The
progression
from water in early cantos to crystal, jade, and other forms-such as the great acorn of light in the later, paradisal cantos-becomes ever clearer.
A-Companion-to-the-Cantos-of-Ezra-Pound-II
Mal.
testiana: F, quarter-hour.
" I, "in the Biblioteca Malates- tiana.
" Fang says now there are no initials on the back of the door [II, 269] .
450. Fortean Society: A society, organized in 1931, directed by Tiffany Thayer, de- voted to the study of the works of Charles Fort (1874-1932), an American journalist who was interested in researching and documenting unusual and unexplained natural phenomena. The Fortean Society's magazine was called Doubt.
451. bambooiform: Neologism to suggest shape of grass.
452. "La Nascita": I, "_the birth. " The Birth of Venus by Botticelli. The child is prob. Mary, Pound's daughter, and the eyes are those of her mother Olga Rudge.
453. Capoquadri: Name of the house in Siena where Pound used to stay during visits [83 :36].
454. Helios: The sun. The "form beached" is Aphrodite in La Nascita.
455. funge la purezza: I, "the tensile light
"pleasant
they are' " [GK,226]_ 449. metempsychosis at
tion.
. . . .
? :
Reincarna-
? ? ? ! ' I
i!
386
74/447
74/448-449
387
465. barbiche: F, "goatee. "
466. Mr. Quackenbos, or
Abraham Quackenbush, a real estate man who in 1906 had an office at 236 E. 87th SI. He was an old bore who lived at the board-
:inghouse and was always put at the head of "the other long table" so that he would not interfere with Uncle Ezra's heated conversa- tions with M. Fouquet [ibid. ].
467. Mrs. Chittenden's . . . : Poss, Kate SaraC. , 1856-1959, American organist, composer, and lecturer, who may have been a transient resident at the boardinghouse, which, along with Ezra Weston's hotel in Nyack, preserved the elegance of "the old South" observed by Weston when he was caught in the American South during the
Civil War.
468. Mouquin's:
rant Pound referred to in letter to WCW [L, 159].
469. Train: George Francis T. , 1829-1904, American merchant and writer. Founded Train & Co. , which sent clipper-ships to California and made a fortune backing the Union Pa~iflc Railroad. As an independent candidate for U. S. President in 1872, Train made famous inflammatory speeches against politicians, for which he was castigated. He traveled around the world in 67 days and
delivered speeches on the downfall of Napoleon III which were hailed by the French people. Before his death Train often sat on the street outside Mills Hotel in Greenwich Village; earlier he was called the "Sage of Madison Square" because he fed birds and spoke to people openly in the park. Train spent many of his later years in silence, writing messages. He died a pauper
[JW]. In "Indiscretions" Pound wrote: "Francis Train still sat white-headed, or with I think a stiff straw hat on the back of his head, in' a plain wooden hemicycular chair on the pavement before some hotel . . . I was told that he was Francis Train . . . and I read that . . . he had been jailed" [PD, 10].
470. fellow throwing a knife: "Indiscre- tions" gives: "a man throwing a large jack-
knife some fifty feet after a fleeing male figure" [PD, 10].
471. Towers of Pisa . . . : First in a long list of brie-a-brae brought back from Europe and North Africa by Aunt Frances (Frank) Weston. She took the young Pound with her in 1892 and 1898. Also mentioned are family memorabilia from Massachusetts, the home state of the Westons [PD,3-10].
472. 1806 Barre Mass'chusetts: Barre, Mass. Town in central Massachusetts, NW of Worcester.
473. Charter Oak: In writing of his ancestry Pound said: "hence Joseph Wadsworth, who stole the Connecticut charter and hid it in Charter Oak, to the embarrassment of legitimist tyranny" [PD, 6].
474. Torwaldsen lion: Bertel Thorwaldsen, 1770-1844, the Danish sculptor; one of his best known works is the statue of a lion at Lucerne, Switzerland.
475. Paolo Uccello: Paolo di Dono U. , ca. 1396-1475, Florentine painter; one of the "realists" of the 15th century. "I liked Quattrocento paintin'. P. Uccel1o. First freshman theme, I wrote was on Paulo Uccello, picture in Louvre I reckon" [Speak- ing, 138].
476. Al Hambra: The famous group of buildings of Granada, Spain.
Tangiers area, with Gibraltar: "He heard then a warm heavy sigh . . . and the loose brass quoits of the bedstead jingles . . . All the way from Gibraltar" [DG].
480. Mrs. Jevons' hotel: Prob. an inn Pound stayed at in Gibraltar.
481. veder Nap'oiiiii: [vedere . . . ]: I, "to see Naples. " Part of Italian proverb: "See Naples and die"; i. e. you will then have seen everything [HK].
482. Pavia the romanesque: Capital of Pavia, province of Lombardy, N Italy. Its Church of San Michele is an excellent example of 12th-century Lombard Roman- esque architecture.
