" In his opinion the lack of precision in translat- ing such a key word as this does damage to correct
thinking
through the ages [GK, 324,357].
A-Companion-to-the-Cantos-of-Ezra-Pound-II
John J.
Pershing in WWI.
In 1927 he was ambassador to Mexico, where he started a new era of understanding and cooperation.
He served in the U.
S.
Senate 1930-1931.
His daughter, Anne Morrow, married Charles Lindbergh.
Pound tells a story of how he asked the late
Senator Cutting in a letter, "How many liter- ate senators are there? " Said Pound: "He sent nine hames, ending 'and I suppose Dwight L. Morrow' " [GK,260].
106. Br . . . C . . . . g: Prob. Bronson Cutting, although the dots in the name are not exact as in Pound's usual practice. [E. P. Walkie- wicz and H. Witemeyer, Pai, 9-3, 441-459]. It was not 1932 but earlier, since Morrow died in 1931.
107. "hysteric presiding . . . ": A controver- sial reference. The context convinces me that Roosevelt is intended. Based on note- books Pound gave him, W. Cookson believes the "hysteric" is Hitler [Pai, 8-2, 361]. The " '39" appears to go with this line.
108. Bellum carro perenne: L, "I sing of war everlasting. " A musical figure that occurs often in the poem [88:21; 87:2].
Background
EP, America, Roosevelt and the Causes of the Present War,
London, Peter Russell, 1951 [ARCPW], GK, 46, 105, 58, 324, 357,77,109,278-279,225,57,182, 15;SP, 323, 272-273, 311, 65, 29, 53, 240, 436; L, 255, 348, 173-176; NPL, 149-158; Francis Steegmuller, ed. , The Letters of Gustwe Flaubert, 1830- 1857, Harvard Univ. Press, 1980 [Steegmuller]; Aeschylus, Eu- menides, line 752; William Cabell Bruce, John Randolph ofRoa- noke, New York and London, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1922, Vol. II, 232; Philip Spencer, Flaubert, A Biography, New York, Grove Press, 1952; G. Legman, The Guilt of the Templars, New York, Basic Books, 1966 [Guilt]; Jessie L. Weston, From Ritual to Romance, Cambridge, 1920; M de R, Discretions, 196; Charles Norman, Ezra Pound, Macmillan, 1960 [Norman]; Ford Madox Ford, Portraits from Life, 1937 (later published as Mightier than the Sword, London, Allen & Unwin, 1938); D'Arcy W. Thomp- son, On Growth and Form, Cambridge, 1916, rpts. MacMillan,
1942-1948; Sir Arthur Evans, The Palace o f Minos at Knossos, Vol. III, Biblo and Tannen, New York, 1964.
Exegeses
CE, Ideas, 47-56; Achilles Fang, Ph. D. dissertation, Harvard, Vol. III; EH, Pai, 2-1, 141; CFT, Pai, 2-2, 223 ff. ; Grieve, Pai, 4-2 & 3, 481; HK, Era, 331, 335 ff. ; FR, Pai, 7-2 & 3, 29 ff. ; WB,
Approaches, 303-318; L. Surette, A Light From Eleusis, Oxford University Press, 1979, 263-267; HK, Pai, 4-2 & 3, 381.
Glossary
CANTO LXXXVII Sources
EP WT 8 50 54; Dante, Vita Nuova, 12. 4 [VN]. ; Sophocles, EI~ctra:li~e 351; EP, CON, 22, 27, 232; Seraphin Couvreur, Chou King, Paris, Cathasia, 1950 [Couvreur]; James Legge, The Four Books, Shanghai, 1923 [Legge].
4. perche . . . meltere: I, "why do you wish to put. " In 1932 Mussolini asked this ques- tion. Pound gives the question and his an- swer, "Pel mio poema" ("For my poem"'), later [93:75], thereby showing insistence on a Confucian order in his own mind [GK, 105].
5. Grock: The stage name of Charles Wet- tach (1880-1959), circus performer, acrobat, and comic musician with violin a9d piano.
T
I. between the usurer: [45:1]. This recur- rent theme js further developed in many of Pound's writings on economics [GK, 46; cf. also CE, Ideas, 47-57], e. g. , "To repeat: an expert, looking at a painting . . . should be able to determine the degree of the tolerance of usury in the society in which it was painted" [SP, 323].
2. perenne: L, "continued, perennial. " Part of recurrent tag: "bellum perenne. " For, usury is the cause: "Wars are provoked in succession, deliberately, by the great usurers, in order to create debts, to create scarcity, so that they can extort the interest on these debts, so that they can raise the price of money . . . altering the prices of the various
monetary units when it suits them . . . com- pletely indifferent to the human victim"
[ARCPW,8].
