No More Learning

Cythera PAGGKALA: H, "All-beautiful
104/744-745
Cytherian": Aphrodite. The Greek n in pan
("all") becomes g before kappa, gamma, or chi.
100. Mond: Alfred Moritz M. , 1868-1930, of a family famous for chemical research and manufacturing. In 1910 he bought the En- glish Review (then being edited by F. M. Ford) for political purposes, and Ford was soon out of it. Said Pound: "no greater condemnation of the utter filth of the whole social system of the time can be dug up than the fact of that review's passing out ofhis hands" [HK, Poetry, 308]. It was Mond's brother who said, "it will not take 20 years to crwuth Mussolini" [SP, 313; 78:10]. The "interval" refers to the dozen years before Ford went to Paris to edit the Transatlantic Review [ef. 53 above].
101. . . . Quatorze: F, "fourteenth. " The celebration of Bastille Day, July 14th, the national holiday of republican France.
102. Brits paid . . . : The first issue of the Transatlantic Review may be referred to. But "installment" may suggest some kind of war reparations.
103. Alex . . . : [89:230].
104_ the king lost . . . : When
the right of the sovereign alone-was lost, such monetary chaos took place that even Del Mar is amazed. See his chapter entitled "Private Coinage," "Bank Suspensions under Coinage," and the analysis that starts: "From the day when the royal voluptuary resigned a prerogative . . . " [HMS, 389].
681
106. Larranaga: Pedro Juan Manuel L. , 1893-? , civil engineer and road builder. Au- thor of Gold, Glut, and Government: A New Economic Dawn, G. Allen and Unwin, 1932, and Successful Asphalt Paving, London, 1926.
107. Tremaine: Poss. Herbert Tremaine, poet (The Wide Garden and Other Poems, London, 1917) and author of novels such as The Tribal God (London, 1921) and The Feet of the Young Men, a domestic war novel (London, 1917).
108. prescrittibile: I, "stamp script," as money [101:80;SP ,315].
109. False Middles: When the second or middle premise of a syllogism is false, the conclusion is false. A major premise o f Pound's ideas about economists is that they base their reasoning on this kind of illogic. Thus, the acts of the state in taxing are ridiculous: "As ridiculous as . . . for some- one who possessed a tin mine to go about collecting old tin cans" [SP, 315]. When one has understood completely the truth of this sentence, he will be on the way to knowing how needless, destructive, and cruel the in- ternational banking and monetary mess is.
[Currently, Feb. 1982, the international bankers and oil men are "full of alarm" at the prospect of declining oil prices. ]
110. NOOS: H, nous, "mind" [40/201]: "the ineffable crysta1. "
111. Stink Saunders': [87:123].
112. pen yeh: [98:55,56].
113. Homestead . . . kolschoz: [103:5,6].
114. tessera: I, "ticket" [cf. 98 above; SP, 310-311].
that, should the monarchy not be preserved, a violent course of revolution would materi- alize. It did, in all its horror, after his death at age 42.
83. Ovid . . . Pontus: [76/462]. Ovid was exiled, for reasons kept secret, to the far borders of the empire at Tomi on the Black Sea, where he suffered greatly. His Epistulae ex Ponto delineate his misery and plea for him to be allowed to return to Rome. But neither Augustus nor Tiberius would hear of it. He died at Pontus in A. D. 17.
84. Goa: Portuguese colony on the west coast of India founded by Afonso de Albu? querque in 1510, where st. Francis Xavier spent 10 years doing successful missionary work. Xavier's tomb is there. At first Goa was a center of trade for spices, but that trade declined in the 17th and 18th cen? turies [89 :238]. The immediate effect of the arrival of Christian missionaries in this tropical paradise was a chain of destruction. Why? Money! [97/674].
85. Intorcetta: Prospera I. , Jesuit mission- ary to China during the late Ming and early Manchu dynasties. He is still remembered in his native Sicily, to which he returned with artifacts in 1671 [Dunne, Giants, 174? 175, 292].
86. Webster, Voltaire and Leibnitz: Grouped here as lexicographers and refiners o f language. V oltaire: Dictionnaire philoso- phique. Leibnitz: Monadology (1714) and Principles o f Nature and Grace (1714). Said Pound: "Leibniz was the last philosopher who 'got hold of something' . . . Up till Lei- bniz you can find men who really struggle with thOUght. After Leibniz the precedent kind of thought ceased to lead men"
[GK,74].
87. phyllotaxis: The biological laws that dictate the arrangement of leaves on a stem. The force that makes the cherry stone be- come a cherry tree, which to Pound is one of the ways divine intelligence works in the world. Its highest expression is through the mind of great thinkers such as those above [ef. Sieburth, Pai, 6-3, 383-384; 109 :49].
coinage-once
. . .
95. Gold
96. El Melek: [97:1-15].
1204:
[89:79].
