JA said that TJ feared
monarchy
but that he (JA) feared an aristocracy.
A-Companion-to-the-Cantos-of-Ezra-Pound-II
391. K_P. : Kitchen patrol.
392. gratia: L, "with thanks to. " Pound
seems to want to give thanks to these parti~ 377. Anastasia: Saint Anastasia, 4th-century cular people at the DTC who helped make
Roman noblewoman martyred under Diode- his imprisonment tolerable.
tian. All 3 of these saints are recalled in the Mass.
378. saeculorum: L, "of the ages. "
393. Bedell: Lieutenant in provost section. 394. africanus: L, "from Africa. "
395. souterrain: F, "underground. "
should note well. Here Pound states his per- ment recognized his service by creating him ception of "the process" as the divine mys- Chevalier du Merite Agricole. An inverse
tery in action. rhyme with usurers and "haggers of harvest" 382. Immaculata Regina: L, "Immaculate [SP, 278-281; WB,Pai, 11-3,442].
Queen" (from Roman Catholic Mass; the
Virgin Mary). cern a mass with eucharist in memory of
383. Les larmes . . . Tristesse: F, "The tears Carleton.
that I created flood me I Late very late have 398. I known your sadness" (from rondo after grain.
Demeter:
Ceres
[47: 3]
goddess of
stanza 165 in "Grand Testament" of Vii-
lon)[ef. SR,171-178]. 399. (Zupp, Bufford, and Bohon): Trainees
at the DTC.
are called out to dQ KP duty or who line up 400. men of no fortune: [cf. 386 above].
384. (Nadasky . . . ): Soldiers whose names for sick call.
385. hieri: I, ieri, "yesterday. "
386. no fortune: A musical figure [1/4;
74:319].
404. o. t. a. : Of the army.
tion, DTC. 405. Oh . . . out: Paraphrase of the rhythms
387. Bankers: A corporal in the provost sec-
389. Hildebrand: Major in charge of post
397. celebrate Christ:? The lines may con-
[1: 12]. [76: 139]. 403. Pepitone: Trainee.
401. Elpenor:
402. Zoagli:
[41 :33]. Time
? ? ? ? 448
80/515-516
80/516
449
could make money "free again" and return to the old England owned by right-wingers such as Chesterton [Surette, Pai, 6-1, 111- 113J.
413. Talbot: Charles Talbot was of the Shakespear family and a cousin of Dorothy Pound. It was he who inherited Lacock Abbey and left it to his niece, who, in order to pay the death duties, had to sell treasures such as paintings and the Magna Charta.
"Dorothy's father had and Omar now has a beautiful gold seal of the Talbots: their dog emblem both as handle and in imprint"
[HK, Pai, 2-3, 492J.
414. Let backe . . . : The rhythms of this passage are based on a variety of 15th- century lyrics Pound saw in Speare, such as "J oily good ale and old. " "Back and side go bare, go bare, / Both foot and hand go cold; / But, belly, God send thee good ale enough, / Whether it be new or old. "
415. boneen: Irish, baneen or bainin, a litter of pigs.
416. Claridge's: A most posh and fasrnon- able hotel on Brook Street in West End, London.
417. Hewlett's: [74: 170J. Hewlett lived at. the Old Rectory, Broad Chalke, Salisbury. Pound wrote to rns mother on Dec. 24,1911 saying he was at Salisbury and expected to "motor over to see Henry Newbolt some- time or other" [BK, Pai, 5-2, 350J.
418. Southampton: City on southwestern coast of England.
419. the green holly: "Heigh-ho! unto the green holly: / Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly," from As You Like It [Speare, 70J.
420. Salisbury plain: In SW England, NW of Salisbury, an undulating chalk plateau noted for a number of ancient monuments, espe- cially Stonehenge.
421. the Lady Anne: Lady Anne Blunt, wife ofW. S. Blunt [81:61]' who was born Lady Anne Isabella King-Noel, a descendant
of Lord Byron. The Noel may have provided the link in the chain of associations.
422. Le Portel: [82:9J French fishing port which Pound, erroneously, associates with Swinburne, who dramatized the assassina- tion of Queen Mary Stuart's secretary, David Rizzio.
423. La Stuarda: Mary Stewart. Maurice Hewlett wrote a novel about her life (The Queen's Quair, 1903) as well as a play in 1912, which deals dramatically with the murder of Rizzio. In a small cabinet or bou- doir, Mary was having supper with a small party. Darnley, her husband, and others came in to get Rizzio. "Suspecting their pur" pose, Rizzio threw himself behind the queen and caught hold Of her dress, but was stabbed by George Douglas" [Pai, 5-1, 74J.
