8
EE Chdng Ming A New Paideuma . . . Frobcnius uscs thc tcrm Pardeuma for thc tanglc or complcr of tbc inrootcd idcas of any pcriod Ttrc Paidcuma is not tbc Zcit- gcist, tbou I havc no doubt many pcople will try to sink it in thc latter romantic tcrm . I shall usc Paidcuma for thc gristly roots of idcas that arc in action Mencius Epistcmology slarts from thrs versc: the men of old wanting to clarify and diffusc throughout thc cmpirc t}at light whrch comes from looking straight into the heart thcn ect- ing, 6nt sct up good govcrnment in thcir orrn statcs: wanting good govcrnmcnt in thcir statcs, thcy first cstablished ordcr in thcir own familics; wanting ordcr in thc homc, thcy firsr disciplincd thcmselves; dcsiring sclfdisciplinc, thcy rcctificd their own hcarts; and wanting to rectify tbcir hcans tbcy sought prccisc vcrbal dcfinitions of thcir in- erticulatc thoughts (the tones given off by thc hcan); wishing to at- t6in precisc vcrbol definitions, thcy s.t to cxtcnd tbcir knowledgc to tbc utmct. This complction of kno*lcdgc is rootcd in sorting lhings into organic catcgorics. When things had bccn classificd in organic catcgories, knowlcdgc moved toward fulfillment; givcn extrcmc know- ablc poins, tbc inarticulatc thoughts wcre defined with precision (tbc sun's laotc coming to rcst on the prccisc spot verbally). Having at- taincd this prccirc verbal dcfinition (aliter, this sincerity), they thcn stabilizcd their hcarts, thcy disciplined themsclvcs; having attaincd sclf-disciplinc, thcy sct thcir own houscs in ordcr; having order in thcir homes, thcy brought good government to thcir own statcs; and whcn thcir stat6 wcre wcll govcrned, the cmpire was brought into cquilib- rium. From the Empcror, Son of Heaven, down to thc common rnan, singly and all togcthcr, this sclf{isciplinc is thc rmt-i.e. thc paidcuma. COVER: Photograph of Olga Rudge, courtesy of Mary de Rachewiltz ?AI DIVMA ,\ .f orn nlrl l)cvolctl lo l'.zr';r l'tlrrrrtl Selrol;rrship V,rlrrrrtt'l.l Spring 19D5 Number I Senior Editors llur;lr KSNNER Eve Hesse l.lnivcrsity of (icorgia at Athens Munich, West Germany Editor CARROLL F. TERRELL Managing Editor JOSEPH BROGUNIER Editors DONALD GALLUP DAVID GORDON JAMES J. WILHELM llxrk l{evicws Production Manager .l()Sl:l'll BROGLINIER MARIE HELENA McCOSH llLrsirrcss and Administration Executive Secretary (;N II, SAPIEL MARILYN EMERICK Eorronrar- AssrsrANTS Laura Cowan ASSOCIATES Stcphen Adam, Canada Mmimo Bacigalupo, Italy Marius Buning Netherlands I laroldo de Campm, Bruil Dcsmond Egan, Ireland R. N. Egudu, Nigeria lszek M. Engelking Poland Stephen Fender, England Richard Hammki, I Iawaii Martin Kayman, Portugal Sanehide Kalama, Japan Sylvester Pollet Mu Ninny, Switzerland Alejandro Oliverm. Venezuela Deba Patnaik, India Daniel Pearlman. U.SA. Jesu Pardo de Santayana, Spain Harold Schimmel, lsrael Mohammad Shaheen,Jordan G. Singh, Northern Ireland C. K Stead. New Z:aland Jaime Garcia Tenes. Mexio A. C. Ullyat, South Afric I'etr Mikef, Czech Republic I'hilippe Mikriammm, Iirance Timothy Wanguu, lJganda Chang Yao-xin, l'coples Rcpublic of (lhina ISSN009G5674 klitorial and buinqs ollie: National P(xtry Foundation-Rarm 302, Univenity of Maine,5752 Nwille Hall, Orono, Maine M469-5752. Subscriptiom to individuals: $18.00 a year US, or $23.00 Canadian and foreign. To libraria and irstitutiom: $35.00 a year US, or $40.00 Canadian and foreign. All fes mut be paid in US funds. Paidem is published by the Univenity of Maine and printed at the Univenity of Maine Print Shop. Manwripts should onform to the latmt MIA Style Sheet and should be ammpanied by return pGtage. International Copyright (c) 1995 by the National Pctry Foundation except for heretofore unpublished letteF or other writings of Ezra Pound which are Copyright (c) f995 by the Truts of the Ezra Pound Literary Property Trut and wd by pemision of New Directions Publishing Corp., agents for the Trutees. The staff is also grateful to New Directions Publishing Corp. for permision to quote from Fzra Pound's published work.

