Ezra Pound's Cantos: my maddening but magnificent Desert Island Book

I shouldn't really love Ezra Pound's poetry. As a man, he was a bit of a stinker. He lined up alongside the forces of barbarism during the Second World War. He was a raving anti-Semite. (I've already written about his personal shorcomings here.) 

He wrote some of the most wilfully obscure, show-offy poetry ever inflicted on a confused – and decidedly ungrateful – public. And yet, for the last two years, I've found myself returning repeatedly to the Cantos. To be honest, they’ve become a bit of an obsession.

The poems are packed with obscure references – to, for example, Chinese poetry and the work of French troubadours and the Italian banking system during the Renaissance. They're peopled with equally obscure historical figures (Astorre Manfredi of Faenza? Emperor Tching Tang? Io Sordels? – it’s a positive relief when the likes of Thomas Jefferson, Confucius and Talleyrand appear). They're stuffed with numerous lines that mean absolutely nothing to anyone but, one presumes, American academics (for instance, “ANAXIFORMINGES! Aurunculeia!” is a complete line from Canto IV, which the rest of the poem does nothing to explain). And they're shot through with medieval French and lots of Chinese hieroglyphics and Ancient Greek and Latin – all untranslated, of course -  as well as phonetic renderings of heavily-accented foreigners trying to speak English (a literary device that always makes my heart sink).

I even bought a guide to the Cantos to help me penetrate the maddening fog of what I took to be genuine erudition - but there are still tranches that make no sense whatsoever to me. In fact, I’m yet to be convinced that some sections aren’t pure gibberish to anyone but Pound himself – even my extraordinarily detailed guide slips furtively past certain passages. 

So why do I persevere? Why would anyone but an academic or an out-and-out pseud persevere?

Simple, really. The Cantos contain some of the most mysteriously beautiful and powerful poetry I have ever read. Pound might have gone completely crackers during his unfortunate Italian sojourn, much of the poetry makes no sense, and I have contempt for the theory that artistic talent excuses bad behaviour. But the Cantos aren’t the ravings of an unpleasant, disoriented madman – they are a work of sublime poetic genius, and one of the 20^th Century’s greatest works of art.

If I had to choose a Desert Island Book, it might very well be an edition of The Cantos (as long as I was allowed to take along every commentary ever written on them).

If I’d started with one of the more incoherent fragments, I might not have mde it to the next page, but I started at the beginning – and the opening lines of Canto I are simply tremendous:

And then went down to the ship,
Set keel to breakers, forth on the godly sea, and
We set up mast and sail on that swart ship,
Bore sheep aboard her, and our bodies also
Heavy with weeping, and winds from sternward
Bore us onward with bellying canvas,
Circe's this craft, the trim-coifed goddess.
Then sat we amidships, wind jamming the tiller,
Thus with stretched sail, we went over sea till day's end.
Sun to his slumber, shadows o'er all the ocean,
Came we then to the bounds of deepest water,
To the Kimmerian lands, and peopled cities
Covered with close-webbed mist, unpierced ever
With glitter of sun-rays
Nor with stars stretched, nor looking back from heaven
Swartest night stretched over wretched men there.
The ocean flowing backward, came we then to the place
Aforesaid by Circe.

Well, that was me awed – and hooked. 

As I said, there’s something cold and cat-like about Pound, but his poetry is far from emotionless – the deliberate oddness is shot through with the sort of monumental, tragic tenderness you find in Homer:

But first Elpenor came, our friend Elpenor,
Unburied, cast on the wide earth,
Limbs that we left in the house of Circe,
Unwept, unwrapped in the sepulchre, since toils urged other.
Pitiful spirit. And I cried in hurried speech:
"Elpenor, how art thou come to this dark coast?
"Cam'st thou afoot, outstripping seamen?"
And he in heavy speech:
"Ill fate and abundant wine. I slept in Circe's ingle.
"Going down the long ladder unguarded,
"I fell against the buttress,
"Shattered the nape-nerve, the soul sought Avernus.
"But thou, O King, I bid remember me, unwept, unburied,
"Heap up mine arms, be tomb by sea-bord, and inscribed:
"A man of no fortune, and with a name to come.
"And set my oar up, that I swung mid fellows."

