LOVE AS AN ORDERING PRINCIPLE

IN CAVALCANTI, POUND AND

ROBERT DUNCAN

BY

RALPH ROBERT WESTBROOK

B.A., University of Manitoba, 1966.

A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF

THE REQUIRMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF

MASTER OF ARTS

in the Department

of

English

We accept this thesis as conforming to the

required* standard

THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA

April, 1969

i In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that

the Library shall make it freely available for reference and Study.

I further agree that permission for extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the Head of my Department or by his representatives. It is understood that copying or publication of this thes,is for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission.

Department

The University of British Columbia Vancouver 8, Canada ABSTRACT

The purpose of this thesis is to offer some explination of the manner in which has created a metaphysical centre for through absorption and integration of the metaphysic of courtly and transcendent love and the pragmatic ethical philosophy of Confucius. It resolves no problems, either textual or critical, but rather suggests that the thirty-sixth Canto is central to the philosophy underlying the poem as a whole. From the central fourth chaper, the thesis attempts to give some idea of the nature of Pound's influence upon one other poet and how this influence has resulted in a new evaluation of the original Cavalcanti material.

The short intoductory chapter outlines the nature of the problem of love as an ordering principle which provides a reconciliation of the disparate and seemingly opposing forces which shape human experience. This unity, it is stated, represents an attempt on the part of western man to integrate his dualistic response to the world of Process, an essentially eastern concept.

Chapter two outlines the nature of Cavalcanti's poem and the philosophy of love which it contains. Apparently, this poem has yet to be interpreted with any degree of finality and I have necessarily had to work through the general concensus of critical opinion.

The third chapter points to Pound's conception of the philosophy of Guido Cavalcanti's canzon and how Pound has interpreted the "guerdon" of the amour courtois tradition as the Confucian doctrine of l_i_.

Chapter four explores the connexion between Pound's conception and interpretation of Donna Me Prega and how, from the concept of individual compassion, Pound envisions a viable order for the society of western man, while continually maintaining the concept of the universe as Process.

The fifth chapter deals with Robert Duncan's stated variation on Pound's view of Donna Me Prega and the philosophy contained therein, and offers some comments on the different possibilities vf order, or lack of same, as expressed by Duncan.

The conclusion discusses the metaphysical concept of love as a principle of unity in relation to some modern statements of epistemology and aesthetics, and concludes that Pound has expressed the sense of order and unity in a more universal and objective manner than has Duncan-

The addendum of chapter seven suggests some possibilities for further research into these areas and concludes that Ezra Pound's consciousness of the Processal universe is essentially oriental, ie., an aesthetic response, while the concept remains largely an intellectual postulate in the western world.

ii On the whole, the primary concern is for the explanation of the relationship among such elements as imagination, transcendent love, human social order, and the concept of the universe as an all-embracing Process of interacting elements.

iii CONTENTS

PAGE

1. Introduction p. 1

2. Donna Me Prega p. 5

3. Mercede as Compassion p. 29

4. Compassion or Order p. 52

5. Inmersed in the Process p. 78

6. Conclusion p. 106

7. Addendum p. 113

8. Bibliography p. 118

iv LOVE AS AN ORDERING PRINCIPLE

Chapter One: Introduction

The greatest poets have traditionally been those who worked toward and effected a synthesis, an integration of the varied elements of their experience, both in life and in art. Man is both sentient and intellectual, imaginative and rational. The various philosophies reflect this duality in tiiat each postulates reality as existent intwo distinct aspects. In philosophy, one sees the duality stated in terms of the positions of realist and idealist; in religion, the division is made between the rationalist and the mystic; and in art between the poles of classical and romantic. None of these positions represent an expression of actuality, as each approaches existence from the perspective of some limited theory concerning the nature of man and existence. Each position assumes that man's nature is accurately defined by that particular half- truth which it postulates and each, if accepted as a statement of fact and a valid philosophical position, is exclusive in that it disallows any further information about existence that the opposite position could provide.

Surrounding the divided house of human consciousness and await• ing the cessation of man's artificial distinction lies the world of Process. Whether one subscribes to the view that the universe is composed wholly of spirit or that the universe is entirely material, or even to the 2 recently-discovered view (at least, by the western world), that the universe is a flux of matter and energy constantly shifting and re-phasing, the Process awaits man's discovery of, and integration to, its river-like flow. The Process of continual anabolism and catabolism, form and dissolution, matter and energy, has been in every age the essential reality of existence. Each culture has arrived at a distinctly different orientation toward the Process, from the passive acceptance of and integration to the

"other" aspect of reality that the Asian cultures have achieved, to the theoretical postulates of human control over the "machine" of nature made by western man. Beyond the poles of this traditionally dichotomy lies the essential truth that neither is a complete statement of the actual situation and that both positions, when taken together, form a total cosmological view.

In each culture, the poet has been the one man who not only sees clearly the twin poles of the artificial distinction but who has sought a synthesis, a unity which each has been aware must underlie the duality. In order to achieve insight into the essential harmony of existence, poets have the problem of duality in widely varied terms and have utilized different poles with which to express the dichotomy. One has seen the duality in terms of human and metaphysics, expressing on one hand the senses and the passive intellect, and on the other, the rational or active intellect; and has spoken of reality as existent in form (in the Platonic sense) and actuality. This is the medieval philosophical position of Guido Cavalcanti, to whom love is ultimately a Platonic form or idea which works through the sense response, uniting the duality of human consciousness via the machinations of the possible and active intellects, and working toward a mystic contemplation of the super-sensuous ideal. Love, ther; is a Platonic form which, although a disembodied ideal, has a physical actualty by virtue of the fact that it has its origin in the response of the senses to physical 3

beauty. Through the workings of the dual nature of the human consciousness,

love becomes a force which unifies the duality in contemplation of a

transcendent ideal. Another poet, Ezra Pound, writing in a cultural milieu which had postulated and demonstrated the metaphysical inter-connection of 2 matter and energy in a cryptic statement of physical reality, (E=MC ), states

the dichotomy in terms of epitemology, utilizing the poles of perception and conception. Perception is an intuitive apprehension of truth operating

through one or more of the senses; while conception denotes the formulation

of truth in the . As Pound uses these terms, the emphasis is upon

perception as an intuitive, imaginative and immediate apprehension, and he

stesses conception as a more conscious intellectual process divorced from

imagination. The integration of these responses allows the application of intelligence to the world of Process, clarity of vision and a more

complete apprehension of the position of the individual vis-a-vis the

Process. Love, to Pound, has still both the Platonic form or ideal and the

Physical actuality; however, in its machinations as a unifying force, love

becomes compassion or fellow-feeling and enable the individual to manifest

the Confucian concept of l_i_, or brotherly deference. As each individual achieves the quality of Poundian compassion the possibility for the attain• ment of a just and lasting social order increases. Thus, love has, to one

poet the power to unify the mind in contemplation of a transcendent ideal, while to another love has the potential to create an equitable and all-pervasive

social order.

To a third poet, Robert Duncan, the world of Process has become

equatable with the Biblical Chaos, threatening engulfment and dissolution

of form, meaning the consciousness. The poem itself, being a microcosm of

the larger universe, repeats the disorder and the lack of definite form which

the poet experiences in the world of Process. No longer is the poem an 4

expression of the total sentience and consciousness of man, but rather, it

exists as a scaled-down universe of disorder in which the poet plumbs in

order to discover his own identity. Love, in its ideal aspect, is decidedly

the Poundian compassion and is still necessary to the establishment of both

personal and social order; however, the emphasis of the poem is upon the

surrounding darkness and human bestiality. The ideal of love provides a

refuge in that it strengthens the faith of the individual who perceives and can experience it, thus allowing him to stoically face the disharmony and

pain of human existence. 5

Chapter 2: Donna Me Prega

Tradition has established that Guido Cavalcanti's lyric expression of the nature and origins of love, "Donna Me Prega," was written in response to the , "Onde si Muove," of Guido Orlandi. The canzone certainly answers all of the questions concerning love asked by Orlandi, and it appears to be the only one extant that could be considered as a response to the sonnet. That the Donna of the canzone is Orlandi, or at least one poet of the dolce stil nuove, is made readily apparent by the complex and subtle reasoning of the poem, not to mention the tightly compressed Scholastic philosophy, obviously not intended for the ears or mind of any woman.

Cavalcanti's avowed purpose for writing the conzone, implicit in the first stanza, is to convince those who doubt the existence of this transcendent force and to explain, in the terms of medieval philosophy and metaphysics, the immediate and ultimate sources of love, its nature, ramifications and significance. It is clear that, although the exchange between Orlandi and Cava!canti stands in the tradition of the medieval love debate, the canzone is not intended merely to add to the knowledge of manners or procedure, not is it intended merely to defend or clarify a traditional postulate or argument. Such an intention would be superficial and unworthy of the philosophical sophistication of Cavalcanti. This is not to accuse the poets of the tradtion of a lack of serious concern for the true nature of love, but rather to imply that the love about which poets such as Arnaut Daniel, Guillaume de Lorris and Geoffrey Chaucer spoke, was less

Metaphysical and cctsmic in scope that that of Cavalcanti. The primary

concern of the Provencal poets and their followers was with manners and morals, especially the manner in which the uncouth medieval man could be 6 refined, socially and personJly, by the love of the courtly love tradition.

Just as there is a basic difference in purpose and treatment of love between the poets of the courtly love tradition and Cavalcanti, so is there a difference in their respective conceptions of the nature of love. The fin' amors of the Provencaj l lyricists is the result of a confluence of philosophical forces, some inherent in European culture, others oriental in origin. The decline in awareness of Classical learn• ing left only traces of Platonic idealism, which, through the absorption of Platonic concepts into the philosophical system of , were carried forward into the framework of medieval Christianity. The essential differences between the two later resulted in the medieval schools of

Nominalism and Realism. Aristotelian realism became the philosophical grounding of the Scholastic movement in medieval Christianity, while

Platonic idealism developed through the Alexandrian Platonists, such as

Origen, Proclus and Iamblichus, into the Christian philosophy of Dionysius

the areopagite and St. Augustine. Between the decline of the Classical philosophy and the thirteenth century resurgence of European culture, rises the power and learning of Islamic culture. The widespread conquests of Moslem armies and resultant absorption of oriental philosophical concepts lead to a further Platonic colouring of Aristotelain realism, which the

Christian Scholastic philosophers, especially Thomas Aquinas, began gradually to purge.

The primary points of contact between the European and Islamic cultures are Spain, Sicily and the section d'or of France. For our present purposes, however, Spain may be excluded, as little direct influence of

Spanish orientalism upon the Provencal, SiciTan or Tuscan literary 7 traditions has been satisfactorily proven. The Sicilian court of

Frederick II was the first imperial court to absorby Arab scholarship and hence, oriental philosophy, which was mostly in the fields of mathematics and medicine. The position of the Islamic philosophy of this period was decidedly Platonic, both inherently, through the scholarship of

Avicenna and Averroes, and extraneously, through Arabic absorption of Hindu philosophical notions, which tend generally toward the same idealism as that expressed by Plato. Poets at the court of Frederick II, writing in a style composed of Norman and Oriental elements, talk in terms of chivalric idealism and philosophical abstractions. The chivalric and courtly content of thebir work is largely a foreign excrescence, grafted on through the influences of 1 the Norman traditions of fantastical chivalry and the eastern sensuousness.

Concepts, images and narrative elements are outside of the native experience; like the matter of Rome employed by Guido del Colonna, it is only a memory, evanescent as the mists. The paradox behind the lies in the fact that, although the poets speak in terms of abstractions and the nearly-forgotten memories, the conclusion to the overwhelming amount of their love is merely physical conquest of the idealized lady and possession of her physical perfections. Love has not the exaltation and refinement of spirit in the Sicilian school as it has in the later Tuscan poets. Perhaps this fact is the best illustration of how the chivalric traditions were grafted onto the Sicilian court and reultantly, the literary expression.

The court poets aim at expression of the noble ideals of their political suzerains, but the physical facts of their personal experience are irrepressible.

The experiential element cannot be suppressed by any theoretic or idealistic ambitions. In the Sicilian courts poets, we see the strong influence of

1 De Sanctis, F. History of , vol. 1, pp 12 - 14, New York: Basic Books, Inc. 1931 8 Arabic Platonism, but also, how imperfectly this influence was absorbed. The love that they seek to express is sensual in essence, but is disussed in terms of spiritual and idealistic realities which become mere abstractions without any real basis in terms of their actual experience. The other point of contact between European and Islamic culture, germane to the present discussion, occurs in the area of southern France and helps to foster the courtly love tradition of the refined love of the Provencal troubadors. Here, as is readily surmised from Andreas Capellanus' De Arte Honeste Amandi, love is a refining and exalting force, but exalting force, but primarily in the area of the social graces, manner and the arts. We have here, as in the Sicilian poets, the sense of sensual love (eros), albeit seen idealistically. The lady is socially exalted beyond the courtier's hope of attainment and the courtier seeks to become the serf of his lady, offering his fealty and discretion in return for her "mercy". Although the servant of love would seek to improve himself in manners grooming, and the composition and performance of love lyrics in praise of his lady, the level of the self-cultivation is of theutmost importance. The focus of the self-cultivation is here upon the outward man, man as a social creature, as a courtier. The love of the troubadors is ultimately a sensual love, in fact, preferably an illegitimate love, for some treatises even rule that love is impossible between a man and his legal 2 spouse. The Tuscan poets of the thirteenth century are as much the heirs

2 Dodd, W.G. " The System of Courtly Love," p. 4, vol II, Chaucer Criticism, N otre Dame, Ind.,: University of Notre Dame Press, 1961 9 of the Provencal troubadors as they are of the Sicilian court poets. In their early work, one finds the same chivalric and fantiastically heroic elements as in the Sicilians, and the same sense ofcourtliness and concern for the manners and refinement of the outer man as in the Provencal troubadors. There is, however, an important departure from the varied elements which amalgamate to produce the dolce stil nuove in that an intensification of thought, a more metaphysical inclination is apparent. Perhaps this greater sophistication is explicable in terms of sociological concepts, such as intensified urbanization and the greater currents of philosophical speculation which surrounded the Florentine poets; however, one need go no further than the literary tradition itself in order to explain the phenomenon. Guizizelli, Cavalcanti and wrote as the end result, the final effloration, of an ongoing tradition of philosophical thought and topical concern. It is possible to see a continuum of artistic and philosophical development from the Provencal and Sicilian poets to Dante.

Common elements exist in the work of all the poets concerned, such as the pre-occupation with love, its nature and ramifications, the concern for the transcendent and exalting aspects of sensuous love and the progressively developing conception of a reconciliation of the fleshy and the spiritual natures of man, the attempt to harmonize eros and agape. The Sicilian court poets do not have a sufficiently strong experiential reference for the spiritual or theoretic elements of their work, and hence, cannot transcend the sensuous aspect of love, while the Provencal troubadors suffer from a lack of vision of the transcendent and are limited to a realistic expression of the power which love possesses to transform the man of crude sensibility into a refined courtier possessing a strong sense of loyalty, artistic ability and discretion. 10

It is basically the fin' amors of the Provencal tradition, then, that

Cavalcanti and his fellow poets of the dolce.stil miove are discussing.

However, as we have noted, there is philosophical intensification and subtle reasoning on the part of the Florentine poets, which is not found in the work of the Provencal troubadors. The courtly love tradition of southern France was judged heretical by the Church, and no doubt the reasoning and philosophical assumptions which produced the fiii' amors produced also the Albigensian heresy, which the Church treated so severely as a challenge to its authority. If for no other reason, the Church would see this focus on sensual or sexual love as a force working for human refinement as being excessively worldly in orientation. For after all, the basic Christian teaching was that man should focus on the other world, the world of the Almighty, and direct hislove towards the celestial and the Supremely Good, rather than on the more limited, but less theoretic, earthly good, or beauty. Man is to focus on the divinely and eternally beautiful, rather than on that which is sensuous and temporal.

Monkish scholasts brought the full pressure of their Aristotelian realism to bear upon this philosophically Platonic conception of love, which flourished in thirteenth and fourteenth century southern Europe. Anquinas argues as strongly against the Platonic conception of love as he does against St. Augustine's mystical Christianity, and ultimately reconciles the transcendent values of the Christian Church with the emphasis on earthly and sensual love. It is basically the position of Aquinas which Dante expresses, as the theoretic component of his art, in the Vita Nuova and the

Divine Comedy. The emphasis of both is upon the Supreme Good, despite

Platonic elements in both works, basically an Aristotelian conception interpreted so as to serve Catholic dogma. n

In the , Dante places the Cavalcanti family in

Hell, as he must do as a devout and practicing Catholic. The family held

to a position, both political and philosophical, which was irreconcilable with a strict interpretation and application of Church teachings. The

basic position of the Church, in terms of medieval philosophy, must be seen as a philosophical realism, which holds that the elements of the material world are ultimate realities, as they participate in and strive towards

the Divine Nature of the Supreme Being. The ultimate position expressed

in Cavalcanti's Donna Me Prega is a philosophical idealism, which holds

that the material world and the world of ideas are both ultimately real;

however, only insofar as human experience of them is able to judge them to

be real. This is a position of philosophical conceptual ism, not unrelated

to eastern philosophical concepts, or to Platonic idealism. The ultimate

test of reality is experiential, ie., reality is immediately and aesthetically apprehendable through the response of the individual. This

is to postulate the universe as a plenum of shifting and oscillating energy

levels which continually waxes and wanes between relative form and dissolution, solidity and intangibility - the world of Process. Cavalcanti's world is such a world, one in which material and conceptual entities are

indissolubly united. In such a world, the force of love serves as a

limiting factor: ordering, defining, and inter-connecting the material to

the irrmaterial, the physical to the spiritual, the form with the idea.

For discussion of Donna Me Prega, I have worked from the Fletcher 3

translation, as it includes excellent line by line notes which expand

upon the significance of terms which suggested different denotations and

connotations to the medieval mind than they do to the modern reader.

