I did not
undertake
to prove this, but expressed my suspicion that the fact was so.
A-Companion-to-the-Cantos-of-Ezra-Pound-II
It seems to relate to Pytha.
gorean light imagery: just as light through air shadows forth creation, so does light through the denser medium water produce a patterf.
' of beauty on stone, a pattern that rhymes, in turn, with the "rose in the steel dust" [74:503].
Pound said in letter to Katue Kitasono: "I wonder if it is clear that I mean the shadow of the 'mittens'?
and can you ideograph it; very like petals of blos- som" [L, 348; 91:105].
"The interaction between heaven, prince, and people para}?
leled by that between the descent of light, the refractive processes of dented water, and the substantiality of the water-bug, which results i n .
.
.
the special flower on the stone" can be seen as a "metaphysical image" that effects "a blending of the moral ambience of the te ideogram" [HK, Pai, 4-2 &3,381].
107. nel botro: I, "in the pool. "
108. Ideogram: TO [M6162], "awareness. " Pound says: "the process of looking straight into ones own heart and acting on the re? suits" [CON, 27]. The ideogram introduces again the idea of process in nature [74:9].
109. "Bomb him down . . . : Prob. a memo- ry from the Pisan confinement.
110. "Und . . . Shinbones! :
that one can tell who is talking by the noises he makes is partly true, Here, one can tell the kind of person (which matters) but not his name (which doesn't). The scene of ec- stasy relates to the discovery of another ex" ample of how divine intelligence works in the world. Just as the branches of a plant are spaced with mathematical precision so that they can spread their leaves to absorb the maximum amount of energy from the sun, so skeletal structures express optimal econ- omy of weight, size, and shape for the load to be carried. A rhyme with other processes in nature, such as the cherrystone producing only the cherry tree [113/788]. Or phyllo- taxis [104:87; 109:49]. For detailed ac- count of the mathematical precision of na? ture, see Thompson, On Growth and Form in particular Chap. IX on Spicular Skeletons and Chap. XIV, "On Leaf-Arrangement, or Phyllotaxis. "
111. ottocento: I, "19th century. "
112. Mencken: Henry L. M. [81:31]. Re-
current theme [GK, 182].
113. Mencius: Meng-tzu [78:60]. The lines are a compressed statement on taxing or sharing (tithing) which occurs in Mencius Ill, I, iii, 6 [ef. Legge, 612-613].
114. T'ang Wan Kung: C, "The duke Wan of T'ang. " Title of Bk. III, Pt. I of The Works o fMencius [ibid. ].
115. Ideogram: Shang [M5669], "supreme, top, first. "
116. pu erh: Pu [M5379], "not"; erh [MI752], "double. " Here, "no dichotomy. "
117. Ideogram: Li [M3867], "profit. " The "grain cut" is the annual renewable product
A French town on the
102. San Bertrand:
Garonne near Montsegur where the Albigen- ses defended their citadel until they were all massacred. It was on the road to this town that Poicebot had a visionary experience
Pound's idea
? 498
of nature, which is distinguished from usury: to harvest acorns brings legitimate profit; to cut down the oak tree for profit is usury. In Legge [Mencius I, I, 1, 125-127J, King Hui of Liang says to Mencius that, having trav- eled a thousand Ii [57:32J, he must have
CO(Tle with counsels "to profit my king- dom. " Said Mencius "Why must your majesty use that word 'profit'? " He said he offered only "counsels to benevolence and righteousness. "
118_ Ideogram: Chih [M933J, "wisdom" [85:9J _The sun (lower) element of the ideo- gram suggests "the light descending," in
Pound's recurrent religious metaphor.
119_ Religion: A deficiency of contempo- rary Christianity, which has no ritualistic dances in celebration of the mystery. With- out such rites, Pound implies by tone, no creed can be effective Of affective as a religion.
120. Cythari,triae: Followers of Cythera [24:30; 79/492J . To be seen here as dancing girls used in ritual.
121. Vide: L, "See. "
122. Neruda: Pablo N. , pseudonym of Nef- tali Ricardo Reyes, 1904-1973, a surrealist poet from Chile. His work is distinguished by his use of bold metaphors and the common tongue. He made sensuous verse out of grief and despair and had wide influence in His- panic America in both social and literary
thought. Many of his poems contain Cytha- ristriae.
123. "Stink" Saunders: A. P. Saunders, dean of Hamilton College. Pound saw him during his 1939 visit to the college [Nor- man, 367J. "An independence" equaled enough money for an artist to live on so that he could devote his time to his art. The idea was behind Pound's efforts with "Bel Es- prit" to create an independence for artists. He tried to start with a fund for Eliot [L,
173-176J.
124. nomignolo: I, "nickname. " Saunders was called "Stink" because of the odors cre- ated in the chemistry lab.
125. Henry's: Henry James [7: 13J. In a let- ter to Wyndham Lewis, undated, Pound wrote: "[re] member that touching passage in H. J. 's raJ bout the dissolving view? " [Xerox of letter at Cornell provided by T. Materer1. The "dissolving view" is illustrated on the next page [cf_ 127 belowJ. In this
context the idea seems to be that a body of coherent thought reaches dissolution by slow attrition or seepage because it is not hitched solidly to "the one principle," as expressed by the ideogram. Sse's response in the Analects is, "I have reduced it all to one principle" [GK 15J. Just as Mencius pre- served the name of Confucius, from whom
coherent thought carne, so should we pre- serve such principles by monuments to the founding fathers, such as John Adams-a spirit and a solid block to build on, or be- come hitched to_
126. Ideogram: Chih [M939J, "the hitching post, position, place one is in, and works from" [CON, 232; 85:9J.
127. Henry again: Henry James. A passage from Ford M. Ford is indicated: "Howof- ten . . . haven't I heard him say whilst dic- tating the finish of a phrase: 'No, no, Dash . . . that is not clear . . . Insert before "we are all" . . . Let me see . . . yes, insert "Not so much locally, though to be sure we're here; but temperamentally in a manner
of speaking. ''' . . so that the phrase, blind- ingly clear to him by that time, when com- pleted would run: 'So that here, not so much locally, though to be sure we're here, but at least temperamentally in a mannner of speaking, we all are'" [Ford, Portraits from Life, 25J. An example of a "disolving view. "
128. De Molay: [cf. 77 aboveJ.
129. Church councils: Whereas early church councils were clearly against usury, they be- gan "bumbling" the issue during the early Renaissance.
