Author Archives: quackenbush

A strong Whitman influence here, emphasized by the
repeated “one year”: cf Walt’s “I hear…”
Where WW used these rhythms to celebrate the energy
and optimism of 19th Century U.S., Ez uses them
to record a lot of energetic war and treachery–
the world in which, and against which, Sigismundo
built his Temple:

One year floods rose,
One year they fought in the snows,
One year hail fell, breaking the trees and walls.
Down here in the marsh they trapped him
            in one year,
And he stood in the water up to his neck
            to keep the hounds off him,
And he floundered about in the marsh
            and came in after three days,
That was Astorre Manfredi of Faenza
            who worked the ambush
            and set the dogs off to find him,
In the marsh, down here under Mantua,
And he fought in Fano, in a street fight,
            and that was nearly the end of him;
And the Emperor came down and knighted us,
And they had a wooden castle set up for fiesta,
And one year Basinio went out into the courtyard
            Where the lists were, and the palisades
            had been set for the tourneys,
And he talked down the anti-Hellene,
            And there was an heir male to seignor,
            And Madame Ginevra died.
And he, Sigismundo, was Capitan for the Venetians.
And he had sold off small castles
            and built the great Rocca to his plan,
And he fought like ten devils at Monteluro
            and got nothing but the victory
And old Sforza bitched us at Pesaro;
            (sic) March the 16th:

The “narrative voice” seems that of a common
soldier who served under Sigismundo.
“fought like ten devils” “Sforza bitched us”:
we come closer to modern vernacular,
in contrast to the previous Canti.

“that Messire Alessandro Sforza
            is become lord of Pesaro
through the wangle of the Illus. Sgr. Mr. Fedricho d’Orbino
Who worked the wangle with Galeaz
            through the wiggling of Messer Francesco,
Who waggled it so that Galeaz should sell Pesaro
            to Alex and Fossembrone to Feddy;

Wangle, wangle, wiggle, waggle: a
snakey imagery…..

and he hadn’t the right to sell.
And this he did bestialmente; that is Sforza did bestialmente
as he had promised him, Sigismundo, per capitoli
            to see that he, Malatesta, should have Pesaro”
And this cut us off from our south half
            and finished our game, thus, in the beginning,
And he, Sigismundo, spoke his mind to Francesco
            and we drove them out of the Marches.

And the King o’ Ragona, Alphonse le roy d’Aragon,
            was the next nail in our coffin,
And all you can say is, anyway,
that he Sigismundo called a town council
And Valturio said “as well for a sheep as a lamb”
            and this change-over (haec traditio)
As old bladder said “rem eorum saluavit“
Saved the Florentine state; and that, maybe, was something.
And “Florence our natural ally” as they said in the meeting
            for whatever that was worth afterward.
And he began building the TEMPIO,
            and Polixena, his second wife, died.
And the Venetians sent down an ambassador
And said “speak humanely,
But tell him it’s no time for raising his pay.”
And the Venetians sent down for an ambassador
            with three pages of secret instructions
To the effect:  Did he think the campaign was a joy-ride?
And old Wattle-wattle slipped into Milan
But he coun’t stand Sidg being as high with the Venetians
And he talked it over with Feddy; and Feddy said ” Pesaro”
And old Foscari wrote “Caro mio
“If we split with Francesco you can have it
“And we’ll help you in every way possible.”
            But Feddy offered it sooner.
And Sigismundo got up a few arches,
And stole that marble in Classe, “stole” that is,
Casus est talis:
            Foscari doge, to the prefect of Ravenna
“Why, what, which, thunder, damnation????”

Casus est talis:

Casus est talis: That’s it, that’s the way it is.
Cf: Nec Spe Nec Metu [neither hope nor fear]
in Canto III.

            Filippo, commendatary of the abbazia
Of Sant Apollinaire Classe, Cardinal of Bologna
That he did one night (quandam nocte) sell to the
Illmo. Do., Do. Sigismund Malatesta
Lord of Arimininum, marble, porphyry, serpentine,
Whose men, Sigismundo’s, came with more than an hundred
two wheeled ox carts and deported, for the beautifying
of the tempio where was Santa Maria in Trivio
Where men, Sigismundo’s, came with more than an hundred
two wheeled ox carts and deported, for the beautifying’
of the tempio where was Santa Maria in Trivio
Where the same are now on the walls.  Four hundred
ducats to be paid back to the abbazia by the said swindling
Cardinal or his heirs.
            grnnh! rrnnh, pthg.
wheels, plaustra, oxen under night-shield,

Very cinematic: the grunts unite the Cardinal
and the oxen.

And on the 13th of August: Aloysius Purtheo,
The next abbot, to Sigismundo, receipt for 200 ducats
Corn-salve for the damage done in that scurry.

And there was the row about that German-Burgundian female

Sigismundo was accused of raping her so violently that
she died. Historians tend to reject this, but the
Inquisition included it among the 100-or-so
charges of which they found him guilty.
In a letter EP describes the charges as
“‘shrouded in  mystery’ or rather lies”

And it was his messianic year, Poliorcetes,
            but he was being a bit too POLUMETIS

polymetis: “many-minded”; many-sided; well-rounded–
a stock Homeric tag for Odysseus, in case the reader hasn’t already noticed the Odysseus/Malatesta
parallels.

And the Venetians wouldn’t give him six months vacation.

And he went down to the old brick heap of Pesaro
            and waited for Feddy
And Feddy finally said “I am coming!…
            …to help Alessandro.”
And he said: “This time Mister Feddy has done it.”
He said: “Broglio, I’m the goat.  This time
            Mr. Feddy has done it (m’l’ha calata).”
And he’d lost his job with the Venetians,
And the stone didn’t come in from Istria:
And we sent men to the silk war;
And Wattle never paid up on the nail
            Though we signed on with Milan and Florence;
And he set up the bombards in muck down by Vada
            where nobody else could have set ’em
            and he took the wood out of the bombs
            and made ’em of two scoops of metal
And the jobs getting smaller and smaller,
            Until he signed on with Siena;
            And that time they grabbed his post-bag.
And what was it, anyhow?
            Pitigliano, a man with a ten acre lot,
Two lumps of tufa,
            and they’d taken his pasture land from him,
And Sidg had got back their horses,
            and he had two big lumps of tufa
            with six hundred pigs in the basements.
And the poor devils were dying of cold.
And this is what they found  in the post-bag:

By analogy with “Found Art” one can consider these
documents a “found ideogram.” They exemplify
Sigismundo Malatesta’s polymetis, and the mad
chaotic creative vortex in which he lived:

                        Ex Arimino die xxii Decembris
     “Magnifice ac potens domine, mi singularissime
“I advise yr. Lordship how
“I have been with master Alwidge who
“has shown me the design of the nave that goes in the middle,
“of the church and the design for the roof and…”
“JHesus,
“Magnifico exso.  Signor Mio
“Sence to-day I am recommanded that I have to tel you my
“father’s opinium that he has shode to Mr. Genare about the
“valts of the cherch…etc…
  “Giovane of the Master alwise P. S.  I think it advisabl that
“I shud go to rome to talk to mister Albert so as I can no
“what he thinks about it rite.

Ez finds the right kinda English for each Italian voice….