Sacrifice and Selectivity in Ezra Pound's First Canto

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Paideuma 24.1, Spring 2005

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Page 1: Sacrifice and Selectivity in Ezra Pound's First Canto

EEChdng Ming A New Paideuma

. . . Frobcnius uscs thc tcrm Pardeuma for thc tanglc or complcr of

tbc inrootcd idcas of any pcriod Ttrc Paidcuma is not tbc Zcit-

gcist , tbou I havc no doubt many pcople wi l l t ry to s ink i t in thc lat ter

romantic tcrm . I shall usc Paidcuma for thc gristly roots of idcas

that arc in action Mencius Epistcmology slarts from thrs versc:

the men of old wanting to clarify and diffusc throughout thc cmpirc

t}at l ight whrch comes from looking straight into the heart thcn ect-

ing, 6nt sct up good govcrnment in thcir orrn statcs: want ing good

govcrnmcnt in thcir statcs, thcy first cstablished ordcr in thcir own

fami l ics; want ing ordcr in thc homc, thcy f i rsr d iscipl incd thcmselves;

dcsiring sclfdisciplinc, thcy rcctificd their own hcarts; and wanting to

rectify tbcir hcans tbcy sought prccisc vcrbal dcfinitions of thcir in-

ert iculatc thoughts ( the tones given of f by thc hcan); wishing to at-

t6in precisc vcrbol definitions, thcy s.t to cxtcnd tbcir knowledgc to

tbc utmct. This complction of kno*lcdgc is rootcd in sorting lhings

into organic catcgorics. When things had bccn classificd in organic

catcgor ies, knowlcdgc moved toward ful f i l lment; g ivcn extrcmc know-

ablc poins, tbc inart iculatc thoughts wcre def ined with precis ion ( tbc

sun's laotc coming to rcst on the prccisc spot verbally). Having at-

ta incd this prccirc verbal dcf in i t ion (al i ter , th is s incer i ty) , they thcn

stabi l izcd their hcarts, thcy discipl ined themsclvcs; having at ta incd

sclf-disciplinc, thcy sct thcir own houscs in ordcr; having order in thcir

homes, thcy brought good government to thcir own statcs; and whcn

thcir stat6 wcre wcl l govcrned, the cmpire was brought into cqui l ib-

r ium. From the Empcror, Son of Heaven, down to thc common rnan,

singly and all togcthcr, this sclf{isciplinc is thc rmt-i.e. thc paidcuma.

COVER: Photograph of Olga Rudge, courtesy of Mary de Rachewiltz

?AI DIVMA, \ . f orn nlr l l )cvolct l lo l ' .zr ' ; r l ' t l r r r r t l Se l ro l ; r rship

V,r l r r r r t t ' l . l Spring 19D5 Number I

Senior Editorsl lur ; l r KSNNER Eve Hessel . lnivcrsity of ( icorgia at Athens Munich, West Germany

EditorCARROLL F. TERRELL

Managing EditorJOSEPH BROGUNIER

Editors

DONALD GALLUPDAVID GORDON

JAMES J. WILHELM

l lxrk l{evicws Production Manager. l( )Sl: l ' l l BROGLINIER MARIE HELENA McCOSH

llLrsirrcss and Administrat ion Executive Secretary(;N I I , SAPIEL MARILYN EMERICK

Eorronrar- AssrsrANTS

Laura Cowan

ASSOCIATESStcphen Adam, CanadaMmimo Bacigalupo, ItalyMarius Buning NetherlandsI laroldo de Campm, BruilDcsmond Egan, IrelandR. N. Egudu, Nigerialszek M. Engelking PolandStephen Fender, EnglandRichard Hammki, I IawaiiMartin Kayman, PortugalSanehide Kalama, Japan

Sylvester Pollet

Mu Ninny, SwitzerlandAlejandro Oliverm. Venezuela

Deba Patnaik, IndiaDaniel Pearlman. U.SA.

Jesu Pardo de Santayana, SpainHarold Schimmel, lsrael

Mohammad Shaheen, JordanG. Singh, Northern IrelandC. K Stead. New Z:aland

Jaime Garcia Tenes. MexioA. C. Ullyat, South Afric

I 'etr Mikef, Czech RepublicI 'hil ippe Mikriammm, Iirance

Timothy Wanguu, lJgandaChang Yao-xin, l 'coples Rcpublic of (lhina

ISSN 009G5674

klitorial and buinqs oll ie: National P(xtry Foundation-Rarm 302, Univenity of Maine,5752Nwille Hall, Orono, Maine M469-5752. Subscriptiom to individuals: $18.00 a year US, or $23.00Canadian and foreign. To libraria and irstitutiom: $35.00 a year US, or $40.00 Canadian and foreign.All fes mut be paid in US funds. Paidem is published by the Univenity of Maine and printed atthe Univenity of Maine Print Shop. Manwripts should onform to the latmt MIA Style Sheet andshould be ammpanied by return pGtage. International Copyright (c) 1995 by the National PctryFoundation except for heretofore unpublished letteF or other writings of Ezra Pound which areCopyright (c) f995 by the Truts of the Ezra Pound Literary Property Trut and wd by pemisionof New Directions Publishing Corp., agents for the Trutees. The staff is also grateful to NewDirections Publishing Corp. for permision to quote from Fzra Pound's published work.

Page 2: Sacrifice and Selectivity in Ezra Pound's First Canto

94 lzslie Hatcher

Aphrodite, Persephone and Kor€ all work side by side with themasculine heroes of the quest to create the promise of rebirth.

WORKS CITED

'Davie, Donald. Ezm Pound: Poet as Sculptor. Nerv York: Oxford UP, 1964.Dekker, George. Sailing After lhowledge: The Cantos of Eza Pound. London:

Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd., 1!b3.Dennis, Helen M. "The Eleusinian Mysteries as an Organising Principle in Tie

Pisan Cantos." Paideuma 10.2 (1981): 27'3{,2.Flory, Wendy. Ezm Pound and The Cantos: A Recod of Struggle. New Haven,

CT: Yale UP, 1980.Pound, Ezra. The Cantos of Ezm Pound. New York: New Directions, 1975.

