It is the
location
of the mass grave of about 10,000 Polish soldiers whom the Russians and Germans have ever since accused each other of killing.
A-Companion-to-the-Cantos-of-Ezra-Pound-II
ends and beginnings: Based on Pound's
interpretation of a Confucian text in The Great Digest: "Things have roots and branches; affairs have scopes and beginnings. To know what precedes and follows, is nearly as good as having a head and feet"
[CON, 29]. The theme recurs at 77/465 and other places in the later cantos.
202. cassoni: I, "treasure chests. " Here, bas-relief panels at Rimini.
203. the hidden nest: A large abstract painting done for Pound by Tamiosuke
76/462
Koume [Michio Ito: 77: 86], which Pound
called "Tami's dream. " In a letter to Katue Kitasono [May 24, 1936], Pound said: "I had all Fenollosa's notes and the results of what he learned. . . . But since Tami Koume was killed in that earthquake [1923] I have had no one to explain the obscure passages or fill up the enormous gaps of my ignorance" [L, 282]. When Pound vacated his Paris studio, he sent the painting to a friend in Auteuil. In 1931 it was brought to Venice, but it was sequestered as alien enemy property during WWII and disap. peared as did "the great Ovid" [Ivaneich].
204. the great Ovid: Ovid's Fasti, printed by a successor of Bodoni, which Pound bought from Sig. Cassini, seller of rare books, and had bound in wooden covers.
205. bas relief of Ixotta: Yriarte attributes a bas? relief of Ixotta [9:59] (now with Olga Rudge) to Agostini di Duccio [9:78]. A picture of the bas? relief with a picture of Ixotta's tomb in the Tempio Malatestiano was published in 1761 [Fang, II, 250].
206. Olim de Malatestis: L, "Once of the
Malatestas. "
207. Fano: A city near Rimini once under
control of the Malatestas [9:3].
401
dichotomy concerning the creation of the universe. One side said, "ex nihilo, nihil fit" ("out of nothing, nothing is made"); the other, "ex nihil ens creatum" ("out of nothing, being is created").
215. la concha: S, "conch. "
216. IIOIKIA08PON' . . . : H, "richly en? throned, immortal. " Opening words of Sappho's hymn to Aphrodite [Lyra Graeca, 182; OBGV, No. 140].
217. that butterfly . . . smoke hole: [cf. 188 above]. The source for the smoke hole here and the German quote 7 lines later is the laboratory scene [11. 6819? 7004], Part Two, Act II of Goethe's Faust. In that scene, Mephistopheles and Wagner, amidst fantastic medieval alchemical apparatus, are busy making a human being. According to the notes that Passage, the translator, derived from Witkowski's edition o f the German text, to create a human being was the "supreme objective of the alchemists. " For a few years (1768 and in the late 1790s), Goethe was a passionate student of the history of alchemy, particularly the work of the previous three centuries. Passage trans- lates lines from the opening of the scene thus: "In the retort a fire dot grows, / And like a living coal it glows. " He has a note that says: "To the alchemists, 'living coals' took fire from their own inner spark. " What
for the alchemists may have been scientific fact becomes for Pound a metaphorical rhyme with all the other fire and light images in The Cantos. Wagner continues: "Yes, like a splendid ruby's spark / It flashes lightnings through the dark. / A clear white light begins to brighten! " With a loud rattling of the door, Mephisto comes in and asks: "~at are you making there? " Wagner says: " A human being! " Mephisto: "A human being? And what loving pair / Have you got hidden in the smoke hole there? " ("Habt ihr in's Rauchloch eingeschloffen,"
[1. 6837]). Wagner says, "none," and keeps
on with his work in a scene evocative of Frankenstein movies. Within a few minutes he has completed a nine months' process and created a homunculus, following somewhat
208. 64 countries . . . sargent:
mark of one of the DTC cadre overheard by Pound, who may be estimating the number of countries involved in WWII. He also men- tions his prewar occupation-, the illegal nature of which strikes an ironic note.
209. vino rosso: I, "red wine. "
210. mountain oysters: A locution some-
times used to label a dish made from sheep
testicles.