424. Si tuit Ii dolh . . . : P, "If all the griefs, and the laments, and the pain. " Imperfectly remembered 1st line from Bertran de Born's lament at the death of Henry the young king
[84:1J.
425. leopards: The struggle for power in the House of ? Plantagenet between Eleanor of Aquitaine and her husband Henry II was car- ried on by alliances among their children. Henry's eldest son, calJed the young king, was actually crowned in 1170 to rule with his father. Richard the Lion-hearted, the youngest son, at one time declared war against his brother. "The Leopard," as we recall from "Sestina: Altaforte," was "the device of Richard Coeur de Lion" [P, 28J. But later on during the War of the Roses, the heads of leopards became identified mainly with the House of York.
426. broom plants: The heraldic devices of the Lancasters had a plantagenet (sprig of broom).
427. Tudor: The royal family that ruled En- gland beginning with Henry VII in 1485 to the death of Elizabeth in 1603. The stanzaic and rhythmic pattern of the three verses derives from the part of the Rubaiyat in Speare'sPocket Book.
428. Blood-red, blanch-white: The War of the Roses between the House of York (White) and the House of Lancaster (Red). When the duke of Richmond (Lancaster) became Henry VII and married Elizabeth of York and started the House of Tudor, the heraldic devices showed both roses: "The rose, either red or white, survived in sweet simplicity till Tudor times, when the one, of a small diameter, was superimposed upon the other, as a symbol that the Yorkists and Lancastrians were united" (Julian Franklin,
Heraldry, 68J.
429. Howard: Catherine H. , 11521-1542, queen of England, fifth wife of Henry VIII; she was accused of immoral conduct before her marriage and was beheaded.
430. Boleyn: Anne B. , 11507-1536, second wife of Henry VIII and mother of Queen Elizabeth I; she was beheaded.
431. York: The English royal house of
York, one branch of the Plantagenets, which came into prominence with Richard Plantag~ enet, 3d duke of York (1411-60); Yorkist kings of England were Edward IV (1461-70; 1471-83), Edward V (1483), Richard III (1483-85).
432. Lancaster: The House of Lancaster; the English royal house derived from John of Gaunt, who was created duke of Lancas~ ter in 1362; Lancastrian kings were Henry IV, Henry V and Henry VI.
433. Serpentine: A curved pond in Hyde Park near Kensington and Church Walk, where Pound lived for a time.
434. couturier: A male dress designer. A grand one designs expensive costumes for royalty and the very wealthy. The Mediter- ranean sunset in which the roses glow at the top of this page has now transformed the whole landscape in spectacular fashion.
CANTO LXXXI Sources
Loeb, The Greek Bucolic Poets, 26; George Santayana, Persons and Places, vols. 1, 2, New York, 1944-45; Morris Speare, The Pocket Book of Verse, 1940 [SpeareJ ;Poetry, vol. 3, no. 4, Mar. 1914,220-223.
Background
EP, GK, 53,182,155,71,248,151; JIM, 47;PE, 79;L, 331, 333, 34; LE, 431-440; NS, LIfe, 352; George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia, Boston, Beacon Press, 1962; John Espey, Ezra Pound's Mauberley, Berkeley, 1974, 98; Claude Gernade Bowers, Beve- ridge and the Progressive Party, Cambridge, Mass. , 1932, 112; Edith Finch, Wilfred Scawen Blunt, London, 1938; John Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy, 1892 [BurnetJ; Augustin Cabanes, The Erotikon, trans. from French by Robert Meadows, New York, Anthropological Press, 1933.
? ? ? ? ? ? 450
81/517-518
81/518
eluding Les Indiscretions de l' htstoire, 6
vols. , Paris, 1903-1909, which is in Pound's library at Brunnenburg. A. C. was most fa- mous for his research in sexual behavior, as reported in his last book The Eratikon: Being an Illustrated Treasury o f Scientific Marvels of Human Sexuality, trans. by Ro- bert Meadows and privately issued by the Anthropological Press, New York, 1933. An introductory note to the book says, "Dr. Cabanes, actuated by the spirit of the real scientist, has brought to light strange data which make vital contributions to our know- ledge of the forces controlling the intimate life of men and women. " Cabanes's work would thus interest Pound as a continuation of Remy de Gourmont's work on the sexual- ity of other species in The Natural Philoso- phy of Love. The meaning of the egg in his pocket is not known, though a weird theory has been suggested [Pai, 11-3,451-453].