130. Justice: Anticipates one of the central themes of Thrones [96:headnoteJ.
131. directio voluntatis: L, "direction of the will" [77:57J. Recurrent leitmotif.
colonel" or "T. F. " Pound commonly re- ferred to St Elizabeths as "the bug-house. "
135. Sikandar: The Indian name for Alex- ander the Great. MSB has two notes: "leg- end [tigers? J go out and howl at full moon over tomb of Alexander the Great" / "Eri- gena who said God himself didn't know who he was. " The point is the mutual empathy of the great cats with the sage, mystic, or char- ismatic leader, a leitmotif repeated with Apollonius of Tyana r94:42, 431 and others. The last of the mythic kings in Shah Nameh [77: 171].
87/575-576
87/576
499
132. Richardus: [85:52J _
Richard St.
Victor
133. Benjamin Major: Companion work to Benjamin Minor.
134. Old crocks: Three of those "to die in a bug-house" seem to be listed after the colon. For Gallagher, MSB has a note: "did a book on America's aims, Asia's aspirations. " But there is no information about either the "old
CANTO LXXXVIII
Sources
Thomas Hart Benton, Thirty Years' View; or, A History ofthe Working of The American Government for Thirty Years, from 1820 to 1850, Vols_ I, II, New York, Appleton, 1854 [TYVJ; Christopher Hollis, The Two Nations, London, 1935; Willis A. Overholser, A Short Review and Analysis o f the History o f Money in the United States, libertyville, illinois, Progress Pub- lishing Concern, 1936; Sophocles, Antigone, II, 337-338; EP, CON, 112, 269, 27-33, 193; Dante, In! XI, 46-66; George Tucker, ed. , Blackstone's Commentaries: with Notes of Refer- ence, to the . Constitution and Laws, of the Federal Govern- ment of the United States; and of the Commonwealth of
Virginia, 1803 [Tucker]; Homer, Iliad IX, 63; James Legge, The Four Books, Shanghai, 1923 [Legge].
Background
EP, GK, 354, 45, 47,43,249, 243;IMP, 65, 33, 252, 196;SP, 295, 172, 265, 313, 176; LE, 86; P, 139-140; e_ e_ Cummings, Collected Poems, 1954; Anatole France, L'Ile des Pengouins, 1908; Brooks Adams, The New Empire, New York and Lon- don, Macmillan, 1902; Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in
America, 4 vols. , 1835-40; Davis R. Dewey, Financial History of the United States, 1902; Benito Mussolini, My Autobiogra- phy, New York, C. Scribner's & Sons, 1928 [Auto].
? 500
88/577
88/577
501
Exegeses HK,Era, 13; EH,Pai, 2-1,143.
[Although the bulk of the source identifications for Cantos 88 and 89 were completed before 1975, many of the most elusive ones come from a dissertation by Charles Watts, which is in the process of being published under the title of The Duel of Giants: The People vs. the Bank. ]
Glossary
of state not because of any bargain struck before the election but because he was the best qualified for the job. But appearances were against them. According to Benton, the people bided their time and in 1828 elected Jackson over JQA with a margin of over 2 to I and thus made up for what they consid? ered "a violation of the demos krateo princi- ple" [ibid. ]. John Randolph, senator from Virginia and a fiery orator, was implacably opposed to many of JQA's foreign policy initiatives, including the president's pro- posed Panama mission, which engendered fierce debate in the Senate and became the precipitating cause for Clay's challenge
[TYV , I, 65-69]. Randolph's intemperate remarks were in defiance of JQA's policy rather than Clay's pursuit of it.
6. Jessup: Thomas S. Jesup, 1788-1860, a soldier from Va. who rose through the ranks to become a major general and in 1836 as- sumed command of the army in the Creek nation.
7. waive privilege: Randolph's willingness to waive his privilege as a senator became a delicate point of negotiation between the seconds. Randolph's stand was that he would answer in his person for any offense given, but not for his actions in the Senate.
8. Salazar's letter: It was reported that Ran- dolph said "that a letter from General Sala- zar, the Mexican minister at Washington, submitted by the Executive to the Senate, bore the ear-mark of having been manufac- tured or forged by the Secretary of State, and denounced the administration as a cor- rupt coalition between the puritan and blackleg; and added, at the same time, that he (Mr. Randolph) held himself personally responsible for all that he had said. " Benton comments: "This was the report to Mr. Clay, and upon which he gave the absolute chal? lenge, and received the absolute acceptance" [ibid. , 73]. "The puritan" was supposed to refer to JQA and "blackleg" to Clay.
9. "forgery": Jesup wrote to Tattnall: "The injury of which Mr. Clay complains consists in this, that Mr. Randolph has charged him
with having forged or manufactured a paper connected with the Panama miSSion; also, that he has applied to him in debate the epithet of blackleg. " Jesup wanted Ran- dolph to declare that he did not intend to charge Clay "with forging or falsifying any paper . . . and also that the term blackleg was not intended to apply to him" [ibid. ].