211. lisciate con lagrime: I, "smoothed with tears. "
212. politis polished] tears. "
"elegant
[or
lachrymis: L,
213. LlAKPY[2N: H, "tears. "
214. ex nihil: L, "out of nothing. " Prob.
meant to evoke phrase from scholastic
Prob. a
re-
? 402
76/462-463
77/464
403
the recipe of Paracelsus's work De genera? tionibus rerum naturalium, Book 1. A note by Passage says in part: "Allow male sperm to putrefy for forty days in a covered jar until it visibly stirs with new life and some- what resembles a man's form . . . ; keep warm for weeks (9 months) and feed daily with arcana sangUlnlS humani . . . after which time it will become a . . . homunculus"
[Passage, 238]. Shortly, Wagner has spirited one up out of the retort and free of the smoke hole. The homunculus then talks to him and Mephisto.
churches have paintings by Fra Angelico [45:12].
224. po'eri di'ao1i: I, "poor devils. " RO's text has a marginalium (presumably given by Pound) which says "Favai," but this word, unless it is slang, means nothing in Italian. Fava, ("bean") is used in slang expressions such as "not worth a bean. " Perhaps, "beans," in this sense, is intended.
225. Knecht [eJ gegen Knecht [eJ: G, "Slave against slave. " From Faust [cf. 217 above]. Continuing the Faust scene, Wagner, Mephisto, and the homunculus come to talk about such things as destiny, pleasure, struggle, and fate, until Mephisto says, "Spare me / That clash of servitude with tyranny' . . . The struggle is, they say, for freedom's rights, / Look closer, and it's slave with slave that fights" [11. 6962-6963].
226. MET A8EMENnN. . . . : H, "chang- ing. " Key word of quote from Aristotle's Politics concerning the results o f changing one currency from another [74:343].
227. NHLON'AMYMONA: H, "a noble island. " From lines in which Odysseus is telling of his approach to the island where his companions killed the cattle of the sun
[20:69].
Background
EP, GK, 188,79,93,89,127; SP, 172,339,96,408,230-231,
179,341,448; GB, 17;PD, 115;LE, 288;PE, 129;Voltaire,Le siecie de Louis XIV, 1751; New Age, Oct. 16, 1913, 728; Dial, Dec. and Oct. 1920; W. B. Yeats, Plays and Controversies, London, Macmillan, 1923 [Plays]; J. E. Cirlot, A Dictionary of Symbols, New York, Philosophical Library, 1962 [Cirlot]; Sisley Huddleston, Paris Salons, Cafes, Studios, Philadelphia and London, 1928, [SH, Paris]; James Wilhelm, Dante and Pound, Orono, 1974; James Legge, The Four Books, Shanghai, 1923
[Legge1; Francis Trevelyan Miller, History of World War11, Philadelphia and Toronto, 1945; Helen Caldwell, Michio Ito: The Dancer and His Dances, Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London, University of California Press, 1977; T. S. Eliot, "Whispers of Immortality"; Achilles Fang, "Materials for the Study of Pound's Cantos," Ph. D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1958, II, III, IV; James G. Fraser, The New Golden Bough, ed. Theodor H. Gaster, New York, 1959; CFT, Basil Bunting: Man & Poet, Orono, 1980; M de R, Discretions, 35-37, 194-196,44, [M de R]; Lord Byron, Works, ed. Rowland E. Prothero, London, I, 173; Leonard Doob, ed. , Ezra Pound Speaking, Connecticut, Greenwood Press, 1978
[Doob, Speaking].
Exegeses
Sieburth, Pai, 6-3, 382; Anderson, Pai, 6-2, 235-250; Nassar, Pai, 1-2,211; Riccardo M. degli Uberti, "Ezra Pound and Ubaldo degli Uberti: History of a Friendship," Italian Quarterly, XVI, 64, Spring 1973, 95-107.
Glossary
refused to allow an international
tion, but Pound had reliable inside informa- tion that told him that the Russians directed and carried out the massacre [M de R].