. Guide to Kulchur. New York: New Directions, 1970.

. Selected hose 1X)9-l%5. Ed. William Cookson. New York: New----TErions, 1973.

. The Spiit of Romance. Ne*'York: Nenr Directions, 1968.m6lT6,ffi:Michel. Language, Sutatity and Ideologt in Ezm Pound's Cantos.

London: Macrnillan, 1986.Surette, l*on.A Light frcm Eleusis. Oxford: Clarendon, 1979.

EVAN R KARACHALIOS

SACNFICE AND SELECTIWTYIN EZRA POUND'S F/RST CANTO

If we never wite anything save what is alrcadyundentood, the feld of undentanding willnever be &ended. One demands the ight,now and again, to wite for a few people withspecial intercsts and whose cuiosity rcachesinto grcater detail.

(e6/61.3)r

ln l92l Ezra Pound wrote to his father and occasional patron,Homer Pound, namesake of the blind Greek poet whoserhythmic hexameters echoed the churning of the sea. For theelder Pound and many early readers of The Cantos the hypnoticrhythms of the first poem in the long sequence seemed todissipate in the apparent incoherence of its subject matter, withsound left helpless in the rescuing of sense. So Ezra was writingto offer his father assistance in piecing together the reconditefragments in the evolving work:

Have I ever given you outline of main scheme ::: or whatever it is?1. Rather like or unlike subject and response and counter subjectin fugue. AA. Live man goes down into world of Dead. C.B. The"repeat in history" B.C. The "magic moment" or moment ofmetamorphosis, bust thru from quotidian into "divine or perrna-nent world." Gods, etc.2

While this fugal pattern is intended as a blueprint forthe entire epic, it immediately plays itself out in the first canto,rehearsing the Odyssean theme of descent-"And then wentdown to the ship" (1/3)-and culminating with the epic's firsttheophany-"Venerandum, / In the Cretan's phrase, with thegolden crown, Aphrodite" (ll5).The descent of Odysseus intothe undenvorld allegorizes Pound's compositional method as apoet in addition to mirroring his post-war intellectual milieu.

l. Ezra Poun4 Tln Cantos of Ezm Pound (New Yorh New Direclions, 191).2. Ezra Pound "To Homer L. Poun4" l1 Apfl 1927,letaer 222 of Ttu Selected lzuen of Ezm Pound:1907-1941, ed. D. D. Paige (New York New Dircclions, l97l) 210.

Page 3: Sacrifice and Selectivity in Ezra Pound's First Canto

96 Evan R. Kamchalios

Blood sacrifice summons for Pound what William CarlosWilliams calls "'the radiant gist' against all that scants ourlives'a and then enables him to disregard superfluous historicalepisodes in order to define the values and essences of TheCantos by a method of exclusion. But this artistic selectivity alsohas social ramifications. After his apparent failure to holdtogether the first disparate fragments of The Cantos with thesonority of many narrative voices, Pound believes sound to be aninferior medium of sense perception and an instrument of massdeception in the aftermath of the First World War. He aban-dons the inimitable splendor of Homeric Greek,a whose melodi-ous surging he mimics in his translation of the Odyssey in thefirst canto, and elects another perceptive faculty-vision-as theemblem of the intellectual elite needed to resurrect his time.With these axes of reference in place, Pound's Odyssean voyagemay begin.

A REPOSITORY OF CULTURAL VALUE

Say that I dump my catch, shiny and silveryAs fresh sardines flapping and slipping onthe marginal cobbles?(I stand before the booth, the speech; butthe truthIs inside this discourse - this booth is full

of the marrow of wisdom.)(Draft of an early Canto, 1917))

The Cantos self-consciously take their place in a tradition ofpoetic achievement stretching from Homer and Virgil in classi-cal antiquity to Dante in the fourteenth century, and to writersas dissimilar as Milton, Wordsworth, and Whitman in moderntimes. By returning to the eleventh book of Homer's Odyssey togather the archetypes for his poem, Pound chooses not simplyone of the oldest of the suniving epics but what he believes tobe the earliest remnant of the Odyssey itself - the Nekuia, ordescent to the underworld: "The Nekuia shouts aloud that it isolder than the rest, all that island, Cretan, etc., hinter-time, that

3. William Carloe Williams, Patenon 1951. (New York: New Directions, 192) f85.4. "In the languages known to me (which do not include Persian and Arabic) the muimum ofmelopoeia [groups of words charged by SOUNDI is reached in Greek. . . . I have never read half apage of Homer withoul linding melodic irwentioq I mean melodic invention that I didn't alreadyknow" (Ezra Poun( Thc ABC of Reading lNew York: New Diredions, f9601 4243).5. Ronald Bush, llr Gerasis ol Ezm Pornd's Cantos (Princeton: Prineton UP, f976) 53.

Sacrifce and Selectivity in Ezm Pound's Fint Canto 97

is not Praxiteles, not Athens of Pericles, but Odysseus."6 Despiteits age, however, the Nelada's literary qualities remain untar-nished for Pound: "3000 years and still fresh."7 Its evidentlongevity endows this text with value, as in its own day the poemmost probably existed as a mythological repository of value forarchaic Greek culture, a compendium of the universal knowl-edge distinctive to epic.8 Thus the older and more valuable apoem is, the more power it seems to possess for disclosingenduring patterns of human experience.

