I find words mentioned on page 531 in Canto 80. Let me suggest some
ideogrammatic thinking.
Mr Pound was poet, not a writer on questions of aesthetics. That makes
one suppose that to understand what words of Beardsley might mean for
Pound, or, to be correct, for a man who wrote Canto 80, that is, for
the artist, one should study Canto 80. In all other ways you turn to
be receiver of some specific information, not a poetry reader, that
is, you are trying not to think creatively, you are just refusing to
think at all, thus becoming potential consumer of Coca-Cola and all
shit. I remember Chesterton saying somewhere that modern man having
all the reference books at his side resembles one who will never solve
any problem, but always will look at the end of the book, where the
answer is given. Such a man, says Chesterton, is not to be blamed,
but surely he's not one who for whom books containing mathematical
problems are made for. And if the books begin to be printed for such a
lazy readers, here we have infamy, Geryon, Usura and all the hell's
horrors.
"Mais non! Mais NON!" ejaculated the scientist, "Les crocodiles ne
montent PAS les arbres." (Guide, ch. 38, p 220)
Will try to look at Beardsley having what knowledge and understanding
I have.
Cantos is a book with the same purpose as Commedia. In Commedia in
Canto XVII we have men violent against art tortured. I've not read
it, but suspect it will help with understanding Canto 80. All the long
Canto 80, which I don't understand, is concerned with the artist's role in
the usury society. Pound is surely not concerned with private men's
aphorisms, but with the way the trees of art grow in different
conditions. The conditions in which Beardsley wrote are ones Pound
called damned bad many a times. Secondly, Pound is one who is sure to
have sympathy for all the revivalist's movement in Victorian England.
The things Ruskin, Morris & Burne-Jones had done were "wrong from
the start", but nevertheless they were done in a very good will.
So we come to the piece of Canto 80:
La beaute, "Beauty is difficult, Yeats" said Aubrey Beardsley, [1]
when Yeats asked why he drew horrors [2]
or at least not Burne-Jones [3]
and Beardsley knew he was dying and had to [4]
make his hit quickly [5]
hence no more B-J in his product. [7]
So very difficult, Yeats, beauty so difficult [9]
All the canto is full of aphorisms bad artist make, for example:
--
"forloyn " said Mr Bridges (Robert)
"we'll get 'em all back "
meaning archaic words and there had been a fine old fellow...
(p. 527)
--
Compare with the beginning of canto 46:
--
And if you will say that this tale teaches...
A lesson, or that Reverend Eliot
has found a more natural language... you who think
you will
get through hell in a hurry...
(p. 231)
--
Now let's reread Beardsley fragment. Yeats is asking about horrors and
receives answer about Beauty being soo difficult. Pound said
somewhere that serious man is one who gives serious answer for a
serious question. The answer Beardsley gives is surely not of this
kind, being not only meaningless, but also impolite, suspecting Yeats
knowing nothing about beauty. From line 4 we get that Beardsley was
dying. Death is the main theme of nearly all the poetry. The way men
receives death is proving the way he lived, otherwise there were no
greek tragedies or Shakespeare or Dante. Compare those fragments:
--
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us -- if at all -- not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind,
In balance with this life, this death.
Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.
This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be,
Home is the sailor, home from sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.
Time, space,
neither life nor death is the answer.
And of man seeking good,
doing evil.
In meiner Heimat
where the dead walked
and the living were made of cardboard.
M'amour, m'amour
what do I love and
where are you?
That I lost my center
fighting the world.
The dreams clash
and are shattered --
and that I tried to make a paradiso
terrestre
--
Remember epitaphs Burns wrote, remember Dante's words on those souls
neither heaven or hell would receive, remember Villon's Testaments,
remember Chaucer's Retraction, remember Epilogue Spoken by Prospero,
and say: what would you think of someone who knowing that death will
come soon is 'making his hit quickly'? It seems that what he makes is
not art, but product, and that is exactly how Pound names it.
Personally, I think that the same wish for making 'hit quickly'
produced the terrible tastelessness of Wilde's 'De Profundis'.
BTW, you who live in a hurry: consider Russia. Here no one knows
about preraphaelites. They even think that Beardsley re-invented book
illustrations with his Malory, while that seems just to be cheap
commercial project stealing ideas from Morris and B-J. The way
Buck Mulligan is always winning over Stephen Dedalus. Yet I think
that stupidity and inhumanity of Beardsley's pictures is something not
hard to notice for any intelligent person. (Not trying to diminish all
his talents).
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