483. San Zeno: San Zeno Maggiore, a Romanesque church in V erona. Contains the column signed Adamo me fecit [45:14].
484. S. Pietro: San Pietro Martire (formerly San Giorgetto dei Domeniconi), on right bank of Adige in Verona. Contains fresco by Giovanni Maria Fa1conetto: "The Corona- tion of the Virgin," with kneeling Teutonic knights [Fang, II, 260] .
485. madonna in Ortolo: L, Madonna in the Garden, painting by Stefano da Verona
[4:45].
486. e "fa . . . tremare": I, "and 'make the air tremble with clarity' " [cf. 425 above].
487. Trattoria . . . : I, "Inn of the Apostles (twelve). " Small restaurant in V erona where Pound and Manlio Torquato Dazzi ate in 1912 when they visited the Biblioteca Capitolare to consult the Cavalcanti MSS
[Fang, II, 316].
488. "Ecco il te": I, " 'Here is the tea. ' "
489. piccolo: I, "young boy"; here the first stage in the multistaged career of a waiter.
490. Assisi: Town in Umbria, central Italy; birthplace of SI. Francis of Assisi. Above the saint's tomb, two Gothic churches were built, both decorated with frescoes by Cimabue, Giotto, and others [for decline of coffee see Kimpel, Pai, 10-2,307].
491. Orleans: Town in Loiret Department, N central France.
492. Mr. Carver: George Washington C. , ? 1864-1943, American agricultural chemist who discovered many new uses for products of the South. He got farmers to give up soil-exhausting cotton for crop rotation of peanuts and sweet potatoes. "From the peanut he made cheese, milk, coffee, flour, ink, dyes, soap, wood stains and insulating board" [EB].
493. arachidi: I, "peanuts. " As food short- ages developed during the war, Pound tried to persuade a number of bureaucrats thilt Italy should start cultivating peanuts. In A Visiting Card he wrote: "Peanuts could bring self-sufficiency in food to Italy or, rather to the empire, for these 'monkey nuts' would grow better in Cyrenaica" [SP, 319].
494. wops: Italian immigrants who at- tempted to enter the U. S. without permis- sion had a form given to them at Ellis Island stamped WOPS-"without papers. " Thus, the term came to refer to Italians in general. Pound does not use it in a pejorative sense.
495. Ragusa: A port of Dalmatia; from 1205 to 1358 under the control of Venice.
496. Herr Bacher's father: Heinrich B. 's father, Michael, was a woodcarver who resided near Brunico, in the Italian Tyrol
[EH].
New Y ork
French
restau-
Quackenbush:
mirador . . .
S, "the gal-
477. el
lery of Queen Lindaraja"; prob. Lindaraxa, the Zegri princess in Gines Perez de Hita's Guerras Civiles de Granada. .
478. PerdicarisjRais UIi: [cf. 161, 163 above ] .
479. Mr. Joyce . . . Hercules: From Victor Berard's works on the Odyssey, especially Calypso et la Mer de L 'Atlantide [Armand Colin, PariS, 1927-1929]. Joyce got the idea that Calypso's island was near Gibraltar, which he conceived to be the "Pillars of Hercules. " Leopold Bloom's train of thought, as he prepares Molly's breakfast and lurks outside her bedroom door (Ulysses, Chap. II, p. 56], associates a gift, also from the
Lindaraja:
497. Salustio's . . . :
1470, son of Sigismundo Malatesta and Isotta [Ixotta] degli Atti. The "itaglios" refer to the seals ofSalustio cut by Pisanello: see specimen in frontispiece of GK.
498. crystal jet: Recurrent image of divinity manifest.
The progression from water in early cantos to crystal, jade, and other forms-such as the great acorn of light in the later, paradisal cantos-becomes ever clearer.
499. Verlaine: Paul V. , 1844-1896. "The one word 'Verlaine' assembles 'crystal' and 'jet' and sculptor under the sign of his 'Clair de Lune' which closes with great
S. Malatesta,
1448-
? ? 388
74/449,75/450
75/450-451
389
ecstatic fountains among statues ('les grands jets d'eau sveltes parmi 1es marbres')"
[HK, Era, 482-483].
500. Zephyrus/Apeliota: West and East
winds: "Wind also is of the process. "
501. nec accidens est: L, "and is not an attribute. "
502. est agens: L, "it is an agent. "
503. rose in the steel dust: A pattern formed under magnetic influence. A graphic image of divine order operating in the material world-a miracle which can be seen occasionally in such a thing as the "down" on a swan. Allen Upward had written: "He who has watched the iron crumbs drawn into patterns by the magnet; or who in the
Milano (15th-century)" [cf. 8 Gerhart Munch (g canto) [cf. 2
CANTO LXXV
Sources
Virgil, Aeneid VI; EP, GK, 203, 151-152,ABCR, 54.
Background
EP, Townsman, 1 (Jan. 1938), p. 18; R. Murray Schafer, Ezra Pound and Music, New Directions, New York, 1977,348-399 and
passim.
Exegesis
EH, Pai, 10-2,295-296; WB, Pai, 10-3, 594; Stephen 1. Adams, "The Soundscope of The Cantos," Humanities Assoc. Review, 28 (Spring 1977), 167-188.