Indeed, the further back that Pound places the com-position of the eleventh book of the Odyssey, the more signifi-cant his use of that past becomes, and the truer (at least forhim) the maiden poem of.The Cantos. As Pound writes in 1913in an essay entitled "The Tradition," "a return to origins invigo-rates because it is a return to nature and reason. The man whoreturns to origins does so because he wishes to behave in theeternally sensible manner. That is to say, naturally, reasonably,intuitively.'ry Reading the Odyssean sacrifice of canto 1 with thisbelief in mind, a reactivation of ancient knowledge charts newdirections beyond a mere quest for the episodes needed toadorn several hundred pages of poetry. The requirement thatthe reinvigorated past itself reinvigorate, that a "poem includinghistory"to actually change history, resides in the very mention ofan eternally sensible way of behaving and in the belief that radi-ant gists may function apotropaically against "all that scants ourlives." But before examining the social implications of degenera-tion and the masses in Pound's aesthetic practice of selectivity,the ritual sacrifice of Odysseus should be read as closely as pos-sible.

COMPOSTTIONAL A RCHAEOLOGY

These fragments I have shored against myruins.

CI. S. Eliot, The Waste Land)rr

A poem purporting to contain history cannot by any means rec-ollect it entirely or distill its infinitude of detail. "The past is a

6. Pound. Selected lzue,t 274.7, Pound, Selected l*tten 275.8. Buh 73.9. Ezra Pound, Lilerary Essays (New York: New Directiom, 1966192.10. Poun4,4BCR 46.ll. T. S. Elio! Selected Perc (New York Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,1964) 67

Page 4: Sacrifice and Selectivity in Ezra Pound's First Canto

98 Evan R' Kamchalios

midden," writes Guy Davenport; "it is the -city 9utP at

O*ittvn"nos, outside Alexandria, where we find shreds of

,"6"i,1r-*ith'texts by Aristotle and Sappho on them."u To this

irriii-in".y inventory one should add the Homeric -poems'F;;ati#rr excavationinThe Cantos from the refuse heap of

it "

o"rt. The task he sets himself in composition is to generate

""*"ig"in"un"", by the slow accumulation of luminous histori-

tuf pui-ti"f"s. ,.poinis define a periphery,"r3_as Pound remarks in

in"'int."au.tion to his Confucian translations, and in building

it "

1nonurnent of The Cantos. Pound's cautiously chosen gists-a

Greek tag, remote names, historical episodes-l1: ut selective

* trc fi""Oings of the modern archaeologist. Sacrifice and selec-

tivity are theiefore inseparable insofar as the first canto mly b9

;;;i ;; a sort of literarry enactment of Pound's compositional

method."Lie quiet Divus" (t/l), with this brief command

Pound infuses his own voice as'epic composilol intg lf: po"-'

h;;G t[;n sitting by while his narrative unfolds, indifferently

ili1,, his tingern-a$ a U Joyce,. Pound instead becomes the

i-"gi"nury speltator he found'and admired in the literature of

ffori"r inO' U"nry James,ra speaking to the materials of his

ir;;;ii.. as Odysieus to Tireiias. And Pound shares with the

"ioi^n"nirt of his first canto another similarity as well, for his

';;;;ilg of the Renaissance translator is an odyss^ean search

i"i f.""*tJage among the forgotte-n documents of the past.

"First thou riust go th; road / t; heil-/ ' ' ' KnowlgOgg t^h: shade

oi u tttua", / Yetihou must sail after knowledge" (471336)''by

"ommanding the sha.de to stillness, Pound sug-

sests that Divus himself h-as been intoning the first.canto, his"n"*irr""* Latin rendered by archaic -nn4r.str

diction and

Annto-S*on triple-beat alliteration. But rather than drawilg his

;;;e;i";-the^poem with these sonorities, Pound works almost

to alienate them with archaism and abrupt syntax, a strateSl

whosepurposewi l lbemadeabundant lyclear ' Iater.L)rvusrsnewly embbdied only by Pound, for whom translatton serves as

;il 'ililh;.i""|;;rtrire

of {idytt"ut pouring out sacrificial

ulooo for the dead: ..Here did they rites, Perimedes and Eury-

L"tt*, /ard drawing sword from my.hig / I dug the,:,u':qYul"

;t;kili p"ui"J we ti"bations unto each thi deadr' (113).It is in

Sacifce and Selectivity in Ezm pound's Fint Canto gg

this way that Pound's return to the past mirrors an odysseandescent, since both uutl.gl3ng pro.tagtnist, itk" ;;;"ir"biuur,are "resurrection-men."b ro find thJbest in the p; ,",r pass italong, and to shore ancient relics in an.attempt to change hisown time, pound sacrifices whatever in his

"ii[ii"1""lii1rutionmay.revivi& Divus's-pocket-sized Latin crib - the flesh anJ utooogf hi:. 9yl.po-etic idioms. The tibations poured ,,unto eacrr the9:"dl' !.1/3)t Divus.and his forgotten transration, ui" tn.t"ro."xngu$trc otterinqs. "water mixed with white flower" (1/3) findtheir poetic anal5gues in.poundb engio-saxon reconstruction ofRenaissance Latiisonorities, with alr"of the murtitude of associ-ations inherent in the earry English tradition ;f ,;Th; J"u]u.".,,and "The wanderer"-wirriois, Bronze Age heroism, bu.oicpoetry.16

- - Too, distinctions between the past and present aredissolved in the sacrificial act. The pouiin!-oi riurri5", ""0