5. Ie beau monde gouverne: F, "society governs. "
6. toujours: F, "always. "
7. Chung: [MI504] "the middle" [76:54].
8. "and having got 'em . . . ": "He said: How can one serve a prince along with these village-sized (kinky) minds? Until they get on they worry about nothing else, and, when they have, they. worry about losing the advantages. When they are afraid of losing
218. saeva: L, "cruel. "
219. Leonello: [24:17].
Prob.
Lionello
d'Este
220. Petrus Pisani pinxit: L, "Peter Pisano painted [it]. " Poss. Antonio Pisano [26:78], a painter employed by Sigismundo and patronized by Lionello d'Este. He was
also known as Vittare Pisano.
221. cameo should remain: Focuses Pound's interest in seals, cameos, and fragments [GK, 159]. .
222. Arezzo: City in central Italy [44:26].
223. Cartana :
Town in
Tuscany
where
CANTO LXXVII Sources
Abner
who apparently had little enthusiasm for manual labor.
2. Von Tirpitz: German admiral [74:377].
EP, CON, 277, 29, 233, 264,173,20,87-89,201; CNTJ, 113- 121; SR, 160; Horace, Odes 111, Satires II; Dante, De Vulgari Eloquentia II, In/. X; Marcus Aurelius, Meditations IV; G. R. S. Mead, "Ceremonial Game-Playing and Dancing in Mediaeval Churches," Quest, vol. 4, no. 1, Oct. 1912,91-123; De Mailla, Histoire generale . . . , Paris, 1777-1785, X, 23; Pauthier, Chine ou Description historique, geographique et litteraire . . . , Paris, 1853
[Chine] ; The Wanderer, line 81.
. . .
3. Maukch: Gothardt Maukshk, an Italian bookdealer, still living, who worked for Sansoni, a publisher in Florence. Pound visited him there with Riccardo degli Uberti in 1959 [M de R].
4. Kalin: Katyn. A Russian village west of Smolensk occupied by the Germans in WWII.
It is the location of the mass grave of about 10,000 Polish soldiers whom the Russians and Germans have ever since accused each other of killing. The Soviets
1.
action: Prisoner at the DT e
investiga-
? ? ? 404
77/464-466
77/466-467
405
(advantages, privileges) there is nothing, absolutely nothing they will not do to retain (them) (no length they won't go to)" [CON, 277].
9. Kungfutseu: Confucius [13:1].
20. camion: A military truck (derives from F).
21. Awoi: The Lady Awoi in the Noh play Awoi no uye which Pound translated from Fenollosa's notes [CNT! , 113-121]. Awoi, the first wife of Genji, is consumed with
jealousy of his later wives [I I 0 :43] .
22. hennia: Hannya. An evil spirit in Noh
plays. In Awoi no uye the hannya appears "Clothed in a scarlet hakama" and joins "the great dance climax of the play," during which she is exorcised [CNT! , 120-121].
36. Regent's canal: A canal along the N edge of Regent's Park in London.
37. Theodora: Private reference to a lady not to be named.
38. Daimio's: Tami Koume [76:203]. "The Tailor's bill was $100" [RO].
39. Grishkin: The last half of Eliot's "Whis- pers of Immortality" concerns the feline promise of Grishkin, whose "friendly bust / Gives promise of pneumatic bliss. " The photo still exists (at Hamilton in 1980).
40. Mr Eliot: T. S. Eliot.
47. Corpus: I, (Corpus Domini), or L, (Corpus Christi): A feast day honoring the institution of Eucharist.
48. Auxerre: Capital of Yonne department, NE central France [cf. 41 above].
49. K<XAAmAOK<XIl<X: H, "with beautiful locks [hair] . "
50. Ida: The mountain where Aphrodite and Anchises were married and where the Judgment of Paris took place. Also, at the end of every eight years King Minos of Crete "retired for a season to commune with his divine father Zeus on Mount Ida" [Fraser, The New Golden Bough, 234].