3 Fletcher, J.B. "Guido Cavalcanti's Ode of Love" ModernPhilogy, vol. 7, January 1910, pp 423-26. 12

Fletcher also relates certain aspects of Cavalcanti's philosophical position to equivalents or parallels in Dante, especially to the Covito, in which occur the greatest similarities to Cavalcanti's treatise. Perhaps the safest exegetical procedure would be a stanza by stanza discussion of the elements of Cavalcanti's philosophy of love.

The first stanza works from the questions of Orlandi's sonnet, outlining the various aspects of the particular problem which are to be discussed. The questions are apparently paired, each pair to be resolved in the succeeding stanzas: where love has place, and what power affects its creation; what is the particular vertute and power of this force; what is the essential verity or essence, and what are the natures of its motions and development; and lastly, what pleasure is derived from love and if it be manifest to sight. Although each of the succeeding stanzas are to be a discussion and resolution of two questions, eachhas a unity of its own, in that the two problems dealt with are treated as divisions of the specific subject with which the stanza deals. A basic paradox in the first stanza betrays the fact that the nature of love discussion is going to be twofold, for with

d'un accidents che sovents e fero

ed e si altero, ch'e chiamato amore: (2-3)

Cavalcanti outlines the purpose and intention of his philosophic canzone to be an attempt to reconcile the difference between the opposing reputations which love has received, fero and altero. That Cavalcanti is biased in favour of altero is apparent in his che sovente, translated as "too frquently," by Fletch, Also, his natural predilection can be seen in the tone of his addressing the canzone to those hearts are not of

"base degree." (basso chore), for by placing his discussion on the level of 13

"proof philosophic," he speaks only to those of his fellow who are in sympathy with the fin' amors and in possession of trained and subtle

intellects. The first stanza is an outline of the problem for discussion, a statement of limitation of audience (related to the commiato), and as an avowal to consider the problem in the context of contemporary philosophical assumptions.

Stanza two describes the origins or place of residence of this love, clearly delineates its nature and describes love in its first perfections as a dispassionate meditation upon an image representative of the ideal of earthly beauty. Love's residence, or point of inception, is in

dove sta memora (15)

ie., in the place where memory resides, to the medieval mind the sensitive, as opposed to the rational, . In modern terms, the imagination as opposed to the intellect. At this point, Shaw, in his thesis upon

Cavalcanti's philosophy of love, expands upon this conception of love's origin.

Cavalcanti's Love is sensitive and not rational, as we are told in the third stanza (1?- 3), but it is both intellectual and sensual: not that it is a union of two separate kinds of love, but because the sensitive soul of the lover has both inner and outer faculties, and the inner faculties are intellectual in that they are pervaded by the intellect. It has a first and a second perfection, and the second perfection is its complete actuality. 4

From this, one may discern that love is formed through the actions of the senses, ie., through the sense response in the sensitive soul or

4 Shaw, F.E. Guido Cava! canti's Theory of 'love, Toronto: The University of Toronto Press, 1961, P. 11. 14

imagination. This is love in its first perfection, an image of ideal

beauty is created by the imagination and remains in the memory. The

image itself is an idea sensed or felt by the imagination, therefore,

in modern terminology, an intuited idea, a perception as opposed to a

conception, In the notes to his translation, Fletcher describes this

creation as, "a silhouette in black upon the screen of the imagination,

so symbolizing the "malignity" of Love." Fletcher then proceeds to describe the "malignity" or fero" aspect of love as the result of the

poet's deriving the "shadow" from Mars, "the planet of wrath and

Perturbation," and says that, "Cavalcanti, however, makes the very

essence of love "excessive longing." Fletcher juxtaposes Cavalcanti's derivation of the "shadow" from Mars with Dante's derivation (in Cdnvito

II, 7) of the force of love from the bright radiance of the planet Venus.

The difference here, between these two derivations, is crucial, for

Cavalcanti, by derivation of the accidents from the influence of the

planet Mars, is locating the inception of love in the concreteness of the

sense response, the aesthetic response of man to a sense object. Dante, on the other hand, derives the force of love from the planet Venus, the

symbolic value of which suggests his focus to be removed from the sense response to the level of the wholly theoretic - love then becomes the desire of the soul for a spiritual union with the loved object. Dante, therefore, ascetically denies the body, the physical nature of love in favour of the wholly spiritual, and one can readily surmise that Dante's

position is more orthodox from the point of view of the medieval Christian

Church.

That Cavalcanti works from the concrete physical experience is

borne out by the remainder of his discussion in the second stanza. 15

nature of sense bestows Its name, and pose of soul, and heart's desire. It comes from visible form, which, apprehended, Ascended into passive intellect. (19 - 22)

The sense response is love's point of departure. Love is an abstraction, or idea, intuitively known or apprehended, drawn from the physical form of ideal beauty, ie., woman. From the immediacy of the sense response,

the imagination draws the abstracted idea into the

possibile intelletto or "passive intellect," ie., the intellective memory. Once in the memory, this love, abstracted from the physical,

"maintains its tenancy," and never works in that part, ie., the memory,

"injury." Injury may be interpreted as a diversion of the will from

its ultimate goal, ie., contemplation of the wholly spiritual. With line twenty-four, "Cavalcanti doubtless" intends a reconciliation of the

body and soul, for he is, in effect, saying that although lovehas its

inception in the physical response, it does not detract from the soul's contemplation of the Supreme Good. It, love, is not a mere binding of the

Self to the earthly, ie., the sense response, but rather, love, in its now abstracted or distilled form, is not "from finite kind descended."

Granted that love's original inception is due to the influence of the

planet Mars, ie., of the senses, but, after the process of abstraction

has occurred, its form (idea) has been exalted by the passive intellect to the level of the infinite. As Fletcher's notes to lines twenty-five and twenty six express the idea.

Being of a pure form, or idea, which as infinite cannot be completely possessed by a finite being, love is never inactive through satiety. 5

Love, at this point of its development, is a pure form or idea, and,

as it is infinite and cannot be reconciled to a finite creature, it 16 cannot come to any physical fruition. The state of love is an enraptured meditation upon the ideal, an abandonment of Self to the contemplation of the ideal.

Nor wears aspect of joy but reverie, For may not enter there affinity. (27 - 28)

Cavalcanti expresses here the Platonic "ecstasy" the loss of separate self-consciousness into the rapture of contemplation. The existence of the ideal in the world of practical reality is the affinity, the' likeness or counterpart of the idea in objective terms. These are irreconcilable, as the "form" and "object," the ideal" and the "real" are distinct entities and may not intrude upon the other's sphere of existence.

Of central importance in the second stanza is the mataphysic of light employed by Cavalcanti to discribe the analogous state of love,

To the medieval mind, God and light were seen as coterminus, the deity being quite literally the source of all light in the universe. All tangible ralities possessed light to varying degrees; light was a property or quality of bodies. The varying degrees of manifestation of light bespoke the proximity of any given body to divinity. Although the various ancient and medieval philosophers differed in the details of their light metaphysics, a common body of doctrine was held in

5 Fletcher, J.B. "Guido Cavalcanti's Ode of Love," Modern Philology, vol. 7, January 1910, p. 424 17 agreement by all. The essentials of this common body of metaphysical doctrine are outlined by J.A. Mazzeo in his study of the medieval cultural tradition in Dante, as follow:

1) Light is the principle of being, activity, extension, casual efficacy, life, motion, nobility, and excellence; indeed, everything positive is somehow light or of the nature of light, the opposite of which would be the sheer negation of darkness. 2) As the fundamental form of body as such, light is the substantial form of the universe and provides the universe with its principle of continuity. 3) It is the noblest of corporal things and has an intermediate place between body and soul, matter and spirit. 4) It is not only the principle which constitues the universe but, as spiritual light, the principle by which the intellect understands. 5) All these notions were set in the framework of a Hierarchically ordered universe. 6

As Masseo proceeds to outline, the question of the relationship

"between the corporeal light which is the principle of continuity in nature and the immaterial light which is God" was implicit in this metaphysical conception. The solution, as Mazzeo has it, was the construction of the following three relationships:

1) Emanation, whereby the corporeal light was derived from the uncreated light and participated in the Divine Being, for example, the doctine of De Intelligent!is. 2) Analogy, wherein the two kinds of light bore a purely analogical relationship to eachother, having no community of being, for example, the doctrine of Bartholomew of and St. Bonaventura. 3) A mixture of the two in which the relationship was imagined as emanation but conceived in terms which kept the Creator quite distinct from His creation, for example, the doctrine of Albertus Magnus. 7

6 Mazzeo, J.A. Medieval Cultural Tradition irr Dante's Comedy, p. 75. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1949.

7 loc. cit. 18

Of these three positions, the first is essentially Platonic and monist.

Deity and the objective world are in harmony, each participating in

the other, a pantheist position.. The second and third are positions of duality, which separate thedeity from the physical universe, thus

destroying the unity of being between God and the objective world*

To Cavalcanti, the.formation of love is analogous to the formation of light in a diaphanous body. Love begins where the intellective memory resides, ie., in the passive intellect or imagination. Just as

light generates from the Divine to the diaphanous particles, so does

love inform the intellect.

si formato come diafan, da lome. (16 - 17j_

The light from the Divine, which illuminates the intellect, is tranformed

into love by the imagination. The ultimate source of love is the planet

Mars, ie., the sense response to beauty. The human soul is like a diaphanous substance, it is actualized by the light, which radiates from

Divinity, The soul has a potental for love whth is made kinetic by the

light of the intellect. The intellectual light is directly related to

the Primus Lax; it is the divine in man. Cavalcanti is saying that love

has a bsis in the sense response of the individual to a beautiful object.

The form or idea of love is known intuitively, ie., this is the perception of the imagination, as opposed to the conception of the active intellect.

This is the first perfection of love, and it is to undergo a further process of distillation and crystallization before it can achieve its second perfection.

Cavalcanti makes perfectlyclear, however, that love has always its origins

in the concrete sense response and works its way upward throught the 19 sensitive or passive intellect (imagination), never causing suffering or injury to the active intellect or intelligence by having its basis in the physical.

so Love its form acquires From shadowxast by Mars, the which abides (17 - 18)

Which gives the lie to the essentially ascetic position of the medieval

Church, and which focuses on the mystic relation between the objective world of tangiHe spirit. The essential paradox of Donna Me Prega lies just in this mystic unity which Cavalcanti is attempting to give "proof philosoph

That Cavalcanti's love is not merely sensuous, but exalts one to the level of the divine and eternal is shown: in

And since from finite kind 'tis not descended, Unended is its radiant effect. (25 - 26j_ where he draws the analogy tighter by likening the effect of love to that of the emanation of light from the Primus Lux to the intellect.

Love becomes a ray (radius) of light, which man receives essentially from his sense response to the beautiful object, ie., the natural object. That the natural object is not merely sensuously enjoyed, but is transcended by the abstracting intellect in contemplation of the ideal of love.

Nor wear aspect of joy but reverie. (27)

Cavalcanti's love, though having its basis in the intuitive response to the beautiful natural object, is essentially immaterial in that it represents a contemplation of th ideal as opposed to the real. Insofar as the poet's philosophy of love stresses the mystic unity of the physical and the spiritual, there can be no ultimate disharmony between 20

these as the ideal is as real as the object, the form and the thing

itself are essentially one.

In the third stanza, Cavalcanti underscores the sense response

element of his theory of love, and measure it against the rational

love of virtue proffessed by the Christian Scholastic philosophers. To

these latter, love is only virtuous if directed by reason toward

contemplation of the Supreme Good. To Cavalcanti, love is not the

intellectual search for a rational perfection, "but feeling, I attest," ie.,

love proceeds intuitively, although love, as Cavalcanti has already stated,

is essentially intellectual in its most complete state. Love seeks not

the perfect good of virtue or of the Supreme Good, but rather, it leads the

intellect away from "well-being." The entire ectivity of the mind is

taken up with a pre-occupation with the beautiful natural object.

For ravishments intelligence enthrall. (33)

and the intellect is thus diverted from contemplation of the Supreme

Good. Hoffiver, if love is not a moral virtue, yet

It is not virtue, but from that proceeds which is perfection, in complexion withal Not rational, but feeling I attest. (29 - 31)

ie., love has its origin in moral virtue, but is not of the reason

(acitve intellect.) Rather, love is an intuitive perception of virtue,

or an intuitive perception of good and beauty, possible only for those of

virtuous nature. The power of love is great but it warps the function'

of the intellectual faculties, so that,

Discernment small it has where vice is guest, Often there follows from its puissance deeth, If wrath o'er much the faculty dismay (34 - 36) 21

The lover is distracted from his path of conscious moral virtue, by nature of the fact that his active intellect is pre-occupied with a contemplation of the ideal of love, and hence, he is vunerable to vice and unable to discern its presence. The power of love can thus

lead one to become overly concerned with the worldly and temporal,

through wrath caused by impatience of attainment of the ideal of love.

This death is the overwhelming of the physical and the mental selves

by obsessive passion for a worldly object. If the path of love lies

not toward virtue, the lover is thus obsessed with the worldly and loses

his claim to eternity. It is a death in life, a spiritual atrophy, of

which Cavalcanti warns in

Who saith that life is his is lead astray (40)

and it is the result of obsession with the worldly, which takes away one's

self matery.

Lacking the stay which makes him his own lord (41)

Love, per se, it is in itself, neither good nor bad, although it can

induce one toward obsession and abandonment of virtue, depending upon

the nature of the lover. If the lover abandons the rational intellect,

and give himself over completely to his sense response to the

beauteous object and its contemplation, he undergoes a spiritual

atrophy, a death. Love has thus the power for virtue, or for corruption,

dependent upon the inherent worth of the man who loves.

The fourth stanza is dedicated to a discussion of the "movimento"

of love, its essence, development and enactment. This is the second 22 pefection of love, its actualization and effects. At this point, love is an immoderate desire, an unnatural excitation of the will to achieve the ideal. For Cavalcanti, the essence of love lies in the fact that it stimulates one to seek intransigantly the unattainable ideal. The will drives the lover to seek what is "beyond the measure of natural pleasure."

In the third stanza, wrath was excited in the lover by his inability to attain the beautiful natural object. Here, wrath may be aroused by the very nature of the immoderacy of the lover's passion for the transcendent ideal, through frustration of his attainment. Through this frustration of the lover's desires, he suffers anguish, confusion and helplessness from love in its second perfection, or actualization. This state brings misery to the lover, whose ideal constantly shifts and incites wrath in him. The state of suffering is unimaginable to the uninitiated, ie., those who know not love and have not felt its power. Here, Cavalcanti departs sharply from the Provencal tradition of fin' amors, whose poets saw the game of love, and its resultant suffering, as being perversely enjyable and leading to refinement of self. Love brings no surface delight; no superficial benefit is gained from the suffering. No great wisdom, "gran saver," whether it be true or slight, results. Love, in its second perfection, is brief, frustrating and painful. It serves no superficial end, such as social refinement, as it did for the Provencal troubadors, but constantly moves the ideal to increasingly unattainable levels, thus forcing man to strive for that which he can never attain.

In the final stanza, Cavalcanti again underscores the super- sensuous and transcendent nature of the love ofvhich he is speaking, returning to the light anology in order to stress the exalted and divine nature of this love. The opening lines of the stanza may be considered 23

as much a direct aspersion cast against the Provencal troubadors and their

superficial view of love as it is relating of the celestial nature of

love. Love, he says, seems to most men manifest in the loving glances and promises of delight of an earthly and sensuous relation. This however,

is not truly love, but a deception.

In secret guise Love comes not, so declared. Indeed not scornful beauty is the dart. (59 - 60)_

The earthly, SBnsuous love, of which sang the troubadors, is not the real love of which Cavalcanti sings. Love is only half manifest, or in

its first perfection, in this earthly manifestation. Real love cannot be

seen, the form or idea of love is "seen by non."

And not to sight is Love made manifest, (63)

• • • * • • • •

And, hears one right that form is seen by none, Then least by him that is by Love undone. (65 - 66)

The real love of Cavalcanti is an intangible reality, an idea which has no earthly pressence, no outward shape which can be readily detected. Thus, love has no material visibility, for

Of colour of being Love is dispossessed. (67)

At this point, the end of the canzone, one must take variance with the Fletcher translation of line sixty-eight, which, in the original

Italian, is

ascico 'n mezzo scuro, luce rade. (68) which Fletcher translates as follow: 24

At rest in shadow space it cancels light.

Fletcher's notes to this line offer no solution to the discrepancy ,

no reasoning for his obversion of Cavalcanti's reasoning. Clearly,

the translation is wrong, by even literal standards, and the meaning

has been lost. The original runs feely as, " seated in obscurity, light

emanates, or shines forth." The noun, "luce" in medieval Italian

refers to a source of light rather than to a light acted upon, as it

would have to be for Fletcher's translation to be even reasonable. As

is readily apparent, there is nothing in the original, (even with

allowance for textual variants), which can be construed as "cancels."

As discussed in the poem, love is a combination of sense response and

intellect. The source of love is the influence of Mars, ie., the

individual sense response to an aesthetic object. However, love

transcends the sensual by means of the active intellect, which forms

a vision of the unattainable ideal. Despite this emphasis of the super-

sensuous ideal, the concrete sensuous origins of love are maintained

throughout the poem. In Cavalcanti's medieval Italian,

ascico 'n mezzo scuro, luce rade. (68)

which is to say that, although love has sensuous origins and is firmly

rooted in the influence of the planet Mars, the light of the divine

still emanates. Love, therefore, is an expression of man's quest for! divinity. Man works from the concrete sensuous response to a natural and

beautiful object, toward expression of the divine in his own nature.

The sense response is thus transformed into a transcendent ideal, through

the construction and idstillation of the imagination and intellect. o

25

Love is thuscdispossessed "of colour of being" and the "light emanates" out and upward toward the ideal.

o 26

ODE OF LOVE (DONNA ME PREGA) by Guido Cavalcanti

I

A Lady entreats me; wherefore I will tell Of a quality too f recently malign, Yet so divine that men have called it Love: Thus may the truth whatever doubt dispel. Adept I ask unto this task of mine, For my design, I fear me, is above His wit that is at heart of base degree. For me proof philosophic is defined, Else disinclined I feel me to recite Where Love has place; created by what might; And what its virtue is; and potency; Verity essential; motions of what kind; Its name assigned as Love for what delight; And if it may be manifest to sight.

