I'll begin by answering a query from Roxanne (?).  I think that love is
primarily masculine, as you said, but that there are some, perhaps,
feminine aspects.  Take Sonnet one from Pounds translation in the Faber
'Translations' (the poem beginning "You, who do breech mine eyes and
touch the heart"). He (Pound or calvacanti, I'm not sure!) makes clear
in the second line that the mind is female/feminine and is assailed by
Love.  But the line beginning the second Stanza indicates a kind of
complicity between love and the mind, as well as seeming to make the
distinction with the senses from the other two aspect mentioned (not
including the addressee).  The complicity between love and the mind is
stated more clearly in the third stanza, where he says that Love came
from the adressee's mind, who, one would assume, is Calvacanti's 'Lady'
-- who i read to be related to the mind and the star she is.
 
I hope this answers your question to some exent, although it should also
display some of the problems I am having with Calvacanti.  So far i see
Calvacnti's poems as wrangling with the complexities of love, spiritual
(i.e. with a spiritual being) and also lodged in the material emotions.
and they go far byond the 'Scintilex Scintillions' (? it has been a long
time!) of Marvell, Vaughn etc., of course because, as was noted
yesterday, the Pagan influences on calvacanti (interesting
correspondence though between these poems and the religious poems of the
early C17th?).
 
I was amazed at the debate about Pound and foreign languages yesterday,
simply because I didn't expect it! I have to agree with the view that
Pound was not a master of all the languages he translated from and used
in the Cantos.  In a Paris Review interview with Robert Frost, there was
some discussion aboiut this topic.  Frost claimed that the knew some of
Pound's university lecturers, who claimed that Pound was far from a deft
hand at languages.  Pound himself admited that he used bi-lingual
dictionaries more frequently that he would wish to.  Moreover, hugh
Kenner goes as far to say that Pound had some problems with the grammer
of some languages (mistaking dative for genitive etc), as I remember.
However, Pound's translations have never been, for me, a real problem
because he decided not to give a literal translation -- for which I am
grateful.  I think this is a debate for academics concerned with
translation.  If anyone has read Arthur Whaley's translations, such as
his 'Ute' translations, one can see how dull translation can be when no
attempt is made to bring foreign poems into English, aside from literal
meaning ( I think recent translations of Homer bear witness to this
problem).  Hugh Kenner made a convincing case for Pound's translations,
simply saying that in some ways they are not translations at all but
Pound's version of a poem written in another language (which most
translations are).  My problem is, as stated yesterday, that Pound was
not the polyglot he claimed to be and does cause questions to arise,
particulary when poems, like Calvacanti's, become so complex-- does he
capture the complexities or garble them?
 
Pound's involvement with Laguages brings me to one final point: Pound's
political involvement.  I think that until time brushes away the
undenialble blemishes Pound left on his life or they are discussed until
one can accept them in some way, Pound will not get the attention he
deserves.  I think Pound's involvement with other languages, German
particularly, needssome closer inspection.  what concerns me on this
point is one of his Radio Rome Speeches where he claims to have read
Hitler's Mein Kampf, and finds something of value in it (!!??).  I would
not call this book recommended reading. What I have read of it -- I
couldn't physically finish reading it -- is very little more than
anti-Semitic invective interspersed with a
eugenic-meglomania-Nationalism.  However, if someone could not read
German very well it is possible that the anti-Semitism particularly
would not come across as strong as it really was.  Thus some of Pound's
statements, such as condoning pogroms against  CERTAIN Jews and Bankers
etc. (which was mild considering what was actually happening)may have
been interpreted by Pound as Hitler's Plan.  I really don't believe that
Pound sensed the Final Solution, which was implicit in Mein Kampf.
 
This is only a minor point in the vast area of debate concerning Pound's
anti-Semitism, I am only too aware.  But I believe these points are
necessary in at least separating Pound's Fascism from the Final
Solution... and there is much stronger evidence than this.
 
yours,
Ben Basan
 
P.s. I was heartend to see the relative pessimism of my last US port in
the Republic of Texas... it's a shame, but at least the situation isn't
much better in England.
 
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