Vae qui
cogitatis
inutile: L, "Woe to you who think without purpose.
A-Companion-to-the-Cantos-of-Ezra-Pound-II
.
Let the ruffians who have made the distur- bance alone be punished .
.
.
seize the bank ruffians.
" Benton's demand was acted upon: "The ringleader was seized, and brought to the bar.
This sudden example intimidated the rest; and the expunging process was per- formed in quiet.
" And so ended one chapter in the wars of the bank [TYV, I, 528-550,
717-731).
259. Securing . . . in 'elect: Daniel Webster in 1833, looking forward to becoming presi- dent in the next election, decided that form- ing an alliance with Jackson would be his best ploy. He thought they'd make a good team. Webster seemed to think he was "ad- mirably qualified for a great adviser. " Jack- son's "heart to execute" would be abetted by "the majesty of his [Webster's) intellect" [MVB, Auto, 687-690). Since there is no mention of Dante in the sources, nor evi- dence that either Webster or Jackson had
read him, and since part of Webster's ploy was to assist Jackson in the next election "Dante" is prob. a typo for "Dan'el. " '
. . .
due in Great Britain. " Benton was against a proposal for the federal government to as- sume the debt: "We have had one assump- tion in our country . . . [and that) was at- tended by such evils as should deter posteri- ty from imitating the example" [TYV, II, 171? 175). Benton opposed the "Assumption of the State Debts" and the measure did n o t pass.
. . .
Thomas Benton fired twice at the falling form of Jackson and Jesse lunged forward to shoot again . . . . Jackson's wounds soaked two mattresses with blood. . . . He was near- ly dead-his left shoulder shattered by a slug, and a ball embedded against the upper bone of the arm" [James, Jackson, 153). Later on, when Benton was battling for Jackson as President, another "expunging" took place: "the President had to submit to a surgical operation for the extraction of the bullet which he had carried in his left arm ever since the time of the Benton affray, in Nash- ville, twenty years before . . . . The doctor made a bold incision into the flesh, gave the arm a squeeze, and out jumped the ball upon the floor. " Parton says, "My informant does not state whether the General restored the ball to its rightful owner [Jesse Benton) or his representative [THB)" [Parton, Life of
Andrew Jackson, III, 415-416).
260. "No
1891-1970, a prolific writer who lived in England 1910? 1912. The quote about Russia is attributed in Orientamenti to a conversa- tion with "the novelist Knitl. " Pound wrote in Meridiana di Roma [7 June 1942): "cer- tainly the great civilizations are monuments and splendid and leave monuments because they have marble" [BK). By this measure? ment, Russia, with "no stone," has no chance [97:259).
Knittl: Prob. John
Knittel,
261. (Hrooshia): Russia [103:82).
distress
. . . : In 1841, THB
262. Make
spoke against the repeal of the Independent Treasury Act, which would put the mone- tary power back in the hands of the banks: "the architects of the mischief-the political, gambling, and rotten part of the banks, headed by the Bank of the United States and aided by a political party-set to work to make panic and distress, to make suspen- sions and revulsions, to destroy trade and
business, to degrade and poison the curren- cy; to harass the country until it would give them another national bank: and to charge all the mischief they created upon the demo- cratic administration" [TYV, 11,228).
263. "The angrier . . . : Meigs writes: "All agree that he [Benton} was a terrible man in anger, but while some say that on such occa- sions he grew almost beside himself and be- came the helpless victim of his fury, both Wentworth and Dyer think that the higher his anger the cooler he was and he never lost
his self-possession" [Meigs, Life o f THE, 487) .
266. "EXPUNGED": Over 20 years earlier, Jesse Benton, brother of Thomas Hart Ben- ton, with the encouragement of gossip pro- v? ked Jackson into threatening to horsewhip hrm. On Sept 4, 1813, they met in a bar- room in Nashville. Jackson went for him "brandishing his whip," saying, "Now, de~ fend yourself you damned rascal! " THB, then a colonel, came from the corridor and saw "Jackson's gun at his [brother's) breast. " He whipped out his own gun and fired: "]ackson pitched forward, firing. . . ,
267. I want
August, 1842) attended by four of his men, he [Fremont) climbed the loftiest peak of the Rocky Mountains" [TYV, 11,478-479).
268. Reck: Michael R. , who visited Pound often during the St. Elizabeths years, wrote: "In June 1954, I visited Fenollosa's grave at the Miidera, a temple overlooking Lake Biwa near Kyoto. . . . Fenollosa lies in a clearing among the trees, Biwa gracefully beneath: a stone urn resting on a concrete base . . . . I described my visit in a letter to Pound, and he recorded it in the last line of his Canto 89" [Reck, Close-up, 174. 175) .
264. one "assumption":
82,83): "About one half of the States had contracted debts abroad which they were unable to pay when due, and in many in- stances were unable to pay the current an- nual interest. These debts at this time
[1839) amounted to one hundred and sev? enty millions of dollars, and were chiefly
[69:67, 76,
L
265. English debt
against assumption, Benton said: "What is more unwise and more unjust than to con- tract debts on long time . . . thereby in- vading the rights and mortgaging the re- sources of posterity, and loading un born generations with debts not their own? . . The British national debt owes its existence entirely to this policy. It was but a trifle in the beginning of the last century, and might have been easily paid during the reigns of the first and second George; but the policy was . . . to pay the interest annually, and send down the principal to posterity" [ibid. , 175).
posterity:
In a speech
Fremont . . .