II

In that part where the memory resides It makes appearance; as transparence shows Through which light flows, so Love its form acquires From shadow cast by Mars, the which abides. Created hence; nature of sense bestows Its name, and pose of soul, and heart's desire. It comes from visible form, which, apprehended,' Ascended into passive intellect, There, as affect, maintains its tenancy. Never it works in that part injury. And since from finite kind 'tis not descended, Unended is its radiant effect. Nor wears aspect of joy but reverie, For many not enter there affinity. 27

III

It is not virtue, but from that proceeds Which is perfection, in complexion withal Not rational, but feeling, I attest. The jedgement Love against well-being leads, For ravishments intelligence enthrall. Discernment small it has where vice is guest. Often there follows from its puissance death, If wrath o'ermuch the faculty dismay Which of the way adversative is ward: Not that with nature Love hath disaccord; But when to perfect good lies not its path, Who saith that life is his is led astray, Lacking the stay which make him his own lord. Nor less avails Love though it be ignored.

IV

Its essence is whenas the passionate will Beyond the measure of natural pleasure goes; Then with repose forever is uhblest. Still fickle, smiles in tears it can fulfill, And on the face leave pallid trace of woes. Brief are its throes. Yet chiefly manifest Thou shalt observe it in the nobly wise. To sighs the new-given quality invites; Through it man sights an ever-shifting aim, Till in him wrath is kindled, darting flame. Conceive it none save one its puissance tries. Complies it never though it still incites; And no delight one seeketh in its name, Neither great wisdom, sooth - or small - to frame. 28

V

A glance Love draws from like-attempered heart Which seeming right to all delight implies. In secret guise Love comes not, so declared. Indeed not scornful beauty is the dart. For that way led desire through dread is wise, But merit lies with spirit that is snared. And not to sight is Love made manifest, For by its test o'ertaken man falls white; And, hears one right that form is seen by none, Then least by him that is by Love undone. Of colour of being Love is dispossessed. At rest in shadow space it cancels light. Without false sleight saith a faith-worthy one, That from it only is the guerdon won.

VI

Ode, thou mayst go thy ways, unfaltering, Where pleases thee: I have thee so adorned That never scorned shall by thy reasoning By such as bring to thee intelligence: To bide with others mak'st thou no pretence.

8. Fletcher, J.B. "Guido Cavalcanti's Ode of Love," Modern Philology, vol. 7, January 1910, pp. 423-426 29

Chapter Three: Mercede to Compassion

"Sex, in so far as it is not a purely physiological reproductive mechanism, lies in the domain of aesthetics, the junction of tactile and magnetic senses;" 9

Pound's essay on Cavalcanti, (1910-1931), was published in 10 its final form in 1934. During the period of its inception, Pound's working aesthetic underwent a variety of influences, most of which are observable in his later poetry. His interest in Vacalcanti was an enduring pre-occupation, which gre as Pound matured both as a thinker and as a poet, until he integrated Cavalcanti and his metaphysic of love into the framework of The Cantos.

Pound's earliest awareness of the Cavalcanti canzone must have began at some point during his formal education in Romance

Literature. Certainly, Cavalcanti, for Pound, represents the ultimate expression of an ongoing tradition which began in Provence, for, in his essay, Pound stesses the connection, in terms of aesthetics and philosophical premises, between Guido and the Provencal troubadors.

9 Pound, Ezra. Make It New, London; Faber and Faber, 1934, p. 311

10 In Make It New, but The Spirit Of Romance (n.d.) is earlier. 30

Erotic sentimentality we can find in Greek and Roman poets, and one may observe that the main trend of Provencal and Tuscan poets is not toward erotic sentimentality. 11

They are opposed to a form of stupidity not limited to Europe, that is, idiotic asceticism and a belief that the body is evil. 12

Pound makes a strong distinction between the Classical aesthetic, on one hand, and that of the Provencal troubadors and Tuscan poets, on the other. What he terms, "erotic sentimentality," represent for Pound an over-indulgence, and especially artistic expression of the over• indulgence, of the physical senses. He felt there to be a lack of intelligence accompanying this sense indulgence. The Classical aesthetic is an articulation of the desire to indulge the carnal appetite.

The Greek aesthetic would seem to consist wholly in plastic, or in plastic moving toward coitus, and limited by incest, which is the sole Greek taboo. 13

I mean that Propertius remains mostly inside the classical world and the classic aethetic, plastic to coitus, Plastic plus immediate satisfaction. 14

11 Ibid., p. 346

12 Ibid., pp 346-7

13 Ibid., p 346

14 Ibid., p 348 31

Paradoxically, the Classical aethetic, which Pound has referred to as

"erotic sentimentality," and "Plastic plus immediate satisfaction," is somehow confused with the northern European cultures and their basic philosophical assumption.

The senses at first seem to project for a few yards beyond the body. Effect of a decent climate where a man leaves his nerve-set open, or allows it to tune into its ambience, rather than struggling, as a northern race has to, for self-preservation to guard the body from assaults of weather. He declines, after a time, to limit reception to his solar plexus. 15

However, his association of the Classical and northern aesthetics is no more explicit than in the above, and Pound may be merely expressing his distaste for ess inviting climates.

To Pound, the distinction in aesthetics between the Provencal troubadors and his "plastic to coitus" view of the Classical world lies in the ability of the Provencals to focus as much on the idea or Platonic form of an object as on its physical actuality. The

Provencal aesthetic represents a certain proportion or balance between the sense perception of an object and the intellectual conception of that object.

The whole break of Provence with this world, and indeed the central theme of the troubadors, is the dogma that there is some proportion between the fine thing held in the mind, and the inferior thing ready for instant consumption. 16

This view of the Provencal aesthetic (Pound notes here that he wants to say metaphysic, but hesitates, becuase "it is so appallingly associated in peoples with unsupportable conjecture and

1% 15 Ibid., pp 348-9 16 Ibid., P 348 32 and devastated terms of abstraction."), is insupportable in light of modern scholarship which focuses upon the topic of amour courtdis,

or even in terms of Andreas Cappellaneus' De Arte Honest Amandi.

However, Pound is here discussing the aesthetic of a later group of

poets who wrote in the same tradition, such as Arnaut Daniel and is

considering the troubadors primarily fo the lightwhich their study

casts upon Guido Cavalcanti and his canzone. When speaking of the

Provencal tradition and its aesthetic assumptions, Pound uses them

interchangeably with the Tuscan, so strong is his sense of the inter• connection between the two. Nevertheless, there is no escaping his error concerning the amour coutois tradition, which becomes

blatantly apparent in his indiscriminate lumping of "Daniel,

Ventadorn, Guido, Sellaio, Botticelli, Ambrogio Praedis, Nic. del 17

Cossa." Perhaps it is necessary to emphasize the fact that Pound's

primary concern in the essay is to cast light upon Cavalcanti and his

canzone, and to clarify the reader of Cavalcanti on exactly what is

present in Donna Me Prega. There is no doubt that the distinction

which Pound is making is present; however, some of Pound's observations

concerning the Provencal tradition of love are false according to

recent scholarship but one must not lose track of the importance of the

insight.

I am labouring all this because I want to establish a distinction as to the Tuscan aesthetic. 18

Pound next focuses on the Tuscan poets, and draws a distinction

17 Ibid., p. 348

j8„ Ibid.,*p. 350 33 between their rational mean of intellect and senses, and the extreme rejection of the senses, the "idiotic asceticism and a belief that the body is evil," that he feels is a " form of stupidity not limited to Europe." At this point, we have before us the two extemes and the golden mean: total absorption with the senses, or the carnal appetite, total rejection of the senses or submission of the senses

to the intellect, and lastly, the sane use of the sense response as a concrete basis for the refining intellect. To Pound, The Tuscan poets most clearly manifest this form of behaviour; their work most fully represents the "medieval clean line."

The conception of the body as perfected instrument of the increasing intelligence pervades. 19

To this point, Pound has continually employed the analogies of

sculpture and architecture as a means of making his points about the

Provencal and Tuscan Poets, He now focuses on poetry, but still maintains the frame of reference of sculpture for purposes of analogy. Cavalcanti's poetry has an immediacy of image, "the medieval clean line," the concrete and experiential reference.

In Guido the "figure," the strong metamorphic or picturesque" expression is there with purpose to convey or to interpret a definite meaning. 20

The "metamorphic expression," and the "world of moving energies," in

the following paragraph, are clues to the world of twentieth -century

19 Ibid., p. 349

20 Ibid., p. 351 34

science which Pound so well expresses in his poetry. This is again,

theworld of Process, in which, all elements of nature are interconnected, anddistinctions among them merely differing phases, or levels of

being. This is what seems to make Cavalcanti so start!ingly modern;

the science underlying his poetic metaphor dispalys a keen perception of a "world of moving energies," in which, physical luminosity is

interconnected with the light of human intelligence. There is always the sense, in Donna Me Prega, that Guido Cavalcanti is not merely employing metaphor in order to express the power of the intellect, but that he actually sees the energy of human intelligence under the

influence of the force of love as coterminous with the physical light that, in medieval cosmology, emanated from the divine. Pound peroaved this element of Cavalcanti, this is why he believed that Guido was aware of Robert Grosseteste's De Luce, and why he (Pound) feels the need to employ the analogies of sculpture and architecture when discussing Cavalcanti and the whole question of the Tuscan and

Provencal aesthetics. For, the power that Pound sees in Cavalcanti

is the power of discernment offbrms, of visible ideas. This, in modern parlance, should perhaps, be more accurately termed the

imangination, in the limited, dictionary sense of the term, ie,:,

image forming.

....magnetisms that take form that are seen or that border the visible, the matter of Dante's , the glass under waters, the form that seems a form seen in a mirror, these realities perceptible to the sense, interacting. 21

21 Ibid., p. 351 35

Pound has differentiated Cavalcanti from his contemporaries by referring to him as a "natural philosopher," as opposed to a moral philosopher. This is to say that Guido leaned toward the "proof by experiment," rather than accept the subtle reasoning of Church orthodoxy. Now, Pound picks up this phrase and discusses the relationship between form and energy that a medieval natural philosopher would see.

A medieval 'natural philosopher' would find this modern world full of enchantments, not only the light in the electric bulb, but the though of the current hidden in the air and in wire would give him a mind full of forms....the medieval philosopher would probably hae been unable to think the electric world, and not think of it as a world of forms. 22

Cavalcanti's modernity and his Platonism are stressed by the comparison, as Pound sees Cavalcanti's ability to perceive the "form" behind the

"thing," and the relationship of the energy to the tangible object as coterminous. To Pound, Cavalcanti's imagination and consciousness represent a medieval awareness of the modern conception of the universe as a world of Process, "the world of moving energies," wherein energy and matter are undifferentiated, participating each in 2 the other; basically, an E=mc universe. To Pound, Cavalcanti represents the ideal artistic consciousness in that, he manifests the essential unity which underlies poetry and music, and clarifies the proportion between the idea and the image, the form and the object. In the opening essay of Make It New, entitled Date Line, Pound has been outlining his projected table of contents as being: an examination of the relationship between speech and music, clarity and precision of terminology, and a "general surrmary of state of human consciousness

22 Ibid., p. 352 36

23 in decades immediately before my own." He ends by expressing the view that Cavalcanti to him contains all of the preceeding.

Cavalcanti, as bringing together all of these strand, the consciousness, depth of same almost untouched in writing between his time and that of Ibsen and James; meaning if you come at it not as platonic formulation of philosophy but a psychology. 24

Throughout the Cavalcanti essay, Pound constantly returns to the light metaphor which Guido so harmoniously throughout Ddnha Me Prega,

Pound has said that "the poem is extremely clear in a number of places, the philosophic terms are used with a complete precision of technique," and later, recalls a conversation with T. E. Hulme, in which he brought to Hulm's attention the fact that "Guido thought in accurate terms; that the phrases correspond to definite sensation undergone;" 25

I spoke to him one day of the difference between Guido's prcise interpretive metaphor, and the Petrarchan fustian and ornament, pointing out that Guido though in accurate terms 26

This view of Cavalcanti's metaphorical usage must be seen in terms of

Pound's theory of the image, which is perhaps best stated and expanded upon in his book on Gaudier-Brzeska. Here, Pound is looking back upon

23 Ibid., P. 15

24 Ibid., p. 15

25 Ibid., p. 361

26 loc. cit. 37

the theory and practice of Imagisme from the perspective of Vorticist

sculpture, primarily the abstracted and geometric forms of Brzeska.

Since the beginning of bad writing, writers have used images as ornaments. The point of Imagisme is that it does not use images as ornaments. The image is itself the speech. The image is the word beyond the formulated language. 27

In a poem of this sort one is trying to record the precise instant when a thing outward and objective transforms itself, or darts into a thing inward and subjective. 28

The image is not an idea. It is a radiant node or cluster; it is what I can, and must perforce, call a VORTEX, from which, and through which, and into which, ideas are constantly rushing. 29

These views of Imagisme, devebped by Pound through the combined

influences of Impressionism and the Japanese haikku, somewhat clarify

Pound's view of Guido as manifesting what is basically an "oriental

27 Pound, Ezra. Gaudier-Brzesks: A Memoir, New York: New Directions, 1916, 1960, p. 88

28 Ibid., p. 89

29 Ibid., p. 92 38 vision." This is to say that Cavalcanti, in his use of the light metaphor, has for Pound, the proclivity toward imagistic conception - the ability to perceive the essential harmony and unity behind all outward appearances. Cavalcanti uses light metaphors as coterminous with the energy of the intellect under the influence of love. When he presents the image of luminosity, it is done in the same manner as occurs in the presentation of the Japanese haikku. The haikku

"sjper-positions" two images and the poetic emotion is created from their juxtapostion. This is not a "like or as" relationship, rather,

the image is itself the speech. 30

The image is not used to give emphasis or concreteness to the speech, 31 but speaks itself. It is the "word beyond formulated language."

Pound is therefore, seeing Cavalcanti as a type of early imagist poet, who expresses the power of the intellect in terms of radiant energy.

Moreover, when Cavalcanti employs the mataphor of light, it is indissolubly united to the idea of intellectual radiance and, the connection between the two are experienced rather than thought.

Perhaps Pound overstresses the free-thinking qualities of

Cavalcanti's mind and the unorthodoxy of his scientific views. Pound admits to a possible error when he says,

32 I cannot believe that Guido 'swallowed' Aquinas.

30 Ibid., p. 88

31 loc. cit.

32 Pound, Ezra. Make It New, London: Faber and Faber, 1934, pp. 357-8 39

and he nowhere says outright that Cavalcanti definitely knew of the theory of light expressed by Robert Grosseteste.

It may be impossible to prove that he had heard of Roger Bacon, but the whole canzone is easier to understand if we suppose, or at least one finds, a considerable interest in the speculation, that he had read Grosseteste on the Generation of Light. 33

We do know that Bacon was primarily guilty of being a propagandist for

Grossesteste (whose Church position prevented circulation of his ideas under his own name), and that Bacon was well-known in French intellectual circles. Guido may or may not have been aware of Bacon's writings and speeches; certainly, he was well-versed in the general philosophical writings of the period, but then, so was Dante, and Pound feels that he

(Dante) was wil1ing

34 to take on any sort of holy and orthodox furniture.

In any case, the question of whether Cavalcanti knew of Grossesteste's theory or of Bacon's writings is largely academic; it is sufficient that Pound felt Cavalcanti could have been aware of these views, and that

Pound found the influence of these ideas in Donna Me Prega.

Perhaps at this point, it would be useful to surmmarize Pound's findings in Cavalcanti's poem. Pound approves of what he felt to be

Guido's anti-ascetic position, the acceptance of the sensuous response

33 Ibid., p. 345

34 Ibid., p. 357 40 to physical stimuli and the argument for the validity of personal experience. Related to this, we see Pound's approval of the "imagistic" element in Cavalcanti, ie., the focus on the perception of the imnediate and concreterather than conception of the remote and theoretic.

Despite this firm grounding of Cavalcanti's philosophy in the immediate and individual sense perception. Ound sees also, the philosophically idealistic elements in Cavalcanti's aethetic, which he says consists of the realization of the fact that,

....there is some proportion between the fine thing held in the mind, and the inferior thing ready for instant consuption. 35

This is actually said of the break of Provence with the Classical aesthetic but, as I have said earlier, Pound uses the "Provencal and

Tuscan aesthetic" interchangeably. Specifically on the Tuscan aesthetic,

Pound has said that they conceived of the body, and by implication the whole of the sense experience, as subject to the will, the enlarging consciousness.

He declines, after a time, to limit reception to his solar plexus. The whole thing has nothing to do with taboos and bigotries. It is more than the simple athleticism of the mens sana in corpore sano. The conception of the body as perfected instrument of the increasing intelligence pervades. 36

Using the anology of sculpture, Pound has said that the Tuscan aesthetic sees that the

35 Ibid., p. 348

36 Ibid., p. 349 41

god is inside the stone, vacuos exercet aera morsus. The force is arrested, but there is never any question about its latency, about the force being the essential, and the rest 'accidental1 in the philosophic technical sense. 37

It is the idea, or Platonic form of an object which is primal. The object, the concrete actuality of experience, is contingent upon the force of the idea. This is why love in Cavalcanti is termed,

D'un accidente (2) and despite its basis in the imnediate sense response, it is dependent, for its "perpetual effect" upon the transcendent ideal which is held in the active intellect. The movement of love, from the level of the original sense reponse to the exaltation of the level of the ideal, is what Pound has referred to as the

proportion between the fine thing held in the mind, and the inferior thing ready for instant consumption. 38 and the values of Cavalcanti's poem, regarding the formativepower of love, are expressed by Pound in his statement concerning the Tuscan aethetic.

