No More Learning

27. Mt Taishan: [74:46].
28. Ideogram: Ho [M2109], "how. " 29. Ideogram: Ylian [M7734], "far. "
30. "How . . . it": From the fragment of a poem on which Confucius commented: "1. The flowers of the prunus japonica deflect and turn, do I not think of you dwelling afar? 2. He said: It is not the thought, how can there be distance in that"
[CON, 233].
31. Boreas: H, "the North Wind. "
32. kylin: [ch'i-lin]: C, "A fabulous animal which has the body of a deer, the tail of an ox, the hooves of a horse, one fleshy horn, parti-colored hair on its back, and a yellow belly" [ER].
33. Ideogram: Tan [M6037], "dawn. " Since tan is pronounced "dahn," it's almost a homophone of dawn.
34. Scudder's Falls: On the Schuykill River, N of Phil"delphia.
35. Ideogram: K'ou [M3434], "mouth, hole, opening. "
Odyssey" [GK, 79]. A [74:39; 80:363].
recurrent
theme
41. dance . . . medium: The
ences to the dance here, on the next page, and elsewhere in the Pisan Cantos [78/477; 79/491; 81/518] derive from Pound's memory of an article by Mead [74:448] in Quest entitled, "Ceremonial Game-Playing and Dancing in Mediaeval Churches" [vol. 4, no. 1, Oct. 1912, 91-123], especially the sections on "The Pelota of Auxerre": "one of the choir-boys used to bring to church a whipping-top. . . . When the moment came in the service . . . the boy, whip in hand, scourged the top down the pavement of the church and out of doors" [Fang, IV, 25].
42. native mountain: "a well-known Sino- Japanese term meaning one's place of birth"
[Fang, IV, 153].
43. q,vXapwv a, . . . : [the ,Xc should be e'<J : H, "You are a tiny soul supporting a corpse. " Saying attributed to Epictetus in the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius [IV, 41].
44. Justinian: Byzantine emperor [65:126]. Pound seems to believe that the emperor included religio~s dancing in his great codification of the law [94 :45].
45. Padre Jose: Jose Maria de Elizondo, the Spanish priest who helped Pound get a photostat of the Cavalcanti MS in the Escorial, Madrid [GK, 158].
46. sumne . . . othbaer: OE, "The ship [or bird] carried one of them away. " The Wanderer, line 81 [27:3].
53. dum . . . scandet: L, "As long as he goes up the Capitol hill" [Horace, Odes 3, 30]. The seven words are the Latin quote plus "the rest is explodable," a reference to the atomic bomb.
54. Shun: Chun [74:91].
55. King Wan: Wen Wang [53:49].
56. two halves of a seal: The 13 lines around this recurrent theme of the halves of a tally stick derive from a passage of Mencius: "Shun was born in Choo~fung . . . a man near the wild tribes of the east. King Wan was born in Chow by Mount K'e . . . a man near the wild tribes on the west. . . . Those regions were distant from one another more
? ? 406
than a thousand li [97:243], and the age of
the one sage was posterior to that of the other more than a thousand years. But when they got their wish, and carried their princi. pIes into practice throughout the Middle Kingdom, it was like uniting the two halves of a seal. When we examine the sages,-both the earlier and the later ,-their principles are found to 1;Je the same. " Legge's notes say one of the characters "should be called a tally or token, perhaps, rather than 'a seal'. Anciently, the emperor delivered, as the token of investiture, one half of a tally of wood or some precious stone, reserving the other half in his own keeping. It was cut right through a line of characters, indicating the commission, and their halves fitting each other when occasion required, was the test of truth and identity" [Legge, 730-731].
57. directio voluntatis: L, "direction of the will" [Dante, De Vulgari Eloquentia II, 2]. A recurrent theme, the opposite of "ab. uleia""
[5:44; 54:192], "paralysis of the will. "
58. Ideograms: The 8 characters from top to bottom are translated at the end of the canto, p. 476. Their English sounds and Matthews numbers are Fei [MI819], Ch'i
[M525], Kuei [M3634], Erh [MI756], Chi [M465], Chih [M935], Ch'an [MI74], Yeh [M7312], Chih [M971]. The two characters on the next page are Fu [MI922] , and Chieh [M795].