: Says THB: "[In
? 540
90/605
90/605-606
541
CANTO XC Sources
into the side of the mountain. Over all a great cliff beetles above a deep recess that seems like a fold in the mountain, whence the waters of Castalia flow. Known as the fount of poetic inspiration.
6. Templum aedifieans: L, "Building the temple. "
7. "Amphion! ": Son of Zeus. Hermes taught him to play the lyre so well that when he became king of Thebes he fortified the city with a wall magically conjured up by his music: at the sound of his lyre the stones moved into place by themselves.
8. Ideogram: San [M5415J, "three"; Ideo? gram: ku [M3470J, "alone. " The San Ku was an inner council in ancient China. Pound associated it with the Eleusinian tradition that culminated in the Order of the Tem- plars. It was a sort of Masonic council with an initiation rite called the Widow's Son, "which is also to be found in some of the Romance literature of the Middle Ages and in the moder~ Masonic ritual" [NS, Exile, 23-26J. [87:75J.
9. Poitiers: Town in W central France. The reference is to a particular room in the town's Hotel de Ville ("once part of the home of Duke William IX of Aquitaine," [JWJ), so constructed that one does not cast a shadow when standing in it [6:1, 2;
76:77J.
10. Sagetrieb: "Passing on the tradition" from father to son, or transmitting civiliza- tion from one generation to the next [85: 194J. In this context, the passing on by priests of the secrets of the Eleusinian mys- teries.
11. Jacques de Molay: [87:77J. Last grand master of the Order of Templars, who was burnt at the stake for heresy. The Templars were associated with the Masons. The Gol- den Section of Pythagoras informs the con- cept of proportions [DD,Pai, I-I, 58J.
12. Erigena: Scotus E. [36:9; 74:90; 85:53J. The line suggests, "Was not Erigena also a member of the brotherhood of Eleusis? "
13. Kuthera: L, Aphrodite. She was called Kuthera because the island of Cythera (now Kythera) was sacred to her.
J. P. Migne, Patrologiae Latina, Tomus 196: Opera Omnia Rich- ardt A Sancta Victore,- De praeparatione animi ad contempla~ tionem (Benjamin Minor); De gratia contemplationis (Benjamin Major) [Migne, column no. J; Luke 7. 47; Dante, Par. I, 75; EP, CON, 179-181; Thaddeus Zielinski, "The Sibyl," Edge, no. 2, 1956; Juan Ramon Jimenez, Animal de Fonda, Buenos Aires, Editorial Pleamar, 1949; Ovid, Meta. V, 600 ff.
Background
EP , SP, 71-72; EM, Difficult, 306, ff. ; CE Ideas, 109-113; Dekker, The Cantos of Ezra Pound, 74-86 [CantosJ; DD, Sculptor, 208-213; EH, Approaches, 25-27, 164? 165, passim; CB-R, ZBC, 132, 203-204; Juan Ramon Jimenez, Libras de Poesia, Aguilar, 1959 [Libras].
Exegeses
D. J. Neault, Pai, 3? 2, 219? 227; WB,Approaches, 311; NS, Exile, 23-26; HK, Gnomon: Essays on Contemporary Literature, New York, 1958,280? 297; JW, Pai, 2? 2,178; DG, Pai, 3-2,239? 244; HK, Era, 368; MB, Trace, 259? 277.
Glossary
15. sernpitema: L, "everlasting. " 16. Ubi . . . oculus: L, "Where love
1. Animus . . . procedit: L, "The human soul is not love, but love flows from it, and it delights not in the idea of itself but in the love which flows from it" [Richard of St. Victor, Quomodo Spiritus sanctus est amor Patris et Filii (Migne, 1012B); cf. DJN, Pai, 3-2, 222J.
2. "From the colour . . . : Reference to the doctrine of signatures of John Heydon [87:82J. Just as the color, shape, and size of item and leaf are aspects of the "signature" of a particular plant, so "love" or the "abili- ty to love," is the Signature of the "soul" or the mark of the divine in man [WB,
Approaches, 311 J .
3. Ygdrasail: [YggdrasiIJ: The great ash tree
in Eddic mythology [85:6J. Its roots reached to the center of the earth, and its
branches supported the Heavens. It con- tained and expressed the universe.
4. Bauds: From a myth of gods disguised to test the charity of people by seeking food and drink. They were refused by all except Baucis and her husband Philemon, who gave them what they had. The gods flooded other houses away but transformed their cottage into a temple and granted Bauds and Phile- mon their wish to serve as keepers. Years later they were metamorphosed into two trees that grew twined together. A rhyme with the pines at Takasago and ]se [4:22, 23J.
5. Castalia: A fountain dedicated to Apollo on Mr. Parnassus at Delphi. Pilgrims to the oracle purified themselves there. The various temples and shrines were built in niches cut
501;cf. 1 aboveJ.
17.
Vae qui cogitatis inutile: L, "Woe to you who think without purpose. " Pound correlates the three states, Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, with Richard's three levels of intellectual activity. Cogitatio, in which "the mind flits aimlessly about the object" [GK, 77J, is "a haphazard improvident looking about" [Pai, 2-3, 500-501 J. "Woe" suggests the Hell-direction of those who do purpose? less thinking. Meditatio correlates with Pur- gatory and comtemplatio with mystic and visionary aspirations for Paradise.