The conception of the body as perfected instrument of the increasing intelligence pervades. 39

This statement implies the notion of a hierarchy of being, which as we have seen, is present in Cavalcanti's original poem and, as the statement testifies, is present in Pound. Cavalcanti lived in an era

37 loc. cit.

38 Ibid., p. 348

39 Ibid., p. 349 42

in which the concept of a hierarchy of being was an integral part of the cultural paideuma. Cavalcanti uses the traditional stratification as a metaphor, speaking of those who are of "base degree," and addressing his canzone to those who can "bring intelligence" to its reasoning. Where Cavalcanti differs from his contemoraries, with regard to his interpretation of hierarchical notions, lies in what

Pound has referred to as, "the conception of the body as perfected 40 instrument of the increasing intelligence." Cavalcanti is a

"natural philosopher," as opposed to a "moral philosopher," and hence, works from the "natural demonstration," the concrete sense experience rather than from the theoretical arguments of orthodoxy. The sense response gives way to the treatment of the higher and active intellect, which transforms it into a transcendent ideal; however, the "influence of Mars" always remains. Where the orthodox Christian philosopher rejects the earthly, the sensuous, in favour of some abstracted theory,

Cavalcanti takes the sense response as the basis of the transcendent ideal. There is then, no absolute separation between the body and the soul, as there has traditionally been in Christian orthodoxy. Rather, there is a scale of value, a continuum upon which the sense response of the body represents less value than does the abstracted ideal, which is never wholly removed from the sense response. Once again, with Yeats, we see that,

41 The body is not bruised to pleasure soul. (58)

40 loc. cit.

41 Yeats, W.B. The Variorum Edition of the Poems of W. B. Yeats, New York; The Macmillan Company, 1940, p. 445. 43

The body is an instrument, a tool which the growing awareness employs

to its own advantage. There is no chasm between the body and the

intellect, and hence, no dualism, arises from the separation of body and soul, as in religious dogma.

The lack of this concept invalidates the whole of monstic thought. 42

The harmony which exists between the senses and the intellect is a

psychological equivalent to the outward harmony of image and idea which the Tuscan seeks in his literary expression, the "proportion

between the find thing held in the mind, and the inferior thing ready for instant consumption." It is in the mind, the consciousness, that this harmony is established. The senses serve the intellect, in that their responses to reality are refined by the intellect, which distills

the essence from the response, withdrawing the idea from the sense

perception, the form from the object. The intellect works to condition the response of the senses, so that, there is a mutual co-operation between sense and intellect, rather than a chasm separating one from the other. An essential unity of response exists, which allows for mental clarity, balance and sensuous satisfaction.

We appear to have lost the radiant world where one thought custs through another with a clean edge, a world of moving energies "mezzo oscuro rade," "risplende in se perpetualeeffecto," magnetisms that take form, that are seen, or that border the visible these realities perceptible to the sense, interacting. 43

42 Pound, Ezra. Make It New, London: Faber and Faber, 1934, p. 349

43 Ibid., p. 351 44

This balance is for Pound, "the Mediterranean sanity." 44

Throughout the whole of the essay on, and in the translation of Donna Me Prega itself, Pound continually stesses the light anology upon which the poem is built. Although he is reluctant to state outright that Cavalcanti was aware of Grosseteste's theory of light and light diffusion, Pound obviously prefers to consider the poem in the light of Grosseteste's theory.

It seems to me quite possible that the whole of it is a sort of metaphor on the generation of light, or that at any rate greater familiarity with the philosophy of the period would elucidate the remaining tangles, particularly if one search for the part of philosophy that was in a state of activity in the years 1270-1290. One cannot absolutely rule out the possibility of Guido's having seen some scraps of MS. by Roger Bacon, although that is, perhaps, unlikely. 45

Grosseteste's theory of light and its emanation, stands in the tradition of the eternal light of divinity. Where Grosseteste, and indeed the entire Oxford philosophical movement, differs -from the tradition, is in the emphasis which they place upon the proof-by-experiment element of the philosophical system. This experientel element of the Nominalist philosophy is the factor which Pound emphasizes in Cavalcanti and which makes Cavalcanti, for Pound, an essentially modern poet. By locating the source of love in the sense response and by likening this love to a source of light, Cavalcanti is focusing upon the earthly and sensuous, and creating a sense of the harmony between the earthly and the celestial.

44 loc. cit.

45. ibid., p. 360 45

The traditional Christian duality of flesh and spirit is thus removed and there is unity, in the influence of love, between the senses and the

intellect, despite Cavalcanti's ranging of the sense response and the

intellectual ideal on a scale or hierarchy. It is this experiential

quality which Pound discovered in Cavalcanti during the first decade

of the twentieth centruy, as his conversation with T. E. Hulme

illustrates.

I spoke to him one day of the difference between -Guido's prcise interpretive mataphor, and the Petrarchan fustian and ornament, pointing out that Guido though in accurate terms; that the phrases correspond to definite sensations undergone:....46

At this point, Cavalcanti represent for Pound, a forerunner of

the Imagiste poet, an early imagistic thinker, who perceives intuitively

the inherent unity between the image and the idea, between objects in

nature and the Platonic forms underlying them. Cavalcanti, as a poet,

is essentially working in the same aesthetic as Gaudier-Brzeska, as a

sculptor, ie., the definition of emotion through the juxtaposition of

plances and surfaces.

It is because of his insight into the work of Cavalcanti and

his own poetic vision, that Pound stresses the light anology of the poem,

using Grosseteste's light theory as scholarly evidence to illustrate

Cavalcanti's angle of metaphysical vision. It is in the Grosseteste

thetry that the material factor of light emanation is stressed and

later, reasoned out to the spiritual elemet, ie., the celestial or

divine is grounded in the earthlv, sensuous and experiential. Pound 47 works from Etienne Gilson's Philosophie auMoyen age. and quotes 1 46

the following summary of Grosseteste.

La lumiere est une substance corporelle tres subtile et qui^se rapproche de 11incorporel. Ses proprietes caracteristiques sont de s'engendrer elle-meme perpetuellement et de se diffuser spheriquement autour d'un point d'une manieVe instante'e. Donnons- nous un point lumineux., il s'engendre instantanement autour de ce point comme centre une spheYe lumineuse immernse. La diffusion de la lumiere ne peut-etre contrariee que par deux raisons: ou bien elle recontre une obscurite qui 1'arrete, ou bien elle finit par atteindre la limite extreme de sa rarefaction, et la propagation de la lumiere prend fin par la meme. Cette substance extremement tenue et aussi 1'^toffe dont toutes choses sont faltes; elle est la premiere forme corporelle et ce que certains nomment la corporeite. 48

From Gil son's summary of Grosseteste, the essentially metaphorical

nature of the medieval Uropean point-of-view is apparent. An essential

paradox appear in the description of light as, "perpetually

self-engendering," and the imposition of a limit to which light is

able to rarify. If light can "perpetually engender" itself, it cannot

possibly dissipate and thus, "prend fin par la meme." The paradox

is most likely the result of the infancy of the proof by experiment at

this point in medieval philosophy, a contrast between the theoretic and

empiric statements concerning the nature of the material world. Certain

views of light as an essentially celestial substance were accepted as a matter of course by the medieval mind, which was primarily concerned

with the nature of deity and the inter-connection btween deity and the

world of apparent reality. The acceptance of this "divine"

interpretation of light caused oftBn insoluble paradoxes for the

46 Ibid., p 361

47 Gilson, E. H. Philosophie au Moyeh Age., Paris; Payot, 1947

48 Pound, Ezra. Make it New, London: Faber and Faber, 1934, p. 359 47 natural philospher of the period, whose experience of the actual world could not be reconciled with the accepted theories. As a result, medieval scientific treatises are usually a curious blend of beliefs and empiric statements of fact. The Grosseteste theory possesses this admixture of fact and belief, in that, it represents an acceptance of the traditional metaphor of light as deity but is unable to verify this belief in terms of intellectual experience of the world of actuality.

As deity, light "s'engendrer ell-meme perpetuellement," but as a physical substance, it "finit par atteindre la limite extreme de sa rarefaction, et la propagation de la lumiere prend fin par la meme."

The paradox is implicit in the opening sentence of the quoted Gilson summary,' in that, Grosseteste apparently woJd have both sides of the arguement at once: light is both a corporeal substance and yet, is sufficiently subtle and evanescent to be capable of approaching the non-corporeal. Light is thus, both a material substance, tangible in a world of physical actuality, but is also possessed of the spirituality of a "world of moving energies." The ultimate implication of

Grosseteste's seeming paradox is that all intellectual distinctions between matter and spirit are artificial, each participates in the other. The actual world is a "world of moving energies," the world of Process.

It is the implication of this seeming paradox upon which

Pound now focuses, in an attempt to remove the artificial distinction which have been made by the limiting and limited intellect. One cannot separate imagination from intellect, form from object, energy matter, ideal from actual. The separation has been in the past and is still the reason for man's atomized response to his world, and the 48

resultant impasse into which dependence upon the merely intellectual has led man. Pound advocates the intuitive response, the perception through intuition buttressed by the application of the intellect. This harmony of vision is the element of Cavalcanti's poem which most appeals to Pound, as his repeated references to Grossetest would seem to suggest. As Pound sa/s, the

French summary is most able, and most lucid. It is far more suggestive of the canzone, Donna_Me Prega, than the original Latin of Grosseteste^ 41T

Apart from the light paradox, the Gil son summary makes statements about the nature and ramifications of light which appealed to Pound, and which he later employed in his own poetry. Grosseteste says that light isProtean, a primal substance from which all things are created. It is also the essential nature of any body, and is itself the very essence of

"corporeite." One sees readily, the pantheism whereby divinity is manifest in all levels of existence, all creation participates in the divine emanation. It is due to the pathettic implications of

Cavalcanti and of Grosseteste that Pound emphasizes the "heretical" views of Cavalcanti and the anti-Thomist basis cf the Cavalcanti universe.

I may be wrong, but I cannot belie/e that Guido "swallowed1 Aquinas. It is perhaps by merest accident but we find nowhere in his poems any implication of a belief in a geocentric or thecentric material universe. 50

49 loc. cit.

50 Ibid., pp. 357-8 49

Seeing light as an analogy for human intelligence, Pound focuses on

Grosseteste's view that light is perpetually self'engendering and connecting this position to Cavalcanti's in

risplende in se perpetuale effetto (12) and stressing the importance of the fact that,

Guido though in accurate terms; that the phrases correspond to definite sensations undergone. 51

This is to say that love, working upward from the sense response to beauty toward the transcendent ideal, is responsible for harmonizing

the imagination and the intellect. Under the influence of love, man's

being is unified. Human sense response is subjected to the intellectual

ideal and is thus, refind. Through, love, the highest power of which the intellect is capable, is able to radiate forth. By creating a sense of integration, love makes possibel human attainment of the greatest degree of divinity. Just as light was seen as self-engendering by!

Grosseteste, so is intelligence to Pound, for the ideal of love, once transformed by the intellect, is like light in Grosseteste's theory.

Donnons-nous un point lumineux, il s'engendre instantanement autour de ce point comme centre une sphere luineeuse immense. 52.

51 Ibid., p. 361

52 Ibid., p. 359 50

There is an interactive force, the intellect, drawing from the sense response to beauty, which creates an ideal of love. This in turn, works upon the intellect a certain refinement, a distillation which draws away the transcendent essence of the sense perception and exalts the

perception to the level of an intellectual ideal.

There is the residue of perception, perception of something which requires a huraan being to produce it. Which even may require a certain individual to product it. This really complicates the aesthetic. You deal with an interactive force: the virtu in short. 53

The main departure of Pound's translation of Donna Me Prega,

both from the original canzone and from subsequent scholarly translations

of the poem, lies in Pound's translation of mercede in line seventy.

Merzed, or mercy, to the Provencal troubador, signifies the granting of

physical favours by the idealized, but still sensuous, lady. Cavalcanti's

poem represents an intensification of the amour cOurtois tradition, in

that, the mercede which he seeks is not merely attainment of the lady's

physical favours, but super-sensuous ideal of love, albeit still

firmly grounded in the sense response to physical beauty. The Fletcher

translation does not clarify this point, translating the Italian mercede as guerdon, and leaving the sense unclarified. However,

Fletchers note to line seventy certainly accomplishes this elucidation,

and is worth quoting.

53 Ibid., p. 348

54 Fletcher, J.B. "Guido Cavalcanti's Ode of Love., "Modern Philology, vol. 7. January, 1910, p. 426. 51

The sense response remains at the root of the qulity of compassion, ie., the concrete at the bases of the transcendent ideal. There is no quality of human response, man is essentially a harmony of sense and intellect. Light emanates from the darkness of the "shadow of Mars," becase of the harmony between sense and intellect which love effects in man. Becuase of this unity, this harmony of sense response and integration, each whole individual is able to shed the artificial distinctions, which the solely intellectual response to the universe has created. Unity of self must be established as a pre-conditioning before this divine sympathy with the "other" can be achieved. Once self integrity is attained, individual man is able to realize the essential unity of all humanity and man can be integrated into the world of Process. 52

Chapter Four: Compassion to Order

I think the Cavalcanti Canto needs a real working over. Seems to me central to the meaning of the Cantos at large and to a precise statement of Pound's philosophy or religion or whatever you want to call it. 55

The Cantos are a type of twentieth-century Q$/ssey of the Anglo-

Saxon peoples, in which Pound is both one of personae and the contemporary man and poet, experiencing the world of present actuality, man in history and man in the present. This is to say that the periplum takes the quester through experiences which are both in and out of chronological history. An event may be fixed in a definite historical context, but all of the time past is present in the imnediate moment. The unity of The Cantos is thus, one of consciousness as well as of theme and technique. The same vision is present throughout the entire poem: however, this grows and develops as the intesity and the frequency of experience increases and a hierarchy of values and events are considered. Besides the Odyssean periplum of the poem, Pound has embodied the theme of individual man as a social conscience from the

Divine Comedy of Dante. This is only to say that Pound is both in and

55 Edwards, John, editor. The Pound Newsletter, 6 April 1955, p. 20 Berkeley: The University of California Press, 1955. 53

out of the poem or, that the experience and events of history are occurring both subjectively and objectively to the poet. Pound both considers historic events as experience undergone, being at one with the consciousness of Odysseus, and as event considered, ie., viewed objectively from without. The events of histroy and experience are viewed outside of a chronological or developmental contimuum, being impressions of significant moments in the space/time continumm. These specific moments, impressions and events often recur in history, the result of interactive forces reaching climax conditions, thus stressing the continual tide-like waxing and waning of idea and actuality, form and object. The continual phasing in and out is underscored by the stressing of exact dates, related to specific events. This precise dating of documents, event, and personalities, lends an impression of the exact moment in the spce/time continumm at which the interactive forces of Hstory connect and cause an event, or whatever, to be significant. The dual role of Pound, as poet/narrator and as persona, should not be linked to the personal or Odyssean element and the cbjective, or Dantescan, elements, as Pound is fulfilling both the personal and objective roles within each element. Pound is both, with

Odysseus in consciousness, participating in his experience, and removed from Odysseus, and objectively narrating the events involved in the

Odyssey. The same hold true for the Dantescan element. The poet's consciousness is both, at one with that of Dante during the journey through Hell and up to Paradise, but is also objective to the degree that the Dantescan Hell and Paradise are poetically connected to certain analogous states in Pound's own world of twentieth-century actuality. 54 •

Thus, Pound is with Odysseus during his quest voyage, considering the historic event from insije the historical framework, and is also remote from the immediate moment and is manipulating the historic event for his own purposes. Thus, the opening of the first Canto, in which Pound is both inside Odysseus' experience and outside, manipulating the experience of the Odyssey, in order to create an Anglo-Saxon equivalent situation through use of tone, mood, metre and diction.

And then went down to the ship, Set keel to breakers, forth on the godly sea, and We set up mast and sail on that swart ship, Bore sheep aboard her, and our bodies also (1,1-4)

Pound, in a letter to his father, outlined the main scheme of the entire poem, as early as 1927

Dear Dad: - I - I Afraid the whole damn poem is rather obscure, especially in fragments. Have I ever given you outline of main shceme::: 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 'repeat in history' B. C. The 'magic moment' or moment of metamorphosis bust thru from quotidien into 'divine or permanent world.' Gods, etc. 56

This is a rough outline is viable and should be considered point by point. The fugal elements are an important clue, both to Pound's method of topic association and to the harmoic elements. Pound has said,

56 Paige, D.D. editor, The Leters of Ezra Pound 1907-1941, New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1950, P. 210 55

"rather like," which sould not be confused with exactly like, and the qualification should not be forgetten in all fairness to the poet.

When Pound introduces a specific topic, say the reality and ubiquity of the pagan gods, it is not to be discussed fully then dropped, never to be further considered, Rather, the pagan gods, or whatever topic, are introduced in a moment of their mythic or historic manifestation, related to some historic event in which they have a topical significance, then dropped, to be re-asserted shortly thereafter, with lyric intensity and the authority of personal conviction. Thus,

Pound's early treatment of the pagan gods and later assertion of their ubiquitous existence.

Venerandam, In the Cretan's phrase, with the golden crown, Aphrodite, Cypri minimenta sortita est, mirthful, orichalchi, with golden Girdles and breast bands, thou with dark eyelids Bearing the golden bough of Argicida. (I, 72-76)

• • • • * • •

God-sleight then, god-sleight: Ship stock fast in sea-swirl, (II, 57-58)

« • • • • • •

Gods float in the azure air, Bright gods and Tuscan, back before dew was shed. Light: and the first light, before ever dew was fallen. Panisks, and from the oak, dryas, And from the apple, maelid, Through all the wood, and the leaves are full of voices, A-whisper, and the clouds bowe over the lake, And there are gods upon them, (III, 7-14) 56

The subject, the Dionysian or mystery gods of pagan society, is introduced, varied, and an early manifestation of their reality is stated as a response, and finally, the couter-subject, a ^personal and lyrical assertion of their ever-present reality, is stated. This technique of fugal subject presentation is related to the periplum insights into the waxing and waning of chronological history, for, just as historic forces and cruxes are continually phasing in and out of tangible reality, so is there a continual wave-like motion of the subjects, as they are caught up, dropped, varied, and finally re-asserted. This fugal element recurs in the rhythms of the poem, as often lines of definite power and assertion, and often even harshness, alternate with lines of relative calm, passivity and softness. This waxing and waning of rhythmic structure, another element of unity in the poem, ties together the phasing in and out of the personal and the objective involvement, the topic or subject treatement, and the historic

"repeats" of interactive social and historic forces.

