In response to Tim Materer query of some time ago, I took another look at
canto 7, something I have not done for several years.
    I can think of no justification for the Norton's supposition that "the
tal lindifference" is Henry James--except perhaps that James was tall and a
perennial disinterested observer.
    The whole canto is to be read under the rubric of the old men on the
wall observing Helen as she arrives in troy--as Pound explains in a letter
to which I don't have the reference to hand.
    The canto jumps around amongst Homer's archaic Achaea, Ovid's Rome,
Eleanor's Aquitaine, Dante's Florence, James's Paris, and Pound's Paris. In
all of these times Pound isolates the dry shells, analogues of the old men
on  the wall, looking down suspiciously on Helen, brought back from Achaea
by Paris. The poet, of course, is the live man among the dry husks. Just
what the point of it all might be is more difficult and problematic--and
probably undecidable because Pound never did carry out the project he set up
in the first 11 cantos.
    The passage in which the phrase occurs seems clearly to belong to
renaissance Italy, where James would seem a little out of place.
    I hope this is of some help.
 
Leon Surette
English Dept.
University of Western Ontario
London, Ont.
N6A 3K7