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The Cantos and Ezra Pound University of Northern Iowa UNI ScholarWorks Electronic Theses and Dissertations Graduate College 1991 "Ego, scriptor cantilenae": The aC ntos and Ezra Pound Steven R. Gulick University of Northern Iowa Copyright ©1991 Steven R. Gulick Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.uni.edu/etd Part of the Literature in English, North America Commons Let us know how access to this document benefits oy u Recommended Citation Gulick, Steven R., ""Ego, scriptor cantilenae": The aC ntos and Ezra Pound" (1991). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 753. https://scholarworks.uni.edu/etd/753 This Open Access Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate College at UNI ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of UNI ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. "EGO, SCRIPTOR CANTILENAE": THE CANTOS AND EZRA POUND An Abstract of a Thesis Submitted in Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Philosophy Steven R. Gulick University of Northern Iowa August 1991 ABSTRACT Can poetry "make new" the world? Ezra Pound thought so. In "Cantico del Sole" he said: "The thought of what America would be like/ If the Classics had a wide circulation/ Troubles me in my sleep" (Personae 183). He came to write an 815 page poem called The Cantos in which he presents "fragments" drawn from the literature and documents of the past in an attempt to build a new world, "a paradiso terreste" (The Cantos 802). This may be seen as either a noble gesture or sheer egotism. Pound once called The Cantos the "tale of the tribe" (Guide to Kulchur 194), and I believe this is so, particularly if one associates this statement with Allen Ginsberg's concerning The Cantos as a model of a mind, "like all our minds" (Ginsberg 14-16). But Pound was a Fascist and anti-Semite, was he not? This is what I think faces a reader of Pound: Perhaps the reader finds he is not so different from Pound, or any other "mind." Perhaps that is what is most disturbing. After all, do we not each wish to build our own little terrestrial paradise? "EGO, SCRIPTOR CANTILENAE": THE CANTOS AND EZRA POUND A Thesis Submitted in Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Philosophy Steven R. Gulick University of Northern Iowa August 1991 Volume I Copyright by STEVEN R. GULICK August 2, 1991 All Rights Reserved ii This study by: Steven R. Gulick Entitled: "EGO, SCRIPTOR CANTILENAE": THE CANTOS and Ezra Pound has been approved as meeting the thesis requirement for the Degree of Master of Philosophy. r :?-Jp,,I. Cj ( Date Dr. Philip Furia, Outside Examiner, Thesis Committee, University of Minnesota <rl!U 9. iJ-EF Dr. Danie1Zcahill, Chairman, Thesis Committee 6;{~f Dr~ce Swensen, Member, Thesis Committee Member, Thesis Committee iii THIS BOOK IS FOR BARBARA HEMANN il migliora meta IF SHE WANTS IT iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ABBREVIATIONS USED IN THIS TEXT FOR THE WORKS OF EZRA POUND V LIST OF FIGURES . vii EPIGRAMS ix PART 1: INTRODUCTION 1 Notes to Part l 39 PART 2: WILDERNESS AND PARADISE 41 Notes to Part 2 .... 90 PART 3: DE VULGARI ELOQUENTIA; OR, THE ROAD TO FELICITY BOOK I: OF AESTHETES AND ASCETICS 93 BOOK II: FROM TROY THROUGH ROME, ALBION, AND BEYOND 257 Notes to Part 3 579 PART 4: FRAGMENTS, &c. 588 Notes to Part 4 622 WORKS CITED. 623 V ABBREVIATIONS USED IN THIS TEXT FOR THE WORKS OF EZRA POUND ABC of R: ABC of Reading. New Haven: Yale UP, 1934. Collected Early Poems of Ezra Pound. Ed. Michael John King. New York: New Directions, 1976. Con: Confucius: The Great Digest, The Unwobbling Pivot, The Analects. New York: New Directions, 1951. EP/DS Ezra Pound and Dorothy Shakespear: Their Letters 1909-1914. Ed. Omar Pound and A. Walton Litz. New York: New Directions, 1984. GB: Gaudier-Brzeska. New York: New Directions, 1970. GK: Guide to Kulchur. London: Owen, 1960. I: Impact: Essays on Ignorance and the Decline of American Civilization. Ed. Noel Stock. Chicago: Regnery, 1960. Inst: Instigations of Ezra Pound. New York: Boni & Liveright, 1920. J/M: Jefferson And/Or Mussolini. New York: Liveright; London: Stanley Nott, 1936. Let: The Letters of Ezra Pound. Ed. D. D. Paige. London: Faber, 1951. LE: Literary Essays. Ed. T.S. Eliot. New York: New Directions, 1954. L: Lustra of Ezra Pound with Earlier Poems. New York: Knopf, 1917. MN: Make it New: Essays by Ezra Pound. New Haven: Yale UP, 1935. OC "On Criticism in General." The Criterion. 