Glossary
2. Gerhart: G. Munch, German (Dresden) pianist, composer, and arranger who during the 1930s spent a lot of time in Rapallo, where he played concerts with Olga Rudge. He arranged Janequin's Le Chant des Oiseaux, along with other old music that appealed to Pound [GK, 151-153]. Along with Antheil [74:64], Pound considered Munch in the vanguard of the moderns.
3. Buxtehude: Dietrich B. , 1637-1707, German composer and organist who influ~ enced the work of Bach.
4. Klages: Ludwig K. , 1872-1956, German anthropologist to whom Munch addressed a number of letters. Klage's major work in five volumes, Der Geist als Widersacher der Seele [The intellect as adversary of the soul], had an influe. nce upon Munch's work. His name and ideas came to Pound via Munch [EH, Pai, 10-2, 295-296]. Not to be confused with Charles Klages a 19th-century French composer and guitarist.
S. Stiindebuch: G, "collection" [GK, 203]. The word, not to be found in most German dictionaries, occurs in the title of a book of Jost Amman's illustrations to the songs of Hans Sachs [WB,Pai, 10-3,594].
6. -not of one _. . : Pound wrote of the Janequin piece: "The gist, the pith, the unbreakable fact is there in the two pages of violin part __ . [heard] not one bird but a lot of birds as our violinist said on first playing it" [Townsman, 1 (Jan. 1938), p. 18; Adams, 182]_
7. The handwritten words say: (Sidelights from Salassi: La canzone da Ii ucelli (I, "the song of the birds"). Fatto del Violino
(I, "made for the violin"). Francesco da Milina (S cento) ([F. da Milano] I, "Fran-
1. Phlegethon: The river of fire in Hades [25 :46]. The fiaming river flows around the walls of a mighty city, from which the groans and screams of the inhabitants are heard by Aeneas [Aeneid V i]. Horror- stricken, he asks the Sibyl (his guide) what
they are. She says that they come from the judgment hall of Rhadamanthus, who brings to light crimes done in life. In the depths under the city, guarded by the Hydra, are the Titans and such condemned men as Salmoneus, Sisyphus, Tantalus, and Ixion.
frostwork on the window pane has appre- hended the unknown beauty of the crystal's law, seems to me to have an idea more wholesome to our frail imaginings of the meaning of the Mystery of Life" [Upward, The New Word, 222; cited by Knox, Pai, 3-1,81].
504. Swansdown: In "Her Triumph," by Ben Jonson, we read: I'Ra' you felt the wool of beaver / Or swan's down ever? I Or have smelt 0 ' the bud 0 ' the briar? 1Or the nard in the fire? " [from A Celebration of Charis: in Ten Lyric Pieces (1624)]. All are examples of miracles of creation [DD, Ezra Pound, 78].
50S. Lethe: The river of forgetfulness in Hades.
The Sibyl then leads the hero toward the Elysian Fields, where the inhabitants are dancing and singing and where "Orpheus struck the chords of his lyre, and called
cesco of
below]).
above]. [per metamorfosi] (I, "by meta- morphosis").
forth ravishing sounds. " _ Pound Allied fire-bombing o f Dresden "the fiaming river" [HK].
said the suggested
8_ Milano: Francesco da M. , 1497-ca. 1543, Italian lutist and composer known as "11 divinio" t o his devotees. His version o f Janequin's "Song of the Birds" became the basis for Munch's [cf. 2 above] version for violin and piano, which became a favorite item for the Rapallo concerts. The violin line by Munch, the basis of the canto, became for Pound a prime example of the mutual support song and music could give each other: "Clement Janequin wrote a chorus, with words for the singers of the different parts of the chorus. These words would have no literary or poetic value if you took the music away but when Francesco da Milano reduced it for the lute the birds were still in the music. And when Munch transcribed it for modern instruments the birds were still there. They ARE still there in the violin parts" [ABCR, 54]. Pound connects the dynamic form in Janequin to "swansdown" and "the rose in the steel dust," which ended Canto 74: "If F. Di Milano . . . chiselled down Dowland's and Janequin's choral words. _. I have a perfect right to HEAR Janequin's intervals, his melodic conjunctions from the violin solo. . . . The forma, the immortal concetto, the concept, the dynamic form which is like the rose pattern driven into the dead iron-filings by the magnet, not by material contact. . . . Cut off by the layer of glass, the dust and filings rise and spring into order. . . . Thus the forma, the concept rises from the death. . . . Janequin's concept takes a third life in our time. . . . And its ancestry I think goes back to Arnaut Daniel and to god knows what 'hidden antiquity'" [GK, 151-152]. The reader should pause for thought: Canto 75 is an exemplum of the forma or the dynamic form of The Cantos as
a whole as well as a transitional move out of hell [cf. 1 above] toward paradiso terrestre.
9. >K fl : Prob. early bone inscription form for fJ( [53:42,43]: "make it new" [DG].