“Sagramoro…”

“Illustre signor mio, Messire Battista…”

“First: Ten slabs best red, seven by 15, by one third,
“Eight columns 15 by three and one third
            etc… with carriage, danars 151
“MONSEIGNEUR:
  “Madame Isotta has had me write today about St. Galeazzo’s
“daughter.  The man who said young pullets make thin
“soup, knew what he was talking about.  We went to see the
“girl the other day. for all the good that did, and she denied
“the whole matter and kept her end up without losing her
“temper.  I think Madame Ixotta very nearly exhausted the
“matter.  Mi pare che avea decto hogni chossia.  All the
“children are well.  Where you are everyone is pleased and
“happy because of your taking the chateau here we are the
“reverse as you might say drifting without a rudder.  Madame
“Lucrezia has probably, or should have, written to you, I
“suppose you have the letter by now.  Everyone wants to be
“remembered to you.                     21 Dec.  D. de M.”

Ixotta degli Atti, Sigisundo’s longtime mistress and third
wife, here dealing with another of his mistresses.
War, temple-building and multiple mistresses…polymetis indeed.

“…sagramoro to put up the derricks.  There is a supply of
“beams at…”
“MAGNIFICENT LORD WITH DUE REVERENCE:
  “Messire Malatesta is well and asks for you every day.  He
“is so much pleased with his pony, It wd. take me a month
“to write you all the fun he gets out of that pony.  I want to
“again remind you to write to Georgio Rambottom or to his
“boss to fix up that wall to the little garden that madame Isotta
“uses, for it is all flat on the ground now as I have already told
“him a lot of times, for all the good that does, so I am writing
“to your lordship in the matter I have done all that I can, for
“all the good that does as noboddy hear can do anything
“without you.
                “your faithful
                                            LUNARDA DA PALLA.
                                                20 Dec. 1454.”

Siggy even had time to be a good father/while
still supervising the Tempio from a distance.

“…gone over it with all the foremen and engineers.  And
“about the silver for the small medal…”

“Magnifice ac potens…
            “because the walls of…”

“Malatesta de Malatestis ad Magnificum Dominum Patremque
“suum.

“Exso. Dno. et Dno. sin Dno. Sigismundum Pandolfi Filium
            “malatestis Capitan General

“Magnificent and Exalted Lord and Father in especial my
“lord with due recommendation:  your letter has been pre-
“sented to me by Gentilino da Gradara and with it the bay
“pony (ronzino baictino) the which you have sent me, and
“which appears in my eyes a fine caparison’s charger, upon
“which I intend to learn all there is to know about riding, in
“consideration of yr. paternal affection for which I thank
“your excellency thus briefly and pray you continue to hold
“me in this esteem notifying you by the bearer of this that
“we are all in good health, as I hope and desire your Exct.
“Lordship is also: with continued remembrance I remain
            “Your son and servant
                            MALATESTA DE MALATESTIS.
            Given in Rimini, this the 22nd day of December
                                    anno domini 1454”
                            (in the sixth year of his age)

Damn well-written for a 6-year-old; but then Sigismundo
led his first army at age 13…

“ILLUSTRIOUS PRINCE:
  “Unfitting as it is that I should offer counsels to Hannibal…”

”     Magnifice ac potens domine, domine mi singularissime,
“humili recomendatione premissa etc.  This to advise your
“Mgt. Ldshp. how the second load of Veronese marble has
“finally got here, after being held up at Ferrara with no end
“of fuss and botheration, the whole of it having been then
“unloaded.
  “I learned how it happened, and it has cost a few florins to
“get back the said load which had been seized for the skipper’s
“debt and defalcation; he having fled when the lighter was
“seized.  But that Yr. Mgt. Ldshp. may not lose the moneys
“paid out on his account I have had the lighter brought here
“and am holding it, against his arrival.  If not we still have
“the lighter.
  “As soon as the Xmas fetes are over I will have the stone
“chapel; first because the heavy frosts wd. certainly spoil
“the job; secondly because the aliofants aren’t yet here and
“and one can’t get the measurements for the cornice to the columns
“that are to rest on the aliofants.
  “They are doing the stairs to your room in the castle… I
“have had Messire Antonio degli Atti’s court paved and the
“stone benches put in it.
  “Ottavian is illuminating the bull.  I mean the bull for
“the chapel.  All the stone-cutters are waiting for spring
“weather to start work again.
  “the tomb is all done except part of the lid, and as soon as
“Messire Agostino gets back from Cesena I will see that he
“finishes it, ever recommending me to yr. Mgt. Ldshp.
                                             “believe me yr. faithful
                                              PETRUS GENARIIS.”

That’s what they found in the post-bag
And some more of it to the effect that
            he “lived and ruled”

Again, the theme of fragments, shelved [or shored]

“et amava perdutamente Ixotta degli Atti“
e “ne fu degna“
            “constans in proposito
“Placuit oculis principis
“pulchra aspectu“
“populo grata (Italiaeque decus)

“And he loved Ixotta degli Atti to distraction, and
she deserved it; she that he loved to look upon,
and she pleased the people and was the ornament
of Italy”
The Temple has his initial, S, intertwined with hers, I,
all over the walls. Every naked Venus has her face.

“and built a temple so full of pagan works”
            i. e. Sigismund
and in the style of “Past ruin’d Latium”
The filigree hiding the gothic,
            with a touch of rhetoric in the whole
And the old sarcophagi,
            such as lie smothered in grass, by San Vitale.

In Canto 10 the Inquisition has more to say
about this pagan Temple and its maker…..

These fragments you have shelved (shored).

Paraphrase from Eliot’s “Waste Land.”
Both Ez and Tom felt European culture
only survived in “fragments” after World War I.
Eliot thought they cd be “shored” [rescued]
Ez worries they might only get “shelved” [preserved.]
Cf MAKE IT NEW theme from Emperor Ching later.

 “Slut!”  “Bitch!”  Truth and Calliope
Slanging each other sous les lauriers:

Who gets the laurel: fact [Truth] or the Muse
of Epic Poetry? Ez ain’t sure. Cf opening
of Canto II: which Sordello “is” the “real”
Sordello?

That Alessandro was negroid. 

Alessando de Medici again, still more full of life
than 1919 London, bringing another fact
or rumor with him.

            And Malatesta
Sigismund:
             Frater tamquam
Et compater carissime: tergo
                               …hanni de
                               …dicis
                               …entia

The hero of the next four Cantos appears as
part of a mostly ruined document….
sorta like the letter containing all history
found in the garbage dump in Finnegans Wake.

And suddenly Sigismundo speaks directly to us
in “his own words” of at least in Ez’s invention
of a kind of English isomorphic to Sigd’s
15 Century aristocrat/soldier Italian:

Equivalent to:
                               Giohanni of the Medici,
                               Florence.
Letter received, and in the matter of our Messire Gianozio,
One from him also, sent on in form and with all due dispatch,
Having added your wishes and memoranda.
As to arranging peace between you and the King of Ragona,
So far as I am concerned, it wd.
Give me the greatest possible pleasure,
At any rate nothing wd. give me more pleasure
    or be more acceptable to me,
And I shd. like to be party to it, as was promised me,
            either as participant or adherent.
As for my service money,
Perhaps you and your father wd. draw it
And send it on to me as quickly as possible.