Canto XVI is a particular favourite of mine:

And before hell mouth; dry plain
              and two mountains;
On the one mountain, a running form,
              and another
In the turn of the hill; in hard steel
The road like a slow screw’s thread,
The angle almost imperceptible,
               so that the circuit seemed hardly to rise;
And the running form, naked, Blake,
Shouting, whirling his arms, the swift limbs,
Howling against the evil,
               his eyes rolling,
Whirling like flaming cart-wheels,
               and his head held backward to gaze on the evil
As he ran from it,
                to be hid by the steel mountain…

Bizarre, ludicrous, cartoonish – but what a blisteringly powerful, unforgettable image of William Blake that is! Unfortunately, I’m not sufficiently perceptive to know – or sufficiently articulate to be able to express - what makes it so good. Certainly, Pound is a master of visual imagery – he can paint pictures with almost contemptuous ease. His use of colour is particularly fine (there’s a wonderful image later in the same poem where he talks of “the criminal/lying in blue lakes of acid” – it’s the “blue” that makes this lodge in the mind). Like all the very greatest poets he also has an unerring eye for physical detail. And his command of language - his feel for it - is extraordinary.

Canto XLV is another favourite. Here, Pound’s sheer power is almost overwhelming (fortunately - and strangely - he was evidently a lousy propagandist). A trumpet-blast against what the poet considered to be usury, this makes me uneasy on many levels – the anti-semitic and anti-capitalism subtext is obvious (Pound apparently blamed capitalism for the slaughter of the First World War – not sure what he imagine caused the subsequent horrors of WWII or the butchery behind the Iron Curtain). Despite profoundly disagreeing with the thinking underlying the poem, I think it's magnificent. 

With usura hath no man a house of good stone

each block cut smooth and well fitting

that design might cover their face,

with usura

hath no man a painted paradise on his church wall

harpes et luthes

or where virgin receiveth message

and halo projects from incision,

with usura

seeth no man Gonzaga his heirs and his concubines

no picture is made to endure nor to live with

but it is made to sell and sell quickly

with usura, sin against nature,

is thy bread ever more of stale rags

is thy bread dry as paper,

with no mountain wheat, no strong flour

with usura the line grows thick

with usura is no clear demarcation

and no man can find site for his dwelling.

Stonecutter is kept from his tone

weaver is kept from his loom

WITH USURA

wool comes not to market

sheep bringeth no gain with usura

Usura is a murrain, usura

blunteth the needle in the maid’s hand

and stoppeth the spinner’s cunning. Pietro Lombardo

came not by usura

Duccio came not by usura

nor Pier della Francesca; Zuan Bellin’ not by usura

nor was ‘La Calunnia’ painted.

Came not by usura Angelico; came not Ambrogio Praedis,

Came no church of cut stone signed: Adamo me fecit.

Not by usura St. Trophime

Not by usura Saint Hilaire,

Usura rusteth the chisel

It rusteth the craft and the craftsman

It gnaweth the thread in the loom

None learneth to weave gold in her pattern;

Azure hath a canker by usura; cramoisi is unbroidered

Emerald findeth no Memling

Usura slayeth the child in the womb

It stayeth the young man’s courting

It hath brought palsey to bed, lyeth

between the young bride and her bridegroom

                               CONTRA NATURAM

They have brought whores for Eleusis

Corpses are set to banquet

at behest of usura.

If the protesters currently despoiling our capital couched their arguments in these terms (fat chance, I know) one might even be tempted to listen to them.

I’m glad it took me so long to start reading Pound: early exposure might have led me to dismiss the art because of the man, and I’m more patient now than I used to be. I wouldn’t have liked to meet Pound. He evidently had many good points, including great generosity towards emerging writers – but, even leaving his repulsive political views to one side, biographies suggest he just wasnt likeable. Nevertheless, I’m delighted to have made his acquaintance at last.