3. without . . . credit: Partial usury [45/230].
definition of
? ? ? 490
87/569
87/569-570
491
Originator of routine developed later by Jack Benny, Victor Borge, and others. Grock made a London appearance in 1911, where Pound may have first seen him: "He per- fected those adventures of a simpleton among musical instruments . . . wonder as to where the strings had gone when he held his fiddle the wrong side up and at his labours to sit nearer the piano by pushing it toward
the stool. " The French dialog is typical of the nonsequiturs he used with his straight- man partner, a clown he teamed up with named "Brick. " Grock's autobiography ap- peared in 1956 [Die Memoiren des Konigs der Clowns].
6. OU ca? : F, "How's that? "
7. 1'ai une idee: F, "I have an idea. "
8. Berchtold: Leopold, Graf von B. , 1863- 1942, Austro? Hungarian foreign minister who, after the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand at Sarajevo, followed a harsh, reckless policy that contributed to the start of WWI. Although he was outwardly calm, the effect of the assassination on him was dynamite. The lines suggest that Pound met Berchtold, perhaps during his visit to Vienna in 1928 [35:6;76:132].
9. Varchi: Italian historian who made no judgment as he did not have enough facts
[5:33,58].
10. Of Roanoke: John Randolph, 1773- 1833, American statesman called "of Roa- noke. " During the years 1799-1829, he served a total of 24 years in the U. S. House of Representatives and 2 years in the Senate (for 4 of those years he was out of office). He became a powerful force as well as a flamboyant orator. The more he was against something, the more dramatic and biting his oratory became. His violent excoriations of Henry Clay and JQA led to the famous duel
[88:passim]. Because of his opposition to Jefferson on the acquisltion of Florida, he lost his leadership in the House temporarily. He also opposed James Madison and the Northern Democrats, the War of 1812, the second Bank of the United States, the tariff
measures, and the Missouri compromise. He is a continuous, if at times shadowy, pres- ence in Cantos 87-89.
II. "Nation silly . . . ": A recurrent theme cited in all of Pound's writings on the eco- nomic history of the United States, and a major theme of R-D [88:passim]. ln a letter to Benton [88:80], Dec. 12, 1829, Ran- dolph said: "It is obvious that the discount- ing of private paper has no connection with the transfer of public monies, or a sound paper currency. My plan was to make the great custom-houses branches of our great
national bank of deposit-a sort of loan of- fice, if you will . . . . This would give one description of paper, bottomed upon sub- stantial capital, and whensoever Government might stand in need of a few millions, in- stead of borrowing their own money from a knot of brokers on the credit of said brokers, it might, under proper restriction, issue its own paper in anticipation of future
revenues on taxes to be laid; such notes to be cancelled within a given time" [Bruce, Randolph, Vol. II, 232]. N. B. : Herein is the heart of the social credit idea as well as Pound's basic attitude about debt-free money.
12. Polk: James K. P. , 1795-1849, lith U. S. president (1845-1849), lawyer and statesman from Tennessee; supporter of President Jackson, especially in the war against the bank. Thus, he deserves to be among those honored for fighting the "usu- rocracy. "
13. Tyler: John T. , 1790-1862, 10th U. S. president (1841-1845). He stood between the great parties and was opposed to most of the policies of Jackson and Van Buren, ex- cept for a brief period while senator from Virginia [34:81; 37:39].
14. paideuma: A word taken from Fro- benius [38:45] which Pound defines not as the Zeitgeist but as "the gristly roots of ideas that are in action" during a period of time [GK, 58].
15. Buchanan: James B. , 1791-1868. As
president (1847-1861) he was not a rigorous henchman of the money interests [34: 84].
16. Infantilism: An epithet Pound applies to those who continue to have puerile or sim- pleminded ideas about economics, who em- phasize the idea of "circulation" and neglect the importance of the source of money andl or credit.
17. the problem of issue: A central question of Economic Democracy [C. H. Douglas, 1920] and the social credit movement: who should issue the money and how should the issue be tied to production.
18. Nakae Toji: 1608-1648, Japanese phil- osopher known as "the Sage of Omi. " He expounded the neo-Confucian philosophy of Wang Yang-mingo Pound got the name and the association from Carson Chang, who visited him at St. Elizabeths [Fang, III, 96].
19. Wai' Ya': Wang Yang-ming, 1472-1528, the Ming dynasty neo-Confucian. In Carson Chang's Kiangsu dialect, "Wai' Ya' " approx- imates the sound for the name. "Min's lamp" is Wang's enlightened philosophy
[ibid. ].
20. Nippon: Japan.
21. Grenfell: Russell Grenfell, 1892-1954, author of Unconditional Hatred, which purports to prove that the Roosevelt- Morgenthau-Churchill program of uncondi- tional surrender and the reduction of Ger- many after WWII to a powerless agrarian state showed less wisdom than the program of Wellington at the Congress of Vienna to build a lasting balance of power in Europe. This theme is developed at length in Cantos 100-105 [85:7].
22. Antoninus: A. Pius, A. D. 86-161, the Roman emperor (137-161) Pound often cites for his knowledge and promotion of wise maritime laws [42:4;46:42; 78:56].