,r,"barbaric slaughter of bulls and sheep occur at the same insrantor narratlve trme as pound's sacrifice of a modernist aesthetic tothe past, his infusion. of the living practices ;i;;;,,y ilio oldtexts. Indeed, the notion of narrative time may be ress'meaning-ful here than that of narrative space, since'in the- firsi cantoppcchs are arranged not as chronblogicar points th.oueh whichnrsrory sweeps but _as the verticany stacked notes of-a chord:li?:1_rlq,_ -fp".

of history's. beginnings: the earties, -en4irn

!11?tuT.. rhythmsand diction), the earliest Greek (Nekuia)l thebegrnnlng of the 20th_century Vortex, and the oiigin, o'f thevortex we call the Renaissancl, when once before it tiuJre"m"o

pertinent to reaffirm Homer's perpetual freshness.lliipouno',

,._tl.Tl::tly^ !-y,",.."9 times conv.i.gg F canto l, confirming anmturtron ne publishes as early as his first prose book, The ipiitof Romance: "y'-Jl, ages, are. contemporaneous.,,rE By situalingthese various ages together in the same canto, pound exhibits acyclrc lf"o.y. of time that will be effective in his wish to trans-1:lT^lir,, :"ltural present, since recurring historical patterns"accomprrsh I'or the learned what the mythological rituais of rhe.._1:o": accomplish for the intellectually unsJphisticated. Bothmltrgate the terror of history, in which events, and most of all

12. Guy Davenpor! "Foreword" The Citical llitings-of lytq tyce (tthaca: Comell UP' 1959) 4'

13. Ezra poun4 trars.,nv anatiii,ov'i:""r*i* iN& York: New birections, l95l) l%. -..

14. ..I have, on rhe other n*i, i"',lii ,rr;';; Hql.ilrr" i*"gn"ty sp€clator, which in 1918 I still

itrouglr was Henry James'Particulat ProPerty (ABCR 431'

f.l. Hugh Kenner, The Pound Em-.(krteley and [,oe Angels: U of C:alifornia p, l97l) 6.16. Guy Davenpofl, Cities on Hiits: e sl"ay "li.*iif-ilc"i'p._ii";;;,'iX;; Arbor uMrRescarch P, l9E3) t09.

17. Kenrer 349.lE. Ezm Pound, Pr€f8ce ao The Spirit of Ronwce (New york New Direcrions, 1966) 6.

Page 5: Sacrifice and Selectivity in Ezra Pound's First Canto

1A0 Evan R' Kamchalios

man's personal decisions, are set forever in an irreversible pat-

tern.tt19But if sacrifice in the first canto resurrects the past,

then an act of selection must inevitably appropriate its ^wisdom'

ili;h t;Fr."iii"a-iv-tne UUnO seer firesias, the sole figlre ofiisht'il,f," darkness "1

it'" underworld Pllry :l?iy:: sacri-

fice there is no possilility of offering a "sheep.to Tiresias only"

tt/3i;;i;tom'uti"uuy sLlecting the.radiant. gist from the past

;ii;fi may be the mott telling. The blood ritual also summons

many "souls out oi g,iebus, Zadaverous dead' of brides /. of

ililrh, ,"i'.r ,t "

oto *t,o had borne much" (t/3.). These.unbid-'d;;-;ffi;-".o*O about Odysseus "with shouting" (1./4), agt-

tatins him as t " "*uiJtne

airival of the Theban prophet Tire-

ri"t,",'tt""""ly-gh;; *ith whom he wishes to -speak' The

;;",yp" ofin""r" ,,impotent dqad]' is Odvsseus' former com-

nanion. Elpenor, *h;';5;;; forth desiring imm.ortality:." 'Heap-

[p *r"L ili''d" ;;;b bv sea-bord,.and-inscribed: / A man of

ii iii*, ona *tti i nok' to come"' Ql!)t Pyt ftt Pound to

;;Jid being overwhelmed _by the manifold historical source

materials h-e attempts to subdue poetically in The gantos.' many

;i-]i; should 'bL dismissed rathei than immortalized'

Odvsseus' statement that he "sat to keep off the impetuous

#ii!i; d;;i;'iii;l Jie"'"ii""ty informs i'ound's principles of,"'f'".tiuity unC oiglntatTon throughout the 116 cantos, another

;;'"-.pi;'"i t o* Tt "

lg, iuta devilops themes taken up by the

entire epic.

DEGENERATION AND THE FIRST WORLD WAR

The age demanded an image of its

accelerated gimace' ' 'gh Setwyn Mauberl$o

Sincethisf i rst instal lmentofPound'sepical legor izesthecom.;;;1il;;l oini"utti", in t i, artistic tife, one may-.also expect it to

"b;;';il;ig"i*i""i"onr.iourness of its age, a literary analogue

of what the Greek-pry.fioiogitts called th-e "phantastikon"-an

entity reflecting th'e' sundr! p.atches of iti macrocosmos'2r

i.a"la, p.i""AJO"-ii" ifiut ii't" ii.tt canto be a vehicle of rectifi-

cation only makesl;; ff it off"r, the reader an estimation of

Sacifice and Setectivity in Ezm pound,s Fint Canto I0I

its cultural surrounding.. l. Guy Davenport notes, ,,The Cantos,for all their ability to.-make the'p-ast transparent, are ultimateryabout their own century. pound's desraii ou"i'[i, iln ,in,",rarely. stated .p-erso.nany