? 390
76/452
76/452
391
CANTO LXXVI Sources
Cavalcanti, "Donna mi prega," LE, 163-167; Dante, La Vita Nuova, XXIV; EP, CON, 20, 29, 239; Micah 4. 5; Leviticus 19. 35-36; EP, "Three Cantos," Poetry, June 1917; Homer, Od. I, 4; Dante, Par. VIII, 37; Time, June 4, 1945,36 and June 11, 1945, 50; Herodotus I, 98, Loeb, I; Lyra Graeca I, fr. 1, 184; OBGV, No. 140; Goethe, Faust, pt. 2, Act II, 11. 6819-7004; Ralph Cheever Dunning, The Four Winds, London, 1931; Herman
Suchier, Aucassin und Nicolette, Paderburn, F. SchDningh, 1889; Paracelsus, De generationibus rerum naturalium, Passage, 238; Ford Madox Ford, Provence, London, George Allen & Unwin,
1938.
Background
EP, GK, Ill, 17, 109,328,259, 159; SP, 454,433,322; Townsman, April 1939; SR, 84, 121; MIN, 390; L, 254, 249, 147,282; Henry James Warner, The Albigensian Heresy, New York, Russell, 1967; Gianfranco Ivancich, Ezra Pound's Italy, New York, Rlzzoli, 1978; Aristotle, Politics; Nichomachean Ethics; Marion K. Sanders, Dorothy Thompson, A Legend in Her Time, Boston, Houghton-Mifflin, 1973; Kenneth Quinn, CatuUus, An Interpretation, New York, Barnes & Noble, 1973.
Exegeses
Achilles Fang, "Materials for the Study of Pound's Cantos," Ph. D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1958, II, III, IV [Fang]; Stuart Gilbert, Letters ofJames Joyce, New York, Viking, 1957; Mde R, Discretions, 221; HK, Era, 469; NS, LIfe, 47; EP,Pal, 10-3, 605-618; Shuldiner, Pal, 4-1,72-73; Bowers, Pai, 2-1, 53-66, BK & TCDE, The Explicator, 40 (1981), 43.
Glossary
6. Hamadryas ac Heliades: L, "Hamadryad and Heliads. " The hamadryad [74:148] was a tree nymph. The Heliads were daughters of Helios. They were changed into poplar trees as they mourned for their brother, Phaethon, who was struck dead by a thunder? bolt of Zeus to prevent him from setting the world on fire after he turned out to be too weak to manage the sun chariot of his father, Relios, for one day.
7. Dirce: The wife of Lycus, early mythol? ogical king of the Greek city that later became Thebes. They treated Antiope, the mother of the twins Amphion and Zethus, with such cruelty that she plotted revenge. She, the twins, and a band of herdsmen slew Lycus and tied Dirce by the hair of her head to a bull. The bull dragged her over the ground until she was dead. Pound's imme- diate source was Landor's "With Dirce in one bark conveyed. " The three ladies, Dirce, Ixotta, Guido's donna, are "in the timeless air" because placed there by three poets
[HK].
8. et ! xotta: L, "and Isotta. " Isotta degli Atti [9:59].
9. e che fu . . . : I, "and she who was called Primavera [Spring]"; the lady of Guido Cavalcanti [Dante, La Vita Nuova, XXIV, 20-23] , to whom he addressed a number of ballate.
10. nel c\ivo ed . . . : I, "on the slope and at the trihedral corner": a ,place where three roads cross. Pound traversed such a cross- road daily on his way from Rapallo up to Sant' Ambrogio.
the old road under St. Pantaleo at St. Ambrogio [M de R].
16. Cunizza: C. da Romano [6:34]. In 1265, at age 67, she freed a number of slaves, an act of piety that led Dante to place her in Paradise [74:286].
1. the sun: Apollo, Helios, source of the tensile light descending; metaphor for the divine presence in the world which is some- what obscured to those in the Pisan hell.
2. dove sta memora: I, "where memory liveth" [36:3]. Pound's translation from the Donna mi prega.
3. Signora Agresti: Signora Olivia Rossetti Agresti, daughter of William Michael
Rossetti. Living in Rome, Signora Agresti for years wrote on 20th-century economic problems [Fang, III, 116].
4. A1cmene: The wife of Amphitryon [74:144].
S. Dryas: Dryad [3: 11] ; a tree nymph that lived only as long as the particular tree it was associated with.
12. sotto Ie . . . : I, "under our cliffs. "
13. Sigismundo: S. Malatesta [8:5].
14. Aurelia to Genova: L, "The Aurelian [way]," the highway that runs along the coast from Rome to Pisa and thence to Genoa.
11. periplum: H, [59 :10].
"circumnavigation"
18. she who said . . . mould: Caterina Sforza Riiirio (1463-1509),' daughter of Galeazzo Maria Sforza and wife of both Girolamo Riario and Giovanni de' Medici. As Countess of ForE she was noted for her ruthlessness and celebrated by Machiavelli [Discourses, 1II, 6] for foiling the Orsi conspiracy. Leaving her small children as hostages, she entered Ravaldino promising to hand over the fortress. Mounting the walls, she exposed her genitalia and announced that she still had "the mould for casting more children" [Richard Taylor, letter, 19 April 1983].