59. Lord Byron: Pound got the idea from
Pauthier, who said, "Quel malheur que Confucius n'ait pas redige en V ers ses admirables preceptes de morale! " [Chine, 172]. At least, after reading this Pound wrote: "Byron regretted that Kung hadn't committed his maxims to Verse" [GK, 127]. Byron also said, "In morals, I prefer Confucius to the Ten Commandments, and Socrates to St. Paul" [Byron, Works, vol. 1, p. 173]. With this Pound would agree with enthusiasm.
60. Voltaire: Francois Marie Arouet de V. , 1694. 1778, French philosopher and
historian.
61. Louis Quatorze: Le Siecle de Louis
77/467-468
XIV, 1751, by Voltaire. The last chapter of this book deals with Chinese rites and Christian practices and asks whether they are compatible. He compares the tolerance o f the Emperor K'ang Hsi [59:21] with the violent repression of both Protestants and Jansenists by the bigot King Louis
77/468-469
407
American poet and critic who went to London in 1914 to become involved in imagism. With her money, dynamic energy, and mass (some 2501bs. ), she drew many into her circle and transformed the move* ment into "amygism. " She held a formal dinner at Dieudonne 17 July 1914 to celebrate the first imagist anthology. Miss L. had 12 guests, including Ezra and Dorothy Pound, Allen Upward, and Gaudier? Brzeska, who seems to have measured the planes and angles o f her massive breasts (see "two teats of Tellus" above) with-amazement? G? B whispered to Pound as Amy stood up to speak, "God! I'd like to see her naked. " MSB says, "Pound really stressed the GAWD when he told me this anecdote,"
82. Upward: [74:275]. Pound wrote: "Of
course, it is very irritating: if you suggest to Mr. Upward that his mind is as clear as Bacon's, he will agree with you. If you suggest to Mr. Upward that his middles are less indefinite than Plato's, he will agree with you" [SP ,408].
83. Haff. . . basshunts? : "Have you no
political passions? " in a Russo? German accent.
84. Demokritoos, Heragleitos: Democritus, Heraclitus.
85. Doktor Slonimsky: Henry S. , 1884?
1970. Born in Minsk, he was a classmate
of Pound's at U. of Penn. 1902? 1903. In 1912, he received a Ph. D. degree from the University o f Marburg with a dissertation entitled Heraklit und Parmenides. Pound speaks of him as "A Russian, who had taken degrees . . . on prehistoric Greek philoso- phers . . . who, . . . said he was going 'to convert England to philosophy' " [PD, l I S ] . Also, he wrote, "Slovinsky [sic] looked at me in 1912: '. . . Boundt haffyou gno bolidigal basshuntz? ' Whatever eco? nomic passions I now have, began ab initio from having crimes against living art thrust under my perceptions" [SP,230? 231].
86. Miscio: Michio Ito (ca. 1892? 1961), a
Japanese dancer from a samurai family who
[Sieburth, Pai, 6-3, 382].
"Mang Tsze": "The ethic of Confucius and Mencius is a Nordic ethic. . . . It is concen? trated in the Mencian parable: 'An Archer having missed the bullseye does NOT turn round and blame someone else. He seeks the cause in himselr " [SP, 96] .
74. total sincerity: In Chung Yung Pound said: "Only the most absolute sincerity under heaven can bring the inborn talent to the full and empty the chalice of nature" [CON, 173]. And in "Terminology," for the word "Sincerity," he said: "The precise definition o f the word, pictorially the sun's lance corning to rest on the precise spot verbally" [CON, 20].
75. Tellus: Roman goddess of the earth; the Greek Rhea.
. . .
64. Thales: F1. 6th century B. C. One of the Seven Sages, said by Aristotle to be the founder of physical science. Pound relates a story from Aristotle about Thales "wishing to show that a philosopher could easily 'make money' if he had nothing better to do. " He foresaw a bumper crop of olives so he "hired by paying a small deposit, all the olive presses on the islands of Miletus and Chios. When the abundant harvest arrived, everybody went to see Thales" [SP, 172].
65. Siena: In Gold and Work Pound wrote; "The true basis of credit was already known to the founders of.
the Monte dei Paschi of Siena at the beginning of the seventeenth century" [SP,339].