They all wrote with unction and
lubricating oil in those days
even when asking to be paid;
but Sigismundo will surprise us:

And tell the Maestro di pentore
that there can be no question of
His painting the walls for the moment,
As the mortar is not yet dry
And it wd. be merely work chucked away
                 (buttato via)
But I want it to be quite clear, that until the chapels are ready
I will arrange for him to paint something else
So that both he and I shall
Get as much enjoyment as possible from it,
And in order that he may enter my service
And also because you write me that he needs cash,
I want to arrange with him to give him so much per year
And to assure him that he will get the sum agreed on.
You may say that I will deposit security
For him wherever he likes.
And let me have a clear answer,
For I mean to give him good treatment
So that he may come to live the rest
Of his life in my lands –
Unless you put him off it –
And for this I mean to make due provision,
So that he can work as he likes,
Or waste his time as he likes
(affatigandose per suo piacere o no
non gli manchera la provixione mai)
                                               never lacking provision.
                 SIGISMUNDUS PANDOLPHUS DE MALATESTIS
                 In campo Illus. Domini Venetorum die 7
                 aprilis 1449 contra Cremonam

Sigd wrote that age 32 after 19 years as a professional
soldier-for-hire [yeah, he started at 13];|
his attitude toward artists much pleased Ez
and, as we shall shortly learn, wd please Kungfutse too

The money Sigd earned as killer-for-hire
went largely to creating the monument he
left behind, the  first Pagan temple built
in Itay in 1000 years, Tempio Malatesta

Pound’s Voluntarist Economics differs from
Deterministic Economics in positing creative
leaps of intelligence as ‘chaotic’ factors

 . . . . . and because the aforesaid most illustrious
Duke of Milan
Is content and wills that the aforesaid Lord Sigismundo
Go into the service of the most magnificent commune
of the Florentines
For alliance defensive of the two states,
Therefore between the aforesaid Illustrious Sigismund
And the respectable man Agnolo della Stufa,
                        ambassador, sindic and procurator
Appointed by the ten of the baily, etc., the half
Of these 50,000 florins, free of attainder,
For 1400 cavalry and four hundred foot
To come into the terrene of the commune
                        or elsewhere in Tuscany
As please the ten of the Baily,
And to be himself there with them in the service
of the commune
With his horsemen and his footmen
                   (gente di cavollo e da pie) etc.
Aug. 5 1452, register of the Ten of the Baily.

Even in documents as “dusty” as this Ez helps us
see the meaning of the STYLE: these guys sure
wuz perlite even about minute details…
sorta like the Confucian rulers we’ll meet later

From the forked rocks of Penna and Billi, on Carpegna
with the road leading under the cliff,
                        in the wind-shelter into Tuscany,
And the north road, toward the Marecchia
                        the mud-stretch full of cobbles.

Ez and Hemingway went over the scenes of Sigd’s
most famous battles, with Hem explaining military
details to the Quaker-raised Ez. Soomehow,
the above Imagist impressonism emoiged

Lyra:
” Ye spirits who of olde were in this land
Each under Love, and shaken,
Go with your lutes, awaken
The summer within her mind,
Who hath not Helen for peer
                  Yseut nor Batsabe.”

An early poem by Sigismundo; Ez stresses
the troubadour [Eleanor] influence.

With the interruption:

[always interruptions. Sigd lived that kind
of life….]

            Magnifico, compater et carissime
            (Johanni di Cosimo)
Venice has taken me on again
            At 7,000 a month, fiorini di Camera.
For 2,000 horse and four hundred footmen,
And it rains here by the gallon,
We have had to dig a new ditch.
In three or four days
I shall try to set up the bombards.

“I sing eternal war between light and mud”–Canto 73
Light and joy again:

Under the plumes, with the flakes and small wads of colour
Showering from the balconies
With the sheets spread from windows,
            with leaves and small branches pinned on them,
Arras hung from the railings; out of the dust,
With pheasant tails upright on their forelocks,
            The small white horses, the
Twelve girls riding in order, green satin in pannier’d habits;
Under the baldachino, silver’d with heavy stitches,
Bianca Visconti, with Sforza,
The peasant’s son and the duchess,
To Rimini, and to the wars southward,
Boats drawn on the sand, red-orange sails in the creek’s mouth,
For two days’ pleasure, mostly “la pesca,” fishing,
Di cui in the which he, Francesco, godeva molto.
            To the war southward
In which he, at that time, received an excellent hiding.

Best imagist outburst since Canto 2….

And the Greek emperor was in Florence
            (Ferrara having the pest)
And with him Gemisthus Plethon
Talking of the war about the temple at Delphos,
And of POSEIDON, concret Allgemeine,

Florence hosted a meeting between the Pope and
the Patriarch  of the Eastern Church, and there
Sigd met Gemisto Plethon, a neo-pagan
philosopher who profoundly impressed him.

Gemisto conceived “the sea” and/or the “sea-god”
as concrete abstractions, things you can experience
but still not totally concrete — e.g. the sea
changes every nanosecond but Poiseiden, Lyr,
So-Shu, the concrete images of the sea
reveal a form behind the metamorphoses

Many commentators believe Gemisto’s ideas
about seagods inspired the aquatic emphasis
of the Tempio Malatesta

And telling of how Plato went to Dionysius of Syracuse
Because he had observed that tyrants
Were most efficient in all that they set their hands to,
But he was unable to persuade Dionysius
To any amelioration.

I can’t read this  without thinking about poor
idealistic Ez trying to sell his ideas to Mussolini…..
but we leap ahead to Sigd’s chaotic & tragic
last years:

And in the gate at Ancona, between the foregate
And the main-gates
Sigismundo, ally, come through an enemy force,
To patch up some sort of treaty, passes one gate
And they shut it before they open the next gate, and he says:
“Now you have me,
           Caught lke a hen in a coop.”
And the captain of the watch says: “Yes Messire Sigismundo,
But we want this town for ourselves.”
            With the church against him, 

[for heresy and paganism]

With the Medici bank for itself,   
With wattle Sforza against him
Sforza Francesco, wattle-nose,
Who married him (Sigismundo) his (Francesco’s)
Daughter in September,
Who stole Pesaro in October (as Broglio says “bestialmente“),
Who stood with the Venetians in November,
With the Milanese in December,
Sold Milan in November, stole Milan in December
Or something of that sort,
Commanded the Milanese in the spring,
the Venetians at midsummer,
The Milanese in the autumn,
And was Naples’ ally in October,
            He, Sigismundo, templum aedificavit

HE BUILT A TEMPLE, GODDAM IT,
WITH ALL THAT AGAINST HIM

In Romagna, teeming with cattle thieves,
            with the game lost in mid-channel,
And never quite lost till’ 50,
            and never quite lost till the end, in Romagna,
So that Galeaz sold Pesaro “to get pay for his cattle.”

And Poictiers, you know, Guillaume Poictiers,
            had brought the song up out of Spain
with the singers and viels.  But here they wanted a setting.
By Marecchia, where the water comes down over the cobbles
And Mastin had come to Verucchio,
            and the sword, Paolo il Bello’s,
            caught in the arras
And, in Este’s house, Parisina
Paid
For this tribe paid always,

She paid with more than money. Story
comes later.

and the house
Called also Atreides’,
And the wind is still for a little
And the dusk rolled
            to one side a little
And he was twelve at the time, Sigismundo,
And no dues had been paid for three years,
And his elder brother gone pious;
And that year they fought in the streets,
And that year he got out to Cesena
            And brought back the levies,
And that year he crossed by night over Foglia, and…

Some consider Sigismundo one of the worst
monsters of the Rennaisance; some consider
him its most maligned hero. I think Ez
presents him as a case in the development
of Western Individualism
another heir of Odysseus
OUTSIDE Dante’s categories
a one man hell/purgatory/paradiso

But we have 3 more canti about him
coming at us

Truth or Calliope?
Which the slut, which the bitch?