19.
450. Fortean Society: A society, organized in 1931, directed by Tiffany Thayer, de- voted to the study of the works of Charles Fort (1874-1932), an American journalist who was interested in researching and documenting unusual and unexplained natural phenomena. The Fortean Society's magazine was called Doubt.
451. bambooiform: Neologism to suggest shape of grass.
452. "La Nascita": I, "_the birth. " The Birth of Venus by Botticelli. The child is prob. Mary, Pound's daughter, and the eyes are those of her mother Olga Rudge.
453. Capoquadri: Name of the house in Siena where Pound used to stay during visits [83 :36].
454. Helios: The sun. The "form beached" is Aphrodite in La Nascita.
455. funge la purezza: I, "the tensile light
"pleasant
they are' " [GK,226]_ 449. metempsychosis at
tion.
. . . .
? :
Reincarna-
? ? ? ! ' I
i!
386
74/447
74/448-449
387
465. barbiche: F, "goatee. "
466. Mr. Quackenbos, or
Abraham Quackenbush, a real estate man who in 1906 had an office at 236 E. 87th SI. He was an old bore who lived at the board-
:inghouse and was always put at the head of "the other long table" so that he would not interfere with Uncle Ezra's heated conversa- tions with M. Fouquet [ibid. ].
467. Mrs. Chittenden's . . . : Poss, Kate SaraC. , 1856-1959, American organist, composer, and lecturer, who may have been a transient resident at the boardinghouse, which, along with Ezra Weston's hotel in Nyack, preserved the elegance of "the old South" observed by Weston when he was caught in the American South during the
Civil War.
468. Mouquin's:
rant Pound referred to in letter to WCW [L, 159].
469. Train: George Francis T. , 1829-1904, American merchant and writer. Founded Train & Co. , which sent clipper-ships to California and made a fortune backing the Union Pa~iflc Railroad. As an independent candidate for U. S. President in 1872, Train made famous inflammatory speeches against politicians, for which he was castigated. He traveled around the world in 67 days and
delivered speeches on the downfall of Napoleon III which were hailed by the French people. Before his death Train often sat on the street outside Mills Hotel in Greenwich Village; earlier he was called the "Sage of Madison Square" because he fed birds and spoke to people openly in the park. Train spent many of his later years in silence, writing messages. He died a pauper
[JW]. In "Indiscretions" Pound wrote: "Francis Train still sat white-headed, or with I think a stiff straw hat on the back of his head, in' a plain wooden hemicycular chair on the pavement before some hotel . . . I was told that he was Francis Train . . . and I read that . . . he had been jailed" [PD, 10].
470. fellow throwing a knife: "Indiscre- tions" gives: "a man throwing a large jack-
knife some fifty feet after a fleeing male figure" [PD, 10].
471. Towers of Pisa . . . : First in a long list of brie-a-brae brought back from Europe and North Africa by Aunt Frances (Frank) Weston. She took the young Pound with her in 1892 and 1898. Also mentioned are family memorabilia from Massachusetts, the home state of the Westons [PD,3-10].
472. 1806 Barre Mass'chusetts: Barre, Mass. Town in central Massachusetts, NW of Worcester.
473. Charter Oak: In writing of his ancestry Pound said: "hence Joseph Wadsworth, who stole the Connecticut charter and hid it in Charter Oak, to the embarrassment of legitimist tyranny" [PD, 6].
474. Torwaldsen lion: Bertel Thorwaldsen, 1770-1844, the Danish sculptor; one of his best known works is the statue of a lion at Lucerne, Switzerland.
475. Paolo Uccello: Paolo di Dono U. , ca. 1396-1475, Florentine painter; one of the "realists" of the 15th century. "I liked Quattrocento paintin'. P. Uccel1o. First freshman theme, I wrote was on Paulo Uccello, picture in Louvre I reckon" [Speak- ing, 138].
476. Al Hambra: The famous group of buildings of Granada, Spain.
Tangiers area, with Gibraltar: "He heard then a warm heavy sigh . . . and the loose brass quoits of the bedstead jingles . . . All the way from Gibraltar" [DG].
480. Mrs. Jevons' hotel: Prob. an inn Pound stayed at in Gibraltar.
481. veder Nap'oiiiii: [vedere . . . ]: I, "to see Naples. " Part of Italian proverb: "See Naples and die"; i. e. you will then have seen everything [HK].
482. Pavia the romanesque: Capital of Pavia, province of Lombardy, N Italy. Its Church of San Michele is an excellent example of 12th-century Lombard Roman- esque architecture.
483. San Zeno: San Zeno Maggiore, a Romanesque church in V erona. Contains the column signed Adamo me fecit [45:14].
484. S. Pietro: San Pietro Martire (formerly San Giorgetto dei Domeniconi), on right bank of Adige in Verona. Contains fresco by Giovanni Maria Fa1conetto: "The Corona- tion of the Virgin," with kneeling Teutonic knights [Fang, II, 260] .
