Jacob,
 
I don't have access to the exact reference, but in an early essay
or review EP said something like, There are great chunks of
world literature that don't exhibit major form, and he goes on to
give some (disputable) examples.
 
We must take such a statement in the context of EP's own struggles
with his own long poem, his uncertainties, his defensiveness--
and it would be completely wrong to assume that he cared little
about the issue of "major form" in the Cantos.  Not only do we
have a handful of statements of his attempting to encapsulate
his view of the poem's major form (Dante, Del Cossa analogies),
all of them coming from no later than the twenties, I believe,
but I discovered, in 1971, a passage in a letter of his from
the fifties, to his son-in-law Boris, which passage begins,
"Structure of Cantos begins to appear / Inf / Purg / Parad/,"
and goes on briefly to characterize each "realm."  I would
probably be ill-advised to print it all out online, but suffice
it to say that EP's characterization of each of these realms
corresponds exactly with my own, in my 1969 BARB OF TIME.  We know,
of course, that EP made early statements about the LOCAL form
of the Cantos mixing Inf-Purg-Parad elements, but this 50's
statement of EP's talks of the *overall* structure, the structure
that, to the author himself, finally, "begins to appear."
 
When, in one of the last Cantos, he says "I cannot make it cohere"
(misquote?), he is either speaking out of depression, as he was
wont, or is not referring to major form in the Cantos.
 
BTW, I'd like to publish that EP snippet on Cantos form in a
re-issued paper edition of BARB with added later, not-easily-
accessible essays of mine on the Cantos.  Oxford won't do it
because they think it won't sell more than 500 copies.
 
Anybody out there know of a university press that might be
interested?  I've got too much on my plate right now to send
out dozens of queries.
 
==Dan Pearlman
 
At 09:09 AM 6/6/98 -0700, you wrote:
>With regard to David Centrone's problem with the unity of the Cantos --
>somewhere Pound says that he has no use for the concept of "major form" --
>or some such term. But he did seem to have begun with some ideas about
>fugal form and the pattern of the Del Cossa frescoes, as in an early
>letter to his father.
>
Dan Pearlman                    Office: Department of English
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