BTW, Pound called Cantos 1-7 “preparation of the palate.”
If that metaphor seems obscure, consider ’em
an OVERTURE presenting themes that get
explored and developed in Cantos 8-120….

Palace in smoky light,
Troy but a heap of smouldering boundary stones,

a] return to Homeric world: recurs thematically
as a root of Occidental culture. “To know what
precedes and what follows will assist yr comprehension
of Dao”–Kungfutse quoted later.
b] first short image of the waste and destruction of
warfare, a theme developed in much longer
passages later.
“SmOky…TrOY…smOUlder…bOUnd…stOne”: nice assonance

ANAXIFORMINGES! Aurunculeia!

An EXTREME example of EP’s ideal of
“condensation.” Foist woid, from Greek of Pindar,
relates to poetry as source of civilization;
second woid, from Latin of Catullus, relates
to sexuality as root of family/tribe/society etc

Hear me. Cadmus of Golden Prows!

Cadmus: another ornery individualist:
metamorph of Odysseus archetype

The silver mirrors catch the bright stones and flare,
Dawn, to our waking, drifts in the green cool light;
Dew-haze blurs, in the grass, pale ankles moving.
Beat, beat, whirr, thud, in the soft turf
under the apple trees,
Choros nympharum, goat-foot, with the pale foot
alternate;

The vegetative gods again. Cf Kung on respect
for same [later] and Frazer on fertility-worship.
EP utilized Frazer as early as “Canzone: The Yearly Slain”
[1907] and, while working on these early Cantos,
edited Eliot’s “The Waste Land,” which also
incorporates the death/resurrection of
vegetation gods.

Crescent of blue-shot waters, green-gold in the shallows,
A black cock crows in the sea-foam;

“black cock crows”: more subtle aliteration than
Swinburne, I’d say.
I suppose everybody living on the Mediterranean
notices its beautiful variety; but who ever
found such precise images to convey that?
“tin flash in sun-dazzle,” “green-gold in shallows,” WOW!!

And by the curved, carved foot of the couch,
claw-foot and lion head, an old man seated
Speaking in the low drone… :
Ityn!
Et ter flebiliter, Ityn, Ityn!

The legend of Itys/Ityn involves rape
and cannibalism as revenge for
rape: i.e. mind under passion,
Pound’s version of Hell.
[Shakespeare used rape and cannibalism
similarly in Titus Andronicus]
The Greek legend metamorphs to a medieval
horror story involving the same elements:

And she went toward the window and cast her down,
            “All the while, the while, swallows crying:
Ityn!
            “It is Cabestan’s heart in the dish.”
            “It is Cabestan’s heart in the dish?”
            “No other taste shall change this.”
And she went toward the window,
                 the slim white stone bar
Making a double arch;
Firm even fingers held to the firm pale stone;
Swung for a moment,
                and the wind out of Rhodez
Caught in the full of her sleeve.
            . . . the swallows crying:
‘Tis.  ‘Tis.  Ytis!

Cabestan got done in by the husband of a lady
he courted. The husband then served her Cabestan’s
heart for dinner, telling her it was a deer’s.
After she finished the meal, hubby told her
The Awful Truth and she jumped to her death.
Note how “It is….’Tis” swings back and forth
between the two legends, ancient Greek
and medieval French.
Sordello and Cabestan both sponsored by
Eleanor of Acquitaine, who pops in and out
of these early Cantos.
“Firm even fingers held to the firm pale stone”–
EP began exploring this kind  of limpid simplicity
in his first Imagist poems, 1912, but only reached
this level in his first
Chinese translations, 1915, guided
by the notebooks of Ernest Fenollosa.
“the while, the while:” to me, the frequent
use of repetition in this Canto invokes both “poor
old Homer” and more recent sea-chanties.

           Actaeon…
             and a valley,
The valley is thick with leaves, with leaves, the trees,

The sunlight glitters, glitters a-top,

“with leaves, with leaves” “glitters, glitters”–
see what I mean?

-Like a fish-scale roof,
            Like the church roof in Poictiers
If it were gold.
            Beneath it, beneath it
Not a ray, not a slivver, not a spare disc of sunlight
Flaking the black, soft water;
Bathing the body of nymphs, of nymphs, and Diana,
Nymphs, white-gathered about her, and the air, air,
Shaking, air alight with the goddess,
             fanning their hair in the dark,
Lifting, lifting and waffing:
Ivory dipping in silver,
            Shadow’d, o’ershadow’d
Ivory dipping in silver,
Not a splotch, not a lost shatter of sunlight.

What to  say, except what W.H. Auden wrote of
Raymond Chandler: “I wish I could write
that well.”
Allegorical interpretations of Acteaon legend go
back 2500 years. In context of Cantos I suggest:
Actaeon, undisciplined hunter = mind driven
by passion, Hell; Diana nude = sudden vision
of Nature Whole [Dao]; Acteaon turned to
deer = sudden empathy with his victims;
the dogs who devour him = his own
awakened conscience [cf “agenbite of
inwit” in JJ’s *Ulysses*]
That church in Poctier reappears often in
the Paradiso Cantos, oddly linked to
Knights Templar & Mithraism….
Metamorphoses theme continues.

Then Acteaon: Vidal,
Vidal.  It is old Vidal speaking,
            stumbling along in the wood,
Not a patch, not a lost shimmer of sunlight,
            the pale hair of the goddess.

Metamorph of Actaeon into Pierre Vidal,
Vidal into Acteaon.
[Vidal, a poet in tradition of Sordello
and Cabeston, in order to impress a certain
noble lady spread rumor that  he had
magick powers and cd metamorph into
a wolf. Unfortunately, the Holy Inquisition
believed the rumors and he had to flee,
pursued by dogs like Actaeon]

The dogs leap on Actaeon,
            “Hither, hither, Actaeon,”
Spotted stag of the wood;
Gold, gold, a sheaf of hair,
            Thick like a wheat swath,
Blaze, blaze in the sun,
            The dogs leap on Actaeon.
Stumbling, stumbling along in the wood,
Muttering, muttering Ovid:
            “Pergusa… pool… pool… Gargaphia,
“Pool… pool of Salmacis.”
            The empty armour shakes as the cygnet moves.

Since Acteaon unlikely to quote Ovid, Vidal
must speak here, mixing rape legends with the
Acteaon story. Why DO so many Greek gods
appear as serial rapists?????

Thus the light rains, thus pours, e lo soleills plovil
The liquid and rushing crystal
            beneath the knees of the gods.
Ply over ply, thin glitter of water;
Brook film bearing white petals.

Lovely imagery, but where are we now?

The pine at Takasago
            grows with the pine of Ise!

JAYsus Christ, we’ve landed in Japan….
& same themes pursue us. Both pines
started out as humans. Metamorphoses
as common theme in both Occident & Orient.
“Tree of Visages” below from Noh play
about these pines.

The water whilrs up the bright pale sand in the spring’s
                                                                        mouth
“Behold the Tree of the Visages!”
forked branch-tips, flaming as if with lotus.
            Ply over ply
The shallow eddying fluid,
            beneath the knees of the gods.
Torches melt in the glare
            set flame of the corner cook-stall,
Blue agate casing the sky (as at Gourdon that time)
            the sputter of resin,
Saffron sandal so petals the narrow foot: Hymenaeus Io!
            Hymen, Io Hymenaee!  Aurunculeia!
One scarlet flower is cast of the blanch-white stone.