485. madonna in Ortolo: L, Madonna in the Garden, painting by Stefano da Verona
[4:45].
486. e "fa . . . tremare": I, "and 'make the air tremble with clarity' " [cf. 425 above].
487. Trattoria . . . : I, "Inn of the Apostles (twelve). " Small restaurant in V erona where Pound and Manlio Torquato Dazzi ate in 1912 when they visited the Biblioteca Capitolare to consult the Cavalcanti MSS
[Fang, II, 316].
488. "Ecco il te": I, " 'Here is the tea. ' "
489. piccolo: I, "young boy"; here the first stage in the multistaged career of a waiter.
490. Assisi: Town in Umbria, central Italy; birthplace of SI. Francis of Assisi. Above the saint's tomb, two Gothic churches were built, both decorated with frescoes by Cimabue, Giotto, and others [for decline of coffee see Kimpel, Pai, 10-2,307].
491. Orleans: Town in Loiret Department, N central France.
492. Mr. Carver: George Washington C. , ? 1864-1943, American agricultural chemist who discovered many new uses for products of the South. He got farmers to give up soil-exhausting cotton for crop rotation of peanuts and sweet potatoes. "From the peanut he made cheese, milk, coffee, flour, ink, dyes, soap, wood stains and insulating board" [EB].
493. arachidi: I, "peanuts. " As food short- ages developed during the war, Pound tried to persuade a number of bureaucrats thilt Italy should start cultivating peanuts. In A Visiting Card he wrote: "Peanuts could bring self-sufficiency in food to Italy or, rather to the empire, for these 'monkey nuts' would grow better in Cyrenaica" [SP, 319].
494. wops: Italian immigrants who at- tempted to enter the U. S. without permis- sion had a form given to them at Ellis Island stamped WOPS-"without papers. " Thus, the term came to refer to Italians in general. Pound does not use it in a pejorative sense.
495. Ragusa: A port of Dalmatia; from 1205 to 1358 under the control of Venice.
496. Herr Bacher's father: Heinrich B. 's father, Michael, was a woodcarver who resided near Brunico, in the Italian Tyrol
[EH].
New Y ork
French
restau-
Quackenbush:
mirador . . .
S, "the gal-
477. el
lery of Queen Lindaraja"; prob. Lindaraxa, the Zegri princess in Gines Perez de Hita's Guerras Civiles de Granada. .
478. PerdicarisjRais UIi: [cf. 161, 163 above ] .
479. Mr. Joyce . . . Hercules: From Victor Berard's works on the Odyssey, especially Calypso et la Mer de L 'Atlantide [Armand Colin, PariS, 1927-1929]. Joyce got the idea that Calypso's island was near Gibraltar, which he conceived to be the "Pillars of Hercules. " Leopold Bloom's train of thought, as he prepares Molly's breakfast and lurks outside her bedroom door (Ulysses, Chap. II, p. 56], associates a gift, also from the
Lindaraja:
497. Salustio's . . . :
1470, son of Sigismundo Malatesta and Isotta [Ixotta] degli Atti. The "itaglios" refer to the seals ofSalustio cut by Pisanello: see specimen in frontispiece of GK.
498. crystal jet: Recurrent image of divinity manifest.
The progression from water in early cantos to crystal, jade, and other forms-such as the great acorn of light in the later, paradisal cantos-becomes ever clearer.
499. Verlaine: Paul V. , 1844-1896. "The one word 'Verlaine' assembles 'crystal' and 'jet' and sculptor under the sign of his 'Clair de Lune' which closes with great
S. Malatesta,
1448-
? ? 388
74/449,75/450
75/450-451
389
ecstatic fountains among statues ('les grands jets d'eau sveltes parmi 1es marbres')"
[HK, Era, 482-483].
500. Zephyrus/Apeliota: West and East
winds: "Wind also is of the process. "
501. nec accidens est: L, "and is not an attribute. "
502. est agens: L, "it is an agent. "
503. rose in the steel dust: A pattern formed under magnetic influence. A graphic image of divine order operating in the material world-a miracle which can be seen occasionally in such a thing as the "down" on a swan. Allen Upward had written: "He who has watched the iron crumbs drawn into patterns by the magnet; or who in the
Milano (15th-century)" [cf. 8 Gerhart Munch (g canto) [cf. 2
CANTO LXXV
Sources
Virgil, Aeneid VI; EP, GK, 203, 151-152,ABCR, 54.
Background
EP, Townsman, 1 (Jan. 1938), p. 18; R. Murray Schafer, Ezra Pound and Music, New Directions, New York, 1977,348-399 and
passim.
Exegesis
EH, Pai, 10-2,295-296; WB, Pai, 10-3, 594; Stephen 1. Adams, "The Soundscope of The Cantos," Humanities Assoc. Review, 28 (Spring 1977), 167-188.