23. "state shd / . . . benefit": Concept Pound attributes to Antoninus, who fought against widespread piracy and supported maritime insurance. Antoninus was indig- nant that people should exploit the misfor-
tunes (e. g. , shipwrecks) of others [SP, 272,311].
24. Salmasius: Claudius S. , 1588-1653, la- tinized name of Claude Saumaise, author of De Modo Usurarum, which Pound says, "ap- pears not to have been reprinted since 1639 to 40" [SP, 323, 65, 272-273, 311].
25. Xpda: H, "use, service, need. " Pound said the word, as used in Aristotle, should be translated as "demand" and not "value.
" In his opinion the lack of precision in translat- ing such a key word as this does damage to correct thinking through the ages [GK, 324,357].
26. Ari: Aristotle.
. . .
28. Richardus: Richard St. Victor [85:52].
29. Centrum circuli: I, "center of a circle. " In the Vita Nuova, Amor (Love) says to Dante: "I am the center of a circle, which possesseth all parts of its circumference equally but thou not so" [12. 4]. Pound first quoted it in the New Age 1912 [SP ,29].
30. Remove the mythologies: An ironic rec- ommendation. Pound believes the myths as retold by Ovid (for one) express the interac- tion of the human and the divine. Hence, when asked what he believed, Pound said he "answered such questions by telling the en- quirer to read Confucius and Ovid"
[SP ,53].
31. Picahia: Francis P. , 1879-1953, a French painter who advanced the cause and practices of the cubists, dadaists, and surreal- ists. He was part of the Parisian group of artists, including Man Ray and Cocteau, whose creativity Pound respected most.
32. Alsace-Lorraine: An area along the Rhine bank between France and Germany
": L, Pound
27. "Cogitatio
"cogitation, meditation, and contempla- tion. " He further illustrates: "In the first the mind flits aimlessly about the object, in the second it circles about it in a methodical manner, in the third it is unified with the object" [GK, 77;Pai, 2-2,182].
translates as
? 492
87/570-571
87/571-572
493
control of which has been contested from
the time of the Roman occupation of Gaul. Since the Treaty of Verdun (843) it has passed back and forth between Germany and France a number of times.
33. Vlaminck: Maurice de V. , 1876-1958,
was one of the fauvist painters influenced by
Van Gogh, a group that included Derain and
Matisse. Pound knew them in his Paris years. Perhaps the "Art is local" is a response to W. C. Williams's attribution of the idea to John Dewey. In the "Author's Note" to Paterson, WCW said that Dewey said: "The local is the only universal, upon that all art builds. "
34. Wops: Italian immigrants at Ellis Island
who were "without papers" were identified
with these initials. Not a pejorative label: just the language of the people.
35. 8lix[JOPOV . . . : H, a fusion of words from lines 676-677 of Sophocles' Trachiniae (8lix[JOPOV rrpos OV8EVOS/TWV <1;80v, e,! -) , . 8ECJTOV . ~ "'UTOV <peevEd and line 351 of Electra (au ra:vra: npos Kcx'/wiu 8elA(av ? X? L;). Thus: "Destroyed by nothing within, but
eaten by itself, it wastes away; and in addi- tion to our woes, shall we add cowardice? " A Sophoclean rhyme with the previous 2
His dedication to the concept of justice
rhymes with the act of Athena [85:5].
had he ever known how to spare himself"
[OCD]. Pound may have got the idea that he was "burnped off" from Goleyevsky [cf. 47 below]. But his death did put a stop to a lot of planned development in the civilized world of his time.
47. Gollievski: Goleyevsky, a Russian gen- eral with an English wife whom the Pounds knew in Paris in the early 20s. Pound men- tions him anonymously [GK, 229]: "To re- capitulate, I take it from my ex-Russian ex- General that the fall of Alexander's empire was a disaster" [EH,Pai, 2-1,141].
48. Greece . . . : Goleyevsky had another idea: "Most European history saw the fall of Rome, but failed to calculate the possible greater loss to knowledge, learning, civiliza- tion implied in the fall of the Macedonian empire" [ibid. ].
49. Justinian's codes: J. the Great, 527-565,
inherited the corpus of Roman law called Codex Theodosianus, issued in 438, which by his time needed up-dating [65:126]. He promoted a new Codex, which in time had to be redone under Basil and Leo the Wise
[CFT,Pai, 2-2, 223 ff. ; 94:45].
SO. "abbiamo. ,,": I, "we have made a
heap. "
51. Mus. viva voce: I, "Mussolini orally"
[with live voice]: Implies M tried to get parties to avoid the haystack of laws by settling out of court.
52. Ocellus: [cf. 43 above].
53. jih: [M3124]. "The sun, a day"
[53:43].
54. hsin: [M2737]. "New. "
55. The play: Sophocles' Trachiniae.
56. <PAo'l,~6fJ. Evov: H, "in a blaze of light. " Pound translates, "as is the lightning blaze"
[WT,8].