Quotes and translations from Latin marriage songs.
Aurunculeia! as before, from marriage poem
[hymenial] by Catullus.
Scarlet flower on blanch-white stone sounds
like one of EP’s Chinese translations. Ez
learned a lot from Fenollosa.

            And So-Gyoku, saying:
“This wind, sire, is the king’s wind,
            This wind is wind of the palace,
Shaking imperial water-jets.”
            And Hsiang, opening his collar:
“This wind roars in the earth’s bag,
            it lays the water with rushes.”
No wind is the king’s wind.
            Let every cow keep her calf.
“This wind is held in gauze curtains…”
                 No wind is the king’s…

Back to China for the poem’s first statement
of limits on monarchy; humorous, like
Canute vs. the Ocean, but foreshadows
later canti on Coke, Jefferson, Adams
and limitations on all government.

The camel drivers sit in the turn of the stairs,
            Look down on Ecbatan of plotted streets,

Ecbatan: ancient city which allegedly models
the whole universe. Recurs in final Cantos….
[linked to real and imagined Paradiso Terrestre…]

“Danae!  Danae!

Another rape victim; locked in a tower
but Zeus got her anyway, coming as
a shower of gold light.

            What wind is the king’s”
Smoke hangs on the stream,
The peach-trees shed bright leaves in the water,
Sound drifts in the evening haze,
            The bark scrapes at the ford,
Gilt rafters above black water,
            Three steps in an open field,
Gray stone-posts leading…
Pere Henri Jacques would speak with the Sennin, on
                                                      Rokku,
Mount Rokku between the rock and the cedars,

A very tolerant, or very pragmatic, Jesuit, accused
by the Vatican of converting himself to Confucianism
instead of converting Chinese to Christianity.
Here he attempts to communicate with the Sennin,
Chinese isomorphs of the vegetation gods
we’ve already met.

Polhonac,
As Gyges on Thracian platter set the feast,
Cabestan, Tereus,
            It is Cabestan’s heart in the dish,

Vidal, or Ecbatan, upon the gilded tower in Ecbatan
Lay the god’s bride, lay ever, waiting the golden rain.

Danae/Zeus legend interpreted as magick
ritual [hierogamy]

By Garonne.  “Saave!”
The Garonne is thick like paint,
Procession, – “Et sa’ave, sa’ave, sa’ave Regina” –
Moves like a worm, in the crowd.
Adige, thin film of images,
Across the Adige, by Stefano, Madonna in hortulo,
As Cavalcanti had seen her.

A Catholic feast which Ez said [in a letter to his
dad] reminded him of Voodoo.
Guido Cavalcanti: not here by accident. He will reappear
often, as both poet and philosopher.
Dante put Cavalcanti’s family in Hell as
heretics, but EP will dig them up again.

            The Centaur’s heel plants in the earth loam.
And we sit here…
            there in the arena…

More cinematic technique, I think: gods, mortals, places
all seen as from above, like one of Griffith’s
or Kubrick’s tracking shots.

Two themes: [2] the poet in poverty,
enVISIONing the world of the gods;
[2] My Cid as another Odysseus

I sat on the Dogana’s steps
For the gondolas cost too much, that year,

a] Autobiography: Pound at his lowest ebb financially in Venice
1908,unable even to afford a gondola;
b] foreshadowing of Venice/deMedici theme
which will dominate Cantos 17-27;
I love the assonance of Dogona/gondola….

And there were not “those girls”, there was one face,

“those girls”: echo from Browning’s “Sordello.”
“one face”: EP very sensitive to beautiful faces.
Cf Thomas Hardy’s poem about beautiful girl
seen from train, Bernstein’s speech about
ditto seen from Staten Island ferry [Citizen Kane]
etc. The poem later insists that nothing is lost
that lives in memory. Hardy & Bernstein never lost
those girls; EP never lost that face.

And the Buccentoro twenty yards off, howling “Stretti”,
And the lit cross-beams, that year, in the Morosini,
And peacocks in Kore’s house, or there may have been.

Images of beauty of Venice. Medicis later appear
as both heroes [creators of beauty] and
villians [founders of modern banking].
EP oft repeated, “Dante’s map NOT
suitable for our age,” e.g. we recognize
ambiguities, mixes, middles, grey areas……..

              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.

Crowley defined Magick as “causing change by
act of Will.” Psychoanalyst Violet Wirth, student of Crowley,
defined Magick as “causing change in consciousness
by act of Will.” Assuming one of them,
oversimplified for slow learners, which
wd you suspect?
Did EP “imagine” the gods or “perceive” them?

Panisks, and from the oak, dryas,
And from the apple, maelid,
Through all the wood, and the leaves are full of voices,

Vegetation spirits; later we will hear Confucius
urge proper respect for them.
In one sense these gods exist as individuals,
with their own trees even; in another sense
they exist as manifestations or metamorphs
of Dionysus [Canto II].
Cf EP’s “Axiomata,” 1921, “We have no proof
that [the theos] is one, or is many, or is
divisible or indivisible, or is  an ordered
hierarchy culminating, or not culminating,
in a unity…Dogma is bluff based on ignorance.”
The Cantos seem [to me] to lean toward
polytheism, but pantheism and even
monotheism sometimes appear…..

A-whisper, and the clouds bowe over the lake,
And there are gods upon them,
And in the water, the almond-white swimmers,
The silvery water glazes the upturned nipple,

            As Poggio has remarked.

Green veins in the turquoise,

EP always presents precise images…
These I like especially: almond-white,
silvery water, green veins in turquoise.

Or, the gray steps lead up under the cedars.

Chinese theme sneaking in subliminally;
|Confucius ascends such grey steps under
cedars when taking office in Chou [in the Lun Yu]
Now we jump to the Cantar de mi Cid, 1140:
[Pound condenses as he translates]

My Cid rode up to Burgos,
Up to the studded gate between two towers,
Beat with his lance butt, and the child came out,
Una nina de nueve anos,
To the little gallery over the gate, between the towers,
Reading the writ, voce tinnula:
That no man speak to, feed, help Ruy Diaz,
On pain to have his heart out, set on a pike spike
And both his eyes torn out, and all his goods sequestered,
“And here, Myo Cid, are the seals,
The big seal and the writing.”

Myo Cid [a.k.a. Ruy Diaz] at a low point,
like EP at the beginning of this Canto.
“On pain to have his heart out, set on a pike spike”:
the sound conveys the brutality of the age;
note how “pain” reinforces “pike spike”
una nina de nueve anos: an 8-year old girl,
kept in Spanish presumably because      a]
EP liked the sound; b] reminds reader that
we usually look at primary sources in these Cantos
voce tinnula: ringing voice? tinny voice?
I think EZ wd prefer latter if he
translated this phrase….

And he came down from Bivar, Myo Cid,
With no hawks left there on their perches,
And no clothes there in the presses,
And left his trunk with Raquel and Vidas,
That big box of sand, with the pawn-brokers,
To get pay for his menie;

They thought the box contained gold, not sand.
First money-swindle in the Cantos:
a Xtian cheating two Jews. Cd
EP’s reputation as antisemite contain
some oversimplification?
In any case, the rascal or scoundrel side
of the Odysseus/Individualist here emphasized.

Breaking his way to Valencia.

Exit El Cid….