10. Charlotte jury: Tattnall replied that Randolph said he used these words in de- bate: "that I thought it would be in my power to show evidence sufficiently pre- sumptive to satisfy a Charlotte (county) jury that this invitation was manufactured here~ that Salazar's letter struck me as bearing a strong likeness in point of style to the other papers.
I did not undertake to prove this, but expressed my suspicion that the fact was so. I applied to the administration the epi? thet, puritanic? diplomatic-black-Iegged ad- ministration. " Benton says these words ameliorated the harsh words "forging and falsifying" attributed to Randolph and adds: "The speech was a bitter philippic, and in- tended to be so, taking for its point the alleged coalition between Mr. Clay and Mr. Adams with respect to the election, and their efforts to get up a popular question contrary to our policy of non-entanglement with foreign nations" [ibid. ]. Benton be- lieved that if Clay had been present at the speech he would not have shown resentment at it, but he could not prevent the duel from taking place.
1I. Right bank . . . that: These six lines are taken from the source: "The afternoon of Saturday, the 8th of April, was fixed upon for the time,: the right bank of the Potomac, within the state of Virginia, above the Little Falls bridge, was the place,-pistols the weapons,-distance ten paces. . . . There was a statute of the State against duelling within her limits; but, as he merely went out to receive a fire without returning it, he deemed that no fighting, and consequently no breach of her statute. This reason for choosing Virginia could only be explained to me, as I alone was the depository of his secret" [ibid. , 73-74].
1. It . . . relation: The opening lines of chap. 26, entitled "Duel Between Mr. Clay and Mr. Randolph. " of Thomas Hart Benton's TYV
[Vol. I, 70], except that after the word "ses- sion," the source has some added detail: "that Mr. Randolph came to my room at Brown's Hotel, and (without explaining the reason of the question) asked me if I was a blood relation of Mrs. Clay? " Senator Ben- ton said that he was. His response told Ran- dolph that he would be unable to ask him to act as his second in a duel to which he had just been challenged by Mr. Clay, and that he must apply instead to Colonel Tattnall.
2. Clay's right: Clay issued the challenge because of news reports that Randolph had made incriminating remarks about some of Clay's actions as secretary of state. Ran- dolph insisted Clay had no right to hold him accountable for anything he said in the Sen- ate, but as a private person he would answer for any injury Clay believed he had received. For this reason Randolph confided in Ben- ton that he would not return Clay's fire.
c
Benton summarizes the nuances; "As sena- tor he had a constitutional immunity, given for a wise purpose, and which he would neither surrender nor compromise; as indi- vidual he was ready to give satisfaction for what was deemed as injury. He would re- ceive, but not return a fire. It was as much as to say: Mr. Clay may fire at me for what has offended him; I will not, by returning the fire, admit his right to do so" [TYV, I, 71].
3. Brown's: A Washington hotel frequented by members of the government.
4. Col. Tatnall: Edward F. Tattnall, 1788. 1832, of Savannah, Georgia; state solicitor general, 1816-1817; member of state legisla- ture, 1818? 1819; member of Congress, 1821- 1827. Not to be confused with Josiah Tatt? nail (1795-1871), a naval officer from Georgia who served in the War of 1812 and the Mexican War but was not promoted to captain until 1850. (Pound's incorrect spel- ling comes from Benton. )
5. Defiance of Adams: John Quincy Adams [34:passim]. The challenge to duel derived from deep-rooted antipathies between the Federalists and "the party of the people" which came to a climax in the election of 1824. The electoral college, bound by its constituents, could not provide a majority (131 out of 260) for any of the four candi- dates, so "the election devolved upon the House of Representatives" [TYV, I, 44-45].
Jackson [37: passim], with 99 votes, had the highest count (Adams, 84; Crawford 41; Clay 37). Before the House voted Henry Clay [34:47] visited JQA. No one else was present at the meeting. Despite denials that a bargain was made between the two men, the facts suggested otherwise, for when the House voted, Clay switched his allegiance to JQA, who won the election and soon after made Clay secretary of state. Long before Clay's visit to JQA, he told Benton that he planned to support Adams even though they had been political adversaries. Clay, with others, said he preferred JQA's intelligence and experience to that of a military chieftan
[ibid. , 47]. JQA said he made Clay secretary
? 502
12. I went to Clay's . . . : Benton visited Clay on Friday night and Randolph on Sat- urday noon, April 8th, the day of the duel. Pound chooses phrases from the source to give a sense of the people and the scene.
13. Georgetown: A section of NW Washing? ton one passed through "to cross the Poto~ mac into Virginia at the Little Falls bridge"
88/578-579
points up the struggle against the bank which is the main theme of Cantos 88 and 89. The bank's lies about its gold holdings, its desire to substitute its own notes in pay- ment and its readiness to back down when chall~nged by a powerful politician, repre- sents in miniature the war that Benton, Ran-
19. His (R's) stepfather: St. George Tucker, 1752-1827, revolutionary soldier, constitu- tional delegate, lawyer, and judge. The book was entitled Blackstone's Commentan'es: with Notes ofReference, to the Constitution and Laws, o f the Federal Government o f the United States; and of the Commonwealth of Virginia, 1803.
88/579-580
specie, which drained the colonies of so much of it that too little was left to carryon trade. Another act in 1763, even more strin- gent, became a primary cause of the Revolu- tion [Overholser, History ofMoney, 21. 29].
24. Lexington: A reference to a letter of John Adams to Thomas Jefferson which Pound often quotes [33:18; 50:1]: "The Revolution was in the Minds of the peo- pIe . . . IS years before a drop of blood was drawn at Lexington. " Adams made the point elsewhere in his correspondence [32: I].