18. quam in nobis . . . imago: L, part of a sentence that correctly reads: "Bona volun- tatis per quam in nobis divinae similitudinis imago reperietur," Pound translated it as: "The good things of will, through which an image of the divine likeness will be found in us" [SP,71J.
19. Randolph: John R. of Roanoke, Va. , who "loved much," as the Greek in the next line reads [87: 10J. His love of mankind led him to free his slaves by wills and several codicils between 1819 and 1831: "I give my slaves their freedom to which my conscience tells me they are justly entitled" [Bruce, Randolph, Vol. II, 49J.
20. inOI7f1)UEV 1[0/1. 6: H, "she loved much. " From the New Testament story of Jesus being tested by Simon the Pharisee [Luke 7. 47J. While Jesus "sat at meat" at Simon's house, a woman who was a sinner "brought an alabaster box of ointment" and "began to wash his feet with tears, and did wipe them with the hairs of her head . . . and annointed them with the ointment. " Simon thought
?
14. oEtva: inspiring. "
H, "terrifying" or
"fear-
is, there is the eye" [Richard of St. Victor, Benjamin Minor, 13; DG, Pai, 2-3, 500; DJN,Pai, 2-3,
? 542
90/606
90/606-607
543
that if Jesus were really a prophet he would have known what the woman was and would not have allowed her to come near him. Knowing what was in Simon's heart, Jesus told the story of the creditor who had two debtors, one who owed much and one who owed little. The creditor, finding neither had money to pay, forgave them both. Jesus asked, "Tell me therefore, which of them will love him most? " Simon gave the right answer and Jesus then compared his acbons with those of the sinner and concluded, "wherefore I say unto thee, her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much; but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little. " The Greek phrase is thematic
to this central Paradiso canto, the first half of which concerns the various ways divinity manifests itself through love: the woman's love is "a good thing of will" flowing from the soul, as was the love of Randolph in his act of manumission.
21. liberavit masnatos: L, "he freed his slaves," An act of humanitarian compassion which rhymes with that of Cunizza da Ro- mano, who freed her slaves. The Latin phrase is also applied to her [6:34; 29: 14].
22. Castalia: [cf. 5 above]_
23_ Evita: Prob. Eva Peron, wife of Juan P. then dictator of Argentina; but poss. Eva Braun, the mistress, consort, or companion of Hitler. While Pound was writing parts of this canto, Llfe magazine carried a picture of a breadline in Washington just at the time the Marshall Plan, with billions of dollars for Europe, was being announced. Eva Peron's response was to organize "a drive in Argen- tina for the poor gringos of the North" [EM, Difficult, 306]. The story, promoted by Lampman [97:60], caused Pound great amusement.
24. semina motuum: L, "seeds of motion. " This Latin tag is? used as a musical figure to express one of the most important religious concepts of The Cantos,-and one of the dimensions in which the mysterium is per- ceived similarly in both the East and the West. The good things of will (directio vol-
untatis) [77:57] flow from the soul as per- ceived by Richard of St. Victor, a Christian mystic, but Pound found a similar idea ex- pressed by Confucius in the Analects. A few fragments of Tsze Tze's Third Thesis climax: "He who possesses this sincerity does not lull himself to somnolence. . . . Fulfilling himself he attains full manhood. . . . The in? born nature begets this activity naturally, this looking straight into oneself and thence acting. These two activities constitute the process which unites outer and inner . . . and thence constitutes a harmony with the sea- sons of earth and heaven. . . . Hence the highest grade of this clarifying activity has no limit, it neither stops nor stays. Not coming to a stop, it endures; continuing du- rable, it arrives at the minima [the seeds whence movement springs]. From these hid- den seeds it moves forth slowly but goes far and with slow but continuing motion it penetrates the solid, penetrating the solid it comes to shine forth on high" [EP, CON, 179-181; see also CON, 59 and 89:252].
25_ Sibylla: The all-seeing priestess of the oracle at Delphi. For a number of years Pound tried to get "The Sibyl" by Thaddeus Zielinski translated into English. It was final- ly finished and published in 1956 as the 2d number pf Edge. The sibyl is mainly a pro- phetess but seems also to function as an intercessor [97: 160]. Sheri Martinelli is un- derstood to be the real-life sibyl at St. Elizabeths.
26. m'elevasti: I, "you lifted me up" [adap? ted from Par. 1,75], praise which Dante lovingly attributes to Beatrice.
27. Erebus: The dark place through which souls must pass on the way to Hades.
28_ Isis: In Egyptian mythology, Isis, the earth goddess, was the wife of Osiris, god of the sun and the Nile-in which form he visi- ted her as flooding water. Isis correlates with Ishtar, Demeter, and Ceres as the goddess of grain, renewal, and compassion. In the myth, she gathered up the limbs of Osiris and re- stored the god of light under Ra to his power. Early in his career Pound wrote a
series of articles that together are called, "I gather the Limbs of Osiris. " They appeared in New Age, Dec. 7, 191 I-Feb. 15, 1912 [SP, 21-43]_ Here, at a particularly dramatic moment in The Cantos, Pound brings a key element in Western myth together in one image with the compassionate bodhisattva of the East, Kuanon.