51. Nemi: In the opening chapter of The Golden Bough, the King of the Wood is seen prowling the sacred grove on the shore of Lake Nemi defending the tree of the golden bough. The priest-king will keep his office until his successor succeeds in plucking the golden bough and then murder- ing him and becoming priest in his stead: "In his hand he carried a drawn sword, and he kept peering warily about him as if at every instant he expected to be set upon. " So it went on from day to day until his murderer arrived [ibid. , p. 3].
52. liars . . . Siracusa: Syracuse, the port in Sicily, where sailors still tell "yarns from the
10. Bros Watson's . . . scope: These 12
seem to record a memory of Pound's of a scene he observed at the age of 19 when he was attending Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, 1903-1905. The Watson Drug Co. (located on the north side of College St. , about a mile east of Hamilton) was founded by Col. James T. Watson in 1904. It dis- pensed drugs and sundries and had a tele- graph office and chess tables in the rear
[V. Mondolfo, letter, March 13, 1979].
11. (a. d. 1904 . . . : The missing closing parenthesis should prob. be after "1904. "
12. Ideogram: Hsien [M2702]: "first, fore- most," Pound explicates the characters at end of the canto, p. 476. They are taken from The Great Digest (TA HIO). The lines around the characters paraphrase Pound's trans. of the Confucian text: "Things have roots and branches; affairs have scopes and beginnings. To know what precedes and what follows is nearly as good as having a head and feet" [CON, 29].
13. Ideogram: Hou [M2143]: "afterwards; to follow. "
14. process: Pound's sense of an ideogram not given: "Tao" [M6136]: "the way; the truth" [74:9].
15. vide: L, "see,"
16. Epictetus: Stoic philosopher (fl. 55- 135) who wrote Lectures, on the value of endurance. "He taught that the universe is the work of God, and that Divine Providence manifests itself in its unity and order" [OCD].
17. Syrus: Publius S. , a writer of Latin mimes and maxims in the first century B. C.
18. Arcturus: Major star in the constellation Bootes.
19. bloke . . . open: Source unknown.
lines
23. der im Baluba: [38:41].
24. Faasa . . . 4 Silla [74:134].
thues: Also
Agada,
Ganna,
several
refer-
25. II Scirocco . . . : [10 Scirocco] : I, "the South Wind is jealous. "
26. X86vos: H, "of the earth. " Gen. sing. of
X8wv.
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
?
interpretation of a Confucian text in The Great Digest: "Things have roots and branches; affairs have scopes and beginnings. To know what precedes and follows, is nearly as good as having a head and feet"
[CON, 29]. The theme recurs at 77/465 and other places in the later cantos.
202. cassoni: I, "treasure chests. " Here, bas-relief panels at Rimini.
203. the hidden nest: A large abstract painting done for Pound by Tamiosuke
76/462
Koume [Michio Ito: 77: 86], which Pound
called "Tami's dream. " In a letter to Katue Kitasono [May 24, 1936], Pound said: "I had all Fenollosa's notes and the results of what he learned. . . . But since Tami Koume was killed in that earthquake [1923] I have had no one to explain the obscure passages or fill up the enormous gaps of my ignorance" [L, 282]. When Pound vacated his Paris studio, he sent the painting to a friend in Auteuil. In 1931 it was brought to Venice, but it was sequestered as alien enemy property during WWII and disap. peared as did "the great Ovid" [Ivaneich].
204. the great Ovid: Ovid's Fasti, printed by a successor of Bodoni, which Pound bought from Sig. Cassini, seller of rare books, and had bound in wooden covers.
205. bas relief of Ixotta: Yriarte attributes a bas? relief of Ixotta [9:59] (now with Olga Rudge) to Agostini di Duccio [9:78]. A picture of the bas? relief with a picture of Ixotta's tomb in the Tempio Malatestiano was published in 1761 [Fang, II, 250].
206. Olim de Malatestis: L, "Once of the
Malatestas. "
207. Fano: A city near Rimini once under
control of the Malatestas [9:3].
401
dichotomy concerning the creation of the universe. One side said, "ex nihilo, nihil fit" ("out of nothing, nothing is made"); the other, "ex nihil ens creatum" ("out of nothing, being is created").