Ignez da Castro murdered,

An historic detail that will recur, with horror
added, in Canto XXX.

                       and a wall

Here stripped, here made to stand.
Drear waste, the pigment flakes from the stone,
Or plaster flakes, Mantegna painted the wall.
Silk tatters,

That whole age of chivalry and/or brutality
suddenly fades, as in cinematic montage.

“Nec Spe Nec Metu.”

“Neither hope nor fear”: Stoic motto that
the Occidental periodically rediscovers.
Also a “Chinese” theme…
When A Draft of Cantos 1-16 published [1925]
Pound asked publisher NOT to send a copy
to his friend Thomas Hardy because “HELL
Cantos” shd not go to old man “before later
chants bring them into proportion  to
the whole.” Do not try to judge the
meaning or even the flavor of the whole
from the Infernal overture.

And then went down to the ship,

Probably the first time an epic began in the middle of a sentence. *Thus EP notifies us at once that he will present fragments [“luminous details,” ideograms]
* Canto I published 1917. Finnegans Wake begun 1922.

Set keel to breakers, forth on the godly sea, and

“godly sea”: first divine presence in the poem. Cf
Bucky Fuller’s claim that the first deity was
a “mathematicizing sea-god”

We set up mast and sail on that swart ship,
Bore sheep aboard her, and our bodies also
Heavy with weeping, and winds from sternward
Bore us onward with bellying canvas,
Circe’s this craft, the trim-coifed goddess.

Translating from Homer [via Divus: see below] but
EP uses alliteration and some archaism to suggest
early Anglo-Saxon  poems like “The Seafarer.”
He considered this episode the oldest part of
the Odyssey because of its archaisms. The
Descent to the Underworld cd indeed contain
parts of an ancient death/rebirth initiation ritual.

Then sat we amidships, wind jamming the tiller,
Thus with stretched sail, we went over sea till day’s end.
Sun to his slumber, shadows o’er all the ocean,
Came we then to the bounds of deepest water,
To the Kimmerian lands, and peopled cities
Covered with close-webbed mist, unpierced ever
With glitter of sun-rays
Nor with stars stretched, nor looking back from heaven
Swartest night stretched over wreteched men there.

Read as stretchED and wretchED. Supposed to sound
 archaic….Also read unpiercED…..
BTW, in any translation, the Kimmerian lands always
sound like Ireland in the winter to me.

The ocean flowing backward, came we then to the place
Aforesaid by Circe.
Here did they rites, Perimedes and Eurylochus,
And drawing sword from my hip
I dug the ell-square pitkin;

The first “I”; until now we have only had “we” & “our”
and “us.” Indicates the sudden emergence of Western
Individualism from previous Wholism, I think. Cf Canto52, translated an equally ancient Chinese text presenting
Wholism. The poem seeks a synthesis of the best
of East and West. Pitkin: small pit – deliberately archaic,
maintaining “Seafarer” flavor.

Poured we libations unto each the dead,
First mead and then sweet wine, water mixed with white flour
Then prayed I many a prayer to the sickly death’s-heads;
As set in Ithaca, sterile bulls of the best
For sacrifice, heaping the pyre with goods,
A sheep to Tiresias only, black and a bell-sheep.
Dark blood flowed in the fosse,
Souls out of Erebus, cadaverous dead, of brides
Of youths and of the old who had borne much;
Souls stained with recent tears, girls tender,
Men many, mauled with bronze lance heads,
Battle spoil, bearing yet dreory arms,
These many crowded about me; with shouting,
Pallor upon me, cried to my men for more beasts;
Slaughtered the herds, sheep slain of bronze;
Poured ointment, cried to the gods,
To Pluto the strong, and praised Proserpine;
Unsheathed the narrow sword,
I sat to keep off the impetuous impotent dead,
Till I should hear Tiresias.

I love the rhythm of sea-surge here, and
how it unites the Saxon/Seafarer alliterations with
Homer’s own rolling sea-sound

But first Elpenor came, our friend Elpenor,
Unburied, cast on the wide earth,
Limbs that we left in the house of Circe,
Unwept, unwrapped in the sepulchre, since toils urged other.
Pitiful spirit. And I cried in hurried speech:
“Elpenor, how art thou come to this dark coast?
“Cam’st thou afoot, outstripping seamen?”
And he in heavy speech:
“Ill fate and abundant wine. I slept in Crice’s ingle.
“Going down the long ladder unguarded,
“I fell against the buttress,
“Shattered the nape-nerve, the soul sought Avernus.
“But thou, O King, I bid remember me, unwept, unburied,
“Heap up mine arms, be tomb by sea-bord, and inscribed:
“A man of no fortune, and with a name to come.
“And set my oar up, that I swung mid fellows.”

Pound cdn’t have planned it, but later, in the death cells
 at Pisa [Canto 74 et seq], he becomes  Elpenor…..

And Anticlea came, whom I beat off, and then Tiresias Theban,
Holding his golden wand, knew me, and spoke first:
“A second time? why? man of ill star,
“Facing the sunless dead and this joyless region?
“Stand from the fosse, leave me my bloody bever
“For soothsay.”
And I stepped back,
And he strong with the blood, said then: “Odysseus
“Shalt return through spiteful Neptune, over dark seas,
“Lose all companions.” Then Anticlea came.

Prepare for a quantum jump:

Lie quiet Divus. I mean, that is Andreas Divus,
In officina Wecheli, 1538, out of Homer.

Ez reveals his source: not Homer directly
but the 1538 Latin translation of Divus—the
text best known to the Renaissance figures
who dominate the first 30 Cantos. Pound
considers Divus part of what he calls the
paideuma of that period [modern: the
reality-tunnel or gloss]

And he sailed, by Sirens and thence outwards and away
And unto Circe.

No longer “I” but “he.”
Change to 3rd person indicates the “perspectivism”
of the Cantos.

Venerandam,

I prefer Arlen’s translation of this powerful wordto all others: “she who must be adored.”
Strongest declension in Latin.

In the Cretan’s phrase, with the golden crown, Aphrodite,
Cypri munimenta sortita est, mirthful, oricalchi, with golden
Girdle and breast bands, thou with dark eyelids
Bearing the golden bough of Argicidia. So that:\

Bits from a pseudo-Homeric hymn to the Love Goddess,
which Divus tacked on at the end of his Odyssey.
Note the “mirthful”: this foreshadows the union
of amor and hilaritas  in the closing Cantos.

Bearing the golden bough of Argicidia. So that:

Canto 1 began in the middle of a sentence,
and ends in the middle of another sentence:
emphasis on fragments –which eventually form ideograms

I wonder where Joyce got the idea of beginning
and ending Finnegans Wake in mid-sentences?

Wal, Ez probably got the idea of using a Homeric
frame for the Cantos from Ulysses...

This Canto seems to me a summation of Cantos 1-19
with variations — new ideograms [concrete particulars]
illustrating major themes.

Sound slender, quasi tinnula,

Sou…slen…quas…
nice aliteration without Swinburnian
tub-thumping;
quasi tinnula, “as if ringing” [Catullus];
you can almost hear the ringing

Ligur’ aoide

“Sweet song” [Homer]; Odysseus from Canto I,
this time tempted
by the Sirens…more Odyssean themes will recur
in this Canto, and later

Ligur’ aoide: Si no’us vei, Domna don plus mi cal,
Negus vezer mon bel pensar no val.”