Spanish poet from Andalusia who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1956 while in Puerto Rico. The death of his father (which be observed in 1900) was a great trauma from which he never freed himself. During the remainder of his life, he traveled a lot and lived in the U. S. , Puerto Rico, and Cuba. He lectured in Argentina in 1948. Returning to the U. S. by ship, he had the intense mystical experience that he tried to evoke in Animal de Fonda (! 949). In this
book, his obsession with nothingness and the fear of death, symbolized in earlier books by various sea and ocean metaphors, is resolved. Animal de Fonda is filled with joy, mystical aspirations, and the union of the "inner" and "outer" selves, realized by a perception of spirit as beauty, ecstasy, and light. Poem 29 in this volume ("Soy animal de fonda") is the immediate source of Pound's imagery
[Jimenez, Libros, p. 1339].
34. Castalia: [Cf. 5 above]_ Castalia was a
water nymph who, pursued by Apollo, leaped into the spring at Delphi which bears her name. A rhyme with the myth of Are- thusa.
35. Arethusa: A water nymph in the service of Diana [Ovid, Meta. V, 600 ff. ]. As with Daphne [2:26] Pound changes some details in the myth. Arethusa, bathing naked in a still stream, inspired lust in a water-god, who pursued her. She fled far, but finally, feeling his heavy panting on her hair, she called for help to Diana, who spirited her into the earth so she could escape and brought her to light again as a fountain in Sicily. The pop- lars and willows of the source are changed to the elms of the lawn of St. Elizabeths, and Areth. usa is seen as a lone nymph.
36. Wei and Han: Two Chinese rivers which join. This rhymes with the Arethusa myth: as a fountain Arethusa flowed together with
the water? god Alpheus.
37. Richardus: Among the "gists" from Richard of St. Victor [85:52] Pound gives one that translates, "watch birds to under- stand how spiritual things move, animals to understand physical motion" [SP, 71]. The
r
29. Kuanon:
[74: 81].
30. the blue serpent: The uraeus, or blue cobra: the emblem of the sacred serpent in the headdress of Egyptian divinities. At this time Pound's interest in Egyptian analogues for his canto themes led Sheri Martinelli (the most immediate motivation for Canto 90) to do a painting entitled "Isis of the Two King? dams" [Pai, 3-2, 240]. About this painting David Gordon wrote: "Here is the faintly blue serpentine cobra just below the sun-disc
of this composite Egyptian and Chinese god- dess of compassion: 'the natural object is always the adequate symbol. ' And it is she herself who is lifting the protagonist from the dust" [DG, Pai, 3-2, 241]-and from the dust to one of the most dramatic paradisal visions of the poem. Here the musical leit- motif "aram vult nemus" ("the grove needs its altar"), sounded several times earlier,
[74:441; 78:91; 79:126] receives visionary fulfillment. Beginning with the viper and the blue serpent, all nature answers the call and comes from the depths of the ocean and out of the earth to the grove, where smoke and bright flame rise from the altar. Just as Dio- nysus at the moment of declaring his god? head evoked a furry assemblage out of the air [2/7-9]-lynx, leopard, and panther-so in the following lines the hieratic animals answer the call.
31. lamps float: Ceremony celebrating the death of Adonis. Every July at Rapallo, "vo- tive lights [were] set adrift in the Golfo di Tigullio for the festival of Montallegre Ma- donna. " EP associated it with primitive rites to Tammuz-Adonis [HK, Era, 368; 47:7].
32. "De fondo": S, "of the depths. "
33. Juan Ramon: J_ R. Jimenez, 1881-1958,
? 544
free-flowing waters suggest the way thought
90/607-609
52. Xe)uSwv: H, "swallow. " An echo of 1. 429 of The Waste Land and the Philomela of Pervigilium Venen? s.
53. Corpus: L, "Body. " Evokes rhyme with
the church festival and procession on Corpus
Christi day, the first Thursday after Trinity Sunday.
54. Erebus: Dark place in the netherworld.
After the incantation, we have a vision of souls being delivered out of Hades and rising up out of the earth.
55. Tyro: Daughter of Salmoneus who be- came enamored with the divine river [2:12].
56. Alcmene: [Alcmena]: Wife of Jupiter
and mother of Hercules.
57. e i cavalieri: I, "and the chevaliers, or cavalry. "
58. 'HA? KTP": H, "Electra. " Daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra. Clytemnes- tra became the paramour of Aegisthus while Agamemnon was away at the Trojan War. After Clytemnestra murdered her husband, Electra joined with her brother Orestes to murder her mother.
59. Trees die & the dream remains: Accord- ing to Sheri Martinelli, this line was evoked by a thought of Juan Ramon Jimenez [cf. 33 above]. Pound was struck by a line something like, "Love dies but the trees re- main. " Going a step beyond his own "What thou lovest well remains, the rest is dross" [81/521], it prompted him to "make it new" and evoke the dream, which for him is the vision still of paradiso terrestre.
60. ex animo: L, "from the soul. " 61. UBI AMOR . . . : [Cf. 16 above].
91/610
545
ought to flow in the unburdened [DJN,Pai, 3-2,225].