215. la concha: S, "conch. "
216. IIOIKIA08PON' . . . : H, "richly en? throned, immortal. " Opening words of Sappho's hymn to Aphrodite [Lyra Graeca, 182; OBGV, No. 140].
217. that butterfly . . . smoke hole: [cf. 188 above]. The source for the smoke hole here and the German quote 7 lines later is the laboratory scene [11. 6819? 7004], Part Two, Act II of Goethe's Faust. In that scene, Mephistopheles and Wagner, amidst fantastic medieval alchemical apparatus, are busy making a human being. According to the notes that Passage, the translator, derived from Witkowski's edition o f the German text, to create a human being was the "supreme objective of the alchemists. " For a few years (1768 and in the late 1790s), Goethe was a passionate student of the history of alchemy, particularly the work of the previous three centuries. Passage trans- lates lines from the opening of the scene thus: "In the retort a fire dot grows, / And like a living coal it glows. " He has a note that says: "To the alchemists, 'living coals' took fire from their own inner spark. " What
for the alchemists may have been scientific fact becomes for Pound a metaphorical rhyme with all the other fire and light images in The Cantos. Wagner continues: "Yes, like a splendid ruby's spark / It flashes lightnings through the dark. / A clear white light begins to brighten! " With a loud rattling of the door, Mephisto comes in and asks: "~at are you making there? " Wagner says: " A human being! " Mephisto: "A human being? And what loving pair / Have you got hidden in the smoke hole there? " ("Habt ihr in's Rauchloch eingeschloffen,"
[1. 6837]). Wagner says, "none," and keeps
on with his work in a scene evocative of Frankenstein movies. Within a few minutes he has completed a nine months' process and created a homunculus, following somewhat
208. 64 countries . . . sargent:
mark of one of the DTC cadre overheard by Pound, who may be estimating the number of countries involved in WWII. He also men- tions his prewar occupation-, the illegal nature of which strikes an ironic note.
209. vino rosso: I, "red wine. "
210. mountain oysters: A locution some-
times used to label a dish made from sheep
testicles.
211. lisciate con lagrime: I, "smoothed with tears. "
212. politis polished] tears. "
"elegant
[or
lachrymis: L,
213. LlAKPY[2N: H, "tears. "
214. ex nihil: L, "out of nothing. " Prob.
meant to evoke phrase from scholastic
Prob. a
re-
? 402
76/462-463
77/464
403
the recipe of Paracelsus's work De genera? tionibus rerum naturalium, Book 1. A note by Passage says in part: "Allow male sperm to putrefy for forty days in a covered jar until it visibly stirs with new life and some- what resembles a man's form . . . ; keep warm for weeks (9 months) and feed daily with arcana sangUlnlS humani . . . after which time it will become a . . . homunculus"
[Passage, 238]. Shortly, Wagner has spirited one up out of the retort and free of the smoke hole. The homunculus then talks to him and Mephisto.
churches have paintings by Fra Angelico [45:12].
224. po'eri di'ao1i: I, "poor devils. " RO's text has a marginalium (presumably given by Pound) which says "Favai," but this word, unless it is slang, means nothing in Italian. Fava, ("bean") is used in slang expressions such as "not worth a bean. " Perhaps, "beans," in this sense, is intended.
225. Knecht [eJ gegen Knecht [eJ: G, "Slave against slave. " From Faust [cf. 217 above]. Continuing the Faust scene, Wagner, Mephisto, and the homunculus come to talk about such things as destiny, pleasure, struggle, and fate, until Mephisto says, "Spare me / That clash of servitude with tyranny' . . . The struggle is, they say, for freedom's rights, / Look closer, and it's slave with slave that fights" [11. 6962-6963].
226. MET A8EMENnN. . . . : H, "chang- ing. " Key word of quote from Aristotle's Politics concerning the results o f changing one currency from another [74:343].
227. NHLON'AMYMONA: H, "a noble island. " From lines in which Odysseus is telling of his approach to the island where his companions killed the cattle of the sun
[20:69].