57. gospoda: Transliteration from Russian: "citizen,"
58. il1/6ivEip,,: H, "Daianeira. " Wife of Her-
cules, who was tricked into sending him as a
gift the "Nessus shirt" which, after he put it
on, became such a painful "shirt of fire"
that he persuaded his son Hyllos to build a
pyre and have him consumed by flames to end the terrible pain. Hercules is associated in tradition with "solar vitality. "
59. A"'/lrrpiY. aV/l~",ivEt: H, "What splendour. It all coheres. " Or so Pound translates [WT 50] and adds in a note: "This is the key phrase, for which the play exists" [109/ 772].
60. dawn blaze . . . : The Women ofTrachis opens at dawn, and the pyre that consumes Hercules burns at sunset at the end of the play. Hercules' attitude is that under the law of the gods, "What has been, should have been," while his young son who must start the blaze believes, "And for me a great toler- ance / matching the gods' great unreason"
[WT,54].
61. Destutt: Antoine Louis Claude Destutt de Tracy, Comte, 1754-1836, a French phi- losopher who became a deputy to the Con- stituent Assembly in 1789. His major works include Elements d'ideoligie and Commen- taire sur l'esprit des lois [71 :96].
62. "Pity to stamp . . . '-: If a gold or other coin is stamped for a value less than its value by weight of metal, it will be melted down and disappear from the marketplace. Pound calls people who do such things "gold-bugs": they are a drag on any monetary system.
63. Ari: [Aristotle]: A saw "money as a measure," which is "called NOMISMA be- cause it exists not by nature but by custom and can therefore be altered or rendered useless at will [Pound's italics]. If we put this 'be rendered comparatively useless' we shall have got the juice out of 'altered and rendered' [which], . . . is now part of the bank wheeze" [GK, 278-279]. "Wheeze" has an informal meaning of "trickery. "
64. chih4 : [M971]. "Aim, intention. " Pound defines this: "The will, the direction of the will, directio voluntatis, the officer standing over the heart" [CON, 22].
Hnes: "The pusillanimous . . .
[86:64] [DG].
36. quia . . . est: L, "which is
37. Ver novum: L, "Fresh spring" [39:13]. 38. hie est medium: L, "here is the center. " 39. chih: [M939]. "Rest in. "
40. Ae6iv",: H [Ae1/v". ], "Athena. " At the end of the Oresteia, Athena broke the tie of the jury [Eumenides, 752; Loeb, 344: "this man stands acquitted on the charge of mur- der. The number of the casts [ballots] are equal"]. The play provides the first evidence of trial-by-jury in Judeo-Hellenic-Christian civilization.
41. Shang: [M5673]. Second dynasty: 1766-1121 B. C.
42. Y Yin: A minister of the Shang dynasty.
44. Erigena: [36:9; 74:90]. Because Pound associates Erigena with light-philosophers, he attributes to him the phrase from Grosse- teste, "All things are lights," as a way of suggesting his agreement with Grosseteste.
45. Greek tags: His dates, about 800 to about 877, make him one of the earliest philosophers to know Greek and thus one of the most complete scholars of his time.
46. Alexander: A. the Great, 356-323 B. C. In the spring of 323, A moved to Babylon to undertake great new developments, includ- ing a plan to open up maritime routes from Babylon to Egypt around Arabia: "under his supervision was prepared . . , an immense fleet, a great basin dug out to contain 1000 ships. " But on June 15 and 16 of that year, at the beginning of a great enterprize, he "caroused deep into the night at the house of the favourite Medius. On the 17th he developed fever; . . . on the 27th his speech was gone . . . on the 28th Alexander died" [EB]. "In him the soul wore out the breast, and he died, in his thirty-third year, of a fever which might well have spared hhn
dishonesty"
impossible. "
43. Ocellus:
Pythagorean philosopher from Lucanus who may have been a pupil of Pythagoras. An Ionic treatise attributed to him, entitled On
the Nature of the Universe (quite certainly spurious), dates not earlier than the 1st cen- tury B. C. "It maintains the doctrine that the universe is uncreated and eternal; that to its three great divisions correspond the three kinds of beings-gods, men and daemons; and finally that the human race with all its institutions . . . must be eternal. It advocates an ascetic mode of life, with a view to the perfect reproduction of the race and its training in all that is noble and beautiful" [EB]. Since Ocellus is listed by Iamblicus
as a
Pythagorean,
Pound associates
Or Occelus.
A 5th-centurY -B. c.
[5: 5]
him with the hnportant philosophers of light, and attributes to him the phrase "to
build light" [94: 172]. Ocellus was lated by Thomas Taylor in 1831.
trans-
? 494
87/572-573
87/573
495
65. directio voluntatis: L, "direction of the will" [77:57J: "The science of economics will not get very far until it grants the exis- tence of will as a component; Le. will toward order, will toward 'justice' or fairness, desire for civilization, amenities included. The in- tensity of that will is definitely a component in any solution" [SP, 240J.