The second part of Pound's early outline must be considered in this same twofold manner. The "live man," going down into the world of the dead, is at onetime, Pound examining the evil of the past through an adopted persona, and Pound personally commenting on the atrophy and death of spirit which he observed in his contemporary society. Pound is one with Odysseus in the Kimmerian lands and with Dante in purgatory, but still expresses the Hell which he feels to be inherent in twentieth-century society, with its arms profitering, usurious economics and bad art. This presentation of the past and present through various adopted personae, is not unrelated to the concept of the

"repeat in history" as the cyclical view of historic forces may mesh, 57

to allow repetition of identical or closely similar events, so may these.forces and resultant events interact with human nature to produce

individuals who are of a certain type. Pound has clearly distinguishable

hero and villain archetypes, with whom he peoples his worlds, both of the past and of the present. The hero archetype, maiifest in Sordello,

Jbhn Adams, Kung-feu-tse and Malatesta, is the man of united intellect and feeling, the man whose conceptualization of the world of actuality

is not separate from his perception or imaginative response to the concrete individualities of the aesthetic world. The villians of the

Poundian universe are those whose response to the world is measured

in terms of their limited intellects, men whose theories about the nature of the actual world have no relation to the complete and unified response to the world, but are intended to serve some vested

interest, usually their own self aggrandisement or material advantage.

Among Pound's villains must be numbered a variety of and monarchs, artists who cloud the lines of demarcation, such as Milton, and those among politicians and economists whose position represents a usurious economic system, men such as Sir Basil Zaharaff, Winston

Churchill and F.D.R.

The final point of Pound's outline of his poem is perhaps the most significant for purposes of discussion of the Poundian metaphysic. The key phrases, "magic momet," and "divine or permanent world," are crucial to understanding Pound's view of aesthetics and

philosophic value. The "magic moment" of metamorphosis is the moment

in which the correspondence of idea and object, feeling and thought,

is perceived. The intellect creates artificial distinctions, or 58

dualities, between states which are more properly placed in a continuum

of existence. This is to say that man is an integral part of a world

of Process, one integer in a inter-connected and multi-levelled

framework of existence. Man is able to perceive, both sensuously and

imaginatively, his position vis-a-vis other levels of existence, or

can conceptualize theories about the nature of the non-self or "other"

aspect of the world of Process. The integrated self, because there is

a harmony of being within the self, is able to perceive the true

relationship of the self to the "other" level of existence. The

intellect is unable to make artificial distinctions, because it is

checked by the imagination, which responds sensuously to the unity in

the universe. The moment of perception of this essential oneness which

exists between the self and the "other," is Pound's "magic moment."

Philosophically, Pound is essentially a Neo-Platonist, believing

that the world is composed of ideal reality and outward appearance. In

terms of Plato's philosophical system, Pound's "magic moment," would be

an instant of the space/time cohtinutrm wherein one perceives the

essential oneness of the temporally limited outward appearances and

the permanent forms of which the appearances are mere representations.

In Pound's aesthetic, the juxtaposition of poetic images or the definition

of form by plances in sculpture, provide instants in the space/time continuum wherein one is able to realize, through response of the

integrated self to physical stimuli, the oneness of all existence.

I say that Pound is a Neo-Platonist largely due to his value judgment,

implicit in the second phrase of the final point of his outline, namely,

that the "magic moment" represents a "bust thru from quotidien," 59 into a "divine or permanent world." By the word, "quotidien,"

Pound suggest the world of outward appearances to be limited in time and spirit to the level of the unreal and illusory. Plato, too, saw the world of actuality as existent at a remove from reality, which in Platonic terms is defined as the world of permanent forms or ideas, existent at the level of the divine and eternal. Although Pound's reaction to Hindu asceticism is violently negative, he nevertheless manifests what is essentially the Hindu doctrine of maya in this evaluation of the world of appearances and the underlying world of permanence. Behind the outward and seemingly real world exists a level of existence removed from the time/space limitation - the world of spiritual reality. It is the "world of moving energies," this world of Process, which is the ultimate reality for Pound.

Pound's awareness of the world of Process is arrived at through his search for a new and distinct literary style, which is to say, integrally with his struggle for complete self awareness and integration of being. The Poundian realization of the connection between the level of self existence attained and the development of a new literary style can be best illustrated from Pound's essay on Remy de Gourmont.

Le style, c'est de sentir, de voir, de penser, et rien plus.

Le style est une specialisation de la sensibilite. 60

Une idee n'est qu'une sensation defraichie, une image effacee. 57

Apparently, Pound found what he was searching for in de Gourrront's literary pronouncements, as his essay would seem to illustrate. Style of presentation is integral to feeling, intellect and total vision, a division of sensibility. Concepts arise from sensations experienced, the intellect builds upon images. The view of aesthetics, the emphasis upon the concrete image and the integration of response is apparent in

Pound's progression from the early, or Imagiste stage, to the later achievement of his final style in the Cantos. In the Imagiste stage,

Pound sought the definition of poetic emotion through the juxtaposition 58 of images, The emotion is "fire struck between stones," the stones being the images employed by the poet. In the later, Vorticist movement,

Pound sees the definition of emotions through planes and surfaces as an aesthetic ideal, much as does Gaudier-Brzeska in his abstract sculpture.

This movement represents an attempt to maintain the cognitive factor in art. The form is abstracted from the original sense response of the viewer. This is what Pound means by "the conception of the body as 59 perfected instrument of the increasing intelligence." The response of the senses must be united to the intellectual response before an

insight into the form can be gained. By the time Pound begins the Cantos, his style has achieved its final form. The principles stated by Pound, during the Imagiste and 60 Vorticist periods, have merged with and become verified by his work

57 Pound, Ezra. Make It New, London: Faber and Faber, 1934, p.328

58 Hulme, T, E. Speculation? London: Kegan Paul, 1924, p. 135

59 Pound, Ezra, Make It New, Lotion: Faber and Faber, 1934, p. 349 60 Ibid., pp.336-341 61

61 with the Fenellosa papers on the Chinese ideograms. This wor"k with the Chinese characters brings Pound to the ultimate development of his 62 style, what he has called the "ideogrammic method." As Pound interprest the Chinese ideogram, it manifests the same basic priniciples for which Pound has been searching. Pound feels the ideogram to posses an immediacy of reference not found in the phonetic symbols cf the western 63 alphabets. This is to say that the Chinese ideogram, as well as naming the object, presents a symbolic picture of the object or state.

It has a resultant reference to the concrete experience of that which it represents, abstractly and symbolically. Thus, the images and planes which Pound has been attempting to employ as a means of delineating poetic emotions and ideas, may now be embodied in the very characters which he employs. More than this, an adaptation of the principles underlying the use of the Chinese ideogram can be made, which will enable Pound to juxtapose mythic and historic events, personalities, ideas and emotions, thereby structuring his poem in the same manner as the Chinese ideogram is built. Thus, a section or Canto will be dedicated to the exposure of economic malpractice. This will be juxtaposed with passages presenting examples of bad economics and corruption, drawn from all ages of history and croos culturally. An extended passage will follow, in which the ideal is described. The

61 Pound, Ezra, ABC of Reading, New York: New Directions, I960, p 18.

62 Clark, T. "The Formal Structure of Pound's "Cantos,"" East-West Review, vol I, No. 2, Autumn 1964, pp. 97-144, Kyoto, Japan: Doshisha University Press, 1964

63 Pound, Ezra,ABC of Reading, New York: New Directions, 1960,p. 22. 62

Poundian ideal may be in the realm of economics, (Gesell, Douglas), or in political theory (Adams.) The various elements of the overall ideogram combine to present one with the idea cluster of mistaken economic theory, unethical practices and human corruption, examples of both of these and samples of documents which support such malpractice, and also, presenting the as yet unrealized ideal for economic justice.

During the course of the presentation of these various ideogramic elements, the reader has experienced a variety of emotional responses to the assorted stimuli and will be left with an "economic impression," an encapsulated history, theory and ideal of economics, which will provoke emotional and intellectual response. Employing this ideogrammic procedure, Pound is able to unify and examine all history, culture and human experience, however remote or disparate. Evil and Hell in the

Cantos, are at one time mythic, historic, remote and abstract, actual and experiential. The reader is both at one with the infernal experience of the figures of pagan myth, heroes of history and literature, and personalities of the actual world, and remotely and objectively judging the nature and merit of these infernal experiences. The vision of Hell is universalized yet the twentieth-century parallels make the vision real, concrete and experiential. Hell becomes a possibility, a potential condition of life, a possibfe line of existence. The splendour and radiance of the heavenly city has this same quality of immediacy. Pound's vision of Paradise is expressed the same terms, and with the same references, as is his vision of Hades. One sympathizes with, yet objectively examines, the experience of Paradise undergone by the heroes and visionaries of pagan myth, historic 63

personalities, and literary figures, as well as contemporary personae

experiencing and envisioning the possibility of a Paradise, both inner and actual.

The presentation of Paradise in the Cantos, both earthly and

spiritual, is accomplished through the manipulation of light imagery, which is the control 1ingmetaphor of the poem. A wide-ranging variety of light symbols and analogies are presented by Pound throughout the

poem, usually in moments of personal and lyric intensity. The entire

positive assertion of the Cantos is accomplished through this presentation of light metaphors. One could simplify Pound's structuring of light

imagery by an arbitary division of his light images into those which

give expression to the Dionysian and those which convey the Apollonian natures of man. This would enable convenient discussion of the divinity which Pound is attempting to express, but would necessarily be less than a complete statement of the immense weight which Pound makes his controlling light imagery bear. However, it is essentially the Dionysian and Apollonian natures of man that Pound is putting forth, albeit in a more complex form than this division would seem to suggest. The

Dionysian nature stresses the emotional involvement with the world of

Process to an almost frenzied degree. This emotional frenzy Pound would eschew, as his remarks on the "plastic to coitus" element of Greek art displays. However, Pound would no doubt agree, and does implicitly, that the Dionysian emotional involvement, the intuitive perception, is valid despite the frenzy of the early cultists. Where Pound would differ, lies in that structuring which he places on the body and a spirit,

intellect and emotion, and which he felt was inherent in the Tuscan 64

aesthetic.

The conception of the body as perfected instrument of the increasing intelligence 64

The Apollonian element of the Cantos seems readily apparent in those passages which are dedicated to Confucius and the Confucian doctrine of "chung." However, to call this an Apollonian element is a vast over-simplification, as Confucian philosophy is sufficiently mature to contain both poles of the Dionysian/Apollonian duality. It is necessary, then to adopt a larger framework in which to consider

Pound's light imagery. However, it should be borne in mind that the

Dionysian/Apollonian division can be made, provided one allows for

Pound's hierarchical view of the relation between the sense response and the intellectual conceptualization, and the sophistication of

Confucian philosophy.

The light pattern of the Cantos is divisible into the Dionysian and Apollonian perspectives; however, each aspect must be further subdivided in order to be properly understood. The Dionysian, or intuitive element of the Poundian metaphysic is concerned with the with the assertion and verification of the pagan gods in all their manifestations, elucidation of the omnipotence and ubiquity of these deitfes at all levels in the world of process, and statement of the recognition of the Dionysian element in man and by man. Thus, the presence and power of the pagan divinities is asserted early in the poem.

64 Pound, Ezra. Make It New, London: Faber and Faber, 1934, p. 349 65

Venerandam, In the Cretan's phrase, with the golden crown, Aphrodite, Cypri munimenta sortita est, mirthfuj, orichalchi, with golden Girdles and breast bands, thou with dark eyelids Bearing the golden bough of Argicida. (I, 71-75)

And Acoetes, the only one to recognize the presence of Dionysius, is the only cre-member to be spared when the god wreaks vengeance upon the crew for "god-sleight."

Aye, I, Acoetes, stood there, and the god stood by me, (II, 62-63)

He has a god in him, though I do not know which god. (II, 109-110j_

Olibanum is my incense, the vines grow in my homage. (II, 100-101)

The Canto imnediately following this manifestation of the Dionysian mystery god's presence, asserts, with marvelously lyric intensity the multi-formed ubiquity of the pagan deities and begins the progression of light imagery which is to be carried on throughout the whole of the poem.

Gods float in the azure air, Bright gods and Tuscan, back before dew was shed, Light: and the first light, before ever dew was fallen. Panisks, and from the oak, dryas, And from the apple,maelid, Through all the wood, and the leaves are full of voices, A-whisper, and the clouds bowe over the lake, And there are gods upon them, (HI, 7-14) 66

The recongnition of the Dionysian by man, and the necessity of man's integrating himself into the world of Process by recognition of this element in himself, are key concepts related to the power of the pagan gods, for, "god-sleight" results in the loss of one's humanity and consequent reversion to the bestial, as Pound illustrates by the matter of the abduction of Dionysuis and the resultant changing of the crew to beasts. Acoetes, recognizing godliness itself, retains his humanity

And I worship. I have seen what I have seen. When they brought the boy I said: "He has a god in him, though I do not know which god," (II, 106-110), and is able to integrate himself into the process of nature, because of his recognition and adoration of godliness.

And Lyaeus: "From now, Acoetes, my altars, Fearing no bondage, fearing no cat of the wood, Safe with my lynxes, feeding grapes to my leopards, Olibanum is my incense, the vines grow in my homage," (11, 96-101)

Later, Pound stresses again the need for man to truly realise his place in the natural order of the world of Process, his essential oneness with all life.

Pull down thy vanity, I say pull down. Learn of the green world what can be thy place In scaled invention or true artistry, Pull down they vanity, Paquin pull down! (LXXXI, 144-148) 67

Light is employed to present the Apollonian aspect of man's nature as well as the Dionysian. The Apollonian element of the Cantos refers to the axis of order, which for Pound, is the Confucian, a type of rationalism and idealism achieved through self knowledge and compassion fpV one's fellow man. The divine to Pound is attainable through sacrifice of one's sense of self as separate from the world of Process. The heavenly city can be realized here and now, if man would establish his connextion with the divine, through intuitive response to the process, bolstered by the use of the now clear intellect. The Apollonian, or ordered element of divinity, presented also by means of light imagery, is concerned with the expression of the radiance of the heavenly city and the sacred homes of the gods, description of te human intelligence informed by the imaginative sense response through the metaphor of light and light formation, and light is also used as a metaphor or analogy for the forming influence of love in the intellect and imagination of man. Thus, the vision of the heavenly city has been attained by all societies, the light of the hold scarab of Egyptian myth is as valid and powerful as the light of Mount Taishan, the Olympus of China.

the great scarab is bowed at the altar

the green light gleams in his shell (LXXXIV, 122,123)

• • • • •

as of Shun on Mt. Taishan (LXXIV, 128)

The various uses of light flow together in the seventy-fourth Canto, where the light of mythic deities, medieval Christianity and Confucian 68

philosophy are juxtaposed, to be interconnected by the Chinese character "ming." The light of natural intuition is the "green light," gleaming in the shell of the sacred Egyptian scarab. This intuitive grasp of the divine light is connected to the pattern of life in

Chinese peasant society. It is a tensile, or viable, light, applicable to a society ruled by a priestly hierarchy, as in ancient Egypt, and to a peasant life of agrarian economy, as in early China. It is both the divine light, in which John Scotus Erigena saw all material things as participants, and the light of human intelligence working upward from a man to the divine.

in the light of light is the virtu (LXXIV, 126)

In the light of human intelligence is the power, the capacity for the divine. Man can participate in divinity and create his heavenly city on earth, through application of his unified intelligence, the intuition and the intellect together. Man, as part of the world of Process, participates in the divine light. He is one of the "all things," that

Erigena saw as participants in the light of divinity.

"sunt lumina" said the Oirishaman to King Carol us, "OMNIA, all things that are are lights" (LXXIV, 143-145)

All things are integral parts of the world of Process, man included, and the Process works toward the divine and exalted. Light is the world of Process,

"OMNIA. all things that are are lights" (LXXIV, 144-145) 69

and man has the light of his integrated, harmonized, intelligence,

in the light of light is the virtu (LXXIV, 126) which is the flexible, widely-interpreted power, applicable to all conditions and milieux.

Light tensile immaculata (LXXIV, 141)

The Chinese character "ming," which Pound employs to fuse all the disparate uses of light, is interpreted by Pound to represent the total process of light in the universe, both material and spiritual.

The ideogram is composed of elements which represent the sun and the moon, hence, the total material light process, the emanation, radiation, and reflection of physical light. This is the tangible and corporeal light which Grosseteste was attempting to pinpoint. In Confucian philosopfy, however, the ideogram is used to represent a series of distinctions made in the Analects by the Master. "Ming" means to be bright, clear, intelligent - a state of participation in the divine intelligence, radiant with the clarity of divine vision. It can also mean to cleanse or burn away the dross, to illustrate, and to understand. Therefore, Pound's use of the ideogram must be seen as a culmination, as the peak of the pattern of light in the Cantos.

"Ming," represents the material light of the universe which Erigena saw in all things. It is also the divine light of the universe, the

....white light of allness (XXXVI, 70)

the sun's cord unspotted. (LXXIV, 142) 70

to which man is connected through his place in the world of Process.

Between these two extremes, lies the power of the human intelligence, which has a light of its own comprehension. The Confucian use of "ming," as the action of the understanding, stresses the divine element in man, his intelligence informed by his feeling, his sympathy or realization of his essential place in the world of Process. Man must see his place in tfe natural order, must establish harmony between his feeling and intellect. He must cease to make distinctions with the limited, and limiting, intellectual response, and cease to see his own existence as separate from the world of Process.