Background
EP, GK, 188,79,93,89,127; SP, 172,339,96,408,230-231,
179,341,448; GB, 17;PD, 115;LE, 288;PE, 129;Voltaire,Le siecie de Louis XIV, 1751; New Age, Oct. 16, 1913, 728; Dial, Dec. and Oct. 1920; W. B. Yeats, Plays and Controversies, London, Macmillan, 1923 [Plays]; J. E. Cirlot, A Dictionary of Symbols, New York, Philosophical Library, 1962 [Cirlot]; Sisley Huddleston, Paris Salons, Cafes, Studios, Philadelphia and London, 1928, [SH, Paris]; James Wilhelm, Dante and Pound, Orono, 1974; James Legge, The Four Books, Shanghai, 1923
[Legge1; Francis Trevelyan Miller, History of World War11, Philadelphia and Toronto, 1945; Helen Caldwell, Michio Ito: The Dancer and His Dances, Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London, University of California Press, 1977; T. S. Eliot, "Whispers of Immortality"; Achilles Fang, "Materials for the Study of Pound's Cantos," Ph. D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1958, II, III, IV; James G. Fraser, The New Golden Bough, ed. Theodor H. Gaster, New York, 1959; CFT, Basil Bunting: Man & Poet, Orono, 1980; M de R, Discretions, 35-37, 194-196,44, [M de R]; Lord Byron, Works, ed. Rowland E. Prothero, London, I, 173; Leonard Doob, ed. , Ezra Pound Speaking, Connecticut, Greenwood Press, 1978
[Doob, Speaking].
Exegeses
Sieburth, Pai, 6-3, 382; Anderson, Pai, 6-2, 235-250; Nassar, Pai, 1-2,211; Riccardo M. degli Uberti, "Ezra Pound and Ubaldo degli Uberti: History of a Friendship," Italian Quarterly, XVI, 64, Spring 1973, 95-107.
Glossary
refused to allow an international
tion, but Pound had reliable inside informa- tion that told him that the Russians directed and carried out the massacre [M de R].
5. Ie beau monde gouverne: F, "society governs. "
6. toujours: F, "always. "
7. Chung: [MI504] "the middle" [76:54].
8. "and having got 'em . . . ": "He said: How can one serve a prince along with these village-sized (kinky) minds? Until they get on they worry about nothing else, and, when they have, they. worry about losing the advantages. When they are afraid of losing
218. saeva: L, "cruel. "
219. Leonello: [24:17].
Prob.
Lionello
d'Este
220. Petrus Pisani pinxit: L, "Peter Pisano painted [it]. " Poss. Antonio Pisano [26:78], a painter employed by Sigismundo and patronized by Lionello d'Este. He was
also known as Vittare Pisano.
221. cameo should remain: Focuses Pound's interest in seals, cameos, and fragments [GK, 159]. .
222. Arezzo: City in central Italy [44:26].
223. Cartana :
Town in
Tuscany
where
CANTO LXXVII Sources
Abner
who apparently had little enthusiasm for manual labor.
2. Von Tirpitz: German admiral [74:377].
EP, CON, 277, 29, 233, 264,173,20,87-89,201; CNTJ, 113- 121; SR, 160; Horace, Odes 111, Satires II; Dante, De Vulgari Eloquentia II, In/. X; Marcus Aurelius, Meditations IV; G. R. S. Mead, "Ceremonial Game-Playing and Dancing in Mediaeval Churches," Quest, vol. 4, no. 1, Oct. 1912,91-123; De Mailla, Histoire generale . . . , Paris, 1777-1785, X, 23; Pauthier, Chine ou Description historique, geographique et litteraire . . . , Paris, 1853
[Chine] ; The Wanderer, line 81.
. . .
3. Maukch: Gothardt Maukshk, an Italian bookdealer, still living, who worked for Sansoni, a publisher in Florence. Pound visited him there with Riccardo degli Uberti in 1959 [M de R].
4. Kalin: Katyn. A Russian village west of Smolensk occupied by the Germans in WWII.
It is the location of the mass grave of about 10,000 Polish soldiers whom the Russians and Germans have ever since accused each other of killing. The Soviets
1.
action: Prisoner at the DT e
investiga-
? ? ? 404
77/464-466
77/466-467
405
(advantages, privileges) there is nothing, absolutely nothing they will not do to retain (them) (no length they won't go to)" [CON, 277].