66. "An instrument . . . ": Major theme of
Economic Democracy (1920).
67. Douglas: [38:49J.
Senator Cutting in a letter, "How many liter- ate senators are there? " Said Pound: "He sent nine hames, ending 'and I suppose Dwight L. Morrow' " [GK,260].
106. Br . . . C . . . . g: Prob. Bronson Cutting, although the dots in the name are not exact as in Pound's usual practice. [E. P. Walkie- wicz and H. Witemeyer, Pai, 9-3, 441-459]. It was not 1932 but earlier, since Morrow died in 1931.
107. "hysteric presiding . . . ": A controver- sial reference. The context convinces me that Roosevelt is intended. Based on note- books Pound gave him, W. Cookson believes the "hysteric" is Hitler [Pai, 8-2, 361]. The " '39" appears to go with this line.
108. Bellum carro perenne: L, "I sing of war everlasting. " A musical figure that occurs often in the poem [88:21; 87:2].
Background
EP, America, Roosevelt and the Causes of the Present War,
London, Peter Russell, 1951 [ARCPW], GK, 46, 105, 58, 324, 357,77,109,278-279,225,57,182, 15;SP, 323, 272-273, 311, 65, 29, 53, 240, 436; L, 255, 348, 173-176; NPL, 149-158; Francis Steegmuller, ed. , The Letters of Gustwe Flaubert, 1830- 1857, Harvard Univ. Press, 1980 [Steegmuller]; Aeschylus, Eu- menides, line 752; William Cabell Bruce, John Randolph ofRoa- noke, New York and London, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1922, Vol. II, 232; Philip Spencer, Flaubert, A Biography, New York, Grove Press, 1952; G. Legman, The Guilt of the Templars, New York, Basic Books, 1966 [Guilt]; Jessie L. Weston, From Ritual to Romance, Cambridge, 1920; M de R, Discretions, 196; Charles Norman, Ezra Pound, Macmillan, 1960 [Norman]; Ford Madox Ford, Portraits from Life, 1937 (later published as Mightier than the Sword, London, Allen & Unwin, 1938); D'Arcy W. Thomp- son, On Growth and Form, Cambridge, 1916, rpts. MacMillan,
1942-1948; Sir Arthur Evans, The Palace o f Minos at Knossos, Vol. III, Biblo and Tannen, New York, 1964.
Exegeses
CE, Ideas, 47-56; Achilles Fang, Ph. D. dissertation, Harvard, Vol. III; EH, Pai, 2-1, 141; CFT, Pai, 2-2, 223 ff. ; Grieve, Pai, 4-2 & 3, 481; HK, Era, 331, 335 ff. ; FR, Pai, 7-2 & 3, 29 ff. ; WB,
Approaches, 303-318; L. Surette, A Light From Eleusis, Oxford University Press, 1979, 263-267; HK, Pai, 4-2 & 3, 381.
Glossary
CANTO LXXXVII Sources
EP WT 8 50 54; Dante, Vita Nuova, 12. 4 [VN]. ; Sophocles, EI~ctra:li~e 351; EP, CON, 22, 27, 232; Seraphin Couvreur, Chou King, Paris, Cathasia, 1950 [Couvreur]; James Legge, The Four Books, Shanghai, 1923 [Legge].
4. perche . . . meltere: I, "why do you wish to put. " In 1932 Mussolini asked this ques- tion. Pound gives the question and his an- swer, "Pel mio poema" ("For my poem"'), later [93:75], thereby showing insistence on a Confucian order in his own mind [GK, 105].
5. Grock: The stage name of Charles Wet- tach (1880-1959), circus performer, acrobat, and comic musician with violin a9d piano.
T
I. between the usurer: [45:1]. This recur- rent theme js further developed in many of Pound's writings on economics [GK, 46; cf. also CE, Ideas, 47-57], e. g. , "To repeat: an expert, looking at a painting . . . should be able to determine the degree of the tolerance of usury in the society in which it was painted" [SP, 323].
2. perenne: L, "continued, perennial. " Part of recurrent tag: "bellum perenne. " For, usury is the cause: "Wars are provoked in succession, deliberately, by the great usurers, in order to create debts, to create scarcity, so that they can extort the interest on these debts, so that they can raise the price of money . . . altering the prices of the various
monetary units when it suits them . . . com- pletely indifferent to the human victim"
[ARCPW,8].
3. without . . . credit: Partial usury [45/230].
definition of
? ? ? 490
87/569
87/569-570
491
Originator of routine developed later by Jack Benny, Victor Borge, and others. Grock made a London appearance in 1911, where Pound may have first seen him: "He per- fected those adventures of a simpleton among musical instruments . . . wonder as to where the strings had gone when he held his fiddle the wrong side up and at his labours to sit nearer the piano by pushing it toward
the stool. " The French dialog is typical of the nonsequiturs he used with his straight- man partner, a clown he teamed up with named "Brick. " Grock's autobiography ap- peared in 1956 [Die Memoiren des Konigs der Clowns].