66. interest . . . nothing: A recurrent theme in The Cantos and in many of Pound's economic writings [46:26].
67. METATHEMENON: [74:343; 97:77].
68. Le Paradis . . . : [74 :292].
69. KVe7JPCl: H, "Cythera"; Aphrodite.
70. i. mo X8ovos: H, "under the earth" [cf. 26 above].
71. 'YEa: H, "earth. " Reference to men rising out of the earth in full battle-gear in the Cadmus myth. They turned and fought each other until all but five were killed. These assisted Cadmus in building Thebes.
72. "like an arrow . . . ": From Analects
62. 1766 ante Christum:
Christ. " In 1766 B. C. the emperor Ch'eng T'ang opened a copper mine and made money which he gave to the people to buy grain [53:40].
63. Salamis: [74:109,110].
L, "
before
L
X'f, 6: "He said: Straight, and how' the historian Yu. Country properly governed, he was like an arrow; country in chaos he was like an arrow" [CON, 264. ].
73. "Missing . . . himself": Said
Pound
in
76. Pirandello:
Luigi P . ,
1867? 1936. Most
significant o f the modernist Italian drama?
tists [Freud, 91:55]. Pound wrote:
"Pirandello was worried at the news that Cocteau was trying an Oedipus; for a moment he 'feared' or 'had feared' that M. Jean wd. fall into psychoanalysis, and caught himself the next moment with 'No, he won't fall into that mess. It est trop bon poete' " [GK,93].
77. Campari: Cafe C. at Galleria Vittorio Emanuele, Milan. Perhaps Pirandello told the story o f Cocteau there.
78. Dieudonne: [74:178].
79. Voisin: [74:179).
80. Gaudier: G? Brzeska, 1892? 1915, Vor? tieist sculptor killed in WWI, and celebrated by Pound: "Among many good artists . . . there was this one sculptor already great in achievement at the age of twenty? three, incalculably great in promise and in the hopes of his friends" [GR, 17].
81. Miss Lowell: Amy L. , 1874? 1925, an
? 408
77/469-470
77/470-471
409
trained in Japan, in Paris (with Nijinsky and the Ballet Russe), and at a school of eu- rhythmics in Germany. When WWI broke out he fled to London and was reduced to poverty. He lived in a rooming house run by an Irish woman. After pawning about all he had including neckties, he finally went for three days without any hot water or light. "Out of the sixpence he realized from his neckwear he put two pennies into the gasometer and went out to buy some bread with the remainder of his fortune. " That night a painter took him to a party at Lady Ottoline Morrell's where Lady Cunard invited him to dinner the next day. He began dancing at parties, thereafter, for literary and artistic audiences. Once, after he had danced before an audience of 100, a distin- guished gentleman asked him about Japanese art. Ito could not speak English but said that if he might speak German he could answer. The gentleman, no less than Prime Minister Asquith, concurred and they spoke quite
easily in German [Caldwell, Michio, 40-41]. 87. Ainley: Henry A. , an actor who played
the part of Cuchulain in At the Hawk's Well, by Yeats. Allan Wade played the Old Man and Michio Ito the Guardian of the Well. The line in quotes is probably a remark made by Ito during a rehearsal. The play was performed on the afternoon of April 2, 1916 in Lady Cunard's drawing room. Yeats said later of these days: "I shall not soon forget the rehearsal of The Hawk's Well, when Mr. Ezra Pound, who had never acted on any stage, in the absence of one chief player rehearsed for half an hour" [Plays, 214].
88. Mrs Tinkey: Prob. the Irish landlady of Ito.
. . .
[was] 'Jap'nese dance all time overcoat' "
[L,335].
90. Jack Dempsey: William Harrison D. , 1895? 1983, American heavyweight boxing champion, 1919? 1926.
91. Mr Wilson: Tom Wilson, DTC trainee [74:257]. A popular song sung by Mr. Wilson had these lines: "My girl's got great big tits / Just like Jack Dempsey's mitts"
[DG].
92. old Dublin pilot: In a piece entitled "John Synge and the Habits of Criticism" [The Egoist, Feb. 2, 1914], Pound said: "'She was so fine and she was so healthy that you could have cracked a flea on either of her breasts,' said the old sea captain bragging about the loves of his youth. It seems a shame that the only man who could have made any real use of that glorious
phrase in literature is dead. "
93. precise definition: [cf. 74 above].