38. Gaio! . . . : I, "merry, merry. " 39. rilievi: I, "reliefs. " In sculpture.
mind
CANTO XCI
Sources
Jean Beck, Die Melodien der Troubadours und Trouvers; Philos- tratus, Life ofApolionius ofTyana, trans. F. C. Conybeare (Loeb Classical library) [Apollonius]; L. A.
717-731).
259. Securing . . . in 'elect: Daniel Webster in 1833, looking forward to becoming presi- dent in the next election, decided that form- ing an alliance with Jackson would be his best ploy. He thought they'd make a good team. Webster seemed to think he was "ad- mirably qualified for a great adviser. " Jack- son's "heart to execute" would be abetted by "the majesty of his [Webster's) intellect" [MVB, Auto, 687-690). Since there is no mention of Dante in the sources, nor evi- dence that either Webster or Jackson had
read him, and since part of Webster's ploy was to assist Jackson in the next election "Dante" is prob. a typo for "Dan'el. " '
. . .
due in Great Britain. " Benton was against a proposal for the federal government to as- sume the debt: "We have had one assump- tion in our country . . . [and that) was at- tended by such evils as should deter posteri- ty from imitating the example" [TYV, II, 171? 175). Benton opposed the "Assumption of the State Debts" and the measure did n o t pass.
. . .
Thomas Benton fired twice at the falling form of Jackson and Jesse lunged forward to shoot again . . . . Jackson's wounds soaked two mattresses with blood. . . . He was near- ly dead-his left shoulder shattered by a slug, and a ball embedded against the upper bone of the arm" [James, Jackson, 153). Later on, when Benton was battling for Jackson as President, another "expunging" took place: "the President had to submit to a surgical operation for the extraction of the bullet which he had carried in his left arm ever since the time of the Benton affray, in Nash- ville, twenty years before . . . . The doctor made a bold incision into the flesh, gave the arm a squeeze, and out jumped the ball upon the floor. " Parton says, "My informant does not state whether the General restored the ball to its rightful owner [Jesse Benton) or his representative [THB)" [Parton, Life of
Andrew Jackson, III, 415-416).
260. "No
1891-1970, a prolific writer who lived in England 1910? 1912. The quote about Russia is attributed in Orientamenti to a conversa- tion with "the novelist Knitl. " Pound wrote in Meridiana di Roma [7 June 1942): "cer- tainly the great civilizations are monuments and splendid and leave monuments because they have marble" [BK). By this measure? ment, Russia, with "no stone," has no chance [97:259).
Knittl: Prob. John
Knittel,
261. (Hrooshia): Russia [103:82).
distress
. . . : In 1841, THB
262. Make
spoke against the repeal of the Independent Treasury Act, which would put the mone- tary power back in the hands of the banks: "the architects of the mischief-the political, gambling, and rotten part of the banks, headed by the Bank of the United States and aided by a political party-set to work to make panic and distress, to make suspen- sions and revulsions, to destroy trade and
business, to degrade and poison the curren- cy; to harass the country until it would give them another national bank: and to charge all the mischief they created upon the demo- cratic administration" [TYV, 11,228).
263. "The angrier . . . : Meigs writes: "All agree that he [Benton} was a terrible man in anger, but while some say that on such occa- sions he grew almost beside himself and be- came the helpless victim of his fury, both Wentworth and Dyer think that the higher his anger the cooler he was and he never lost
his self-possession" [Meigs, Life o f THE, 487) .
266. "EXPUNGED": Over 20 years earlier, Jesse Benton, brother of Thomas Hart Ben- ton, with the encouragement of gossip pro- v? ked Jackson into threatening to horsewhip hrm. On Sept 4, 1813, they met in a bar- room in Nashville. Jackson went for him "brandishing his whip," saying, "Now, de~ fend yourself you damned rascal! " THB, then a colonel, came from the corridor and saw "Jackson's gun at his [brother's) breast. " He whipped out his own gun and fired: "]ackson pitched forward, firing. . . ,
267. I want
August, 1842) attended by four of his men, he [Fremont) climbed the loftiest peak of the Rocky Mountains" [TYV, 11,478-479).
268. Reck: Michael R. , who visited Pound often during the St. Elizabeths years, wrote: "In June 1954, I visited Fenollosa's grave at the Miidera, a temple overlooking Lake Biwa near Kyoto. . . . Fenollosa lies in a clearing among the trees, Biwa gracefully beneath: a stone urn resting on a concrete base . . . . I described my visit in a letter to Pound, and he recorded it in the last line of his Canto 89" [Reck, Close-up, 174. 175) .
264. one "assumption":
82,83): "About one half of the States had contracted debts abroad which they were unable to pay when due, and in many in- stances were unable to pay the current an- nual interest. These debts at this time
[1839) amounted to one hundred and sev? enty millions of dollars, and were chiefly
[69:67, 76,
L
265. English debt
against assumption, Benton said: "What is more unwise and more unjust than to con- tract debts on long time . . . thereby in- vading the rights and mortgaging the re- sources of posterity, and loading un born generations with debts not their own? . . The British national debt owes its existence entirely to this policy. It was but a trifle in the beginning of the last century, and might have been easily paid during the reigns of the first and second George; but the policy was . . . to pay the interest annually, and send down the principal to posterity" [ibid. , 175).
posterity:
In a speech
Fremont . . .