6. OU ca? : F, "How's that? "
7. 1'ai une idee: F, "I have an idea. "
8. Berchtold: Leopold, Graf von B. , 1863- 1942, Austro? Hungarian foreign minister who, after the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand at Sarajevo, followed a harsh, reckless policy that contributed to the start of WWI. Although he was outwardly calm, the effect of the assassination on him was dynamite. The lines suggest that Pound met Berchtold, perhaps during his visit to Vienna in 1928 [35:6;76:132].
9. Varchi: Italian historian who made no judgment as he did not have enough facts
[5:33,58].
10. Of Roanoke: John Randolph, 1773- 1833, American statesman called "of Roa- noke. " During the years 1799-1829, he served a total of 24 years in the U. S. House of Representatives and 2 years in the Senate (for 4 of those years he was out of office). He became a powerful force as well as a flamboyant orator. The more he was against something, the more dramatic and biting his oratory became. His violent excoriations of Henry Clay and JQA led to the famous duel
[88:passim]. Because of his opposition to Jefferson on the acquisltion of Florida, he lost his leadership in the House temporarily. He also opposed James Madison and the Northern Democrats, the War of 1812, the second Bank of the United States, the tariff
measures, and the Missouri compromise. He is a continuous, if at times shadowy, pres- ence in Cantos 87-89.
II. "Nation silly . . . ": A recurrent theme cited in all of Pound's writings on the eco- nomic history of the United States, and a major theme of R-D [88:passim]. ln a letter to Benton [88:80], Dec. 12, 1829, Ran- dolph said: "It is obvious that the discount- ing of private paper has no connection with the transfer of public monies, or a sound paper currency. My plan was to make the great custom-houses branches of our great
national bank of deposit-a sort of loan of- fice, if you will . . . . This would give one description of paper, bottomed upon sub- stantial capital, and whensoever Government might stand in need of a few millions, in- stead of borrowing their own money from a knot of brokers on the credit of said brokers, it might, under proper restriction, issue its own paper in anticipation of future
revenues on taxes to be laid; such notes to be cancelled within a given time" [Bruce, Randolph, Vol. II, 232]. N. B. : Herein is the heart of the social credit idea as well as Pound's basic attitude about debt-free money.
12. Polk: James K. P. , 1795-1849, lith U. S. president (1845-1849), lawyer and statesman from Tennessee; supporter of President Jackson, especially in the war against the bank. Thus, he deserves to be among those honored for fighting the "usu- rocracy. "
13. Tyler: John T. , 1790-1862, 10th U. S. president (1841-1845). He stood between the great parties and was opposed to most of the policies of Jackson and Van Buren, ex- cept for a brief period while senator from Virginia [34:81; 37:39].
14. paideuma: A word taken from Fro- benius [38:45] which Pound defines not as the Zeitgeist but as "the gristly roots of ideas that are in action" during a period of time [GK, 58].
15. Buchanan: James B. , 1791-1868. As
president (1847-1861) he was not a rigorous henchman of the money interests [34: 84].
16. Infantilism: An epithet Pound applies to those who continue to have puerile or sim- pleminded ideas about economics, who em- phasize the idea of "circulation" and neglect the importance of the source of money andl or credit.
17. the problem of issue: A central question of Economic Democracy [C. H. Douglas, 1920] and the social credit movement: who should issue the money and how should the issue be tied to production.
18. Nakae Toji: 1608-1648, Japanese phil- osopher known as "the Sage of Omi. " He expounded the neo-Confucian philosophy of Wang Yang-mingo Pound got the name and the association from Carson Chang, who visited him at St. Elizabeths [Fang, III, 96].
19. Wai' Ya': Wang Yang-ming, 1472-1528, the Ming dynasty neo-Confucian. In Carson Chang's Kiangsu dialect, "Wai' Ya' " approx- imates the sound for the name. "Min's lamp" is Wang's enlightened philosophy
[ibid. ].
20. Nippon: Japan.
21. Grenfell: Russell Grenfell, 1892-1954, author of Unconditional Hatred, which purports to prove that the Roosevelt- Morgenthau-Churchill program of uncondi- tional surrender and the reduction of Ger- many after WWII to a powerless agrarian state showed less wisdom than the program of Wellington at the Congress of Vienna to build a lasting balance of power in Europe. This theme is developed at length in Cantos 100-105 [85:7].
22. Antoninus: A. Pius, A. D. 86-161, the Roman emperor (137-161) Pound often cites for his knowledge and promotion of wise maritime laws [42:4;46:42; 78:56].
23. "state shd / . . . benefit": Concept Pound attributes to Antoninus, who fought against widespread piracy and supported maritime insurance. Antoninus was indig- nant that people should exploit the misfor-
tunes (e. g. , shipwrecks) of others [SP, 272,311].
