Some Notes on "The Cantos"

The following specific observations are mine: "The Cantos" begins with writing derived in style, word choice, and meter; from John Milton's "Paradise Lost." It ends with an imagery metaphor redrawn from the end of "The Fall of Hyperion" by John Keats--the final choice of topic readdresses and reasseses (it retracts a vehement exclamation or edict) an earlier comment about beauty--"Beauty is difficult,"1 the theme of "The Cantos;" derved from the beginning stanza of John Keats' "Endymion"2--and art within the context of the ending thematic discussion about the poet and his divine creation in an infernal real world."3

The Chinese characters and vignettes in "The Cantos" represent (esp w2) attempts for Italian conquest--digging for China as a new hell for Italy, and new emporers-- exhorts against the Germans (the Huns at the time), also the Austrians; the English (orientalists & ditto); and the Americans (new continent as parallel to (digging to "hell.") Pound, who married an Irish woman, Dorothy Yeats, the daughter of WB Yeats;--also uses this metaphor in "The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter"4). (If the river-merchant has to do with either the River Po (It-see Byron5) or Venitian gondoliers(also same//)

As a poetic reference, the use of the Chinese characters, given the theme of "Inferno"--and the classical setting in Italy, expresses the threats to the location and the source of classicism at the time, and is not only a demonstration of scholarly erudition of oriental aesthetics in poetry." note: Ezra Pound became interested in (and began a long study of) Chinese literature when he was in London, before he went to Italy.

The ending? "Olga," most probably refers to the fate of the Russian poet, Marina Tsvetayeva, the Russian poet who was imprisoned and subsequently died after the torturous conditions in a Siberian camp under Stalin's government. In such conditions, would beauty be difficult? Marina Tsvetayeva, who wrote beautiful lyrical and emotive poems, and her suffering; at this point in The Cantos, causes Pound to reconsider whether there is intrinsic value in beauty (John Keats "Endymion," "a thing of beauty is a joy forever")2(a). Pound's theme at this point in the work, is that the poet (as in Dante) creates a paradise out of the hell in which people live. He ends with the concluding image from "The Fall of Hyperion;" an obsidian stone reflects the name of the poet.


FOOTNOTES:

Pound, Ezra, "The Cantos of Ezra Pound," (New Directions Publishing Company, New York) 1996.  (paperback edition).

Themes and Conclusion

1Theme:  "Beauty is difficult"  (Ezra Pound, "The Cantos,"  LXXV, LXXX)
Pound, Ezra, "The Cantos of Ezra Pound," (New Directions Publishing Company, New York) 1996.  (paperback edition).


compare material with:  sources and discussion:

1, and 1(a) "Endymion," (Book I, ll.1-24), Keats, John, "Complete Poems and Selected Letters of John Keats," (Random House, New York) 1994, Modern Library Paperback Edition 2001.

2"The Fall of Hyperion:  A Vision," (Canto II, ll.49-61) cf. (Canto I, ll.460-463, image), (Canto I, ll. 282-310), Keats, John, (Random House, New York) 1994, Modern Library Paperback Edition 2001.

Organization and structure:  conceptual themes, such as virtue, courage,

compare with sources and chronology of sequencing:  see also Keats, Byron--The British Romantic Poets--and Italy (neo-classicism and the British Romantics) for sources for point-of-vew and connecting material

Milton, John, "Paradise Lost, A Norton Critical Edition," (edited by Scott Elledge) (W.W. Norton and Company, New York) 1975. (paperback edition)

Alighieri, Dante, "The Intferno," translated by John Ciardi (Signet Classics, New York) 2001.  (paperback edition)

Alighieri, Dante, "The Purgatorio," translated by John Ciardi (Signet Classics, New York) 2001.  (paperback edition)

Alighieri, Dante, "The Paradiso," translated by John Ciardi (Signet Classics, New York) 2001.  (paperback edition)

One other Pound poem and a conception:

3,(p.52)Pound, Ezra, "Selected Poems of Ezra Pound," (New Directions Publishing Company, New York) 1996.  (paperback edition)

4"To the Po.  June 2, 1819," Gordon, George; "Lord Byron, Selected Poetry," (edited with an Introduction and Notes by Jerome J. McGann) (Oxford World's Classics, Oxford University Press, New York) 1998.  (paperback edition)  (compare ideas and form of footnote 3, poem, Pound, and footnote 4 poem, Byron--only, add a gondolier's hat(!)--"Beppo,"?, other Byron)