mankind, like the “forest” of Shakespeare’s, for his development begotten with Comedies and early Histories especially, Titus Andronicus, an exception – the most bloodiest and most immature work of Shakespeare's can only re-echo’s future power of excellent tragedies as Romeo and Juliet, but especially King Lear, Othello, Macbeth, Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, Hamlet, and perhaps one of the greatest Histories (Henry IV and V with sir John Falstaff -&c., King John)– King Richard The Third, where Ch. Marlowe’s mighty lines are visible since Jew of Malta and mostly Doctor Faustus. (Observe the introduction of the two disparate characters on the scene; just like the biblical Job! and the very beginning of Goethe’s Faust, here in R. the III. the entire theme is being compounded in the introductory solus of Richard, Duke of Gloucester.) Late Comedies as As You like It, Measure for Measure or All’s Well that ends Well or middle-period Comedy Merchant of Venice signifies those magnificent moments of the development. Just to recall King R. the Third with one of his last words, a monologue “Richard loves Richard, so I am I,” when his personality of falling apart before he calls his “Kingdom for a horse!” This prejudice that physically deformed man is morally in the same measures creeps in the “Rich Jew,” and the mysterious Portia who letting us be with an inexorable thought: “Is she really that honest?” - Or rather represents the inner struggle between Christianity and Judaism, for in those day’s ghettos where certainly isolated, not family only by a family, and therefore did even – or might have Shylock ever heared of the “light” as the ‘regret’ of “Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth,” or all the Tora’s wisdom figuring as one of a prime doctrine for Jewish Law. Therefore here we have the inclination of the signs of the development; similar scheme-structure in theme, and same Comedy-Tragedy (M. or Venice), History-Tragedy (R. the III.) Since 1904 Oxford Head Press abandoned the first Folio of organization of Comedies, Histories and Tragedies according to the ‘latest research’, which is still though strongly accurate, just to keep the observance of the genius’s progress in revealing his path, the ‘forest’ is getting into some shape same as Cantos here, the Rag-bag of all possible. “I wanted to write a paradise” E. Pound puts into one of his last fragmental Cantos as if apologizing for his ‘Usura’ term which gives the final birth and unity of his majestic epic. Ad Inherim added, Canto # II strongly represents the Ur-Cantos before year 1922, and if it has a certain weakness, it dwells in its length. But remarkably enough what what makes it strong is its potent “Shereafer” scheme of Ezra Pound’s, where the rhythm and stress of singular words are more than anything else. These kind of features will be manifested mostly – or especially- in the first 4 Cantos, as was said, relatively the major model and vision for the entire 117 Cantos including one translation from Italian, not to mentioned that Chinese and Japanese characters, also dynasties will be formulating the – structure of the culture of Cantos in one epoch, of which we are having completely nine, or 10 if counting the last Fragment Ad Inherim written in 24 of August 1966, quite a long time after ‘finishing’ Cantos, for its ‘final form’ was given in St. Elizabeth’s hospital in 1956, and ‘given a title’ with a sign of Odysseus, a human figure representing a bowman along with uncertain Chinese ideograms which origin is unfortunately unclear.
V.
As regard back to the proverbial structure of Cantos; why Ovid and a theme of ‘metamorphosis’? There’s descent to Hades echoing Odyssey in Canto I directly, in Canto number VIII Odysseus is replaced by Sigismundo Padulfo Malatesta. Please notice. The “outline” – or “main scheme” of texture, i. e. same as in the notion of rhyme and its relation resonating alongside, of which I will say a few words later, Pound expressed to his father thus:
“1. Rather like, or unlike subject and response and counter subject in fugue.
A. A. Live man goes down into the world of Dead
C. B. The ‘repeat in history’
B. C. The ‘magic moment’ or moment of metamorphosis, but true from quoditien ‘into divine or permanent world’. Gods, etc.”
Numbers 17 or 18 are important, for they illustrate Pound’s relation to Dante’s sketches of the universe during his work on his Comedia, although numbers around 33, especially, is the most remarkable evidence in his result in amount of cantos in each of three parts. In Cantos, rhyme scheme is equivalent to ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQ and then back A to Q, 18teen lines, or also fugue-motives, where the Bach-like never-ending aria is voice of the “And then went down to the ship,” the very first line, poet is not saying who, perhaps the history itself alongside with mankind, and here is evidence of recalling moments, not even particular lines or words, although it’s occurring as well as in Homer when he’s repeating one certain word, in Cantos, too, the repetition is broken not only in rhapsodical fugue-like scheme being awaken by following the line by line by reading the text, but also entire magical moment of the ‘transformation’ of the topic, a sudden change related to certain subject or so.
VI.
Since we suggested the very basic notion how and where Cantos are having roots and basis, we should approach to be more specific for formulating some inner sense of “Invention of the other”, and deconstructed theory applied, which with Theodor Adorno, Martin Heidegger and especially J. Derrida introduced into the world of conceptions. In this case it can carry an idea of what was the motive that changes and also keeps poetry as the most exalted vocation possible to man manifested in Cantos, although Pound's reading Joyce's manuscript of Ulysses proved him upcoming times for prose, as I already spoken of. Pound keeps the greatest models of poetry (Homer, Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Browning), but the same, less or minor, figurative poets and craftsmen (most of all Sappho, Ovid, Catullus, Propertius –viz Homage to Sextus Propertius--, Waller and so on) which had no doubt remarkably advances in the art. Poet's purpose was for Pound same as for Shelly; mentioned in “Defense of Poetry”, that of a “transcendence of 'things' by poetry, opening the shades to 'more real reality'”. For more than a dozen years he was contemplating of the “Poem of some length” (1908-1921), during which the Ur-Cantos were composed and used in future for especially evidently in final form in Canto II, where its pedantic Soldello idea dominating, but renovation of awakening hand in hand took place most of all. Several moments of despair Pound felt during getting even with Ulysses before its publishing, for he sooth that only prose can be the reawakening factor for future, and for Pound as a “Modernist” is all senses it must had been a horrifying experience. Before he found his own calculus. And that formed Cantos as we are having at the moment, something that represents a text undermining itself. Of Alume Spento is being yield the poetical phrase in Browning's nineteenth century texture and rhythm, but around 1922 comes an ambience of confident control where he informs that each canto articulates with the whole; but how? --We partially answered in connection between Canto I and II. But:
Ezra Pound to Felix Schelling:
“Perhaps the poem goes on I shall be able to make various things clear. Having to trust to attempt a poem in 100 to 120 cantos long after all mankind had been commanded never again to attempt a poem of any length. I have to stagger as I can.”
The first 11 cantos are preparation to the palette. He ought to get down all the colors or elements he wanted for the poem, some perhaps too enigmatically and abbreviatelly. For design and architecture was decision put aside. In 1928 in letter to Yeats he conveys his understanding of 'certain' archetypal events. “It is a religious poem.” It is possible to conceive it as a tale of the tribe in an account of men's progress from darkness of hell to the light of paradise. Thus it is a revelation of how divinity manifested into the universe. The process of stars, planets, the dynamic energy of the seed in motion, and the kind of intelligence that makes the cherrystones become the cherry tree. Hell is darkness [“There is only the darkness of ignorance”]: thus the highest manifestation of divinity flows from mind and the spirit of the man. As if whenever gods be the act through man's mind and perceptions and are revealed as follows:
his intelligence
his ethical sense and his thirst for his sense for perfectibility
his power to love
his perception for beauty
his aspiration to create a paradise upon the world
VII.
Explanation for my method on elaboration over Cantos comes soon.