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From:
Antony Adolf <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
- Ezra Pound discussion list of the University of Maine <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Fri, 24 Jan 2003 08:27:01 -0800
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Though I have been reluctant to participate, I have been spectating for a while now, and I can hardly express how lucky I feel to have found this list.

Thank you one and all.

In regards to form in the Cantos, another interesting argument is put forth by Kay Davis in "Fugue and Fresco: Structures in Pound's Cantos" (NPF 1984) as she draws upon Yeats' famous note and on E.P. musicality.

Hope that helps a little.

tony.





-----Original Message-----

> Date: Fri Jan 24 02:51:43 PST 2003
> From: A. David Moody <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Re: Major Form
> To: [log in to unmask]
>
> Garrick Davis wrote:
>
> > Pound wrote: "Major form is not a non-literary component. But it can do us
> no harm to stop for an hour or so and consider the number of very important
> works of world literature in which form, major form, is remarkable for [its]
> absence.ııı
> >
> > from: ABC of Reading (if I recall correctly....)
>
> Without a fuller context it is impossible to get the bearing of that remark.
>
> I don't find it in ABC of R -- I may have missed it.  I do find in the
> chapter headed "DISSOCIATE" remarks on major form in the novel, leading up
> to this: "and in all of them [Donne, Cavalcanti, Ford, James et al] the
> underlying concept of FORM, the structure of the whole work, including its
> parts."
>
> I reflect without rancour that hazily incorrect recall wastes everybody's
> time and mind.
> >
> > Also: Writing to his father in 1927, two years after A Draft of XVI Cantos
> was published, Pound admitted:
> >
> > Afraid the whole damn poem is rather obscure, especially in fragments.
> Have I ever given you outline of main scheme...or whatever it is?
> >     1. Rather like, or unlike subject and response and  counter subject in
> fugue.
> >     A.A. Live man goes down into world of Dead
> >     C.B. The ııırepeat in historyııı
> > B.C. The ııımagic momentııı or moment of metamorphosis burst thru quotidien
> into ıııdivine or permanent world.ııı (Selected Letters, 210)
>
> One might have read that as indicating a concern for form.
> >
> > I must disagree with Mr. Moody concerning the presence of "major form" in
> The Cantos--Allen Tate's early and late essays on the poem being rather
> instructive in that regard. Also, I highly recommend R. P Blackmur's essay
> on the subject, contained in Form & Value in Modern Poetry.
> >
>
> I too have read messrs Tate and Blackmur with respect and profit;
> neverthless it is possible to use one's own mind, all these years on, and
> even to see what was not yet apparent to them.  But I repeat:  our not being
> able to see something doesn't prove it is not there.  The accurate statement
> is "I don't see it" -- the false claim is "It isn't there".  I have found it
> more interesting, and more rewarding, to look harder.
>
> If you are sufficiently motivated you might look up a couple of indicative
> sketches:  "Composition in the Adams Cantos" in <Ezra Pound and America> ed.
> Jacqueline Kaye (Macmillan, 1992); and the article on "The Pisan Cantos" in
> <A Companion to Twentieth Century Poetry> ed. Neil Roberts (Blackwell,
> 2001).  Further brief indications in the Garland Encyclopaedia of EP (in
> preparation), in my articles on the China and John Adams blocks of cantos.
>
> David Moody

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