19. Basil . . . Canaries: B. Bunting, born in the Tyne Valley area of England, and still (in 1982) going strong. [For the story of his life and work see Pai, 9-1, Spring 1980, devoted to him and his Pound connectionsJ. During the three days between the Crucifixion and the Resurrection, when Christ was supposed to have been harrowing Hell, the villagers- man, woman and child-were supposed to beat drums day and night nourished by little except wine. They did this until the hands of many became a bloody mess and hundreds were groaning with pain. They called the an- nual event a simple village fiest-a. "As for life
in the Canaries," says Bunting, "I suppose Ezra is thinking of my description of the sexual mores of the islands in those days, so very unlike those of New York and Philadel- phia in his time, perhaps even a bit alarming to his fundamentally puritan soul" [Bunting,
Pai, 10-3,619-621].
20. Possum: T. S. Eliot.
21. portagoose: Portuguese.
22. Cole: [80: 153]. Reprise of the demon- stration Cole mounted at Italy's entrance into WWI.
451
23. Andre Spire: [77:134]. Pound wrote: "Old Spire who had sat on a Credit Agricole board said: 'Yes, very nice, communal cre- dit, but when you get your board, every man on that board has a brother-in-law'" [JIM, 47) . The agricultural credit board was a de- vice to extend credit to farmers for seed, fertilizer, etc. Since community credit for development is at the heart of Social Credit economics, note that Pound was aware of one of the most serious flaws in it as a program: influence and favoritism, which, being impossible to prevent, posed serious problems even with reasonable control.
24. John Adams: [31:15; 69:56].
JA said that TJ feared monarchy but that he (JA) feared an aristocracy.
25. MrJefferson: [31:2).
26. To break . . . heave: To bring poetry back to the speech of the people, it was necessary to get rid of artificially imposed rhythms: a first premise of Pound's revolu- tion in poetry.
27. Jo Bard: Josef B. , 1882-1975, Hungari- an writer Pound knew in the late 20s and early 30s. Bard wrote essays for the Dial, the New English Weekly, etc. Pound mentions him in a review ofW . C. Williams's A Voyage to Pagany. A book by Bard, Shipwreck in Europe, shows Americans not speaking: "I think the continental author mentions as a general and known post-war quantity: the American or Americans who comes or corne to Vienna to find out why they can't enjoy life even after getting a great deal of money" [PE, 79). Bard married Eileen Agar of the "trick sunlight" [76:50). Pound visited them and saw the effect of the light when he went to London in 1938 for the funeral of Olivia Shakespear. It was Bard who intro- duced Pound to Frobenius [HK).
28. La Rouchefoucauld: La Rochefoucauld [31:36]. A sophisticated French stylist.
29. de Maintenon: Fran,oise d'Aubigne, Marquise de M. , 1635? 1719, first the mis? tress and later the second wife of Louis XIV of France. A Woman of wit and wisdom.
Exegeses
LL,Motive, 121-123; CE,Ideas, 148. 149; DD, Sculptor, 171? 172; EH, Approaches, 340-347, 376? 377; HK, Era, 132? 133, 155? 156, 489-492; Peck, Pai, 1? 1, 3-36; Achilles Fang, "Materials for the Study of Pound's Cantos," Ph. D. dissertation, Harvard University,
1958, Vols. ]], Ill.
1. Zeus . . . bosom: Divine power abides in nature and manifests itself through the green world of Ceres (Demeter), the goddess of corn, the harvest, and fruitfulness.
2. Taishan: [74:46].
3. Cythera: Aphrodite, the planet Venus.
4. Hay . . . desaparacen: S, "Here is much Catholicism / . ,. and very little religion / . . . I believe that kings disappear. "
5. Padre Jose: [77:45].
6. Dolores: [37:61]. Perhaps the girl who told the young Pound to eat bread in 1907.
7. Come pan . . . : S, "eat bread, boy. " A recurrent phrase [80: 10].
8. Sargent: [80:352]. Perhaps the girl in Sargent's 1891 painting "La Carmencita" is Dolores [Fang, Ill, 136].
9. Velazquez: [80:292].
10. Museo del Prado: The Spanish National Museum [80: IS].
11. peseta: Spanish monetary unit, similar to Italian lira.
12. Bowers: Claude Gernade B. , 1879? 1958, American historian and diplomat, ambassa- dor to Spain, 1933? 1939. Pound praised his historical study Jefferson and Hamilton in a number of places and wrote to him in 1938. Bowers's letter in reply, dated May 10, 1938, mentions "the atmosphere of incre-
dible hate" in Spain [NS, Life, 352].