Glossary
2. Gerhart: G. Munch, German (Dresden) pianist, composer, and arranger who during the 1930s spent a lot of time in Rapallo, where he played concerts with Olga Rudge. He arranged Janequin's Le Chant des Oiseaux, along with other old music that appealed to Pound [GK, 151-153]. Along with Antheil [74:64], Pound considered Munch in the vanguard of the moderns.
3. Buxtehude: Dietrich B. , 1637-1707, German composer and organist who influ~ enced the work of Bach.
4. Klages: Ludwig K. , 1872-1956, German anthropologist to whom Munch addressed a number of letters. Klage's major work in five volumes, Der Geist als Widersacher der Seele [The intellect as adversary of the soul], had an influe. nce upon Munch's work. His name and ideas came to Pound via Munch [EH, Pai, 10-2, 295-296]. Not to be confused with Charles Klages a 19th-century French composer and guitarist.
S. Stiindebuch: G, "collection" [GK, 203]. The word, not to be found in most German dictionaries, occurs in the title of a book of Jost Amman's illustrations to the songs of Hans Sachs [WB,Pai, 10-3,594].
6. -not of one _. . : Pound wrote of the Janequin piece: "The gist, the pith, the unbreakable fact is there in the two pages of violin part __ . [heard] not one bird but a lot of birds as our violinist said on first playing it" [Townsman, 1 (Jan. 1938), p. 18; Adams, 182]_
7. The handwritten words say: (Sidelights from Salassi: La canzone da Ii ucelli (I, "the song of the birds"). Fatto del Violino
(I, "made for the violin"). Francesco da Milina (S cento) ([F. da Milano] I, "Fran-
1. Phlegethon: The river of fire in Hades [25 :46]. The fiaming river flows around the walls of a mighty city, from which the groans and screams of the inhabitants are heard by Aeneas [Aeneid V i]. Horror- stricken, he asks the Sibyl (his guide) what
they are. She says that they come from the judgment hall of Rhadamanthus, who brings to light crimes done in life. In the depths under the city, guarded by the Hydra, are the Titans and such condemned men as Salmoneus, Sisyphus, Tantalus, and Ixion.
frostwork on the window pane has appre- hended the unknown beauty of the crystal's law, seems to me to have an idea more wholesome to our frail imaginings of the meaning of the Mystery of Life" [Upward, The New Word, 222; cited by Knox, Pai, 3-1,81].
504. Swansdown: In "Her Triumph," by Ben Jonson, we read: I'Ra' you felt the wool of beaver / Or swan's down ever? I Or have smelt 0 ' the bud 0 ' the briar? 1Or the nard in the fire? " [from A Celebration of Charis: in Ten Lyric Pieces (1624)]. All are examples of miracles of creation [DD, Ezra Pound, 78].
50S. Lethe: The river of forgetfulness in Hades.
The Sibyl then leads the hero toward the Elysian Fields, where the inhabitants are dancing and singing and where "Orpheus struck the chords of his lyre, and called
cesco of
below]).
above]. [per metamorfosi] (I, "by meta- morphosis").
forth ravishing sounds. " _ Pound Allied fire-bombing o f Dresden "the fiaming river" [HK].
said the suggested
8_ Milano: Francesco da M. , 1497-ca. 1543, Italian lutist and composer known as "11 divinio" t o his devotees. His version o f Janequin's "Song of the Birds" became the basis for Munch's [cf. 2 above] version for violin and piano, which became a favorite item for the Rapallo concerts. The violin line by Munch, the basis of the canto, became for Pound a prime example of the mutual support song and music could give each other: "Clement Janequin wrote a chorus, with words for the singers of the different parts of the chorus. These words would have no literary or poetic value if you took the music away but when Francesco da Milano reduced it for the lute the birds were still in the music. And when Munch transcribed it for modern instruments the birds were still there. They ARE still there in the violin parts" [ABCR, 54]. Pound connects the dynamic form in Janequin to "swansdown" and "the rose in the steel dust," which ended Canto 74: "If F. Di Milano . . . chiselled down Dowland's and Janequin's choral words. _. I have a perfect right to HEAR Janequin's intervals, his melodic conjunctions from the violin solo. . . . The forma, the immortal concetto, the concept, the dynamic form which is like the rose pattern driven into the dead iron-filings by the magnet, not by material contact. . . . Cut off by the layer of glass, the dust and filings rise and spring into order. . . . Thus the forma, the concept rises from the death. . . . Janequin's concept takes a third life in our time. . . . And its ancestry I think goes back to Arnaut Daniel and to god knows what 'hidden antiquity'" [GK, 151-152]. The reader should pause for thought: Canto 75 is an exemplum of the forma or the dynamic form of The Cantos as
a whole as well as a transitional move out of hell [cf. 1 above] toward paradiso terrestre.
9. >K fl : Prob. early bone inscription form for fJ( [53:42,43]: "make it new" [DG].