Learn of the green world what can be thy place (LXXI, 145)

• • • • • • •

Pull down thy vanity. (LXXXI, 147)

When he ceases to make these artificial distinctions, man's intelligence is freed and hence, able to be applied to the search for the real world, the realm of idea, Platonic forms, or ideal. He is now able to,

bust thru from qutidien into 'divine or permanent world.' Gods, etc. 65

Once the question of the divided house of human response is solved, man can move on to the question of,

what whiteness will you add to this whiteness, what candour? (LXXIV, 16-17)

65 Paige, D.D., editor. The Letters of Ezra Pound 1907-1941, New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1950, p. 210 71

and seek his position vis-a-vis divinity. Once able to utilize his

complete intelligence and to see the divine element in its permanent

relation to the conrete of his own experience of the world of Process, man is able to realize the possibility of the heavenly city.

to build the city of Dioce whose terraces are the colour of stars

(LXXIV, 10)

Canto thirty-six is central to the entire metaphysic of the

larger framework of the Cantos, in that, it deals with the personal

spiritual growth of the individual who would see the divine light and

learn what is his true place in the universe. The first five stanzas of

the Canto are a translucence of Cavalcanti's canzone and different from

the Pound translation of Donna Me Prega. The major difference are Pound's emphasis of the light imagery and his interpretation of the mercede,

the guerdon to be won. We have seen that Cavlcanti's views of light and

love were interrelated, in that love in human psychology is analogous

to the physical formation of light in the universe, and that this material light has also a spiritual, or at least non-corporeal, aspect, due to the medieval belief in a universe which owed its existence to divine emanation, Man, in a state of love reflects the divine element

in his own nature, but he must continually focus upon the

supersensuous ideal of love and transcend that aspect of love which is

merely physical and sensuous. Nevertheless, the concrete sense response

of love is an element necessary to the growth and development of the

divine nature of man. The "guerdon," to be won, or mercede, to

Cavalcanti represented the concentration upon the supersensuous ideal

of love, the attempt to discern the idea or Platonic form of love. In

Pound's translation of the Cavalcanti canzone, the "gerdon," to be 72

won, or mercede to be granted, becomes compassion. This is a divine sympathy, a fellow-feeling, which instigates change in the very social nature of man, thedaydadhvam of Hindu philosophy, Man, able to sympathize with the experience of his fellow man, is essentially a man of unified sensibility - intuition and intellect are indossolubly united in one response. The response is essentially aesthetic, in the eastern sense of the word, in that it represent the response of a complete and harmonized being, feeling with his fellow man, but, due to his integrated sensibility, able to direct his sense response with the rational intellect. The response differs from the nineteenth-century German concept of einfuhlung, which is a feeling of oneness which a man may feel with the "other" of the objective world of nature. This einfuhlung is defferent, in that, the values of the vfewer are super• imposed onto the aesthetic object; it is not then, a truly aesthetic response as Pound sees it, as it represents, not an unified, but an intellectual response. Within the framework of the Cantos, and specifically, in the thirty-sixth Canto itself, this is essentially the same response.

Although the translation uses compassion for mercede, the translucence employs the cognate word, mercy. The meaning is the same, but mercy is a less precise term than compassion, bearing connotations form the English

Renaissance. However, the denotation is of the essence for purposes of discussion and one must realize that it is part of a much larger framework.

Perhaps Pound wishes;te give as close an impression of the original poem as is possible. He spells out his exact meaning in o;ther places, notably Canto thirteen, the Confucian, or l_i_ section of the poem. The full meaning of mercy and compassion, existent in the framework of the

Anglo-Saxon epic, appears in the thirteenth Canto, which deals with the 73

thirteenth Canto, which deals with the Confucian concept of brotherly deference. Self development to a high degree is necessary before one can feel this compassion. The individual must unify and integrate himself before he may look to his fellow man.

And Kung said, and wrote upon the bo leaves: If a man have not order within him He can not spread order about him; And if a man have not order within him His family will not act with due order; And if the prince have not order within him He can no put order in his dominions. And Kung gave the words "order" and "brotherly deference" and said no-thing of the "life after death." And he said "Anyone can run to excesses, It is easy to shoot part the mark,

It is hard to stand firm in the middle." (XIII, 45-58)

The light imagery of the thirty-sixth Canto presents the pure light of divinity, existent in a world of Process, the Process as bathed in celestial radiance - the gem-like radiance of the Paradisal light, the celestial radiance of ideal love, and the concept that man, through the effects of this divine love, participates in and expresses the divine element of human nature. Love, as Pound express it, originates in the intellective memory as the result of the sense response to beauty. It has a Platonic form or idea, which when united to the sense response, or intuition, is a source of eternal light in itself.

Thus, love is

Formed like a diafan from light on shade (XXXVI, 18) through the response of the senses to beauty, which sensuous response is always the concrete, or experiential element of love, regardless of how abstract and idealized it may become through the workings of the active intellect . 74

Which shadow cometh of Mars and remaineth Created, having a name sensate, (XXXVI, 19-20)

The intellectual, or non-experiential, element of love is the Platonic form or idea of love, which unites with the sense response to create a source of divine radiance within the individual.

Cometh from a seen form which being understood Taketh locus and remaining in the intellect possible

(XXXVI, 23 -24)

This is an energy of the world of Process, -connected form the theoretical deity of organized religion, but still an integral part of the essentially celestial or divine. A part of the objective world of

Process without material connexion, ie., an element of the "world of moving energies."

Wherein hath he neither weight nor still-standing. (XXXVI, 25)

This power, or energy, is in itself, a source of celestial light to man, ie., it allows the emanation of spiritual light from within the

individual, but has no connexion with traditional deities.

neth out (XXXVI, 26-27)

It is the light of love which is formed in the darkness of the instincts

by the sense response to beauty, and which integrates the ideal and the actuality of love, to illuminate the soul of individual man. The emanation of light from love in man is a perpetual source of celestial 75

radiance and comes only to the man who is consciously striving for self-perfection and who perceives intuitively the "middle," in which Confucious felt a man to have trouble standing.

He is not vertu but cometh of that perfection Which is so postulate not by the reason But 'tis felt, I say. (XXXVI, 30 -32j_

The connexion between the light of love, and the light of the celestial is made in the fifth stanza of the translucence, where Pound describes love as unknowable from its outward appearance. Love can be known only if the lover perceive intuitively its presence in the "world of moveing energies," the world of Process.

Nor is he known from his face But taken in the white light that is allness (XXXVI 67-70)

This "white light of allness," the celestial element in the

Poundian metaphysic, is reflected in Pound's description of the heavenly city and appears also, in the same Canto, as the total of the divine in man. The heavenly city has the same light, as has the divine in man.

To build the city of Dioce whose terraces are the colour of stars.

(LXXIV, 10)

• •• • •

what whitenss will you add to this whiteness, what candour? (LXXIV 16)

Man must realize the divine in himself, make it manifest, before the 76

heavenly city can become even a remote possibility. In the Cavalcanti

Canto, this heavenly city is described in terms of gem imagery, but the same light is present and is connected to the world of Process through John Scotus Erigena. The heavenly city, the "bust thru from quotidien," brings us to a crystallization of human experience and spiritual growth, to the thrones of the heavenly city. Pound uses a quote form Erigena to present an early glimpse of the city of celestial radiance.

it Called thrones, balascio or topaze" Eriugina was not understood in his time (XXXVI, 85-86)

The ruby and topaz light of the Paradisal vision is also connected to the world of Process, later in the poem, as the light imagery reaches a climax condition, fused into the Confucian interpretation of the

Chinese light ideogram, "ming." The light of love, of intelligence, of intuition, shines through the "balascio or topaz," of Erigena through also,

the great scarab is bowed at the altar the green light gleams in his shell (LXXIV, 122-123) and through the gems of the early pagan Greek vision.

Smaragodos, chrysolithos; (VII 55)

It is the same light that shone on Olympus, and.

as of Shun on Mt. Taishan and in the hall of the forebears as from the beginning of wonders (LXXIV, 128-130) 77

In its purest form this is the "white light of allness," to which,

Pound feels that each man must aspire, and of which, each must have a vision, in order to be able to add,

what whiteness will you add to this whiteness,

what candour? (LXXIV, 16) before we can establish the order within, the order necessary

To build the city of Dioce whose terraces are the colour of stars. (LXXIV 10) 78

Chapter Five: Immersed in the Process

66 Robert Duncan's I Tell of Love, being, in intention, a variation upon the Pound Essay on Cavalcanti and Pound's translation of Donna Me Prega, is written in his earlier period, where Duncan's work is characterized by an intense focus upon the psychology and the poets personal experience of Love. As Duncan says, in a later 67 poem, "If I live, I live for love." From the form of the variation, it would appear that Duncan does not subsribe to an aesthetic, not to a view of the universe, in which the imposition of for and order by man is a possibility, but rather, he focuses upon his own personal involvement in the world of Process and work? toward

66 Duncan, R. E. Poems 1948-49, Glen Gardner, New Jers^: Libertarian Press, n.d, pp 11-17.

67_ . Caesar's Gate: Poems 1949-1950. Spain: Diver Press 1955. n.p. 79

the possibility of discovery. His concern for the experiential elements is thus different from Pound's concern, in that, while

Pound sees the experientally verifiable as a necessary and inspirational element in human intellectual structuring Duncan's focus is upon the facts of his own personal experience and processes and not upon the intellectual build-up from the initial sense .response to stimuli. The emotional and the unrestricted are the primary elements in Duncan's working aesthetic, which is necessarily built upon his own sense responses, feeling, emotion and conceptions. Pound, on the other hand, stresses the personal and experiential elements as they are necessarily integral to any attemtp at human structuring and works toward such an ordering or structuring through the presentation of the experiences of his personae. Pound's view of experience is both subjective and objective, in that he presents both his own experience and his response to it, and the experiences of others and their subjective responses to it. In terms of the modern novel, this is equal to a comparison of the stream of consciousness technique, as it is employed by Virginia Woolf and James

Joyce. Mrs. Woolf tries to present the stream entire, so pre-occupied is iie with the flux itself, Joyce however, selects from the stream and presents his selection dramatically. In this comparison, Duncan's technique is comparable to Mrs. Woolf's in that, like her he is pre-occupied with the flux. However, instead of a flow of the stream of consciousness, Duncan is totally immersed in the Process, one atom of billions at flux in a universe of flowing matter and energy. This is not to be construed as a direct criticism or disparagement of Duncan's philosophy or technique, as he does not seek to impose an order on the chaos of his personal experience, nor does he attempt to create any 80

logical pattern or form. He has stated unequivocally that such formalization is outside of his aesthetic intention, "I do not seek 68 a synthesis, but a melee."

Apart from the apparent idstinctions of form between Pound and

Duncan, certain elements of vision are widely separate, namely, the ability to see human experience as comprising an essential unity or continuum, the emotional and intellectual responses of the individual as necessarily-forming a unity, and, the possibility for the establishment of a meaningful order in an essentially chaotic universe.

Pound's vision of the universe embraces the concept that all men, no matter how remote in time or space, are essentially kin in that the principles of their existence are invariable factors; only the outward and material manifestations of these principles differ. Beneath the illusory world of surface actuality, lie immutable forces and ideas, which are more real and hence, more permanent than the world of apparent reality. This concept is well illustrated in Pound's statement of general intention referred to in note fifty-six above. This principle of human kinship, both of existence and of aspiration, partially account for the technique of personae which pound employs in the poem, He is selecting from the continuum of history moments of historic significance, heroic events, instances of intellectual insight and clarity of spiritual vision, and dramatizing them by juxtaposition with other events and experiences, either historic or comtemporary, which

68 Allen, D., editor, The New American Poetry: 1945-1960, New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1960, p. 406. 81

he feels to be significant for the value system of the poem. Thus, in the thirty-six Canto, the concepts of love and compassion, which Pound has managed to draw from the Cavalcanti canzone, are immediately followed by an encapsulation of Erigena's philosophic conception of divine

Process, a vision of the be-gewelled heavenly city, a condemnation of Aristotle and Aquinas, and historic examples of the antitheses of love and compassion. The idealized conception of love, contained in the Cavalcanti cansone and presented in the early stanzas of the thirty-sixth Canto, is followed by a statement of the sacramental nature of physical love,

Sacrum, sacrum, inluminatio coitu. (XXXVI, 96)

which, because the quotation is in Latin, suggest a western and a Christian concept, but which also suggest the Hindu doctrine of

Tantric Yoga. Ideogrammically, Pound has connected the experience and philosophy of pagan Greece, , the Provecal troubadors, the

Scholastic movement of medieval Christainity and Asian philosopy. Thus, the position of man in history for Pound, is one of kinship and unity with man in history and in the present. Implicit also, is the related concept of the continuity of human experience, as each age builds upon the experience and memory of that which preceeds it. Thus for Pound, the concrete experiences and theoretical philosophies of Confucian philosophy are as valid for the wrld of the twentieth centrury as they were in ancient China, and the heavenly city, of which man has a vision in every age, is one with the heavenly city of Dioce. 82

And Kung gave the words "order" and "brotherly deference" And said nothing of the "life after death." (XIII 52-54)

To build the city of Dioce whose terraces are the colour of stars.

(LXXIV 10)

This vision of the essential kinship of all men, and sense of the continuity of human experience is absent from Duncan's variation poem, the-very tone of which suggests the world as chaos and disintegration.

Perhaps it is only because the poem represents the testimony of Duncan's personal experience, but, the poet's vision of the human condition does seem to be one of darkness and disorder.

He heightens the sense of the surrounding darkness (46-47_)

• • • • •

...I look upon disorder with a new eye. (114-115)

Have I not had dark reasons? (74)

You disturbed the pattern. (39) 83

One can explain away this impression, for, the poem is not integral to any large whole, expressing a total view of the universe, nor is it seeking to express objectively the experience of love of other mera.

However, the tone of the negative passages, the constant return to those elements which negate love, compassion and unity, combined with

Duncan's sense of darkness and chaos, unite to give the rader a distinct impression of the atomization and loneliness of individual man in Duncan's universe. Seen from another angle, this impression

serves to increase the poignancy of the poem, and renders more

immediate the experience of love which Duncan has undergone by emphasizing the contrasts between love, light and unity on one hand, and darkeness, fear, and disintegration on the other. Hoever, this sense of disharmony is bolstered by the sense of a divided response and the lack of any possibility for the imposition of order upon human experience, which the poem presents. At first glance, the unification of sensibility which Pound saw as a necessary condition for the growth and development of love within the individual, would seem to be

implicit in Duncan's variation poem. He speaks of his response to the

state of love as,

giving up my wit, my essence,

into the light of it. (6-7) and, quotes from Pound on love as,

"not to delight, but in an ardour of though." (43)

also, of love as "casting his own light:" 84

"where thought has its demarcation, the substance its virtu." (51-52) yet, he does not percieve love with intellect and intuition united, but rather, speaks of being.

....filled with a notion of form that seems visible. (18-19)

and asks,

Does not eh heart hunger for love; and the mind learn patience, (24 - 26)

Presumably, the hunger of the "heart," and the possession of the

"notion," of the ideal of love, are metaphors, for the intuition, or sense response, but surely these are inadequate, imprecise and vague substitutes for the precise differentiation which Pound made btween the intuition and the intellect? Notion denotes a partial apprehension of a concept, a general idea or a vague thought; and connotes that this apprehension is limited and incomplete. The "heart," as a metaphor for feeling and emotion, is a tired and hackneyed colloquial coinage, with unclear denotation and bearing connotations of surfeit fo emotion and mawkish sentimentality. In all fairness to Duncan, however, it should be emphasized that these are metaphors for feeling and intuitive response, despite thir imprecision and unfortunate connotations, and, that he is taking cognizance of the fact that love has its inception in the unconscious, intuitive response. 85

The third stanza, in an attempt to clarify the relationship between the rational intellecta and the feeling intuition, opens with a more clear statement of the role of the feelings, ;but, eventually loses sight of the argument in inconsistency. Duncan unequivocally states that love has it original reaction in the sense response,

I feel this Love. (55)

and follows the same interpretation of the original Cavalcanti argument that we have seen in Pound's tanslation, essay and translucence.

Reason does not perceive Him but takes its light from His presence. (56-57]_

Reason take its light from his presence. (68,78)

This is to say that the intellect, which is not in harmony with the intuition, has not true reason, but makes distinctions and juedgments which are purely theoretical, in that, they have no concrete basis in the experiential, However, the position put forth by Pound does not seem to be fully clear to Duncan, as there would seem to be a basic inconsistency in the argument, which follows the initial statement of the relation between reason and love.

Reason is a right form from which his radiance flows (58-59)

Now perhaps I am mistaken in this, but these lines appear to contradict 86

Duncan's original position, in that, reason seems to be a necessary

prior condition for the growth and development of love. To fit the argument which has pneeeded, the fifty-nith line should read, "Flowing from

his radiance." The dependence has hitherto been that of reason on

love, but, the position l^as apparently now been reversed, and love now

appears to be dependent upon reason. If not an inconsistency of arguement, then certainly an ambiguity of statement .-(has been committed.

or my reading is at fault. It could also be that the fifty-eightji line

is merely placd-ng the "right form" of a unified state of being prior

to both reason and teh radiance of love, but then, one would have

a difficulty in proving this interpretation based upon the poem. Twelve

lines further into the stanza, the ambiguity of this line is somewhat clarified, but, the original inconsistency returns, and one is as confused as ever. Duncan now ask if he has not stumbled in the absence of love,

or lacked reason to perceive love: (71)

which lack of reason to perceive love is understandable, since,

Reason does not perceive Him But takes its light from His presense (56-57)

The final line of the stanza repeats the same argument, and, since this

position is the one most emphatically stated in the stanza, and is consistent with the main argument of the poem, as well as with the

Pound original, accept it we must. However, the inconsistency of the

argument, or the ambiguity of statemtnt, is a lamentable flaw in an otherwise acceptable testimony to the power of love. The explanation

of their occurence must remain in the realm of conjecture; perhaps 87

the most plausible explanation would be to see them in light of Duncan's statement of his workinq aesthatic, "I do not seek a synthesis 69 but a melee," plus the fact that, for Duncan, the poem is a sort of self-contained process of self-discovery; a process in which he may mingle all the various elements of his experience in hope of fhding his identity, convictions and articulation, With such a view, the poem is integral to the poet's own nature, a segment of his search for his own soul, and consequently, is large enough to contain inconsistencies.