-in the poem, i'r n"ui.tn"i"r, un' urt.in-gent theme."z Like Qdys_seuj sailing away from the razedpalaces.^of J.o.y,_Pound'j first canto 6merges from a ;,mostly

unspecifiable darkness" of The cantos'uuri6u, o*tt, uno t ug-ments, with World yur { looming in the. i-*"Ji"i" f"".'ity,t,i,liln"r_P,oun{ begins to address thZ sociat ;;J;;i;;;"ilonoi,ion,ot hls day in less decorous tones, combining in a new p"r*onuboth social satire .and the emproyment 3r rnoi. uilr".rntythemes, such as ritual sacrifice.zr 'tno""o,- p;;l;,

!*,-*u.milieu.likely resembled the first site encountered by Odysseusand his crewmen, ,,Kimmerian lands, ;;J ;;;p[a?ies /covered with crose-webbed mist,. unpi91"."a ei", i -wi,ti'gti,r".

of sun-rays / Nor with stars stretchedi' (l/3). ' ' .." t

Pound's pre_war reading miy'have suggested theimportance of such i rocare to the e"arly cantos. rn r9r2 poundf19,r!" contempor-ary German historian fuf* Sirn* tiorOuu,,!::t::?::t:ti?n

of History. And his despair about his own agels m:omple.te.agreement with an earlier work of Nordau,s onii_nousry,e.n:rleq Degeneration.,,In our days there have arisen inmore htghly-develo.ped minds vague qualms of a Dusk ofNations, in which all- suns and an rti^ u." graduany waning, andmankind with all its institutions and creati;n;is p.'ri.ti"gi," ,r,"midst. of a dying world."2a If pound was unfamiliar with this ear_rer statement of Nordau's published in 1g95, the Kimmerianimagery of canto one upp"ais all the more appropriate for the:Tl,:l:':"i1.. :yqogn

^ I givgs to Nordau"s iriui""t".iring

1r1::"lig: ly ,1" time pound ptaces the Nekuia ar the beginlnrng ot I.he L:antos, ,,all suns and all stars" are no longer sru?u_

tYlr*:,?.tlt ^]l:_p..pted cities" u." .uit..-ilil;;;;il Zr., 1wrtn grrtter of sun-rays / Nor with stars stretched." pound's lit_erary tropes are identical to Nordau's but suggest an even morepervasive state of degeneration in The dntos' int"ii"ctuutmilieu, a cultural stagnalnry, doubtressry precipitateo u/ir," n'u*killing of the First W-orld War. J

:- <, .Ol" ryTpto.m of degeneration, according to Nordau,ts "a sound of rending in everylradition, and it is ai thoueir the

19. Kenner 37E.i6. ilil: s;,ed Pems (New York: New Directions' l9s6) 6l'

2l.Polund, Ronance 92.

iirff?rf;"t""*tt' Thz Geography of the Imagimtion (New york and San Franciro: panrheon Books,

23. tiush 49.24. Max Nordau, Degenemtion (New york: fr. Appleton and Company, lE95) 2.

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102 Evan R' Kamchalios

morrow would not link itself with today. One epoch ofhistory is unmistakably in its decline, and another is announcingits approach."s Reflecting on the climacteric of World War I,Pound finds this prophecy fulfilled, for "what we call the twenti-eth century ended in 1915,'26 observes Guy Davenport, summa'rizing English modernist sentiment and establishing Nordau'srift with a definitive judgment of historical hindsight rather thanprophecy. For Pound and his contemporaries, "the war seemedto create a huge barrier between the past and the present,blasting centuries of history from beneath Georgian England.'zr

As an implement of socio-historical restoration, theOdyssean descent to the underworld, to the dwelling of Perse-phone, "whose mystery is the power of eternal regeneration,"28deliberately teems with converging historical and aestheticidioms. The linear model of history in which past cedesinevitably into present, and in which discontinuities may therebybe conceived at all, collapses. History no longer sweeps chrono-logically but is purposefully re-configured in anticipation.oj newvalues.- Nordau's

- schism is healed aesthetically with an

"existential historicism" that "does not involve the constructionof this or that linear or evolutionary or genetic history, butrather distinguishes something like a trans-historical event: theexperience, rather by which historicity as such is manifested, bymians of the contact between the historian's mind in the presentand a given synchronic cultural complex from the past.'ze

- As an Odyssean wanderer in search of reactivating

ancient knowledge, and while playing "the role, simultaneously,of amanuensis for the mind of Europe,"s Pound seeks tocounter what in the first canto already appears as the decayingof a botched civilization, a Kimmerian twilight of cultural stag-nation. As Hugh Kenner succinctly writes, "history in the PoundEra seemed calling for such a poem, expecting it to make a dif-ference. Whateverenters the mind's ecologl makes a difference.. . . To offer men's minds a reading of historical patterns mightconsolidate or might alter those patterns, and would anyhowaffect the mind's sense of being at home.'ar