? 390
76/452
76/452
391
CANTO LXXVI Sources
Cavalcanti, "Donna mi prega," LE, 163-167; Dante, La Vita Nuova, XXIV; EP, CON, 20, 29, 239; Micah 4. 5; Leviticus 19. 35-36; EP, "Three Cantos," Poetry, June 1917; Homer, Od. I, 4; Dante, Par. VIII, 37; Time, June 4, 1945,36 and June 11, 1945, 50; Herodotus I, 98, Loeb, I; Lyra Graeca I, fr. 1, 184; OBGV, No. 140; Goethe, Faust, pt. 2, Act II, 11. 6819-7004; Ralph Cheever Dunning, The Four Winds, London, 1931; Herman
Suchier, Aucassin und Nicolette, Paderburn, F. SchDningh, 1889; Paracelsus, De generationibus rerum naturalium, Passage, 238; Ford Madox Ford, Provence, London, George Allen & Unwin,
1938.
Background
EP, GK, Ill, 17, 109,328,259, 159; SP, 454,433,322; Townsman, April 1939; SR, 84, 121; MIN, 390; L, 254, 249, 147,282; Henry James Warner, The Albigensian Heresy, New York, Russell, 1967; Gianfranco Ivancich, Ezra Pound's Italy, New York, Rlzzoli, 1978; Aristotle, Politics; Nichomachean Ethics; Marion K. Sanders, Dorothy Thompson, A Legend in Her Time, Boston, Houghton-Mifflin, 1973; Kenneth Quinn, CatuUus, An Interpretation, New York, Barnes & Noble, 1973.
Exegeses
Achilles Fang, "Materials for the Study of Pound's Cantos," Ph. D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1958, II, III, IV [Fang]; Stuart Gilbert, Letters ofJames Joyce, New York, Viking, 1957; Mde R, Discretions, 221; HK, Era, 469; NS, LIfe, 47; EP,Pal, 10-3, 605-618; Shuldiner, Pal, 4-1,72-73; Bowers, Pai, 2-1, 53-66, BK & TCDE, The Explicator, 40 (1981), 43.
Glossary
6. Hamadryas ac Heliades: L, "Hamadryad and Heliads. " The hamadryad [74:148] was a tree nymph. The Heliads were daughters of Helios. They were changed into poplar trees as they mourned for their brother, Phaethon, who was struck dead by a thunder? bolt of Zeus to prevent him from setting the world on fire after he turned out to be too weak to manage the sun chariot of his father, Relios, for one day.
7. Dirce: The wife of Lycus, early mythol? ogical king of the Greek city that later became Thebes. They treated Antiope, the mother of the twins Amphion and Zethus, with such cruelty that she plotted revenge. She, the twins, and a band of herdsmen slew Lycus and tied Dirce by the hair of her head to a bull. The bull dragged her over the ground until she was dead. Pound's imme- diate source was Landor's "With Dirce in one bark conveyed. " The three ladies, Dirce, Ixotta, Guido's donna, are "in the timeless air" because placed there by three poets
[HK].
8. et ! xotta: L, "and Isotta. " Isotta degli Atti [9:59].
9. e che fu . . . : I, "and she who was called Primavera [Spring]"; the lady of Guido Cavalcanti [Dante, La Vita Nuova, XXIV, 20-23] , to whom he addressed a number of ballate.
10. nel c\ivo ed . . . : I, "on the slope and at the trihedral corner": a ,place where three roads cross. Pound traversed such a cross- road daily on his way from Rapallo up to Sant' Ambrogio.
the old road under St. Pantaleo at St. Ambrogio [M de R].
16. Cunizza: C. da Romano [6:34]. In 1265, at age 67, she freed a number of slaves, an act of piety that led Dante to place her in Paradise [74:286].
1. the sun: Apollo, Helios, source of the tensile light descending; metaphor for the divine presence in the world which is some- what obscured to those in the Pisan hell.
2. dove sta memora: I, "where memory liveth" [36:3]. Pound's translation from the Donna mi prega.
3. Signora Agresti: Signora Olivia Rossetti Agresti, daughter of William Michael
Rossetti. Living in Rome, Signora Agresti for years wrote on 20th-century economic problems [Fang, III, 116].
4. A1cmene: The wife of Amphitryon [74:144].
S. Dryas: Dryad [3: 11] ; a tree nymph that lived only as long as the particular tree it was associated with.
12. sotto Ie . . . : I, "under our cliffs. "
13. Sigismundo: S. Malatesta [8:5].
14. Aurelia to Genova: L, "The Aurelian [way]," the highway that runs along the coast from Rome to Pisa and thence to Genoa.
11. periplum: H, [59 :10].
"circumnavigation"
18. she who said . . . mould: Caterina Sforza Riiirio (1463-1509),' daughter of Galeazzo Maria Sforza and wife of both Girolamo Riario and Giovanni de' Medici. As Countess of ForE she was noted for her ruthlessness and celebrated by Machiavelli [Discourses, 1II, 6] for foiling the Orsi conspiracy. Leaving her small children as hostages, she entered Ravaldino promising to hand over the fortress. Mounting the walls, she exposed her genitalia and announced that she still had "the mould for casting more children" [Richard Taylor, letter, 19 April 1983].
19.