24. Salmasius: Claudius S. , 1588-1653, la- tinized name of Claude Saumaise, author of De Modo Usurarum, which Pound says, "ap- pears not to have been reprinted since 1639 to 40" [SP, 323, 65, 272-273, 311].
25. Xpda: H, "use, service, need. " Pound said the word, as used in Aristotle, should be translated as "demand" and not "value.
" In his opinion the lack of precision in translat- ing such a key word as this does damage to correct thinking through the ages [GK, 324,357].
26. Ari: Aristotle.
. . .
28. Richardus: Richard St. Victor [85:52].
29. Centrum circuli: I, "center of a circle. " In the Vita Nuova, Amor (Love) says to Dante: "I am the center of a circle, which possesseth all parts of its circumference equally but thou not so" [12. 4]. Pound first quoted it in the New Age 1912 [SP ,29].
30. Remove the mythologies: An ironic rec- ommendation. Pound believes the myths as retold by Ovid (for one) express the interac- tion of the human and the divine. Hence, when asked what he believed, Pound said he "answered such questions by telling the en- quirer to read Confucius and Ovid"
[SP ,53].
31. Picahia: Francis P. , 1879-1953, a French painter who advanced the cause and practices of the cubists, dadaists, and surreal- ists. He was part of the Parisian group of artists, including Man Ray and Cocteau, whose creativity Pound respected most.
32. Alsace-Lorraine: An area along the Rhine bank between France and Germany
": L, Pound
27. "Cogitatio
"cogitation, meditation, and contempla- tion. " He further illustrates: "In the first the mind flits aimlessly about the object, in the second it circles about it in a methodical manner, in the third it is unified with the object" [GK, 77;Pai, 2-2,182].
translates as
? 492
87/570-571
87/571-572
493
control of which has been contested from
the time of the Roman occupation of Gaul. Since the Treaty of Verdun (843) it has passed back and forth between Germany and France a number of times.
33. Vlaminck: Maurice de V. , 1876-1958,
was one of the fauvist painters influenced by
Van Gogh, a group that included Derain and
Matisse. Pound knew them in his Paris years. Perhaps the "Art is local" is a response to W. C. Williams's attribution of the idea to John Dewey. In the "Author's Note" to Paterson, WCW said that Dewey said: "The local is the only universal, upon that all art builds. "
34. Wops: Italian immigrants at Ellis Island
who were "without papers" were identified
with these initials. Not a pejorative label: just the language of the people.
35. 8lix[JOPOV . . . : H, a fusion of words from lines 676-677 of Sophocles' Trachiniae (8lix[JOPOV rrpos OV8EVOS/TWV <1;80v, e,! -) , . 8ECJTOV . ~ "'UTOV <peevEd and line 351 of Electra (au ra:vra: npos Kcx'/wiu 8elA(av ? X? L;). Thus: "Destroyed by nothing within, but
eaten by itself, it wastes away; and in addi- tion to our woes, shall we add cowardice? " A Sophoclean rhyme with the previous 2
His dedication to the concept of justice
rhymes with the act of Athena [85:5].
had he ever known how to spare himself"
[OCD]. Pound may have got the idea that he was "burnped off" from Goleyevsky [cf. 47 below]. But his death did put a stop to a lot of planned development in the civilized world of his time.
47. Gollievski: Goleyevsky, a Russian gen- eral with an English wife whom the Pounds knew in Paris in the early 20s. Pound men- tions him anonymously [GK, 229]: "To re- capitulate, I take it from my ex-Russian ex- General that the fall of Alexander's empire was a disaster" [EH,Pai, 2-1,141].
48. Greece . . . : Goleyevsky had another idea: "Most European history saw the fall of Rome, but failed to calculate the possible greater loss to knowledge, learning, civiliza- tion implied in the fall of the Macedonian empire" [ibid. ].
49. Justinian's codes: J. the Great, 527-565,
inherited the corpus of Roman law called Codex Theodosianus, issued in 438, which by his time needed up-dating [65:126]. He promoted a new Codex, which in time had to be redone under Basil and Leo the Wise
[CFT,Pai, 2-2, 223 ff. ; 94:45].
SO. "abbiamo. ,,": I, "we have made a
heap. "
51. Mus. viva voce: I, "Mussolini orally"
[with live voice]: Implies M tried to get parties to avoid the haystack of laws by settling out of court.
52. Ocellus: [cf. 43 above].
53. jih: [M3124]. "The sun, a day"
[53:43].
54. hsin: [M2737]. "New. "
55. The play: Sophocles' Trachiniae.
56. <PAo'l,~6fJ. Evov: H, "in a blaze of light. " Pound translates, "as is the lightning blaze"
[WT,8].