THE MASSES: SOUND AND VISION

But even if Pound's return to an ancient Mediterranean past tob"g]tt The cantos is.an attempt to_ alter history-an artist iervingas the antennae of his race by offering it the wisdom for rectifi-cation - the criteria of sacrifice and Jelectivity require a morecautious reading of the first canto's reactivation'of luminousdetails from the midden of history. while re-configuring the his-torical patterns that would revive his age, pound-dem6nstratesan awareness that.not everything. entering the mind's ecolorymakes a positive difference. Andln this sfirit he is representa-tive of modernist aesthetic practices in generar. Keepine in mindodysseus' refusal of every shade but Tiresias, witnesi the fol-lowing account of literary modernism's emergence: "Modernismconstituted itself through a conscious stratelgr of exclusion, ananxiety of.contamination by its other: an incrdasingly consumingand engulfifg _mass culture."32 And then compaie these line!from Pound's first canto that dramatize the evolution: ,,Thesemany crowded about me; with shouting / pallor upon me, cried!o *y men- for more.beasts. . . I I sat to keep off the impetuousimpotent 9:ud" (I/4). Apparently, the powei with which a poemrncludlng hrstory may counteract the degeneration of its timedepends upo.n its artistic purity: ,,9nly by fortiffing its bound-aries, by maintaining its purity and autonomy, and-by avoidingany contamination with mass culture and wittr the signiffing sys-tems of everyday life can the art work maintain ils a.ru"-rrurvstance."33 The avoidance of contamination in pound,s milieuexpresses itself as an antipathy for mass phenomena, the socialcounterpart to an antipathy for excessive historical detail in theact.of comp^osition. But in what sense are the masses dangerousand fearful? And how will the poetic search for the ruriinousdetails of the past, which is embodied in the first canto bv theseer Tiresias, ward off their pernicious influence?

The answer may be found in the doctrines of Frenchcritics, influencers of Pound, who were writing half a generationbefore the English modernists and whose specula-tions andbiases about the faculties of sound and vision ari revealed in thevery first canto. Julien Benda and Remy de Gourmont, as Vin-cent Sherry notes, "heard an internal, essential connectionbetween musical sensation and populist collectivism. Musicreaches the vitalist core of the listehei, they proposed, and joins

SaciJice and Selectiity in Ezm Pound's Firct Canto

32. Andreu Huysserr "lntroduction,".,.ll er the Great Dividz (Blmmington: Indiana Up, 19g9) vii33. Huvssen 54.

103

25. Nordau 5.26. Davenporl, Geogaplry 166.27. James't-ongenVici,ine MAemist Pocrics of History (Princston: Princton UP' f987) 928. D av e nporl, G eogpphy 152.29. Frcdrii Jamesoi, "-Vinism and Historicism," Nfl' Utemry History ll (f979): 50'51.30. Kenner 37.31. Kenner 362.

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104 Evan R. Kamchalios

all members of the audience in a spurious but formidable unity.The fellow feeling induced in this way represents a form of mobbonding. The excitable mass emerges as the political image-thedirect result-of this provocative melding through sound.Whereas the democratic ear merges, the aristocratic eye divides.. . . The eye also achieves the distinctions on which clear concep-tual intelligence relies; it thus provides the emblem and instru-ment of a ruling intellectual elite."34

After the mass conflict of World War I, the ear is forPound the particular weakness of mass culture-"the soft spotthrough which the people can be collectivized, manipulated forthe purposes of total war."35 As an instrument of culturalrestoration, the first canto should repudiate the aural mecha-nism of demagoguery, electing vision over sound. In its overallstructure, the movement from the clamoring shades of the deadto the prophecy of Tiresias confirms the selection of things seenrather than heard. But Pound's convictions about the dangers oforal culture can best be glimpsed in a brief article he wrote forPoetry in July 1916. The very title, "The Constant Preaching tothe Mob," reveals the content of the spoken word and its powersof mass deception. "Time and again the old lie. . . . Deceivingthe ignorant is by some regarded as evil, but it is the dema-gogue's business to bolster up his position and to show thatGod's noblest work is the demagogue. Therefore we read for theone-thousand-one-hundred-and-eleventh time that poetry ismade to entertain. As follows: 'The beginning of English poetry. . . made by a rude war-faring people for the entertainment ofmen-at-arms, or for men at monks'tables."'s The demagogueryof mass culture shares the same vocal immediacy as the poet'svoice in oral performance, "now that it has been conscripted tothe efforts of mass war."37 The selection of the Nekuia as thefirst canto nine years later deliberately avoids the dangers ofsonority, though, since Pound expresses this opinion of it in thesame article from 1916: "'The beginnings-for entertainment'-has the author ever read the Seafarer in Anglo-Saxon? Will theauthor tell us for whose benefit these lines, . . . for whose enter-tainment they were made? They were made for no man's enter-tainment, bul because a man believing in silence found himselfunable to withhold himself from speaking. . . . Such poems are

Sacrifice and Selectivity in Ezm pound,s Fint Canto rcs

not made for after-dinn_er speakers, nor was the ereventh book9f the. odystry.stin it flatters the mob to ten them i-hat trreirrmportance rs so great that the solace of lonely men, and thelordliest of the artC, was created for they amusement.,,38

Trhe Nekuia is the perfect. introduction to an epic ofcultural restoration because iti foundation lies not ln orur "o*-munication but in the artist's private silence. ft, i._"onfieirution

of.history and.the elaboration of its them., ui"lil..*ir"" trans_missable only in--the silent act of reading, th";;i;;i'rp!".n orAnglo-saxon alliteration audible only ls a ,,purely imaginedsound."3e And as the emblem of clear-conceptual intelligenceand the intellectual glite 1vho. pracrice it, thei""uity-ll..""iri.",embodied for pound by th.e ironicalry uiino ,"", iiresias, ois-closes the radiant gists and luminous details of which riiVonto,are built. Atter summoning-the wisdom of the past in sacrificialritual and selecting its e-diry,ing episocles, piunO- piu"e, tt,.appearance of Aphrodite at the ionclusion of the firit canto as::Trlllg :nyJhe eye could perceive, ,,radianr and intelligibleIorm sorted trom all other objects,"ro the visual emblem of"civilizations at their most."4r And while priuileein;'in"