Si…us…plus…gus…pens…..
“And if I see you not, lady who enflames me,
No sight is worth the beauty of my thought”
[Bernart de Ventadom];
seductive beauty, like the Sirens’ song,
but not destructive [leads to
Tantrik contemplation
not to crashing on rocks];
recorso of Provencal cult -of- love theme
[Cantos 4-6]

Between the two almond trees flowering,

Two almond trees flowering: the uniquely
Poundian mix of simplicity and loveliness

The viel held close to his side;
And another: s’adora”.

“She is adored” [Cavalcanti]. I think Ez
takes this literally, a deliberate heresy against
Catholic orthodoxy,
and continuation of Provencal theme.
Cf Provencal/Cavalcaanti theme in Canto 6.
See EP’s essays “Psychology & Troubadours”
and “Cavalcanti” and maybe my Ishtar Rising.
[Dante put at least 2 of the Cavalcanti family
in Hell for heresy….]

“Possum ego naturae
non meminisse tuae!”

“Can I forget thy nature” or “thy inwit”
or “thy soul” [Propertius, praising Cynthia
for beauty not visible but felt];
EP cites this often in his prose as
proof that the troubadours did not
“invent” love, as cynics claim;
actually, Propertius praises Cynthia’s
kindness; cf Cunniza da Romano “who freed
her slaves on a Wednesday” [Cantos 6 & 30]

Qui son Properzio ed Ovidio.

Advice to go read Propertius and Ovid on amor

This “overture” combines English, Latin, Provencal,
Greek & Italian into a totally unique melodic structure

The boughs are not more fresh
where the almond shoots
take their March green.

Loverly, loverly

And that year I went up to Freiburg,
And Rennert had said: Nobody, no, nobody
Knows anything about Provencal, or if there is anybody,
It’s old Levy.”

Rennert & Levy: leading scholars in Provencal
language and poetry — the subject of Pound’s M.A.
thesis and a source of many of his translations.
One minor but persistent theme
in the Cantos: Ez’s effort to discover
what the troubadours really meant….

And so I went up to Freiburg,
And the vacation was just beginning,
The students getting off for the summer,
Freiburg im Breisgau,
And everything clean, seeming clean, after Italy.

An ideogram: German towns always seem
clean after Italy. Chew on it.

And I went to old Levy, and it was by then 6.30
in the evening, and he trailed half way across Freiburg
before dinner, to see the two strips of copy,
Arnaut’s, settant’uno R. superiore (Ambrosiana)
Not that I could sing him the music.

Note echo of sea-surge rhythm recurrent
since Canto I.
(the two strips of copy,
Arnaut’s, settant’uno R. superiore (Ambrosiana)):
MS. in which Dante uses a Provencal “word,” noigandres,
from troubadour Arnaut Daniel. The meaning of
this “word” remains in dispute

And he said: Now is there anything I can tell you?”
And I said: I dunno, sir, or
“Yes, Doctor, what do they mean by noigandres?”
And he said: Noigandres! NOIgandres!
“You know for seex mon’s of my life
“Effery night when I go to bett, I say to myself:
“Noigandres, eh, noigandres,
“Now what the DEFFIL can that mean!”

Levy did have a guess, which follows shortly

Wind over the olive trees, ranunculae ordered,
By the clear edge of the rocks
The water runs, and the wind scented with pine
And with hay-fields under sun-swath.
Agostino, Jacopo and Boccata.
You would be happy for the smell of that place
And never tired of being there, either alone
Or accompanied.
Sound: as of the nightingale too far off to be heard.
Sandro and Boccata, and Jacopo Sellaio;
The ranunculae, and almond,

Italian landscapes and painters [and aromas]
hinting of the paradiso terrestre coming at the climax
of the poem

Boughs set espalier.
Duccio, Agostino; e l’olors –
The smell of that place – d’enoi ganres.

Espalier: against the wall
l’olors: the aromas
d’enoi gangres: staves off boredom
[Old Levy’s surmise! it’s two words]

Air moving under the boughs,
The cedars there in the sun,
Hay new cut on hill slope,

The last line uses monosylables to create
a chopped effect, as in EP’s Chinese translations.
He thought English verse had become too legato.

And the water there in the cut
Between the two lower meadows; sound,
the sound, as I have said, a nightingale
Too far off to be heard.
And the light falls, remir,
from her breasts to thighs.

remir: I gaze; another Provencal word
from Arnaut. This part of the paradiso
seems Franco-Italian….

He was playing there at the palla,
Parisina – two doves for an altar – at the window,
” E’l Marchese
Stava per divenir pazzo
after it all.” And that was when Troy was down

Parsina Malatesta, cousin of Sigismundo [Cantos 8-11]
married Nicolo d’Este [El Marchese.]
When convinced she had an affair with his
son, Nic had them both beheaded.
Stava per divenir pazzo: and then he went
nutz [presumably from grief/guilt?]

Echo of Helen of Troy [Canto 2]

In general, Pound sees Rennaisance “villians”
as passion-driven, modern “villians” greed-driven.

[& once again, unlike Dante, Ez allows
for ambiguities and mixed cases]

Borso d’Este, 3rd son of Nic, continually
tried to bring peace between warring
Italian states.

And they came here and cut holes in rock,
Down Rome way, and put up the timbers;
And came here, condit Atesten…

History of d’Este family

“Peace! keep the peace, Borso.”

Borso d’Este, 3rd son of Nic, continually
tried to bring peace between warring
Italian states.

And he said: Some bitch has sold us
(that was Ganelon)

Nic Este becomes Roland, betrayed to the Moors
by Ganelon. Cf editing in Griffith’s Intolerance
[EP follows Chanson Roland, poem not history//
cf openings of Cantos 2 and 8….]

“They wont get another such ivory.”

[Roland’s horn high quality]

And he lay there on the round hill under the cedar
A little to the left of the cut (Este speaking)
By the side of the summit, and he said:
“I have broken the horn, bigod, I have
“Broke the best ivory, l’olofans.”

Jumping back and forth between Este and Roland:
the common theme, betrayal of trust

The ivory was from an elephant;
Roland broke the horn over the skull of
an Arab sent to finish him off…..

Understated irony: Roland is dying
but fusses about a broken horn

And he said:
“Tan mare fustes!”

Roland’s last words, in the Chanson.
“The wrong time.” EP often cited this as an example
of the power of brevity.

pulling himself over the gravel,
“Bigod! that buggar is done for, “They wont get another such ivory.”
And they were there before the wall, Toro, las almenas,
(Este, Nic Este speaking)

Este “becomes” the Spanish national hero, El Cid,
no longer “being” Roland.

[“bigod,” “bugger” etc.: EP believed in following
the tone & style of the original, not making
all antient script sound like Queen James Bible.]

                                               Under the battlement 
(Epi purgo) peur de la hasle, 
And the King said: 
                                  "God what a woman! 
My God what a woman" said the King telo rigido. 
"Sister!" says Ancures, "'s your sister!" 
Alf left that town to Elvira, and Sancho wanted 
 It from her, Toro and Zamora. 
                                                       "Bloody spaniard!

More scraps from the Poema del Cid.
The king got a hard-on [telo rigido] and then felt
abashed to learn the woman was his sister.
We see Eros in many forms in this Canto.

Neestho, le'er go back...

