Just one example of what Pound meant about Propertius as logopoetic or
proto-logopoetic.
 
Logopoeia: "the dance of intellect among words, that is to say, it
employs words not only for their direct meaning, but it takes count in a
special way of habits of usage, of the context we expect to find with
the word...."  Literary Essays Page 25.
 
Propertius in the first stanza of Elegy III, i, which Pound translates
at the very beginning of Homage:
 
        Primus ego ingredior pure de fonte sacerdos
           Itala per Graios orgia ferre choros.
 
The translation from the (imfamous) Loeb Classics:
"I am the first to enter, priest from an unsullied spring, bringing
Italy's mystic emblems in dances of Greece."
 
Pound's (much much better) version:
"I who come first from the clear font
Bringing the Grecian orgies into Italy."
 
Translating "orgies" literally is more than simply eschewing prudery.
These two lines make a comic reference to Horace III, iii, which Pound
would translate late in life, and which he refered to in his early poem
"Dum Capitolium Scandet" (which is a line from Horace's poem). Horace
writes he is "princeps Aeolium carmen ad Italos/deduxisee modos." That
is the first to have brought Aeolian (Gk.) song into Italian modes.
 
To paraphrase the comedy " So you brought the music? Well, *I* brought
the *orgies*!"
 
Whenever he first read this, Pound probably had not only a hearty laugh
at this joke on Horace's sincerity, but an insight into logopoeia. See
how he makes a similar joke in Homage by using a word like
"Wordsworthian."
 
For most of his career Pound dealt with Horace begrudgingly.   "Horace
is the perfect example of a man who acquired all there is to acquire,
without having the root." L.E. page 28. I don't agree at all with this,
and find it interesting to see Pound come around. In the Coke Cantos for
instance his praising Elizabeth I for translating Horace.
 
My General Question:
Will someone help me to trace Pound's developing view of Horace, to find
out what's beneath it, and how we can see it as a key to the progression
of Pound's work?
 
 
Cheers,
Peter Campion