105.
of dozens of books on dozens of subjects, including history, medicine, and money. Said Pound: "There is a body of sane writing in our time and/or a body of writing by enlightened men . . . Larranaga, McNair Wil- son, Christopher Hollis. . . Economic light in our time has not come from the HIRED . . . It has come from free men . . . Larranaga a builder of roads . . . Rossoni, Por, MeN. Wilson-NONE of them in har- ness" [GK, 245-246]. "In harness" means "men hired by usurocrats to lie for pay. "
98. Del Mar cites
uses "ticket" to mean any piece of paper or chit or legal tender which people will accept in exchange: "money is a general sort of ticket, which is its only difference from a railway or theatre ticket" [SP, 290].
: [96:119].
Pound
r
McNair
Wilson:
Robert
M. W. ,
author
11 S. Monreale: Sicilian town near
site of famous cathedral in Norman-Sicilian style, which contains Byzantine mosaics.
116. Topaz: [88/581]. This jewel is the cli- max in a musical crescendo starting as early as the top of the previous page with, "Gold was in control of the Pontifex. " In Dante's "Thrones," concerned with justice, he
Palermo,
? ? ? ? ? ? 682
104/745
[87/575]; or, "Come let us make joyful noise unto the lord"; or, "Be glad and rejoice for the lord is with you. "
119. curet . . . perennia: L, "he cares about- permanent things. " Beware of "false mid- dles"; the process may be total flux, but a shape in the wave may be eternal.
120. foung . . . i: These four Chinese words in Couvreur are the last phrase of a sentence which follows the sentence given in gloss 118 above. In French, the whole sentence is, "Quand on execute les neuf chants appelee Stao chao, les deux phenix viennent et s'agi- tent avec elegance. " The 4 characters mean "come and dance with elegance. " To accent the religious note, Pound has altered Cou- vreur's "lai i" to "Ii i," so the characters read, "with ceremony" [ibid. ].
121. Varnish . . . tribute: The final 2 lines refer to another part of Couvreur concerned with the Hia dynasty, the first chapter of which is entitled "Tribut de IV. " In sec. 5 we read: "Les habitants offrent en tribut a l'empereur du vernis et de la soie" ("The citizens offer as tribute to the emperor var- nish and silk"). Note: This is a tribute in kind, not an indiscrimnate tax [ibid. , 66].
122. Iu's Weights . . . : The lines in the source concern Iu's efforts to regulate weights and measures so that the people would not be cheated [ibid. ].
105/746 683 Exegeses
EP, ND 17, 173; lW, Later, 156? 166; lW, Pai, 2? 3, 399-407; HM, Caged, 69; Zapatka, Pai, 2? 3, 423; EM, Difficult, 355.
speaks to Cacciaguida overwhelmed by the jeweled light that flows from Beatrice: "I turned to Beatrice, and she heard before I spoke, and smiled to me a sign that made the wings of my desire increase. And I began . . . But I beseech you, living Topaz who are a gem in this precious jewel, that you satisfy me with your name" [Par. XV, 70? 87] .
It is appropriate that this note be struck as we approach the climax of the Thrones section of the poem, the special added section, 107?
109, on the Magna Carta.
117. Fetzen Papier: G, "scrap paper. "
118. Where deer's feet . . . edge: The last six lines of the canto return to ceremonial and paradisal themes like those found at the close of earlier paradisal cantos (e. g. , 17,47, 49, 90, 91). The lines here are based on evocative scenes in Couvreur, who says that at a certain moment when musicians are playing a musical background, "lIs s'arretent au signal donne par Ie tigre cauche" [Couvreur, p. 58] Notes on this passage in? clude a drawing of a tiger lying down. A moment later we read, "Les oiseaus et les quadrupedes tressailent de joie" ("The birds and the beasts dance with joy"). Pound adds the specific detail of "deer" and conveys the ideal of dancing by "make dust. " This scene rhymes with Pound's recurrent idea of appropriate religious celebration: "Religion? With no dancing girls at the altar? "
Glossary
CANTOCV
Sources
1. P. Migne, Patrologiae Latina: vol. 158, containing St. Anselm's
Monologium and Proslogion; Chronicon Centulense vol. 174; William ofMalmesbury's The Deeds o f the English Kings, vol. 179.
Background
lW, Seven Troubadours, Pa. State Univ. , 1970; A. Carlini, ed. ,
Compendia di storia della filosofia, Villacchi, Florence, 1921? 24; EP, JIM, 30? 31; EP, SR, 166? 178.
I. Feb. 1956: Date canto was started.
2. Talleyrand: [62:151; 95:13]. He tried to create a peace that would prevent further wars.
3. Bismarck: [86:3]. He believed the Franco-Prussian War was a war to end wars in Europe.
4. rem salvavit: I, "saved the thing. " Phrase applied to Sigismundo [9 :22] , who was said to have saved the Florentine state.
5. il salvabile: I, "the savable. " Reference to M's sending troops to assist Franco in 1936. Each of these three was betrayed by those he tried to help.
6. Ideogram: Chi [M411], "motions and or? igins: moving power of-as the universe. "
7. semina motuum: L, "seeds of motion" [90:24; 89:252].