94. bel seno: I, "beautiful bosom. " in rimas escarsas: P, "in rare rhymes. " vide sopra: L, "see above. "
95. Amo: River in central Italy. The 2 mountains so divided make an enormous, if not beautiful, bosom.
96. ! :;1/Ili]T1/P: H, "Demeter. " Goddess of harvest [47: 3] .
97. copulatrix: L, "one who copulates. "
98. Ciano: Conte Galeazzo Ciano di Corte- lazzo, 1903-44, Italian statesman, secretary of state of press and propaganda (1935), minister of foreign affairs (1936-43), ambas? sador to the Holy See (1943). He was the son-in-law of Mussolini, and according to many, a treacherous stuffed? shirt type guilty of corruption and profiteering [Anderson, Pai, 6? 2, 244].
99. the admiral: Ubaldo degli Uberti, 1881-1945, a longtime Italian naval officer who retired in 1931 but returned to service during WWII, at which time he was pro- moted to admiral. Since early 1934 Uberti and his family had been friends of Pound. They had similar political and literary sympathies, and Uberti assisted in translating Pound and getting his work published. Pound saw Uberti often during his last months in Rome. His son Riccardo provided the ski shoes he wore on his walk (after the fall of the government) north to join his
daughter. The "he" in the line is Mussolini. The Italian fleet was surrendered to the Allies 8? 10 Sept. 1943. Admiral Uberti was ambushed and shot by a platoon of Russian-German soldiers who thought his car belonged to partisans. He died in hospital 28 April 1945, a few days before Pound arrived at the DTC [Uberti, "History of a Friendship," 105].
100. Chilanti: Felice C. , 1914? 1982, ajour- nalist and novelist Pound knew and visited often in the early 1940s. He was a member of a group of dissident Fascists Pound listened to but didn't agree with. In 1972 he wrote "Ezra Pound among the Seditious in the 1940s" [Anderson,Pai, 6-2, 235? 250].
101. 12 . . . daughter:
Pound's many visits to Chilanti's group, she used to listen avidly to all the talk and sometimes "sat on his knees while he cast about for answers which would satisfy him"
[ibid. , 240] .
102. Sold . . . Gais: The village in the Tyrol where Mary, the daughter of Pound and Olga Rudge, was brought up and about which Mary de Rachewiltz (M de R) writes so memorably in Discretions: "All that is gone now. In its place there is a new school, a post office, a hotel and a cement factory near the river" [for the quote and the cattle bedding see Discretions, 35? 37].
103. Chung Ni: Confucius [53:148]. Re? prise of "Mongols are fallen / from losing the law of Chung Ni" [56/308], which derives from De Mailla, Histoire, X, 23.
104. alpino's statue: "The monument to the A lpint in the Piazza in Bruneck has always been one of the Tyrolean Targets for anti- Italian manifestations. In September 1943 they placed beside it an empty valise, to remind Italians it was time to pack up and
leave" [M de R, 194].
105. Brunik: [Bruneck]: A town in the Italian Tyrol.
106. Dalmatia: Territory on the east shore of the Adriatic Sea which became Yugoslavia and Albania; its indigenous people had no enthusiasm for Italian encroachments.
107. treasure of honesty . . . : A recurrent theme in Confucian writings: "A state does not profit by profits. Honesty is the treasure of states" [CON, 87? 89].
108. dog? damn . . . labour: These several lines concern the conviction of many of Mussolini's followers (prob. including Pound) that his government fell riot because of his shortcomings (or the difficulty of Fascism as an ideology) but because of fraud and corruption in the bureaucracy. By Sep- tember 23, 1943 M had formed La Repub? blica de Sa16. Although the 20 years' labour of the old had been ruined, M's new program would work. Pound seemed to hope and dream so. Jactancy (ostentatious public boasting) would be replaced by work
[M de R, 194? 196].
109. Petano: Since there is no town in Italy of this name', it is prob. an error for Adana. John Hersey's novel A Bell for Adana (1945) may have evoked the line. Mary de Rachewiltz remembers that her father read the book around 1945.