Here's something posted to the list a while back by Matthew Hofer.
Tim Romano


Your epigraph is from "Cantico del Sole" (originally published in
_Instigations_), a poem written after the decision by Judge Hand in March of
1918 to ban the American distribution of the serialized "Nausikaa" chapter
of James Joyce's _Ulysses_ (which had been serialized chapter by chapter in
_The Little Review_).

The premise was that the same language that the court finds unacceptable in
a modern "classic" is permissible in the classics in translation because
they "have the sanction of age and fame and USUALLY APPEAL TO A
COMPARATIVELY LIMITED NUMBER OF READERS."  You can find this quotation and
more in Pound's essay "The Classic's [sic.] Escape."  To this evaluation of
the controversial decision, he adds, "No more damning indictment of American
civilization has been written than that contained in Judge Hand's
'opinion.'"  The decision was not reversed until 1933.

And you will find the poem on page 182 of Pound's _Personae: The Shorter
Poems._

Best,

Matthew Hofer
Managing Editor
Modernism/Modernity
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/mod/
1050 East 59th Street
Chicago, IL 60637
Tel.: 773 702 8539
Fax: 773 702 9861





----- Original Message -----
From: "William Marshall" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, January 18, 2001 4:39 PM
Subject: Re: cantico del sole


> Having left the US at the same age Grandpa did (owing in part to all the
bumper stickers which said AMERICA LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT)... I've always
thought of the poem as an indictment of Amerikan kulture... or lack thereof.
I wonder WHEN it was written?
>
> Stoneking
> http://ezrapound.cjb.net
>
>
>
>
>
>
>  ---- you wrote:
> > does anyone have an explication of this?
> > is he mocking st francis?
> > ....the harvard classicism of amb lowell
> > (&, by extension, possum) of previous "ritratto"?
> > ....yeats' "image out of spiritus mundi"?
> > ....gertrude stein?
> > ....america?
> > ....is it just the stilted witticism of snobbery?
> > ....what is the exact content of "the thought"?
> >
> > does anyone have a firm fix on it?
> >
> > bob
> >
>
>
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