: Says THB: "[In
? 540
90/605
90/605-606
541
CANTO XC Sources
into the side of the mountain. Over all a great cliff beetles above a deep recess that seems like a fold in the mountain, whence the waters of Castalia flow. Known as the fount of poetic inspiration.
6. Templum aedifieans: L, "Building the temple. "
7. "Amphion! ": Son of Zeus. Hermes taught him to play the lyre so well that when he became king of Thebes he fortified the city with a wall magically conjured up by his music: at the sound of his lyre the stones moved into place by themselves.
8. Ideogram: San [M5415J, "three"; Ideo? gram: ku [M3470J, "alone. " The San Ku was an inner council in ancient China. Pound associated it with the Eleusinian tradition that culminated in the Order of the Tem- plars. It was a sort of Masonic council with an initiation rite called the Widow's Son, "which is also to be found in some of the Romance literature of the Middle Ages and in the moder~ Masonic ritual" [NS, Exile, 23-26J. [87:75J.
9. Poitiers: Town in W central France. The reference is to a particular room in the town's Hotel de Ville ("once part of the home of Duke William IX of Aquitaine," [JWJ), so constructed that one does not cast a shadow when standing in it [6:1, 2;
76:77J.
10. Sagetrieb: "Passing on the tradition" from father to son, or transmitting civiliza- tion from one generation to the next [85: 194J. In this context, the passing on by priests of the secrets of the Eleusinian mys- teries.
11. Jacques de Molay: [87:77J. Last grand master of the Order of Templars, who was burnt at the stake for heresy. The Templars were associated with the Masons. The Gol- den Section of Pythagoras informs the con- cept of proportions [DD,Pai, I-I, 58J.
12. Erigena: Scotus E. [36:9; 74:90; 85:53J. The line suggests, "Was not Erigena also a member of the brotherhood of Eleusis? "
13. Kuthera: L, Aphrodite. She was called Kuthera because the island of Cythera (now Kythera) was sacred to her.
J. P. Migne, Patrologiae Latina, Tomus 196: Opera Omnia Rich- ardt A Sancta Victore,- De praeparatione animi ad contempla~ tionem (Benjamin Minor); De gratia contemplationis (Benjamin Major) [Migne, column no. J; Luke 7. 47; Dante, Par. I, 75; EP, CON, 179-181; Thaddeus Zielinski, "The Sibyl," Edge, no. 2, 1956; Juan Ramon Jimenez, Animal de Fonda, Buenos Aires, Editorial Pleamar, 1949; Ovid, Meta. V, 600 ff.
Background
EP , SP, 71-72; EM, Difficult, 306, ff. ; CE Ideas, 109-113; Dekker, The Cantos of Ezra Pound, 74-86 [CantosJ; DD, Sculptor, 208-213; EH, Approaches, 25-27, 164? 165, passim; CB-R, ZBC, 132, 203-204; Juan Ramon Jimenez, Libras de Poesia, Aguilar, 1959 [Libras].
Exegeses
D. J. Neault, Pai, 3? 2, 219? 227; WB,Approaches, 311; NS, Exile, 23-26; HK, Gnomon: Essays on Contemporary Literature, New York, 1958,280? 297; JW, Pai, 2? 2,178; DG, Pai, 3-2,239? 244; HK, Era, 368; MB, Trace, 259? 277.
Glossary
15. sernpitema: L, "everlasting. " 16. Ubi . . . oculus: L, "Where love
1. Animus . . . procedit: L, "The human soul is not love, but love flows from it, and it delights not in the idea of itself but in the love which flows from it" [Richard of St. Victor, Quomodo Spiritus sanctus est amor Patris et Filii (Migne, 1012B); cf. DJN, Pai, 3-2, 222J.
2. "From the colour . . . : Reference to the doctrine of signatures of John Heydon [87:82J. Just as the color, shape, and size of item and leaf are aspects of the "signature" of a particular plant, so "love" or the "abili- ty to love," is the Signature of the "soul" or the mark of the divine in man [WB,
Approaches, 311 J .
3. Ygdrasail: [YggdrasiIJ: The great ash tree
in Eddic mythology [85:6J. Its roots reached to the center of the earth, and its
branches supported the Heavens. It con- tained and expressed the universe.
4. Bauds: From a myth of gods disguised to test the charity of people by seeking food and drink. They were refused by all except Baucis and her husband Philemon, who gave them what they had. The gods flooded other houses away but transformed their cottage into a temple and granted Bauds and Phile- mon their wish to serve as keepers. Years later they were metamorphosed into two trees that grew twined together. A rhyme with the pines at Takasago and ]se [4:22, 23J.
5. Castalia: A fountain dedicated to Apollo on Mr. Parnassus at Delphi. Pilgrims to the oracle purified themselves there. The various temples and shrines were built in niches cut
501;cf. 1 aboveJ.
17.
Vae qui cogitatis inutile: L, "Woe to you who think without purpose. " Pound correlates the three states, Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, with Richard's three levels of intellectual activity. Cogitatio, in which "the mind flits aimlessly about the object" [GK, 77J, is "a haphazard improvident looking about" [Pai, 2-3, 500-501 J. "Woe" suggests the Hell-direction of those who do purpose? less thinking. Meditatio correlates with Pur- gatory and comtemplatio with mystic and visionary aspirations for Paradise.
