I don’t know, Professor Pearlman; in fact, this
is a very important question, because we can trace
Pound’s style in The Cantos IF we get such a strong
connection between it and the cubists.
      I am inclined to think the cubists not only
flattened space but they included time in the
composition, as you pointed out in Duchamp’s example.
If we take Picasso’s paintings (mostly portraits)we
can see he portraits different poses in only one
picture, which I think, obliges us to consider a
compression of time, analogous to that practised by
Pound in the Cantos. When Pound writes, in the fourth
Canto: “Then Actaeon: Vidal”, he strikes a composite
figure in our minds. And there’s inevitably the
question of time.
      Some say we have to consider it under
ideological analysis, pointing to the fact that
immobilism in history is obviously conservative; on
the other hand, we can think Pound is always proposing
Ovid’s method of intervening transformation. Then we
finally have the Chinese aspect, i.e., to propose
composite figures as an ideogram, a cultural ideogram
which strengthens the force of presentation in poetry.
      What do you think?


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