On Sun, 18 Jun 2000, En Wei Lin wrote:
> Your repost is interesting, but you will forgive me if I ask you, in
> addition to saying that Pound is a great poet, to select a passage which is
> great, in your view; tell why it is great, and explain its greatness in
> relation to its MEANING and its FORM.
>
On Mon, 19 Jun 2000 Carlo Parcelli wrote:
> I have to cop here. I would very much like to take up your "challenges",
> such as they are, but I am not blessed with much (actually any) time for
> such tasks. Aside from being a small businessman (emphasis on the
> "small"), I am involved with a number of projects that require
> considerable attention. Endless regressive "dialectic" is not an option
> for someone in my position. The negative consequences are too immediate.
Wei, I can recommend you a book written by Hugh Kenner. Title is "The Pound
Era", there is above 600 pages and it is worth its price.
You question simply can't be answered in a short mail. I would like to describe
my own expieriences with Cantos to you, but it would be probably to long
article, not for discussion group.
Anyway if we will take for example Canto LXXIX (I dont have my whole Pound
library at hand so I will recall from memory) then what we can find in opening
lines (and in a whole Canto) can be described just only as a "music of words".
Moon, cloud, tower, a patch of the battistero
all of a whiteness
dirt pile as per de Dell Cosa inset
think not that you wd/ gain if their least caress
were faded from my mind...
Pound simply composes poetry. He works like a musician. Unquestionably it is a
sort of poetry very uncommon today. E.P. said once that "poets who dont pay
attention to the music are simply bad poets". IMHO our contemporary so called
"world poets" & Nobel Prize recent winners can be perfectly defined like that.
Pound proposed many, many years ago something strongly different. He
rediscovered Provace, he discovered China & Orient for Europeans &
Americans.
Provance & China in his verses work together like a sound & image in the
movies (kind of "movie poetry" isn't it ? ).
But in that same way those "chinese" images & pictures which make big parts of
The Cantos are so terribly uncomprehensible for many readers. Peter Bi said
about year ago on this list that Pounds poetry is much more "chinese" than
contemporary Chinese Poetry. (For me it's one out of many aspects of the so
called "americanization", but lets put this subject on the side right now).
Beginng of Canto LXXIX confronts the reader with the image seen by Ezra Pound
from DTC gorilla cage and we have the next image at once: painting by Francesco
Dell Cosa and the next comment on the side (think not that ...) very misty I
believe, but its purpose can be defined as "reduction", "disapperance of
previous images & direct confrontation with the poet himself.
Once again - I am unable to describe line after line but as a poet with certain
scientifical inclinations I can tell you that it is clear for me that
conditions of writing E.P. had to accept in the camp were not perfect.
Constantly playing musicians (the "bum drum"), shoutings of guardians and
prisoners. Some 2 pages later you can find separate fragments and words, that
show the noisy conditions Pound had to endure and ...
... and in a certain moment Pound is visited by Lynx. (It was a really deep
night I think). Lines which you can read here convinced me that we dont have to
be ashamed that we lived in XX cent. (so called "immortal poetry" you know - I
am serious, if you want to confront this with "mortal poetry" I would strongly
recommend you verses written by recent Nobel Prize winners :-(
Who was Lynx is not defined even by prof. Terrel in his excellent "A
Companion to the Cantos of Ezra Pound", anyway it may be much less mysterious
figure than one can think :-), for example I can hear very clearly between some
lines ... cat's mew. (???).
I think that a Lots of Job in interpretation of E.P. poetry was
already done. But it does not mean that we should give up and not read or
translate HIM. Poet of this size does not happen on the surface of our planet
to much often. Certanly if Pound would really want to write "a book of the
tribe" he should recognize for example Kojiki - famous Japanese set of legends,
german-silesian metaphisical poetry, ancient georgian & armenian poets, there
should be much more about nothern tales (for example Kalevala) and so on and so
on. It wouldn't be wrong for The Cantos if HE would put something about
Yashihoco no kami, Nukawa-hime or Susaribime no mikoto. (Eventually about
Angelus Silesius or Martin Opitz). But even in this final form it is possible to
discuss The Cantos as an example of "cross-cultural book", certainly most
interesting for American and Chinese readers, but how many such a books we
have right now, on the beginning of the Era of Internet (or Era of Croissants),
how many I ask ???
...that can become a Croissants Era...
Pawel
Wroclaw/ Breslau 25.07.2000
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