The English translates the Greek. Echo from
Canto 2: Helen again. “Let her go back to the ships”

                                            in the autumn." 
"Este, go' damn you." between the walls, arras, 
Painted to look like arras. 
                                              Jungle:
Glaze green and red feathers, jungle, 
Basis of renewal, renewals; 
Rising over the soul, green virid, of the jungle, 
 Lozenge of the pavement, clear shapes, 
Broken, disrupted, body eternal, 
Wilderness of renewals, confusion 
Basis of renewals, subsistence, 
Glazed green of the jungle;             

Post-Darwinian view of nature as process,
not “thing.” Subject-rhyme with the many appearances
of Dionysus & Chinese fertility-gods. Damn
good rhythms in there too.

Zoe, Marozia, Zothar,
                                            loud over the banners, 
Glazed grape, and the crimson,              

Este thinking of other unfaithful wives;
imagery of delerium

HO BIOS, 
                     cosi Elena vedi,

LIFE,
             where Helen walked
             
Eros combines joy, love and the continuation
of fertility? Sorta...

In the sunlight, gate cut by the shadow; 
And then the faceted air: 
Floating.  Below, sea churning shingle. 
Floating, each on invisible raft, 
On the high current, invisible fluid, 
Borne over the plain, recumbent, 
The right arm cast back, 
                the right wrist for a pillow, 
The left hand like a calyx, 
Thumb held against finger, the third, 
The first fingers petal'd up, the hand as a lamp, 
A calyx. 
               From toe to head 
The purple, blue-pale smoke, as of incense; 
Wrapped each in burnous, smoke as the olibanum’s
Swift, as if joyous.
Wrapped, floating; and the blue-pale smoke of the incense 
Swift to rise, then lazily in the wind 
                as Aeolus over bean-field, 
As hay in the sun, the olibanum, saffron, 
As myrrh without styrax; 
Each man in his cloth, as on raft, on 
                 The high invisible current; 
On toward the fall of water; 
And then over that cataract, 
In air, strong, the bright flames, V shaped;

Another kind of paradiso–but Ez does not identify
it immediately

                Nel fuoco 
D'amore mi mise, nel fuoco d'amore mi mise...

& yet another kind of paradiso: St Francis’s
“In the fire of love He has me,
in the fire of love He has me”

Yellow, bright saffron, croceo; 
And as the olibanum bursts into flame, 
The bodies so flamed in the air, took flame, 
                "...Mi mise, il mio sposo novello."

[“… has me, my new spouse.”
This Canto may record indirectly the beginning
of Ez’s affair with violinist Olga Rudge and
his wife’s briefer affair with an unknown Egyptian.]

Shot from stream into spiral,

Or followed the water. Or looked back to the flowing; 
Others approaching that cataract, 
As to dawn out of shadow, the swathed cloths 
Now purple and orange, 
And the blue water dusky beneath them, 
               pouring there into the cataract, 
With noise of sea over shingle, 
                       striking with: 
                       hah hah ahah thmm thunb, ah 
                       woh woh araha thumm, bhaaa. 
And from the floating bodies, the incense 
       blue-pale, purple above them. 
Shelf of the lotophagoi, 

[lotus-eaters from Homer. It was their Paradise
we visited before St. Francis’s!]

Le paradis ne c’est pas artificiel
but is jagged
For a flash
for an hour
Then agony.
Then an hour

— Canto 90-something
writ in ye olde bugg house
paraphrasing baudilaire

I think he meant Baud was stoned on dope but he, Ez, wasn’t;
I see no evidence that Ez ever got stoned.
But he did pranayama everyday and spent
40some years meditatin’
on Chinese ideograms like cloud over
falling rain over
dancing shaman
which he finally rendered “sensibility.”
Chinese + pranayama may = “stoned” perception……

Aerial, cut in the aether. 
                                               Reclining, 
With the silver spilla, 
The ball as of melted amber, coiled, caught up, and turned. 
Lotophagoi of the suave nails, quiet, scornful, 
Voce-profondo: 
                " Feared neither death nor pain for this beauty;
If harm, harm to ourselves."

[Wot all us dopers say….]

And beneath: the clear bones, far down, 
Thousand on thousand, 
                " What gain with Odysseus, 
" They that died in the whirlpool 
" And after many vain labours, 
" Living by stolen meat, chained to the rowingbench, 
" That he should have a great fame 
                " And lie by night with the goddess? 
" Their names are not written in bronze 
             " Nor their rowing sticks set with Elpenor's";
Nor have they mourned by sea-bord.
             " That saw never the olives under Spartha 
" With the leaves green and then not green, 
             " The click of light in their branches; 
" That saw not the bronze hall nor the ingle 
" Nor lay there with the queen's waiting maids, 
" Nor had they Circe to couch-mate, Circe Titania, 
" Nor had they meats of Kalupso 
" Or her silk shirts brushing their thighs. 
" Give! What were they given? 
                                                                     Ear-wax. 
" Poison and ear-wax,

[so they wdn’t hear the Sirens’ song]

                                      and a salt grave by the bull-field, 
" neson amumona, their heads like sea crows in the foam, 
" Black splotches, sea-weed under lightning; 
" Canned beef of Apollo, ten cans for a boat load." 
Ligur' aoide.             

“Sweet song” — used ironically now.

This powerful and powerfully rhythmic passage
marks a turning point. Occidental individualism
seen as flawed at the root. Cf “the poor devils
dying of cold” in Cantos 9, 10; the trenches
of World War I in Canto 16….

Rescuing a sane
individualism and merging it with a
sane holism represent the major task
Ez set himself in the Cantos

And from the plain whence the water-shoot,
Across, back, to the right, the roads, a way in the grass,
The Khan’s hunting leopard, and young Salustio
And Ixotta; the suave turf
Ac farae familiares, and the cars slowly,
and the panthers, soft-footed.

Malatesta wealth….leopard from an unknown Khan…
ac farae familiares: wild animals
[sounds like Citizen Kane‘s Xanadu];

Salustio Malatesta: murdered by his brother;
Ixotta: Sigismundo’s beloved, to whom the
Temple is dedicated.

Plain, as the plain of Somnus, 
                the heavy cars, as a triumph, 
Gilded, heavy on wheel, 
                and the panthers chained to the cars, 
Over suave turf, the foam wrapped, 
Rose, crimson, deep crimson, 
And, in the blue dusk, a colour as of rust in the sunlight, 
Out of white cloud, moving over the plain, 
Head in arm's curve, reclining; 
The road, back and away, till cut along the face of the rock, 
And the cliff folds in like a curtain, 
The road cut in under the rock 
Square groove in the cliff's face, as chiostri, 
The columns crystal, with peacocks cut in the capitals, 
The soft pad of beasts dragging the cars; 
Cars, slow, without creak, 
And at windows in inner roadside: 
                le donne e i cavalieri 
                smooth face under hennin, 
The sleeves embroidered with flowers, 
Great thistle of gold, or an amaranth, 
Acorns of gold, or of scarlet, 
Cramoisi and diaspre 
                 slashed white into velvet; 
Crystal columns, acanthus, sirens in the pillar heads; 
And at last, between gilded barocco, 
Two columns coiled and fluted, 
Vanoka, leaning half naked, 
                  waste hall there behind her.             

The images and sounds transcend even Canto 2…..

” Peace!
Borso…, Borso!”

A cry for Borso d’Este, who tried to bring
peace to Italy

• I
• II
• III
• IV
• VIII
• IX
• X
• XI
• XII
• XIII
• XIV
• XV
• XVII
• XVIII
• XIX
• XX
• XXI
• XXXI
• XXXII
• XCVIII