2S. '64 "greatest blessing": Lincoln, in a letter to Col. Edmund Taylor, Dec. 1864, wrote about the greenbacks the government issued to help pay the Civil War debt: "Chase thought it a hazardous thing, but we finally accomplished it and gave to the peo- ple of this Republic THE GREA TEST BLESSING THEY EVER HAD-THEIR OWN PAPER TO PAY THEIR OWN DEBTS" [Overholser, History ofMoney, 44; GK, 354;SP, 159].
26. 1878: Pound discovered in 1928 that his grandfather, Thaddeus Coleman Pound, "had already in 1878 been writing about, or urging among his fellow Congressmen, the same essential of monetary and statal eco- nomics" that he was for in the 1920s" [IMP, 65]. Elsewhere Pound wrote: "In 1878 a Congressman expressed or explained his po- sition by saying that he wanted to keep at least part of the non-interest bearing nation- al debt in circulation as qurency" [IMP,
33].
27. sangue, fatica: I, "blood, fatigue. " In describing war Pound wrote: "Sangue, mer- da e fatica, was the definition given me by an officer in the last European war. Blood, dung and fatigue" [IMP, 252].
28. blood . . . surveillance: Exact source un- known, but the idea is everywhere present in Pound's writings about money and banking (usury) as causes of war: "A financial system wherein it is more profitable to sell guns than to sell farm machinery, textiles or food stuff is fundamentally vicious" [IMP, 252].
503 29. peerage: " . P. C. 377: These 12 lines
are taken from Tucker's edition of Black- stone's Commentaries, Chap. V, entitled "Public Wrongs. " Peers of the realm were once allowed to plea benefit of clergy, which resulted in lesser sentences. The distinction was abolished for a time but was "virtually restored by statute I Edward. VI, c. 12 [Book VI, caput (or chapter) 12 of the laws enacted during the reign of King Edward the First] which statute also enacts that lords of parliament and peers of the realm . . . etc" [Tucker, 365-368].
30. The books . . . villein: In Tucker's edi- tion Blackstone has a note that quotes Lord Coke [107:3]: "contenement signifieth his countenance, as the armour of a soldier in his countenance, and the like," and adds, "the wainagium [Anglo-Latin source of wainage] is the countenance of the villein, and it was great reason to save his wainage, for otherwise the miserable creature was to carry the burden on his back" [Tucker, 379].
31. the Histories: The next six lines list a number of occasions in history when kings, emperors, or other rulers understood the dis- tributive function of money and tried to use public credit for the public good.
32. T'ang: Pound wrote of T'ang [53:40]: "The emperor opened a copper mine and issued round coins with square holes and gave them to the poor. . . . That story is 3000 years old, but it helps one to under? stand what money is and what it can do. For the purpose of good government it is a ticket for the order! y distribution of WHAT IS
[ibid. , 74].
. . .
14. Could not
ask Randolph directly if he had changed his mind about not firing, as that would have been to doubt his previous word. So he decided to get at the point indirectly by mentioning his visit, the tranquillity of Mrs. Clay and the sleeping child, "and added, I could not help reflecting how different all that might be the next night. He understood me perfectly, and immediately said, with a quietude of look and expression which seemed to rebuke an unworthy doubt, 'I shall do nothing to disturb the sleep . of the child or the repose of the mother,' and went
value: Benton
could not
on with his employment. . . WhICh was, making codicils to his will, all in the way of remembrance to friends; the bequests slight in value, but invaluable in tenderness of feel~ ing and beauty of expression" [ibid. ].
IS. Macon: Nathaniel M. , 1758-1837, American statesman who served in the Revo? lution and became a political leader in N. C. , a champion of states' rights, an ardent Jef? fersonian, and an opponent of the reestab- lishment of the Bank of the United States. Macon, Ga. , bears his name, as does Ran- dolph-Macon College, along with that of his good friend John Randolph.
16. Y oung Bryan: John Randolph
his namesake, "then at school in Balti- more . . . had been sent for to see him, but sent off before the hour for going out, to save the boy from a possible shock at seeing him brought back" [ibid. ].
17. Johnny: Randolph's "faithful man," a black manservant.
18. Branch bank: The anecdote that Pound summarizes from his source [ibid. , 74-75]
21. Bellum perenne: L, "everlasting war" [86/568; 87/569].
22. 1694: The year William Paterson and others founded the Bank of England with the deliberate intention of creating great profit out of nothing [46:26].
23. 17S0: In 1751 Parliament passed an act that forbade the issue of paper money in the colonies. The act caused great misery as En- gland required payment for goods in metal
Bryan,
A V AILABLE" ["What is Money 1939; reprinted, SP, 295].
For,"
dolph, Macon,
many others conducted against the bank throughout the Jackson era. They deplored the fact that a private company was autho- rized to issue bank notes so that the "power to issue" money was transferred from the public to a private agency.
Jackson,
V an
. . .
of the
20. The place
spot where the duel took place. Benton uses the phrase "depression or basin," rather than "basis. " Pound leaves the duelists here. Two shots were fired but neither Clay nor Ran- dolph was injured. Clay insisted on the sec- ond shot, which ripped Randolph's coat. The duelists shook hands and Randolph said, "You owe me a coat, Mr. Clay. " Clay promptly replied, "I am glad the debt is no greater" [ibid. , 74]. This minor fracas was merely a symptom of the continuous war between the antibank forces represented by Randolph and the probank forces repre- sented by Clay.