1.2 (Jan. 1923): 143-56. PDg: Pavannes and Divigations. New York, New Directions, 1958. PDi: Pavannes and Divisions. New York: Knopf, 1918. vi Per: Personae: The Collected Shorter Poems of Ezra Pound. New York: New Directions, 1950. Pound/Ford: The Story of a Literary Friendship. Ed. Brita Lindberg-Seyersted. New York: New Directions, 1982. Pound/Joyce: The Letters of Ezra Pound with Pound's Essays on Joyce. Ed. Forrest Read. New York: New Directions, 1967. PM: Patria Mia and the Treatise on Harmony. London: Owen, 1962. "Psy & T": "Psychology and the Troubadours." Spirit of Romance. London: Owen, [1952] 87-100. SP: Selected Poems. New York: New Directions, 1957. SPr: Selected Prose: 1909-1965. Ed. William Cookson. New York: New Directions, 1973. SR: The Spirit of Romance. London: Dent, 1910. T: The Translations of Ezra Pound. Ed. Hugh Kenner, New York: New Directions, 1963. I have used the 1986 New Directions edition of The Cantos throughout this text. References appear as follows: (C83 535), which refers, in this instance, to The Cantos, Canto 83, page 535. vii LIST OF FIGURES Fig. 1. Jocopo De' Barbari, Plan of Venice 43 Fig. 2 . View of the Doge's Palace . 51 Fig. 3. Conventualized representation of Hugh of St. Victor . 74 Fig. 4. Dedication page of A Lume Soento 89 Fig. 5 • A portion of "Redondillas" 166 Fig. 6. The musical setting of Arnaut Daniel's second canzone . ....... 172 Fig. 7. A portion of "HE DO THE POLICE IN DIFFERENT VOICES" . 226 Fig. 8. Title leaf of Jefferson and/or Mussolini 244 Fig. 9. The Ancient Near East 269 Fig. 1 0 • An Archimedean screw 306 Fig. 11. Bertran de Born and the Sowers of Discord . 413 Fig. 1 2 • Illustration by an unknown prisoner at Cachau ... 511 Fig. 1 3 . Ezra Pound at the time of his arrest 521 Fig. 14. Model showing "mathematical derivation" of Jefferson's design for the mouldboard of least resistance ... 562 Fig. 15. Model of Jefferson's mouldboard plow 562 Fig. 16. Jefferson's last elevation study for the first Monticello 566 Fig. 17. Chinese railing .. 569 Fig. 18. Verso of title page of Pound's Guide to Kulchur 587 Fig. 19. "how hast thou crescent for car?" (£74 510) . .. 594 viii Fig. 20. "Hieratic Head of Ezra Pound" by Henri Gaudier-Brzeska 604 Fig. 21. Axiometric section of the Tempio Malatestiano 608 Fig. 22. An engraving of the Tempio Malatestiano by D'Agincourt 610 Fig. 23. Sketch of the fa9ade of the Tempio Malatestiano .... 612 ix "From the Arabs, alchemy found its way through Spain into Europe generally. In the Middle Ages it was chiefly the monks who occupied themselves with alchemy. The earliest works on European alchemy now extant are those of the English monk Roger Bacon and the German philosopher St. Albertus Magnus; both believed in the possibility of converting inferior metals into gold. This idea excited the imagination, and later the avarice, of many persons in the Middle Ages. They believed gold to be the perfect metal, and baser metals to be removed by various degrees of imperfection from gold. Thus they sought to fabricate or discover a substance so much more perfect than gold that it could bring the baser metals up to the perfection of gold. This substance they called the philosopher's stone." --Seymore z. Lewin, "Alchemy," Funk and Wagnalls Standard Reference Encyclopedia, 1964 ed. "But there is another way--in diametric opposition to that of social duty and the popular cult. From the standpoint of the way of duty, anyone in exile from the community is a nothing. From the other point of view, however, this exile is the first step of the quest. Each carries within himself the all; therefore it may be sought and discovered within. The differentiantions of sex, age, and occupation are not essential to our character, but mere costumes which we wear for a time on the stage of the world. The image of man within is not to be confounded with the garments. We think of ourselves as Americans, children of the twentieth century, Occidentals, civilized Christians. We are virtuous or sinful. Yet such designations do not tell what it is to be man, they denote only the accidents of geography, birth-date, and income. What is the core of us? What is the basic character of our being?" --Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, (1949; Princeton: Princeton UP, 1973) 385. 1 "It is now time to raise a critical question in connection with the epiphany theory: Are they really revelations of truth or character, or do they merely appear to be truth to the consciousness which experiences them?" --Zack Bowen "Joyce and the Epiphany Concept: A New Approach" (104) PART 1 INTRODUCTION Ezra Pound arrived in Paris, from London, in December, 1920. He and his wife, Dorothy, then spent the first three months of 1921 at St-Raphael near Cannes before taking a garret room in a Paris hotel--finally moving into a studio at 70 bis, rue Notre Dame des Champs the following December (Carpenter 383-384).
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