18. quam in nobis . . . imago: L, part of a sentence that correctly reads: "Bona volun- tatis per quam in nobis divinae similitudinis imago reperietur," Pound translated it as: "The good things of will, through which an image of the divine likeness will be found in us" [SP,71J.
19. Randolph: John R. of Roanoke, Va. , who "loved much," as the Greek in the next line reads [87: 10J. His love of mankind led him to free his slaves by wills and several codicils between 1819 and 1831: "I give my slaves their freedom to which my conscience tells me they are justly entitled" [Bruce, Randolph, Vol. II, 49J.
20. inOI7f1)UEV 1[0/1. 6: H, "she loved much. " From the New Testament story of Jesus being tested by Simon the Pharisee [Luke 7. 47J. While Jesus "sat at meat" at Simon's house, a woman who was a sinner "brought an alabaster box of ointment" and "began to wash his feet with tears, and did wipe them with the hairs of her head . . . and annointed them with the ointment. " Simon thought
?
14. oEtva: inspiring. "
H, "terrifying" or
"fear-
is, there is the eye" [Richard of St. Victor, Benjamin Minor, 13; DG, Pai, 2-3, 500; DJN,Pai, 2-3,
? 542
90/606
90/606-607
543
that if Jesus were really a prophet he would have known what the woman was and would not have allowed her to come near him. Knowing what was in Simon's heart, Jesus told the story of the creditor who had two debtors, one who owed much and one who owed little. The creditor, finding neither had money to pay, forgave them both. Jesus asked, "Tell me therefore, which of them will love him most? " Simon gave the right answer and Jesus then compared his acbons with those of the sinner and concluded, "wherefore I say unto thee, her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much; but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little. " The Greek phrase is thematic
to this central Paradiso canto, the first half of which concerns the various ways divinity manifests itself through love: the woman's love is "a good thing of will" flowing from the soul, as was the love of Randolph in his act of manumission.
21. liberavit masnatos: L, "he freed his slaves," An act of humanitarian compassion which rhymes with that of Cunizza da Ro- mano, who freed her slaves. The Latin phrase is also applied to her [6:34; 29: 14].
22. Castalia: [cf. 5 above]_
23_ Evita: Prob. Eva Peron, wife of Juan P. then dictator of Argentina; but poss. Eva Braun, the mistress, consort, or companion of Hitler. While Pound was writing parts of this canto, Llfe magazine carried a picture of a breadline in Washington just at the time the Marshall Plan, with billions of dollars for Europe, was being announced. Eva Peron's response was to organize "a drive in Argen- tina for the poor gringos of the North" [EM, Difficult, 306]. The story, promoted by Lampman [97:60], caused Pound great amusement.
24. semina motuum: L, "seeds of motion. " This Latin tag is? used as a musical figure to express one of the most important religious concepts of The Cantos,-and one of the dimensions in which the mysterium is per- ceived similarly in both the East and the West. The good things of will (directio vol-
untatis) [77:57] flow from the soul as per- ceived by Richard of St. Victor, a Christian mystic, but Pound found a similar idea ex- pressed by Confucius in the Analects. A few fragments of Tsze Tze's Third Thesis climax: "He who possesses this sincerity does not lull himself to somnolence. . . . Fulfilling himself he attains full manhood. . . . The in? born nature begets this activity naturally, this looking straight into oneself and thence acting. These two activities constitute the process which unites outer and inner . . . and thence constitutes a harmony with the sea- sons of earth and heaven. . . . Hence the highest grade of this clarifying activity has no limit, it neither stops nor stays. Not coming to a stop, it endures; continuing du- rable, it arrives at the minima [the seeds whence movement springs]. From these hid- den seeds it moves forth slowly but goes far and with slow but continuing motion it penetrates the solid, penetrating the solid it comes to shine forth on high" [EP, CON, 179-181; see also CON, 59 and 89:252].
25_ Sibylla: The all-seeing priestess of the oracle at Delphi. For a number of years Pound tried to get "The Sibyl" by Thaddeus Zielinski translated into English. It was final- ly finished and published in 1956 as the 2d number pf Edge. The sibyl is mainly a pro- phetess but seems also to function as an intercessor [97: 160]. Sheri Martinelli is un- derstood to be the real-life sibyl at St. Elizabeths.
26. m'elevasti: I, "you lifted me up" [adap? ted from Par. 1,75], praise which Dante lovingly attributes to Beatrice.
27. Erebus: The dark place through which souls must pass on the way to Hades.
28_ Isis: In Egyptian mythology, Isis, the earth goddess, was the wife of Osiris, god of the sun and the Nile-in which form he visi- ted her as flooding water. Isis correlates with Ishtar, Demeter, and Ceres as the goddess of grain, renewal, and compassion. In the myth, she gathered up the limbs of Osiris and re- stored the god of light under Ra to his power. Early in his career Pound wrote a
series of articles that together are called, "I gather the Limbs of Osiris. " They appeared in New Age, Dec. 7, 191 I-Feb. 15, 1912 [SP, 21-43]_ Here, at a particularly dramatic moment in The Cantos, Pound brings a key element in Western myth together in one image with the compassionate bodhisattva of the East, Kuanon.