: A
description
Buren and
33. the chuntze: C, chun tzu [MI715-18], "the princely man. " A gentleman, the wise man, a man of complete virtue, the beau ideal of Confucianism. " Pound wrote that such a man "stands firm in the middle of what whirls without leaning on anything ei- ther to one side or the other" [CON, 113] .
34. monopoly: Pound wrote) "The usual
? 504
88/580-581
88/581-582
505
frauds of bookkeeping, monopoly, etc. , have been known since the beginning of his~ tory . . . . Aristotle .
107. nel botro: I, "in the pool. "
108. Ideogram: TO [M6162], "awareness. " Pound says: "the process of looking straight into ones own heart and acting on the re? suits" [CON, 27]. The ideogram introduces again the idea of process in nature [74:9].
109. "Bomb him down . . . : Prob. a memo- ry from the Pisan confinement.
110. "Und . . . Shinbones! :
that one can tell who is talking by the noises he makes is partly true, Here, one can tell the kind of person (which matters) but not his name (which doesn't). The scene of ec- stasy relates to the discovery of another ex" ample of how divine intelligence works in the world. Just as the branches of a plant are spaced with mathematical precision so that they can spread their leaves to absorb the maximum amount of energy from the sun, so skeletal structures express optimal econ- omy of weight, size, and shape for the load to be carried. A rhyme with other processes in nature, such as the cherrystone producing only the cherry tree [113/788]. Or phyllo- taxis [104:87; 109:49]. For detailed ac- count of the mathematical precision of na? ture, see Thompson, On Growth and Form in particular Chap. IX on Spicular Skeletons and Chap. XIV, "On Leaf-Arrangement, or Phyllotaxis. "
111. ottocento: I, "19th century. "
112. Mencken: Henry L. M. [81:31]. Re-
current theme [GK, 182].
113. Mencius: Meng-tzu [78:60]. The lines are a compressed statement on taxing or sharing (tithing) which occurs in Mencius Ill, I, iii, 6 [ef. Legge, 612-613].
114. T'ang Wan Kung: C, "The duke Wan of T'ang. " Title of Bk. III, Pt. I of The Works o fMencius [ibid. ].
115. Ideogram: Shang [M5669], "supreme, top, first. "
116. pu erh: Pu [M5379], "not"; erh [MI752], "double. " Here, "no dichotomy. "
117. Ideogram: Li [M3867], "profit. " The "grain cut" is the annual renewable product
A French town on the
102. San Bertrand:
Garonne near Montsegur where the Albigen- ses defended their citadel until they were all massacred. It was on the road to this town that Poicebot had a visionary experience
Pound's idea
? 498
of nature, which is distinguished from usury: to harvest acorns brings legitimate profit; to cut down the oak tree for profit is usury. In Legge [Mencius I, I, 1, 125-127J, King Hui of Liang says to Mencius that, having trav- eled a thousand Ii [57:32J, he must have
CO(Tle with counsels "to profit my king- dom. " Said Mencius "Why must your majesty use that word 'profit'? " He said he offered only "counsels to benevolence and righteousness. "
118_ Ideogram: Chih [M933J, "wisdom" [85:9J _The sun (lower) element of the ideo- gram suggests "the light descending," in
Pound's recurrent religious metaphor.
119_ Religion: A deficiency of contempo- rary Christianity, which has no ritualistic dances in celebration of the mystery. With- out such rites, Pound implies by tone, no creed can be effective Of affective as a religion.
120. Cythari,triae: Followers of Cythera [24:30; 79/492J . To be seen here as dancing girls used in ritual.
121. Vide: L, "See. "
122. Neruda: Pablo N. , pseudonym of Nef- tali Ricardo Reyes, 1904-1973, a surrealist poet from Chile. His work is distinguished by his use of bold metaphors and the common tongue. He made sensuous verse out of grief and despair and had wide influence in His- panic America in both social and literary
thought. Many of his poems contain Cytha- ristriae.
123. "Stink" Saunders: A. P. Saunders, dean of Hamilton College. Pound saw him during his 1939 visit to the college [Nor- man, 367J. "An independence" equaled enough money for an artist to live on so that he could devote his time to his art. The idea was behind Pound's efforts with "Bel Es- prit" to create an independence for artists. He tried to start with a fund for Eliot [L,
173-176J.
124. nomignolo: I, "nickname. " Saunders was called "Stink" because of the odors cre- ated in the chemistry lab.
125. Henry's: Henry James [7: 13J. In a let- ter to Wyndham Lewis, undated, Pound wrote: "[re] member that touching passage in H. J. 's raJ bout the dissolving view? " [Xerox of letter at Cornell provided by T. Materer1. The "dissolving view" is illustrated on the next page [cf_ 127 belowJ. In this
context the idea seems to be that a body of coherent thought reaches dissolution by slow attrition or seepage because it is not hitched solidly to "the one principle," as expressed by the ideogram. Sse's response in the Analects is, "I have reduced it all to one principle" [GK 15J. Just as Mencius pre- served the name of Confucius, from whom
coherent thought carne, so should we pre- serve such principles by monuments to the founding fathers, such as John Adams-a spirit and a solid block to build on, or be- come hitched to_
126. Ideogram: Chih [M939J, "the hitching post, position, place one is in, and works from" [CON, 232; 85:9J.
127. Henry again: Henry James. A passage from Ford M. Ford is indicated: "Howof- ten . . . haven't I heard him say whilst dic- tating the finish of a phrase: 'No, no, Dash . . . that is not clear . . . Insert before "we are all" . . . Let me see . . . yes, insert "Not so much locally, though to be sure we're here; but temperamentally in a manner
of speaking. ''' . . so that the phrase, blind- ingly clear to him by that time, when com- pleted would run: 'So that here, not so much locally, though to be sure we're here, but at least temperamentally in a mannner of speaking, we all are'" [Ford, Portraits from Life, 25J. An example of a "disolving view. "
128. De Molay: [cf. 77 aboveJ.
129. Church councils: Whereas early church councils were clearly against usury, they be- gan "bumbling" the issue during the early Renaissance.