13. London reds: During the time of the
Spanish Civil War, Moscow considered the collective security of the Allied nations to be
more important than any other issue. They wanted Britain, France, the U. S. , and the Soviets to stand firm against the Nazi-Fascist threat. To that end, it was official policy not to upset the Western democracies by spon- soring worldwide revolution. Thus, at the ti9'le of the people's revoiution against Fran- 10 and the Falangists in Spain, there were several Red or Communist groups. Some joined the fight against Franco, but because of the Moscow line, some were actually fighting on the side of Franco. The two
groups were represented among the Marxists in London and the U. S. Some English units left for Spain to join the battle, as did the Abraham Lincoln Battalion from the United States. But some, following the Moscow line meticulously, would not expose the agents of Franco working in London [George Or- well, Homage to Catalonia, Boston, Beacon Press, 1962].
14. Franco: Francisco F. , 1892? 1975, Span. ish general and dictator who was victorious with the help of Germany and Italy in the Spanish Civil War.
15. Alcazar: Alcazar de San Juan, town in central Spain which Pound visited in 1906. He lists it as one of the Islamic monuments that gave "a sense of man and of human dignity yet unobliterated" [GK, 53]. Ironi? cally, it was the bloody siege of Alcazar that Franco said won the war for him.
16. Eso es . . . muerto: S, "that is mourning, Ha! / my husband is dead. "
17. locanda: I, "inn. "
18. Cabranez: Prob. Dr. Augustin Cabanes, 1862-1928, author of some 60 volumes, in?
Glossary
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 452
81/518-519
81/519-521
453
Pound's criticism, agreeing with Bard, was that in novels and poetry ordinary people such as bakers and innkeepers were made to sound like people of wit and wisdom.
30. Te cavero . . . a te: I, "I'll cut your guts out / [and I] yours" [1O:21J. Highly idio- matic and strong talk in the language of the people.
31. Mencken: H. L. M. , 1880-1956, Ameri- can editor, author, critic, and philologist with whom Pound corresponded for years. Pound was much impressed with a remark of his and mentions it often: "Nevertheless, I believe that all schemes of monetary reform collide inevitably with the nature of man in the mass. He can't be convinced in anything less than a geological epoch" [GK, 182J.
32. Some cook . . . : [54: 14J.
33. 'Ivl'~ . . . "vap",: H, "Little wheel . . . . . man to my house. " The first word should be Iv'Y~ and the accent on 1roTt should be grave. The line occurs in Theocritus, "Idyll 2"
[Loeb, The Greek Bucolic Poets, 26J. The complete line is a refrain repeated 10 times as a magic spell worked by a young maid to draw her lover) who has taken up with an~ other) back to her.
34. Benin: The city and river in S Nigeria, whence Frobenius collected masks and arti~ facts.
35. Frankfurt: The German city in which the Frobenius Institute is located and where many cultural objects from Africa were housed. Pound's indirect way of saying that the black soldier who made his table was as handsome as any his race ever produced.
36. Kuanon: [90:29J.
37. And at first . . . : The next several lines
derive from Santayana's Persons and Places, which Pound prob. read in manuscript some- time in 1940 [L, 331, 333J. Santayana was born in Spain and tells of his first impres~ sions of Boston, where he arrived at age 9: "my eye . . . was caught by symbols ofY an- kee ingenuity and Y ankee haste . . . . I was fascinated by the play of those skeleton
disgusted by such a
wheels . . .
land, generally following the last lines of a laisse.
44. Althea: Intended to evoke the Lovelace poem, "To Althea from Prison," which says "And my divine Althea comes / To whisper at the grates. " Pound has no such visitor.
45. libretto: Just as Canto 75 is the musical score of Janequin, so the climactic pages of Canto 81 are given a musical label to under- score the extraordinary musical cadences de~ liberately evoked in one of the major climac- tic statements of the poem.
46. Lawes: Henry L. , 1596-1662, the En- glish musician and composer noted for his masques and airs for voice. But he did not write for the crowd, as Pound knew: "Lawes and Campion will not gather 10,000 ground- lings. Not in our time" [GK, 155J. Lawes set Waller's "Go, Lovely Rose" to music
[Espey, Mauberley, 98J.
47. Jenkyns: John Jenkins, 1592-1678, En- glish composer and musician to Charles I and II. He composed many fancies for viol and organ.
48. Dolmetsch: [80:197J. Arnold D. The Dolmetsch foundation (! 928) was founded to encourage interest in old music.