Spanish poet from Andalusia who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1956 while in Puerto Rico. The death of his father (which be observed in 1900) was a great trauma from which he never freed himself. During the remainder of his life, he traveled a lot and lived in the U. S. , Puerto Rico, and Cuba. He lectured in Argentina in 1948. Returning to the U. S. by ship, he had the intense mystical experience that he tried to evoke in Animal de Fonda (! 949). In this
book, his obsession with nothingness and the fear of death, symbolized in earlier books by various sea and ocean metaphors, is resolved. Animal de Fonda is filled with joy, mystical aspirations, and the union of the "inner" and "outer" selves, realized by a perception of spirit as beauty, ecstasy, and light. Poem 29 in this volume ("Soy animal de fonda") is the immediate source of Pound's imagery
[Jimenez, Libros, p. 1339].
34. Castalia: [Cf. 5 above]_ Castalia was a
water nymph who, pursued by Apollo, leaped into the spring at Delphi which bears her name. A rhyme with the myth of Are- thusa.
35. Arethusa: A water nymph in the service of Diana [Ovid, Meta. V, 600 ff. ]. As with Daphne [2:26] Pound changes some details in the myth. Arethusa, bathing naked in a still stream, inspired lust in a water-god, who pursued her. She fled far, but finally, feeling his heavy panting on her hair, she called for help to Diana, who spirited her into the earth so she could escape and brought her to light again as a fountain in Sicily. The pop- lars and willows of the source are changed to the elms of the lawn of St. Elizabeths, and Areth. usa is seen as a lone nymph.
36. Wei and Han: Two Chinese rivers which join. This rhymes with the Arethusa myth: as a fountain Arethusa flowed together with
the water? god Alpheus.
37. Richardus: Among the "gists" from Richard of St. Victor [85:52] Pound gives one that translates, "watch birds to under- stand how spiritual things move, animals to understand physical motion" [SP, 71]. The
r
29. Kuanon:
[74: 81].
30. the blue serpent: The uraeus, or blue cobra: the emblem of the sacred serpent in the headdress of Egyptian divinities. At this time Pound's interest in Egyptian analogues for his canto themes led Sheri Martinelli (the most immediate motivation for Canto 90) to do a painting entitled "Isis of the Two King? dams" [Pai, 3-2, 240]. About this painting David Gordon wrote: "Here is the faintly blue serpentine cobra just below the sun-disc
of this composite Egyptian and Chinese god- dess of compassion: 'the natural object is always the adequate symbol. ' And it is she herself who is lifting the protagonist from the dust" [DG, Pai, 3-2, 241]-and from the dust to one of the most dramatic paradisal visions of the poem. Here the musical leit- motif "aram vult nemus" ("the grove needs its altar"), sounded several times earlier,
[74:441; 78:91; 79:126] receives visionary fulfillment. Beginning with the viper and the blue serpent, all nature answers the call and comes from the depths of the ocean and out of the earth to the grove, where smoke and bright flame rise from the altar. Just as Dio- nysus at the moment of declaring his god? head evoked a furry assemblage out of the air [2/7-9]-lynx, leopard, and panther-so in the following lines the hieratic animals answer the call.
31. lamps float: Ceremony celebrating the death of Adonis. Every July at Rapallo, "vo- tive lights [were] set adrift in the Golfo di Tigullio for the festival of Montallegre Ma- donna. " EP associated it with primitive rites to Tammuz-Adonis [HK, Era, 368; 47:7].
32. "De fondo": S, "of the depths. "
33. Juan Ramon: J_ R. Jimenez, 1881-1958,
? 544
free-flowing waters suggest the way thought
90/607-609
52. Xe)uSwv: H, "swallow. " An echo of 1. 429 of The Waste Land and the Philomela of Pervigilium Venen? s.
53. Corpus: L, "Body. " Evokes rhyme with
the church festival and procession on Corpus
Christi day, the first Thursday after Trinity Sunday.
54. Erebus: Dark place in the netherworld.
After the incantation, we have a vision of souls being delivered out of Hades and rising up out of the earth.
55. Tyro: Daughter of Salmoneus who be- came enamored with the divine river [2:12].
56. Alcmene: [Alcmena]: Wife of Jupiter
and mother of Hercules.
57. e i cavalieri: I, "and the chevaliers, or cavalry. "
58. 'HA? KTP": H, "Electra. " Daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra. Clytemnes- tra became the paramour of Aegisthus while Agamemnon was away at the Trojan War. After Clytemnestra murdered her husband, Electra joined with her brother Orestes to murder her mother.
59. Trees die & the dream remains: Accord- ing to Sheri Martinelli, this line was evoked by a thought of Juan Ramon Jimenez [cf. 33 above]. Pound was struck by a line something like, "Love dies but the trees re- main. " Going a step beyond his own "What thou lovest well remains, the rest is dross" [81/521], it prompted him to "make it new" and evoke the dream, which for him is the vision still of paradiso terrestre.
60. ex animo: L, "from the soul. " 61. UBI AMOR . . . : [Cf. 16 above].
91/610
545
ought to flow in the unburdened [DJN,Pai, 3-2,225].
38. Gaio! . . . : I, "merry, merry. " 39. rilievi: I, "reliefs. " In sculpture.
mind
CANTO XCI
Sources
Jean Beck, Die Melodien der Troubadours und Trouvers; Philos- tratus, Life ofApolionius ofTyana, trans. F. C. Conybeare (Loeb Classical library) [Apollonius]; L. A.