130. Justice: Anticipates one of the central themes of Thrones [96:headnoteJ.
131. directio voluntatis: L, "direction of the will" [77:57J. Recurrent leitmotif.
colonel" or "T. F. " Pound commonly re- ferred to St Elizabeths as "the bug-house. "
135. Sikandar: The Indian name for Alex- ander the Great. MSB has two notes: "leg- end [tigers? J go out and howl at full moon over tomb of Alexander the Great" / "Eri- gena who said God himself didn't know who he was. " The point is the mutual empathy of the great cats with the sage, mystic, or char- ismatic leader, a leitmotif repeated with Apollonius of Tyana r94:42, 431 and others. The last of the mythic kings in Shah Nameh [77: 171].
87/575-576
87/576
499
132. Richardus: [85:52J _
Richard St.
Victor
133. Benjamin Major: Companion work to Benjamin Minor.
134. Old crocks: Three of those "to die in a bug-house" seem to be listed after the colon. For Gallagher, MSB has a note: "did a book on America's aims, Asia's aspirations. " But there is no information about either the "old
CANTO LXXXVIII
Sources
Thomas Hart Benton, Thirty Years' View; or, A History ofthe Working of The American Government for Thirty Years, from 1820 to 1850, Vols_ I, II, New York, Appleton, 1854 [TYVJ; Christopher Hollis, The Two Nations, London, 1935; Willis A. Overholser, A Short Review and Analysis o f the History o f Money in the United States, libertyville, illinois, Progress Pub- lishing Concern, 1936; Sophocles, Antigone, II, 337-338; EP, CON, 112, 269, 27-33, 193; Dante, In! XI, 46-66; George Tucker, ed. , Blackstone's Commentaries: with Notes of Refer- ence, to the . Constitution and Laws, of the Federal Govern- ment of the United States; and of the Commonwealth of
Virginia, 1803 [Tucker]; Homer, Iliad IX, 63; James Legge, The Four Books, Shanghai, 1923 [Legge].
Background
EP, GK, 354, 45, 47,43,249, 243;IMP, 65, 33, 252, 196;SP, 295, 172, 265, 313, 176; LE, 86; P, 139-140; e_ e_ Cummings, Collected Poems, 1954; Anatole France, L'Ile des Pengouins, 1908; Brooks Adams, The New Empire, New York and Lon- don, Macmillan, 1902; Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in
America, 4 vols. , 1835-40; Davis R. Dewey, Financial History of the United States, 1902; Benito Mussolini, My Autobiogra- phy, New York, C. Scribner's & Sons, 1928 [Auto].
? 500
88/577
88/577
501
Exegeses HK,Era, 13; EH,Pai, 2-1,143.
[Although the bulk of the source identifications for Cantos 88 and 89 were completed before 1975, many of the most elusive ones come from a dissertation by Charles Watts, which is in the process of being published under the title of The Duel of Giants: The People vs. the Bank. ]
Glossary
of state not because of any bargain struck before the election but because he was the best qualified for the job. But appearances were against them. According to Benton, the people bided their time and in 1828 elected Jackson over JQA with a margin of over 2 to I and thus made up for what they consid? ered "a violation of the demos krateo princi- ple" [ibid. ]. John Randolph, senator from Virginia and a fiery orator, was implacably opposed to many of JQA's foreign policy initiatives, including the president's pro- posed Panama mission, which engendered fierce debate in the Senate and became the precipitating cause for Clay's challenge
[TYV , I, 65-69]. Randolph's intemperate remarks were in defiance of JQA's policy rather than Clay's pursuit of it.
6. Jessup: Thomas S. Jesup, 1788-1860, a soldier from Va. who rose through the ranks to become a major general and in 1836 as- sumed command of the army in the Creek nation.
7. waive privilege: Randolph's willingness to waive his privilege as a senator became a delicate point of negotiation between the seconds. Randolph's stand was that he would answer in his person for any offense given, but not for his actions in the Senate.
8. Salazar's letter: It was reported that Ran- dolph said "that a letter from General Sala- zar, the Mexican minister at Washington, submitted by the Executive to the Senate, bore the ear-mark of having been manufac- tured or forged by the Secretary of State, and denounced the administration as a cor- rupt coalition between the puritan and blackleg; and added, at the same time, that he (Mr. Randolph) held himself personally responsible for all that he had said. " Benton comments: "This was the report to Mr. Clay, and upon which he gave the absolute chal? lenge, and received the absolute acceptance" [ibid. , 73]. "The puritan" was supposed to refer to JQA and "blackleg" to Clay.
9. "forgery": Jesup wrote to Tattnall: "The injury of which Mr. Clay complains consists in this, that Mr. Randolph has charged him
with having forged or manufactured a paper connected with the Panama miSSion; also, that he has applied to him in debate the epithet of blackleg. " Jesup wanted Ran- dolph to declare that he did not intend to charge Clay "with forging or falsifying any paper . . . and also that the term blackleg was not intended to apply to him" [ibid. ].
10. Charlotte jury: Tattnall replied that Randolph said he used these words in de- bate: "that I thought it would be in my power to show evidence sufficiently pre- sumptive to satisfy a Charlotte (county) jury that this invitation was manufactured here~ that Salazar's letter struck me as bearing a strong likeness in point of style to the other papers.
