from Peter Makin's Pound's Cantos:
In that character [see Makin page 267] for the 'exact middle' we find
[character] the pivot, for moderation, which the Cantos make the sign of
John Adams (LXX, p. 413; LXXXIV, p. 540). And so, politically, all
depends upon sensibility: on the understanding of 'shadows' and tones
beyond what can be spoken; on what Confucius heard 'under the rain
altars' (LXXX, p. 512). This is stated in the first lines of the whole
section:
LING(2) [character]
Our dynasty came in because of a great sensibility.
(LXXXV, p. 543)
(Pound read that character, from top to bottom: cloud, three voices, and
the priestess: CIV. p. 766; cf. KPE, 14; interpreting the heavens'
changes?)
But Pound's verbal expression contradicts this whole wisdom. 'Way
repeatedly not clean, noisy, & your hearts loveless' suggests no
knowledge of love -- for metrical reasons as much as for others. And
likewise
Awareness restful & fake is fatiguing (LXXXV, p. 558)
[Note scansion in Makin's text]
is one of the least serene lines in the Cantos. This contradiction is
not so surprising: in his prose, Pound had been developing a new
vocabulary usable for the ad hoc purposes of prose, namely moral and
political outlines: 'awareness', 'intelligence', 'precision', and so on.
It had the merit of shaking up categories, but it was still an abstract
language, a language of categories. Pound had generally kept it out of
his verse, whose method was 'ideogrammic'. Now, perhaps a sign of
fatigue, it enters his verse extensively, and shows its capacity to
retain meaning (a characteristic Pound himself had noted) clearly, while
metre and phoneme-pattern carry the real meaning of this verse quite
clearly.
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