"lit"faculty of vision in the first canro, pound t.ui,rroi,n1- n?-r"tr inroa sort oJ Tiresias, informing his own time of its degeneracy andgling for its renovation. As James Longenbach *iit"r, IFounddid consider himself an_inspired interprlter; especiaily'afier hesaw the First world war-wipe.away cenfuries of "Europeanhistory, he felt that the conservation oi the p; ;d;";".t'uponthe efforts of an enlightened few.,,42

CONCLUSION

whereas Pound openly cleclares his admiration for the merodi-ous.language of ancient Greek in his correspondence and earrycritical.writilgf, sacrifice ancl selectivity as well as the historicalperiod in which the first canto was writlen reveal a reorientationof.his explicitly stated values, both aesthetic an<J cultural. Thepnce ol uslng the sustained rhythms of Anglo-Saxon alliterationrn narrating the odyssean blood ritual ii to draw too muchprominence to the medium of sound itself. Rather than holdins-38. Poun4 Litemm Esavs &.39. Sherrv 52.zf0. Daveirporl Cities 108.41. Poun4 Selected lzrre,t 3JG.42. longenbach 95.

3. Vincent Sherry, Em Pound Wyndhan I'uis, and Radicat Modemism (New York: Oxford UP'1993) 4.35. Sherry 53.36.Polu,nd, Litemry Essays 64.37. Sherry 53.

Page 8: Sacrifice and Selectivity in Ezra Pound's First Canto

106 Evan R' Kamchalios

tosether the various sections of the poem, sound distracts rather

ffi;;;;;;ri.,,"nr".u fact Babette Deutsch appeared to realize

in her estimation of Pound in 1933 as a soliloqulzlng ano olgres-

rin" t"t of narrative voices. Though Pound may.sggm to over-

toot-ttt"t" aural shortcomings by placing the richly sonorous

liri "unto

at the beginning 6f nit epic poem'.the--9ve.njs. that

;;l;H;i;;re and his ;ew aniipathy toiound during.World War I

;fiil"'11," i"^0". io r"-"u'utuaie Pound's seeming praise ofsound.I t isnottrueforPoundthatthemediumofsoundistobeavoided at any

"ori, fo. as an artist he remain-s-capable of

"-oiouins it ri,ittr

"itr"-" care in the service of beauty' His

;;,ili;;;f"'ioi tt "

foetic effects wrought by sound, .therefore,

""ni"rnuin intact *f,i1" dir"ouraging thJm at a time when sound

serves the purpose of war-time-dfteneration. In other words,

;,;;;'il.i!ifJging of vjqiol over i-he other sense perceptions

remains consonant *iit ttit desire to bring about a.renovation of

""ltur"f and intellectual life. And the ritual sacrifice and selec-

tivitv of Odvsseus in Homer's Odyssey, by isolating.those frag-

*"tttt from history that disclose vision like the prophet I rrestas

i;ih; undenuorld, ui" fo. Pound the most effeciive means to his

restorative end.

CAMERON McWHIRTER and RAMSAY MUHLY

SENOUS CHARACTER TO FUNI'IY MAN:EZRA POUND'S BRIEF CORRESPONDENCE

WIT H AL EXAN D E R WO O L LC OTT

Despite his disdain for American academ ia, EzraPound alwaysmaintained strong ties with his undergraduate alma mater,Hamilton College. He made a special effort to stay in touch withfavorite professors, including Joseph "Bib" Ibbotson, his instruc-tor in Anglo-Saxon and Hebrew.

The professor and the 1905 graduate correspondedfor years.r In early 1937, Ibbotson -having just retired as Hamil-ton's librarian-traveled to Europe with his wife. After touringGermany, the couple called on Pound in Rapallo. During thevisit,Ibbotson and Pound discussed another Hamilton alumnus:Alexander Humphreys Woollcott, the notorious "Man WhoCame to Dinner" and a member of the class of 1909. In 1937,Woollcott (1887-1943) was at the height of his fame as one ofAmerica's preeminent men of letters. To the American public, ifnot to the intellectual class, he represented sophistication, witand high culture.

Certainly, Woollcott, former drama critic f.or TheNew York Times and The New Yorkr, had far surpassed Poundin popularity.2 Woollcott'sWile Rome Bums (1934), a collectionof previously published essays, was a great success that went intonumerous reprints. His follow-up, an anthology called TheWoollcott Readcr: Bypatlu in the Realm of Gold (1935), was alsoa best seller.

But Woollcott's fame was chiefly spread through anew medium, one that fascinated Pound: radio. His twice weeklyevening program, "The Town Crier," aired on the ColumbiaBroadcasting System. Woollcott's voice was heard coast to coast.

l, fu Ezm Pound: Irtte8 to lbMso\ 1935-1952, eds. Vittoria I. Mondolfo and Margaret Hurley(Orono, Maine: National Poetry Foundatio[ 1979).2. This disparity was c:ven true as regards their alma mater. Pound trryeled to the United Stales in 1939to rcceive an honorary degree from Flamilton as a Doctor of Literature. Woollcotl though younger,had alresdy rcceived the encomium in 1924.