I did not undertake to prove this, but expressed my suspicion that the fact was so. I applied to the administration the epi? thet, puritanic? diplomatic-black-Iegged ad- ministration. " Benton says these words ameliorated the harsh words "forging and falsifying" attributed to Randolph and adds: "The speech was a bitter philippic, and in- tended to be so, taking for its point the alleged coalition between Mr. Clay and Mr. Adams with respect to the election, and their efforts to get up a popular question contrary to our policy of non-entanglement with foreign nations" [ibid. ]. Benton be- lieved that if Clay had been present at the speech he would not have shown resentment at it, but he could not prevent the duel from taking place.
1I. Right bank . . . that: These six lines are taken from the source: "The afternoon of Saturday, the 8th of April, was fixed upon for the time,: the right bank of the Potomac, within the state of Virginia, above the Little Falls bridge, was the place,-pistols the weapons,-distance ten paces. . . . There was a statute of the State against duelling within her limits; but, as he merely went out to receive a fire without returning it, he deemed that no fighting, and consequently no breach of her statute. This reason for choosing Virginia could only be explained to me, as I alone was the depository of his secret" [ibid. , 73-74].
1. It . . . relation: The opening lines of chap. 26, entitled "Duel Between Mr. Clay and Mr. Randolph. " of Thomas Hart Benton's TYV
[Vol. I, 70], except that after the word "ses- sion," the source has some added detail: "that Mr. Randolph came to my room at Brown's Hotel, and (without explaining the reason of the question) asked me if I was a blood relation of Mrs. Clay? " Senator Ben- ton said that he was. His response told Ran- dolph that he would be unable to ask him to act as his second in a duel to which he had just been challenged by Mr. Clay, and that he must apply instead to Colonel Tattnall.
2. Clay's right: Clay issued the challenge because of news reports that Randolph had made incriminating remarks about some of Clay's actions as secretary of state. Ran- dolph insisted Clay had no right to hold him accountable for anything he said in the Sen- ate, but as a private person he would answer for any injury Clay believed he had received. For this reason Randolph confided in Ben- ton that he would not return Clay's fire.
c
Benton summarizes the nuances; "As sena- tor he had a constitutional immunity, given for a wise purpose, and which he would neither surrender nor compromise; as indi- vidual he was ready to give satisfaction for what was deemed as injury. He would re- ceive, but not return a fire. It was as much as to say: Mr. Clay may fire at me for what has offended him; I will not, by returning the fire, admit his right to do so" [TYV, I, 71].
3. Brown's: A Washington hotel frequented by members of the government.
4. Col. Tatnall: Edward F. Tattnall, 1788. 1832, of Savannah, Georgia; state solicitor general, 1816-1817; member of state legisla- ture, 1818? 1819; member of Congress, 1821- 1827. Not to be confused with Josiah Tatt? nail (1795-1871), a naval officer from Georgia who served in the War of 1812 and the Mexican War but was not promoted to captain until 1850. (Pound's incorrect spel- ling comes from Benton. )
5. Defiance of Adams: John Quincy Adams [34:passim]. The challenge to duel derived from deep-rooted antipathies between the Federalists and "the party of the people" which came to a climax in the election of 1824. The electoral college, bound by its constituents, could not provide a majority (131 out of 260) for any of the four candi- dates, so "the election devolved upon the House of Representatives" [TYV, I, 44-45].
Jackson [37: passim], with 99 votes, had the highest count (Adams, 84; Crawford 41; Clay 37). Before the House voted Henry Clay [34:47] visited JQA. No one else was present at the meeting. Despite denials that a bargain was made between the two men, the facts suggested otherwise, for when the House voted, Clay switched his allegiance to JQA, who won the election and soon after made Clay secretary of state. Long before Clay's visit to JQA, he told Benton that he planned to support Adams even though they had been political adversaries. Clay, with others, said he preferred JQA's intelligence and experience to that of a military chieftan
[ibid. , 47]. JQA said he made Clay secretary
? 502
12. I went to Clay's . . . : Benton visited Clay on Friday night and Randolph on Sat- urday noon, April 8th, the day of the duel. Pound chooses phrases from the source to give a sense of the people and the scene.
13. Georgetown: A section of NW Washing? ton one passed through "to cross the Poto~ mac into Virginia at the Little Falls bridge"
88/578-579
points up the struggle against the bank which is the main theme of Cantos 88 and 89. The bank's lies about its gold holdings, its desire to substitute its own notes in pay- ment and its readiness to back down when chall~nged by a powerful politician, repre- sents in miniature the war that Benton, Ran-
19. His (R's) stepfather: St. George Tucker, 1752-1827, revolutionary soldier, constitu- tional delegate, lawyer, and judge. The book was entitled Blackstone's Commentan'es: with Notes ofReference, to the Constitution and Laws, o f the Federal Government o f the United States; and of the Commonwealth of Virginia, 1803.
88/579-580
specie, which drained the colonies of so much of it that too little was left to carryon trade. Another act in 1763, even more strin- gent, became a primary cause of the Revolu- tion [Overholser, History ofMoney, 21. 29].
24. Lexington: A reference to a letter of John Adams to Thomas Jefferson which Pound often quotes [33:18; 50:1]: "The Revolution was in the Minds of the peo- pIe . . . IS years before a drop of blood was drawn at Lexington. " Adams made the point elsewhere in his correspondence [32: I].
2S. '64 "greatest blessing": Lincoln, in a letter to Col. Edmund Taylor, Dec. 1864, wrote about the greenbacks the government issued to help pay the Civil War debt: "Chase thought it a hazardous thing, but we finally accomplished it and gave to the peo- ple of this Republic THE GREA TEST BLESSING THEY EVER HAD-THEIR OWN PAPER TO PAY THEIR OWN DEBTS" [Overholser, History ofMoney, 44; GK, 354;SP, 159].