Other questions concerning the relation between intellect and intuition, though and emotion, arise from Duncan's poem. The overall impression of the poem, in this regard, it that Duncan subscribes to

Pound's position th£ the ideal in this relationship is for the intellect to build its postulates upon the concrete experience of the initial sense apprehension. One perceives intuitively, and this response is built upon, or abstracted into, the conceptualizations of the intellect. This is demonstrable in Pound's essay through his statement upon the nature of the Tuscan aesthetic.

The conception of the body as perfected instrument of the increasing intelligence pervades. 70

69 vid., 68n.

70 Pound, Ezra. Make It New, London: Faber and Faber, 1934, p. 349 88

Also, one may detect this same view in Pound's jibe at scholastic

phrase-mongers among the over-intellectualized students of psychology.

Whether it is necessary to modernize or nordicize our terminology and call this "the aesthetic or interactive vaso motor magnestism in relation to the consciousness," I leave to the reader's own taste and sense of proportion. I am inclined to think that a habit of mind which instts upon, or even tends toward, such terminology somewhat takes the bloom off the peach. 71

Duncan's subscription to Pound's views can be seen in the overall

impression that the poem makes, that love arises through the intuitive

perception, and that,

Reason takes its light from his presence. (78)

However, as we have already seen, some degree of confusion arises from the statements of the third stanza, and that this confusion and

its source are difficult to trace, due to the working aesthetic which

Duncan professes. That the power of the informed intellect proceeds only from the mind that feels the influence of the power of love's force, would seem to be at least partially understood by Duncan, as he re-iterates this concept in the third stanza. However, the intuitive response and the resultant perception are vaguely stated, and remain even mess clear that the relationship between love and the intellect.

With the conception o;f the world as process, Pound and Duncan woudl seem

to be inagreement. However, Pound seems more clear as regards himself

as apprehender of the Process, in that, he sees, the viewer as being

at one time both in and out of the Process. This would seem to creat 89

a duality of human response, or of human orientation; however, insofar as man in necessarily outside of the Process due to his intellectual

nature, he must make judgments and distinctions for the sake of his economic and social well-being. What Pound emphasizes is the need for

the postulates of the intellect to be made with regard for man's full

position in the natural world, and hence, they must alway take

cognizance of the concretes of personal experience of the world, if man is to be in harmony with the world. Duncan seems unclear on the

human position vis-a-vis the world of actuality and the nature of the

intuitive response to; this world; He seems unabrle to distinguish

between Self and "other," and to separate his emotional from his

intellectual responses. After quoting from Pound on the nature of the world as Process,

"a world of moving energies" (2-3)

Duncan immediately focuses on the intellectual response which makes distinctions, or separations, from the world of Process,'

I think of a clear stream; (3-4)

but seems unable to ditinguish between himself, as selector from the

Process, and the selection which his intellectual response makes.

I seem to be so contained in this element; (4-5)

This idehtnfjcat.idh apparently necessitates sacrifice of one's

intellectual power, 90

giving up my wit, my essence, into the light of it. (6-7)

as would seem to be suggested by "wit;" however, "essence," as an elucidation of "wit," suggests the poet's sense of his self= consciousness, his awareness of self as distinct from the Process.

Thus, it would be necessary to sacrifice one's sense of self as a separate entity distinct from the objective world in order to realize the essential harmony which exists between the self, and the "other,"

This is followed by a statement to the effect that,

We are so merged in what we see. (10) which can be construed as a buttressing of the argument against distinction of self as separate from the natural world, but which connotes a conscious action of self engulfment and absorption into the

"other." The loss of self identity is too complete, the "other" medium, surrounds and absorbs the personality and wholly blurs the distinction between the man and Process, erasing will and human purpose.

Rather than total cessation of artificial distinctions between man and the world of Process made by the limited intellect, this desire for merger suggest the death of the self through absorption into an

"other" medium which is basically antagonistic to the self. The desire for a complete engulfment is unnatural, in that it represents annihilation of the human spirit and intellect, a deliberate casting- off of one's essential humanity and a willingness to accept the identification of the self as a thing, an inanimate entity. It is almost as if consciousness were a painful and undesirable experience.

Despit the argument to the contrary, the suggestion that the Process 91

is ultimately antipathetic to human ex4stence is unmistakeably present.

A third difference in philosophic vision between Pound and Duncan occurs in their respective views of the possibility for the imposition of some type of meaningful human order upon a universe of flux and disunity. To Pound, order must first be established within the individual, through achievement of a unified sensibility, which is brough to bear upon the concretes of personal experince, before any intellectual structuring is possible. This is to say, that, the human psyche is a divided house which must be unified before man can look to the organization of the social or political world. Through love, which Pound interprets as compassion or mercy, man's plural response to the world as Process is brought into harmony and he achieves a level of being, form which man's intellect and intuition workd in unison. This new power Pound calls the intelligence - intellectual power re-informed by the response o;f the senses and the intuition. The ideal of love, which for Pound is the apogee of human development, the Platonic or

"seen form," is the Confucian doctrine of TJj-or "brotherly deference." It is only through J_i_ that order can be established, first, within

the individual and later, in the alrger social world. It is the prime requisite for any realization of the divine element in man, and absolutely essential to the creation of the thrones of the heavenly city.

To Duncan, whose aesthetic focuses upon the disorder, the possibility of order is remote, if present at all. Order occurs as a

concept onl;y twice in his poem, Dnce in its positive, and once in its 92

antithetical form. The positive concept appears in the eighth stanza where Duncan appears to be in agreement with the Poundian premises as outlined above.

Who knows not Love cannot restore order. (125-126)

Love, then, would appear to be a prior condition necessary for the establishment of order. But, Duncan, in using "restore," is focusing upon the present lack of order, essentially a more negativ e point of view than that expressed by Pound.

If a man have not order within him He can not spread order about him; And if a man have not order within him His family will not act with due order; And if the prince have not order within him He can not put order in his dominions. (XIII, 46-51)

Granted, Pound is working within a much larger framework, and has resultantly, more time and spce in which to devdop his system; still, Duncan has this larger framework as a given factor with which to work, but is using it to express a differenct vision and experience of the Process. The differnence is more apparent in Duncan's positive assertion of the relationship between love and order, where, far from being a source of inspiration for the creation of order, it merely possesses the power of enabling the lover to chieve a stoical state, from which he may withstand the disorder. Duncan speaks here of the effects of love upon himself 93

I look upon disorder with a new eye. I do not dwell in my fear. (114-116)

Looking both forward and backward, one should compare these effects of love with Duncan's statement of his fear in the second stanza,

I was afraid (38)

and with his condemnation of those who do not s®k love.

So man has craft from fear; envy from ignorance, harbors hates. He falls upon Beauty like an animal^ caught, falls on the spike of or the trap of the naked body where beauty is death. (141-150)

Duncan is adrift in the world of chaos and disorder, unable to make distinctions between the self and the Process, wholly engulfed by the

"surrounding darkness." Awareness of love only serves to sharpen the poets consciousness of the disparity between the ideal of love and it actuality, and to enable man to spritually resist the tendency toward atomization which is implicit in a world of disorder.

He heightens the sense of the surrounding darkness. (46-47) 94

The focus is all upon the darkness, the formlessness and the lack of

purpose which love makes apparent. Compare this view of the effect of

love with that put forth Pound's translation, from which, Duncan is working,

In midst of darkness light light giveth forth. (85) or with the equivalent expression in the Pound translucence of the

Cavalcanti canzone, contained in the thirty-sixth Canto.

Disjunct in mid darkness Grazeth the light, one moving by other, (XXXVI, 75-76)

In the translation, Pound emphasizes the power which love generates for the illumination of darkness; the focus being upon the connexion with the divine tht love strengthens in man. It is a positive assertion of human potential, optimistic in a world of chacs and disintegration, and, philosophically idealistic in an era of growing and philosophical realism. The fragment from the thirty- sixth Canto, which occurs later and is integral to a much larger framework, again facuses upon the positive and the idealistic, countering the darkness which always threatens enfulfment. The light of love stands apart and distinct from the darkness and the chaos, whih is now seen as only a dusky state of dismal semi-darkness. In both, the translation and the translucence, the individual is still larger in spirit than his environment. Disorder is personal and extends outward from the individual to the larger social organism.

Order can be created, first within the individual, then within the 95

surrounding society. The darkness can be illuminated by emanation of the divine light from within each individual. This emanation is created by love! Duncan, on the other hand, returns continually to those aspects of his environment which are the "surrounding darkness" focusing upon those who do not seek the supersensuous ideal of love, but rather, settle for the physical involvement of love. Love for these is but a meaningless word, a physical frenzy, which fosters and hastens the engulfment, and destroys the possibility of transcedence, which the ideal of love can create in man. Thus,

Love has no base likeness (44) and is unattainable by those who do not quest for perfection of their spiritual being, so content are they to wallow in their sensual pleasures.

A base likeness will not kindle this ardour. (53-54)

This limited and limiting sense involvement prevents the spiritual growth of man, from the earthly to the celestial,

You disturbed the pattern. (39) and causes the spiritual death of the trapped individual.

He falls upon Beauty 1 ike an animal, caught, falls on the spike of or the trap of the naked body wfvere beauty is death. (144-150j_ 96

It is this constant return to the merely physical involvement which illustrates Duncan's overwhelming sense of the universal disorder.

The short interpolated stanzas, ie., the fourth, eighth, ninth, and partially the tenth, all focus upon the antithesis of love, the indefference to love, or the lack of order, unity and purpose which result directly from the inability to perceive the supersensuous ideal of love, or to perceive only a base form of love. It is in this last form, that, for Duncan, the human spirit appears to be trapped, and in which, even

beauty is death (150)

Despite these differnces in vision between Pound and Duncan the main arguments of the poem appear to be in essential agreement with

Pound's concept of love as a radiant and structuring force, under the influence of which, man can achieve true reason and participate in the eternal divine light. The world as Process, a continual waxing and waning between form and dissolution, matter and energy, is a conception common to both poets. Pound, however, seems to be more conscious of man's superior place in this world of flux, due to his consciousness, and feels humanity to possess a possibility for the imposition of a meaningful order upon the chaos of experience. Duncan, although he subscribes to Pound's definiation of the Process,

"a world of moving energies" (2-3)

responds less positively to the condition of flux. In his constant focus upon the disorder and his unclear response to the Process, Duncan

seems to fear the disorder and lack of purpose, and responds to the 97

Process more emtionally than intellectually.

I seem to be so contained in this element; giving up my wit, my essence, into the light of it. (4-7)

I look. upon disorder with a new eye. I do not dwell in my fear. (114-116)

There is no doubt that the type of love of which both poets speak

is identical in nature to that of the Cavalcanti poem. To Cavalcanti, the "guerdon," to be won was a supersensuous ideal of love, a transcendent idea, despite its source being located in the original sense response to beauty. This ideal of love, Pound interprets as compassion, and focuses upon the pcver which this force possesses to change human nature and foster the creation of order upon the chaos of human society, and, to allow the emanation of man's divine nature. Duncan's love, too, is a non^sensual ideal of human

perfection, in which, the "pattern," of which he speaks, is one

in which love begins in the sense response, but, is refined by the clear-seeingintellect. Thus,

Love has no base likeness. (44) but is stirred, 98

by the sight from the naked body where love seems to rest, each time, singular as is appointed necessary, appropriate to the pattern. (32-36) yet, love exists

"not to delight, but in an ardour of though." (43)

and is exalted beyond the merely physical element, from which, it

originally arises.

I do not speak of a drunken state. (45)

A base likeness will not kindly this ardour. (53-54)

Yet, Duncan returns too often, to the merely physical aspect of love,

the "drunken state," which he eschews. Love is stirred in the sense

response, not in the response to beauty, but,

from the naked body (33)

and, those who do not experience this ideal of love but are content

with its sensual appearance, are,

caught, falls on the spike of or the trap of the naked body. (146-149) 99

Duncan's expression of the physical basis of love ar invariably in animalistic terms. The reaction against the physical is too negative for the assertion to be credible. As we have seen in consideration of both Cavalcarti and Pound, the sensuous response has still a definite place in the inception of this ideal of love, and, both are clear upon the need for the transcedence of the solely physical aspect of love in favour of the supersensuous ideal. However, neither reacts as violently against the physical in animalistic terminology. It sho;uld also be clarified, that neither Cavalcanti, nor Pound, are working as closely to their own personal experience of the Physical aspect of love as is

Duncan. Both hold aesthetic views which enable them to abstract from their experience, while, Duncan's aesthetic requires the total of his personal experience, without extracting its essence. Duncan, seeing the poem, largely as a process of self-discovery, feels the need to explor every facet of his personal experience of love, before he can discover the essence of that experience. The process of the poem, 72 enable the poest to clarify and complete his experience, as it were.

Relative to tht problem of the relationship between the physical and idealized aspect of love, are the views which Pound and Duncan both apparently hold, of the perception of the ideal of love. As previously mentioned. Pound sees the ideal of love as a Platonic form, or idea, which transcends all apparent reality, but still, is as

72 Vivas, Eliseo. Creation and Discovery, Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1955. 100

experiental as the concrete physical experience. Thus, to Pound, love in its ideal aspect,

Cometh from a seen form which being understood' Taketh locus and remaining in the intellect possible (XXXVI 23-24) while, for Duncan, the ideal of love, the Platonic form of love, is less clear beacause it is less "understood," than "felt."

I am filled with a notion of form that seems visible. (18-19)

To Duncan the idea, or form, is not as tangible and experiential an aspect of love as is the physical actuality. To Poupd, the form of love is "seen," and "understood," while to Duncan, the form only

"seems visible," and he has only a "notion of form," rather than an understanding. Again, this distinction may be seen in terms of

Duncan's working aesthetic. His concern in the poem is to relate his personal experience of love to the view that Pound has expressed. Using his own experience as the concrete, Duncan can only say how he, himself, responds to the ideal of love, how it was first perceived and known by him. He cares, not for the general statement, but for the immediate experience, which hehas personally known. Thus, he would not be justified in claiming understanding, nor in making a general statement concerning the perceptibility of the Platonic form of ideal love.

Earlier in the discussion, we have seen how the third stanza is the source of some confusion regarding the relationship between feeling, intellectual power, and the light of love. Despite the apparent inconsistency, it must be stressed that the view, which Duncan shares 101

with Pound, that,

Reason does not perceive Him But takes its light from His presence. (56-57)

is the conception which most clearly agrees with the rest of the argument of the poem, and also, with the Pound translation and essay.

Although conjectural, the idea occurs, that Duncan, in the early lines of the third stanza, may be referring to divinity, when discussing the

relationship between reason and "His presence." Thus, though seeming

to be referring to love, Duncan, in capitalizing "His," may be

signifying a relationship, not between love and reason, but between divinity and reason.

Reason does not perceive Him but takes its light from His presence. Reason is a right form from which His radiance flows. (56-59)

Reason, then, by itself, in insufficient for perception of the divine, but is itself the result of the divine manifestation in man.

Reason is also, "intelligence," in the same sense as Pound uses the

word, which when achieved, allows a man to express the divine nature

which he possesss, ie., divinity is manifest in the world through the

agency of the human iintelligence, which is both feeling and intellectual

at one time. Later in the same stanza, Duncan, in what sounds like the

same argument, fails to capitalize, "his," perhaps signifying this time,

the relationship between love and reason. 102

Reason takes its light from his presence. Have I not stumbled in Love's absence as if I were a fool and a liar, Or lacked reason to perceive Love; searching for perfection's source with imperfect vision? (68-73)

Love is thus, a prior condition of reason (in the sense of Pound's

"intelligence")., which emanates only from the loving intellect.

This interpretation creates an equation between the presence of love and the divine presence, ie., the right reason of man is an effect, both of the force of ideal love and of the divine working through the human intlligence.

This equation of love and divinity would seem to fit the system, as expressed by Pound in his essay, translation and translucence, and removes the seeming inconsistency mentioned earlier. However, this also assumes that it is Duncan's intention to express the same inter• relationship between love, reason and divinity that we have seen in

Pound, and that, he has chosen the traditional capitalization of possessive pronouns as a means of expressing divine presence. This interpretation is borne out by the later descriptions of the light of love, which place love in the position of divinity itself.

He is not like the sun but the sun itself (118-120)

Love gives forth his own light, worthy of faith. In him who knows Love is compassion born. (121-124) 103

Pound's interpretation of the "guerdon," to be won as compassion is re-inforced by Duncan's parallel interpretation, for, he too sees love as primal and necessary to the establishment of any bond of true sympathy and order in the world. Although he seems to be pre-occupied with the human lack of awareness of the ideal of love, and appears to accept the continued presence of disorder, Duncan is expressing the same essential argument as Pound. Where Pound translates mercede as compassion, Duncan states uneqivocally that,

« In him who knows love is compassion born. (122-124) and expresses awareness of love as a prior condition for the creation or order.

Who knows not Love cannot restore order Not by hearsay is falsity despelled. (125-128)

No doubt, the differences between Pound's interpretation of the

Cavalcanti canzone and Duncan's variation upon Pound's work, may be attributed to the different world views of the two poets, as well as their respective aesthetics, which must differ as their orientations to the world differ. These are both dependent upon the paideumas of the respective social milieux in which the two men came to consciousness,

The differing working aesthetics of the two poets then, are thus, the result of each man's total experience, both of the enculturation process and the individual experiences of consciousness. Pound is a pioneer in that, he was first to develop an aesthetic and technique which would 104

effectively express the twentieth-century concept of the world as Process.

Duncan is irrmersed in the flux and disorder of this Process world, and is attemtpting to discover his own soul through the medium of his art.