8. Suhnona: Birthplace of Ovid [103:91].
9. Federico . . . hawk: [97:272; 98:105].
10. n Marescalco: Libro di Marescalco [or Mascaleia] : I, Book of the Marshall. A book of veterinary medicine written by Giordano Ruffo di Calabria, imperial marshall of the Holy Roman Empire, 1250? 1260, and friend, earlier, of Frederico II [JW].
11. Cesena . . . colonne: I, "Cesena, Cesena of the beautiful columns. " Romagnole dia? lect. [II :20].
12. obit aetat [e]: L, "died at the age of. "
13. Christian's . . . : Pseudonym of Herbiet [80:319].
14. the corridor 1/2 . . . : Pound must have had a vital memory of Herbiet's portrait of a lady (? ) with hat and gloves. He asked at 80/510, "What the deuce has . . . [he] done
with . . . [it]? " and says here, "[it] must be somewhere. " If one could find it, quite like? ly it would have in the background a narrow corridor with a window looking out onto a bridge in the far distance [93:162], which suggested to Pound "a bridge over worlds"
[Frags. j802].
IS. "moyens . . . inconnus": F, "means of existence unknown. "
16. Anselm: St. A. , c. l034? 1109, archbish? op of Canterbury (1093? 1109), an Italian scholar who became a monk in France, where he was befriended by Lanfranc and followed him as prior at Bec in 1062; he later followed him to Canterbury in En? gland. He was made archbishop against his will and became involved in the terrible problems of investiture but held out strongly against Henry I, who finally yielded. In his most notable work, Monologium (1063), he is one of the first theologians to argue the compatibility of faith and reason. Pound found him important, not only because of his rationality in discussing the Mysterium but also because he was a significant figure in the development of democratic freedoms.
In the Bridson interview he said: "You can be damn well thankful to St. Anselm, be? cause all your liberties back before 'Maggie Carter' as they used to call her in the law schools in America-I mean the fight be- tween him and William Rufus, the dirty bandit-all your liberties come out of that"
[ND 17, 173] . The connection Pound makes between Anselm and the Magna Carta is a comment on the structure of The Cantos. Canto 104 prepares the way for the great climax of the Magna Carta cantos, 107? 109.
17. scripsit: L, "wrote. "
18. "non . . . sapientia": L, "not in space, but in knowing. " A part of Anselm's ontolo~
? ? ? ? 684
105/746-748
gical argument: "our ability to conceive of an Infinite Being necessarily entails the exis~ tence of that being. " Pound mentions this not because of some minor historical interest but because it is a vital part of his own religion, as is the idea of the compatibility of faith and reason. By the end of the 19th century, many had concluded it was "either/or": faith or reason. This conclusion is a false dichotomy. No "false middles," please! [104:109J. [Migne, vol. 158, chap. 2, col. 146-147; JW,Pai, 2? 3, 400J.
19. non pares: L, "not equaL" From a state- ment in the Monologium which says that members of the Trinity are not equal in worth [ibid. J.
20. rerum naturas: L, "nature of things. " Taken from a passage in the Monologium which translates: "every created nature takes its place in a higher grade of the worth of essence, the more it seems to approach there" [ibid. J. That is, all things are not, as they are in pantheism, equally beautiful, valuable, or good: differences exist.
poems 687ff. J.
[Migne,
V ol.
158, chap.
2, col.
mind mirrors the image but in itself is not the image. " This construction aligns Anselm with antecedent Neoplatonic light- philosophers.
38. Sapor . . . pulchritudo: L, "flavor . . . beauty. " Anselm'sProslogion [chaps. 17 and 18J says that a nonknower "looks around him and doesn't see beauty" and "tastes, yet doesn't know savour [saporem]" [Migne, vol. )58, cols. 236-237; JW, Pai, 2? 3, 402J.
39. ne . . . intellectu: L, "that it not be divisible in the intellect. " An amalgam of phrases from several places in Anselm, who makes the point that wisdom is whole and entire in itself and cannot be reached by logic alone [JW, Pai, 2-3, 402J .
40. (insulis fortunatis): L, "to the blessed isles. "
. . .
42. Puteus Cantauriensis: L, "Canterbury Well. " Legend says that when, as archbishop of Canterbury, Anselm visited Uberi, 9 mi. E of Capua, to write Cur Deus Homo (Why Did God Live), there was a drought. The monks dug a weIl where Anselm told them to and it produced water with healing pro? perties. Thereafter, the well was, named after him [Migne, vol. 158, cols. 100? 101J.
43. a partridge: Anselm fell ill and wouldn't eat. The monks protested that he must until he finally said he might eat a partridge. The monks couldn't find one, but a stable boy found a martyram [marten: a kind of weasel ("martin" is a misprint)J with a partridge in its mouth. Anselm ate it and was cured
[ibid. , I12-I13J.
44. Ideograms: Kuei [M3634J, "spirits"; chao [M239] , "to appeal to. "
220: "Saca & Socne, on strande & on Streame, on wudan & on feldan . .