26. 1878: Pound discovered in 1928 that his grandfather, Thaddeus Coleman Pound, "had already in 1878 been writing about, or urging among his fellow Congressmen, the same essential of monetary and statal eco- nomics" that he was for in the 1920s" [IMP, 65]. Elsewhere Pound wrote: "In 1878 a Congressman expressed or explained his po- sition by saying that he wanted to keep at least part of the non-interest bearing nation- al debt in circulation as qurency" [IMP,
33].
27. sangue, fatica: I, "blood, fatigue. " In describing war Pound wrote: "Sangue, mer- da e fatica, was the definition given me by an officer in the last European war. Blood, dung and fatigue" [IMP, 252].
28. blood . . . surveillance: Exact source un- known, but the idea is everywhere present in Pound's writings about money and banking (usury) as causes of war: "A financial system wherein it is more profitable to sell guns than to sell farm machinery, textiles or food stuff is fundamentally vicious" [IMP, 252].
503 29. peerage: " . P. C. 377: These 12 lines
are taken from Tucker's edition of Black- stone's Commentaries, Chap. V, entitled "Public Wrongs. " Peers of the realm were once allowed to plea benefit of clergy, which resulted in lesser sentences. The distinction was abolished for a time but was "virtually restored by statute I Edward. VI, c. 12 [Book VI, caput (or chapter) 12 of the laws enacted during the reign of King Edward the First] which statute also enacts that lords of parliament and peers of the realm . . . etc" [Tucker, 365-368].
30. The books . . . villein: In Tucker's edi- tion Blackstone has a note that quotes Lord Coke [107:3]: "contenement signifieth his countenance, as the armour of a soldier in his countenance, and the like," and adds, "the wainagium [Anglo-Latin source of wainage] is the countenance of the villein, and it was great reason to save his wainage, for otherwise the miserable creature was to carry the burden on his back" [Tucker, 379].
31. the Histories: The next six lines list a number of occasions in history when kings, emperors, or other rulers understood the dis- tributive function of money and tried to use public credit for the public good.
32. T'ang: Pound wrote of T'ang [53:40]: "The emperor opened a copper mine and issued round coins with square holes and gave them to the poor. . . . That story is 3000 years old, but it helps one to under? stand what money is and what it can do. For the purpose of good government it is a ticket for the order! y distribution of WHAT IS
[ibid. , 74].
. . .
14. Could not
ask Randolph directly if he had changed his mind about not firing, as that would have been to doubt his previous word. So he decided to get at the point indirectly by mentioning his visit, the tranquillity of Mrs. Clay and the sleeping child, "and added, I could not help reflecting how different all that might be the next night. He understood me perfectly, and immediately said, with a quietude of look and expression which seemed to rebuke an unworthy doubt, 'I shall do nothing to disturb the sleep . of the child or the repose of the mother,' and went
value: Benton
could not
on with his employment. . . WhICh was, making codicils to his will, all in the way of remembrance to friends; the bequests slight in value, but invaluable in tenderness of feel~ ing and beauty of expression" [ibid. ].
IS. Macon: Nathaniel M. , 1758-1837, American statesman who served in the Revo? lution and became a political leader in N. C. , a champion of states' rights, an ardent Jef? fersonian, and an opponent of the reestab- lishment of the Bank of the United States. Macon, Ga. , bears his name, as does Ran- dolph-Macon College, along with that of his good friend John Randolph.
16. Y oung Bryan: John Randolph
his namesake, "then at school in Balti- more . . . had been sent for to see him, but sent off before the hour for going out, to save the boy from a possible shock at seeing him brought back" [ibid. ].
17. Johnny: Randolph's "faithful man," a black manservant.
18. Branch bank: The anecdote that Pound summarizes from his source [ibid. , 74-75]
21. Bellum perenne: L, "everlasting war" [86/568; 87/569].
22. 1694: The year William Paterson and others founded the Bank of England with the deliberate intention of creating great profit out of nothing [46:26].
23. 17S0: In 1751 Parliament passed an act that forbade the issue of paper money in the colonies. The act caused great misery as En- gland required payment for goods in metal
Bryan,
A V AILABLE" ["What is Money 1939; reprinted, SP, 295].
For,"
dolph, Macon,
many others conducted against the bank throughout the Jackson era. They deplored the fact that a private company was autho- rized to issue bank notes so that the "power to issue" money was transferred from the public to a private agency.
Jackson,
V an
. . .
of the
20. The place
spot where the duel took place. Benton uses the phrase "depression or basin," rather than "basis. " Pound leaves the duelists here. Two shots were fired but neither Clay nor Ran- dolph was injured. Clay insisted on the sec- ond shot, which ripped Randolph's coat. The duelists shook hands and Randolph said, "You owe me a coat, Mr. Clay. " Clay promptly replied, "I am glad the debt is no greater" [ibid. , 74]. This minor fracas was merely a symptom of the continuous war between the antibank forces represented by Randolph and the probank forces repre- sented by Clay.
: A
description
Buren and
33. the chuntze: C, chun tzu [MI715-18], "the princely man. " A gentleman, the wise man, a man of complete virtue, the beau ideal of Confucianism. " Pound wrote that such a man "stands firm in the middle of what whirls without leaning on anything ei- ther to one side or the other" [CON, 113] .
34. monopoly: Pound wrote) "The usual
? 504
88/580-581
88/581-582
505
frauds of bookkeeping, monopoly, etc. , have been known since the beginning of his~ tory . . . . Aristotle .