He is a man atomized and isolated, conscious of the lack of any sense of order and unity. The poem is an assertion of his o;wn experience of, and response to, ideal love. As a testimony, it is more than sufficient, it is a great articulation, however, as an experience of love, communicable to others, it doesn't succeed in expressing th grand overview of the life Process as does Pound's poem. The tone of

I Tell of Love, suggests Duncan's isolation and atomization, his sense of being the only conscious individual among the unaware, unreasoning and insensitive. There is much ambiguity and lack of clarity, not the mention the inconsistency of argument in the third stanza. For example, by

This is the animation, "a world of moving energies"; (1-3) does Duncan mean that love is the creative force within the world of

Process, the ordering principle of the flux, or, does he mean that this world of chaos and flux, of "moving energies," is the animation, the agent responsible for the creation of love? Perhaps his statement contains both elements, perhaps only the former is intended. The former is certainly necessary, if the remainder of the poem is to have any unity of intention and argument; however, the ambiguity destroys the unity, just as does the inconsistency of the third stanza.

There seems, also, to exist a discrepancy between Duncan's 105

emotional and intellectual responses to the force of idealized love, and to the world of Process. He disclaims the wholly physical, indeed, he returns repeatedly to castigation of those who go "not in Love's search," and are content with the "drunken state." Yet his emotional responses are expressed in terms which suggest surrender, the desire to merge, to become immersed in the "erotic sentimentality," of which Pound accused the Classical world, and which he expressed 73 so memorably the phrase, "plastic to coitus."

73 Pound, Ezra. Make It New, London: Faber and Faber, 1934, p. 348 106

Chapter Six: Conclusion

Toward comprehension of the conept of the world as Process, the metaphysical basis of Cavalcanti, Pound and Duncan, and the epistemoligical theory of Ezra Pound, I have found the recently- 74 stated system of Dr. F. S. C. Northrop to be extemely useful. Dr. Northrop's primary concern is epistemolgical, in that he is concerned with the nature of the apprehension and the knowledge which man's total consciousness of the world of Process gains for him. The universe, or Process, is termed in this system, the undifferentiated aesthetic continuum, and the elements which comprise this continuum are termed differentiations. Epistemologically, man is a dualist by nature, in that he apprehends the world of Process in two distinctly different ways, or is capable of a bi-polar response to reality. In one, man experiences the undifferentiated aesthetic continuum with this active intellect, making statements concerning the nature of reality, which Dr. Northrop terms concepts by postuation. These concepts by postualation are theoretic, in that each is dependent upon information provided by other, more abstract, theories and disciplines for their cerification. The range of experience thus defined is termed the theoretic continuum, and the elements which 74 Northrop, F.S.C. The Meeting of-hast and West. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1946. 107

comprise this continuum are known as the theoretic components of reality.

On behalf of the opposite response, Dr. Northrop defines a rage of experience which is directly or immediately apprehendable by means of man's aesthetic relation to the world of Process. In this use of aesthetic, Dr. Northrop signifies the eastern meaning of the word as a total or integrated response, involving the senses, the imagination and the intellect. Man gains knowledge of the world of Process via this aesthetic response and makes statements about the nature of his experience of Process, which are termed concepts by intuition. The range of experience thus defined is termed the aesthetic continuum, or reality in its aesthetic component. Both factorss of Northrop's system, ie., the theoretical component or intellectual postulations and the aesthetic component or concepts by intuition, are necessary to a complete comprehension of the nature and significance of the universe. The ultimate reality, the world of Process, is aesthetic in that is cannot"be fully comprehended solely through the intellect, as the concepts by postulation are only one-half of a definition of reality. The immediate apprehension of the conepts by intuition is necessary to a correct and full definition of reality, as Nrothrop's system implies that reality can ultimately be defined only by the individual.

75 In his essay, "The Function and Future of Poetry,"

75 Northrop, F. S. C. The Logic of the Sciences and the Humanities. New York: Meridian Books, 1959, pp. 169-190. 108

Dr. Northrop applies his theory of epistemology to the realm of art, saying that poetry has the function of making "epistemic" correlations between the conepts by postuhtion and the concepts by intuition.

An epistemic correlation is a relation, preferably, but not always, one-one, joining a theoretically-khown factor designated by a concept by postiiation to is" immediately apprehendable, aesthetic correlate denoted by a concept by irituitionT To

However, art not only "relates items of reality which are known 77

in two different ways, " combining the concepts by intuition and postulation, but also servew to distinguish the two continua of reality by allowing the perceiver to separate the concepts by

intuition from the concepts by postulation. As Northrop says,

In short, epistemic correlations both separate and connect the real as known aesthetically with immediacy and the real as known scientifically through deductively formulated, experimentally verified theory. 78

As art, according to Dr. Northrop's system, defines and relates the aesthetic and theoretic continua of reality, so does it serve two distinct functions. When dealing wholly in the concepts by intuition, art function in and for itself, and when arrt manipulates its rhythms, colours and images in order to specifically serve some theoretically

postulated end, art can be said to exist as a handmaiden of the

extraneious end, ie., is a propagandist or didactic vehicle for religious or philosophical dogam. If the concepts by intuition and

76 Ibid., p. 172

77 Loc. cit.

78 Ibid., p. 173 109

postulation are in balance, a "one-one relations," in Northrop's terminology, art achieves greatness of stature, Dr. Northrop cites

Pant's Divine Comedy as an example of great art which possesses this

"one-one relation" of the two types of information as he feels that

Dante expresses, in metaphorical language, teh theroretical postualtes of Thomas Aquninas' Summa Theologica, but also, Dante's poem exists as an aesthetic entity independent of this theoretical element and hence,

is not merely a didactic servant of theology. In other words, the poem functions both easthetically and theoretically, neither element over•

powering the other.

In Cavalcanti's Donna Me Prega, the aesthetic or intuitive concepts are represented by the pattern of light imagery, which is an expression of the medieval traditiion of the undivided light, and the

theoretical element, or concepts by postualation, is represented by

the Scholastic philosophy and the poet's presentation of ideal love as a contemplation of a transcendent and super-sensuous ideal. The relationship of the aesthetic and theoretic elements, of the poem

is not "one-one," as comprehension of the argument of the poem depends entirely upon understanding of the Scholastic philosophy and the gaining of some insight into the subtle reasoning of the argument. It is true, that the pattern of light imagery largely carries the metaphysical arguement however, much of the understanding of the significance of the light pattern is dependent upon an awareness of the tradition of the undivided light and the medieval

therories of light emanation and diffusion, such as the theory of

Robert Grosseteste which Pound has utilized in order to provide an no i insight into the poem. The greatest percentage of the poem's argument is therefore, dependent upon the theoretic component of reality, as it relies upon intellectual theory for its ultimate understanding. The aesthetic elements of the poem, or its concepts by intuition, function in and for themselves, but their prime function is to serve as a vehicle for the Scholastic philosophy and the theory of love as a transcendent ideal.

Pound, in focusing upon the underscoring the light patterns of the poem in his translation, stresses the aesthetic component of reality. The theoretic factors are as strong as in the original, but the experiential elements have been brought more into balance with the intellectual concepts. One can hardly refer to the relation as

"one-one," as Pound's translation is still dependent upon an awareness of Scholastic philosophy and medieval light theoriesrfor its ultimate understanding, although, what has been accomplished is that the medieval aspect of the theoretic component has been given an immediacy of apprehension through the stressing and modernizing of the light metaphors. In the Pound translucence, the experiental or aethetic component of the poem is even stronger, due no doubt, to

Pound's theory of the image and the use of the "ideogrammic method,"

Rather than a theoretic element dependent upon, an awareness of the medieval Scholastic philosophy, Pound's translucence exists in a framework of modern philosophical conceptions, which are drawn from diverse sources, and which are given an immediacy of reference through the poetic theory to which Pound subscribes. Whether Pound's theoretic component drawns from ancient Greek, medieval European, or Oriental Ill

philosophical texts, the ideogrammic method employed by the poet

renders the theoretic component experiential and immediately apprehendable. Thus, it can be augued that the Cantos are dependent upon an awareness of remote theories for their ultimate comprehension

however, the veracity of any theory that the poem contains can be

experienced through the perception of the concepts by intuition, the aesthetic component of reality upon which the poem is structured.

In Duncan's variation upon Pound's workd on Cavalcanti, the theoretical element is apparently identical, in that it postulates

the same basic concepts as does Pound, however, as we have seen there

is a qualitative difference in the values represented by these concepts.

Where pound asserts the ideal of love as a positive force, working

toward the establishment of harmony, unity of human response and

toward the unity of all mankind in a true and just universal order,

Duncan's ideal love possesses a muchless positive value, being now a force, working not for harmony, unity and order, but for the withstanding of human bestiality, disunity and disorder. Where Pound's concepts by

postulation were given in an irrmedicay of response and an experiential factor which rendered them more immediately apprehendable, Duncan's

theoretic component is wholly subjective, depending upon the poets

personal experience for its ultimate verification. The intutive or aesthetic component of this poem also differs qualitatively from Pound's, in that

it represents a lower .-scale of value and vision. In Pound's translation,

essay and translucence, light was an illuminating factor which eminates from within the individual toward the divine. This light was essentially

the same, whether it was the light of divinity, of human intelligence,

or the light of the heavenly city. In a state of ideal love, man is 112

capable of developing the inner light and diffusing the resultant clarity throughout the universe. In Duncan's poem, although the poet purports to subscribe to the same metaphysical and social vision, the aesthetic component, ie., the light imagery, serves a less metaphysical end. The light of ideal love becomes now a force which lights up the

"surrounding darkness," in the sense of casting a spotlight upon the problem of human disorder. So heavy is the emphasis upon this darkness and engulfment, that one feels that even the never-ending light of the traditional metaphsic is incapable of dispelling it. 113

Chapter Seven: Addendum

In retrospect the above thesis seems more exploratory and evaluative than explanatory and comparative, however, perhaps this exploration was inevitable considering the diversity of the matierial under discussion. That Pound was deeply impressed with Cavalcanti and his canzone seems fairly obvious and that he made the philosophy contained in Donna Me Prega central to the framework of The Cantos seems a reasonable and demonstable argument. There is still much disagreement among scholars as to the intention and conclusions of

Cavalcanti's poem, however, its literary status is assured and would be even without Pound's explicatory notes to the poem. What Pound has accomplished in his essay and translation is to make Cavalcanti's work accessible to the modern reader who lacks profound knowledge of

Renaissance Neo-Platonic and Scholastic philosophy. What seems necessary for critical purposes is a more detailed knowledge of the connexion between the Scholastic philosophy represented by

Donna Me Prega and Pound's usage of Cavalcanti's metaphysical position as a basis for the Confucian ethical idealism as Pound expresses it in the thirteenth Canto and indeed, which provides the entire ethical background for all of Pound's economic and political 114

notions. Such a study could perhaps be included in a detailed exegisis of either Pound's religious framework, ehich is based on the Dionysian mystery cult and the medieval Platonism of Christianity, or of his economic, socio-political and moral basis, which appears to be a tangle of the theories of Social Credit, Gesell's labour organization and Confucian ethics.

More complete understanding of the true significance of Pound's thirty-sixth Canto and its relation to the larger philosophical framework of the poem as a whole seems contingent upon a closely detailed explication of Pound's criticism, his sythesis of paganism, Christianity and

Confucian pragmatism into a religious basis, and of his unique views on economic and political organization. Perhaps a sound study of his critical position will be forthcoming in the very near future, when the original text of The Waste Land is published later this year. Certainly a fuller picture of Pound's value as a practical critic will be gained.

This revaluation of Pound as a critic would broaden the critics' view of Pound's comparative and evaluative approach to criticism, of individual figures such as Cavalcanti.

There have been sound exegreses of Pound's religious position, notable B.A. Charlesworth's thesis, The Tensile Light, which is a good basic study but which is forced to adopt a defensive position by virtue of the fact that it is largely a response to the challenge that Pound has no religious beliefs or framework in The Cantos. What is now required in the area of religion is a detailed examination of the various elements which Pound has synthesized into a religious framework and an 115

exegesis of The Cantos in light of that analysis. This would necessarily include Pound's use of the pagan mystery religions

(and perhaps Frobenius' anthropological studies), Ovid's

Metamorphosis, Christian Neo=Platonism and Scholastic philosophy, as well as teh Confucian Analects and The Great Digest. When such a study is completed, the function and significance of the Cavalcanti

Canto will perhaps be mor apparent. Certainl;y greater light will be cast upon the philosophical ba:kground of the original Cavalcanti canzone as Pound interpreted and finally transformed it.

The question of Pound's economic and political theories seems to be a delicate problem even yet. The apparent distastefullness of these theories has coloured almost every ctriitical evaluation of Pound to date, both as poet and as thinker, and one suspects that any fair appraisal of Pound's true literary position will necessarily have to confront his views in these areas and integrate his conclusions to the overall framework of The Cantos. The whole question of the case for and against Ezra Pound must necessarily be answered once again in order to place his major poem in its true perspective. The task here would seem to be one of establishing a more full collection of Pound's correspondence, or perhaps an examination of the ethical basis of

The Cantos focusing upon the fields of economics, political organization and Confucian social norms. Such a study could perhaps be accomplished through publication of Pound's correspondence to

F. D. R. and the U.S. State Department prior to and during World War II.

The concept of the world as Process should have been given greater 116 emphasis and explination in the above thesis, as this seems to be fairly central to both Pound and Duncan as well as to Cavalcanti as he is interpreted by Pound. This concept seems to be more integral to the oriental cosmology than to the western postulates of reality. In the eastern world the view of the cosmos as a chain of inter-connected and regenerative events which ebb and flow between form and dissolution, being and becoming, an implicit assumption cornnon to each distinct philosophical stance. Where the western world has traditionally evaluated events in the space/time continuum as proportionate to their utility for human needs, the eastern mind has imply accepted the fact that man is merely one integer among billions - albeit a self-conscious creature - and that each of the integers is related to all the others in that all are part of the circular process of universal existence, which is to say, becoming.

This view is more an intellectual stance in the western world, As the twentieth century postulate of the inter-connection of matter and energy becomes the accepted cosmological orientation the chasm between the philosophical stances of the east and west seems to draw together. Such is notthe case, however, as the "Process orientation" of the western world is more strictly an intellectual construct having no experiential or aesthetic factor to lend it an immediately apprehendable quality and thus make it ultimately real for individual man. The inter-connexion of matter and energy to the western world remains a cold theoretical postualate, abstract but scientifically demonstrable.

The essentially oriental consciousness of Ezra Pound allows him 117

this felt/thought awareness of the world as Process and enables him to give expression of the "world of moving energies." The eastern perspective renders the concept of man in a world as Process imnediatley comprehensible or perceptual. The western or intellectually postulated view of the universe as Process of becoming has less of an immediate or experiential factor than has a conceptual basis for its reality. It is a limited awareness of a concept which demands to be embraced totally, ie., both though and felt, theoretic and aesthetic, abstract and concrete. It is this limited awareness of the universal process that leads the western world into conflicts of intellectual and emotional responses and the resultant confusion and eventual stasis which is characteristic of our contemporary society. 118

Bib!iography

I Works consulted on Guido Cavalcantii.

Fletcher, Jefferson B. "Guido Cavalcanti's Ode of Love" Modern Philology, vol. 7, January 1910. pp 423-427

-. Literature of the Italian Renaissance. New York The Macmillan Company, 1934.

Mazzeo, Joseph A. Medieval Cultural Tradition'in Daiite's Comedy. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 1949

Muscatine, Charles. Chaucer and the French Tradition. Berkeley: University of California Press. 1957.

De Sanctis, Francesco. History'of_Italian Literature, vol. I New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1931

Schoeck, Richard J., and Taylor, Jerome, editors. Chaucer Criticism, vol. II Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press. 1961. .

Shaw, J.E. Guido Cavalcanti's Theory of Love. Toronto: The University of Toronto Press. 1949

Valency, Maurice. In Praise of Love. New York: The Macmillan Company. 1958

Vittorini, Domenico. High: Points in_the History of Italian Literature. New York: David McKay Company, Inc. 1958

II Works consulted in Relation to Chapter Three

Gilson, Etienne H. La Philosophic au Moyen Age. 2nd. edition. Paris: Payot. 1947.

Pound, Ezra. Make It New. London: Faber and Faber Limited. 1934

Gaudier-Brzeska: A Memoir. New York: New Directions. 1916. 1960. 119

III Works Consulted in Relation to Chapter Four

Charlesworth, B.A. The Tensile Light: A Study of'Ezra Pound's Religion. Coral Gables. Florida: The University of Miami, 1957.

Clark, Thomas. "The Formal Sturcture of Pound's 'Canto;s'." East-West Review, vol. I. No. 2. Autumn 1964. pp 97-144. Kyoto, Japan: Doshinsha University Press. 1964.

Edwards, John, editor. The PouncT New!etter. No..6. April 1955. Berkeley: The University of California Press. 1955.

Fenollosa, Ernest. The Chinese Written Character as a_Medium.for Poetry. San Francisco: City Lights Books. 1936.

Paige, B.D. The Letters of Ezra Pound 1907-1941. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc. 1950 • ~

Pound, Ezra. The Cantos (1-95). New York: New Directions 1934. 1937, 1940, 1948, 1956.

. ABC of Reading. New York: New Directions. 1960

.Make It New. London: Faber and Faber Limited. 1934.

Yutang,LIn. The Wisdom of Confucius. New York: The Modern Library. 1938

IV Works Consulted in Relation to Chapter Five.

Duncan, Robert E. Poems 1948-49. Glen Gardner, N.J.: Libertarian Press, n.d,

. Selected Poems. San Francisco: City Lights Books. 1959.

. Caesar's Gate: Poems 1949-1950. Spain: Divers Press 1955.

Allen, Donald editor. The New^American Poetry. 1945-1960 New York: Grove Press, Inc. 1960.

Wah, Pauline. Robert Duncan: The Poem as Process. (MA Thesis) Vancouver: The University of British Columbia. 1966. Chapter Two: Some Basic Distinctions, pp 5-17.