9. Kungfutseu: Confucius [13:1].
20. camion: A military truck (derives from F).
21. Awoi: The Lady Awoi in the Noh play Awoi no uye which Pound translated from Fenollosa's notes [CNT! , 113-121]. Awoi, the first wife of Genji, is consumed with
jealousy of his later wives [I I 0 :43] .
22. hennia: Hannya. An evil spirit in Noh
plays. In Awoi no uye the hannya appears "Clothed in a scarlet hakama" and joins "the great dance climax of the play," during which she is exorcised [CNT! , 120-121].
36. Regent's canal: A canal along the N edge of Regent's Park in London.
37. Theodora: Private reference to a lady not to be named.
38. Daimio's: Tami Koume [76:203]. "The Tailor's bill was $100" [RO].
39. Grishkin: The last half of Eliot's "Whis- pers of Immortality" concerns the feline promise of Grishkin, whose "friendly bust / Gives promise of pneumatic bliss. " The photo still exists (at Hamilton in 1980).
40. Mr Eliot: T. S. Eliot.
47. Corpus: I, (Corpus Domini), or L, (Corpus Christi): A feast day honoring the institution of Eucharist.
48. Auxerre: Capital of Yonne department, NE central France [cf. 41 above].
49. K<XAAmAOK<XIl<X: H, "with beautiful locks [hair] . "
50. Ida: The mountain where Aphrodite and Anchises were married and where the Judgment of Paris took place. Also, at the end of every eight years King Minos of Crete "retired for a season to commune with his divine father Zeus on Mount Ida" [Fraser, The New Golden Bough, 234].
51. Nemi: In the opening chapter of The Golden Bough, the King of the Wood is seen prowling the sacred grove on the shore of Lake Nemi defending the tree of the golden bough. The priest-king will keep his office until his successor succeeds in plucking the golden bough and then murder- ing him and becoming priest in his stead: "In his hand he carried a drawn sword, and he kept peering warily about him as if at every instant he expected to be set upon. " So it went on from day to day until his murderer arrived [ibid. , p. 3].
52. liars . . . Siracusa: Syracuse, the port in Sicily, where sailors still tell "yarns from the
10. Bros Watson's . . . scope: These 12
seem to record a memory of Pound's of a scene he observed at the age of 19 when he was attending Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, 1903-1905. The Watson Drug Co. (located on the north side of College St. , about a mile east of Hamilton) was founded by Col. James T. Watson in 1904. It dis- pensed drugs and sundries and had a tele- graph office and chess tables in the rear
[V. Mondolfo, letter, March 13, 1979].
11. (a. d. 1904 . . . : The missing closing parenthesis should prob. be after "1904. "
12. Ideogram: Hsien [M2702]: "first, fore- most," Pound explicates the characters at end of the canto, p. 476. They are taken from The Great Digest (TA HIO). The lines around the characters paraphrase Pound's trans. of the Confucian text: "Things have roots and branches; affairs have scopes and beginnings. To know what precedes and what follows is nearly as good as having a head and feet" [CON, 29].
13. Ideogram: Hou [M2143]: "afterwards; to follow. "
14. process: Pound's sense of an ideogram not given: "Tao" [M6136]: "the way; the truth" [74:9].
15. vide: L, "see,"
16. Epictetus: Stoic philosopher (fl. 55- 135) who wrote Lectures, on the value of endurance. "He taught that the universe is the work of God, and that Divine Providence manifests itself in its unity and order" [OCD].
17. Syrus: Publius S. , a writer of Latin mimes and maxims in the first century B. C.
18. Arcturus: Major star in the constellation Bootes.
19. bloke . . . open: Source unknown.
lines
23. der im Baluba: [38:41].
24. Faasa . . . 4 Silla [74:134].
thues: Also
Agada,
Ganna,
several
refer-
25. II Scirocco . . . : [10 Scirocco] : I, "the South Wind is jealous. "
26. X86vos: H, "of the earth. " Gen. sing. of
X8wv.
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
?