57. gospoda: Transliteration from Russian: "citizen,"
58. il1/6ivEip,,: H, "Daianeira. " Wife of Her-
cules, who was tricked into sending him as a
gift the "Nessus shirt" which, after he put it
on, became such a painful "shirt of fire"
that he persuaded his son Hyllos to build a
pyre and have him consumed by flames to end the terrible pain. Hercules is associated in tradition with "solar vitality. "
59. A"'/lrrpiY. aV/l~",ivEt: H, "What splendour. It all coheres. " Or so Pound translates [WT 50] and adds in a note: "This is the key phrase, for which the play exists" [109/ 772].
60. dawn blaze . . . : The Women ofTrachis opens at dawn, and the pyre that consumes Hercules burns at sunset at the end of the play. Hercules' attitude is that under the law of the gods, "What has been, should have been," while his young son who must start the blaze believes, "And for me a great toler- ance / matching the gods' great unreason"
[WT,54].
61. Destutt: Antoine Louis Claude Destutt de Tracy, Comte, 1754-1836, a French phi- losopher who became a deputy to the Con- stituent Assembly in 1789. His major works include Elements d'ideoligie and Commen- taire sur l'esprit des lois [71 :96].
62. "Pity to stamp . . . '-: If a gold or other coin is stamped for a value less than its value by weight of metal, it will be melted down and disappear from the marketplace. Pound calls people who do such things "gold-bugs": they are a drag on any monetary system.
63. Ari: [Aristotle]: A saw "money as a measure," which is "called NOMISMA be- cause it exists not by nature but by custom and can therefore be altered or rendered useless at will [Pound's italics]. If we put this 'be rendered comparatively useless' we shall have got the juice out of 'altered and rendered' [which], . . . is now part of the bank wheeze" [GK, 278-279]. "Wheeze" has an informal meaning of "trickery. "
64. chih4 : [M971]. "Aim, intention. " Pound defines this: "The will, the direction of the will, directio voluntatis, the officer standing over the heart" [CON, 22].
Hnes: "The pusillanimous . . .
[86:64] [DG].
36. quia . . . est: L, "which is
37. Ver novum: L, "Fresh spring" [39:13]. 38. hie est medium: L, "here is the center. " 39. chih: [M939]. "Rest in. "
40. Ae6iv",: H [Ae1/v". ], "Athena. " At the end of the Oresteia, Athena broke the tie of the jury [Eumenides, 752; Loeb, 344: "this man stands acquitted on the charge of mur- der. The number of the casts [ballots] are equal"]. The play provides the first evidence of trial-by-jury in Judeo-Hellenic-Christian civilization.
41. Shang: [M5673]. Second dynasty: 1766-1121 B. C.
42. Y Yin: A minister of the Shang dynasty.
44. Erigena: [36:9; 74:90]. Because Pound associates Erigena with light-philosophers, he attributes to him the phrase from Grosse- teste, "All things are lights," as a way of suggesting his agreement with Grosseteste.
45. Greek tags: His dates, about 800 to about 877, make him one of the earliest philosophers to know Greek and thus one of the most complete scholars of his time.
46. Alexander: A. the Great, 356-323 B. C. In the spring of 323, A moved to Babylon to undertake great new developments, includ- ing a plan to open up maritime routes from Babylon to Egypt around Arabia: "under his supervision was prepared . . , an immense fleet, a great basin dug out to contain 1000 ships. " But on June 15 and 16 of that year, at the beginning of a great enterprize, he "caroused deep into the night at the house of the favourite Medius. On the 17th he developed fever; . . . on the 27th his speech was gone . . . on the 28th Alexander died" [EB]. "In him the soul wore out the breast, and he died, in his thirty-third year, of a fever which might well have spared hhn
dishonesty"
impossible. "
43. Ocellus:
Pythagorean philosopher from Lucanus who may have been a pupil of Pythagoras. An Ionic treatise attributed to him, entitled On
the Nature of the Universe (quite certainly spurious), dates not earlier than the 1st cen- tury B. C. "It maintains the doctrine that the universe is uncreated and eternal; that to its three great divisions correspond the three kinds of beings-gods, men and daemons; and finally that the human race with all its institutions . . . must be eternal. It advocates an ascetic mode of life, with a view to the perfect reproduction of the race and its training in all that is noble and beautiful" [EB]. Since Ocellus is listed by Iamblicus
as a
Pythagorean,
Pound associates
Or Occelus.
A 5th-centurY -B. c.
[5: 5]
him with the hnportant philosophers of light, and attributes to him the phrase "to
build light" [94: 172]. Ocellus was lated by Thomas Taylor in 1831.
trans-
? 494
87/572-573
87/573
495
65. directio voluntatis: L, "direction of the will" [77:57J: "The science of economics will not get very far until it grants the exis- tence of will as a component; Le. will toward order, will toward 'justice' or fairness, desire for civilization, amenities included. The in- tensity of that will is definitely a component in any solution" [SP, 240J.
66. "An instrument . . . ": Major theme of
Economic Democracy (1920).
67. Douglas: [38:49J.
