ABSTRACT
Let it be conceded at once, without cavil, that the authentic note of poetry sounds throughout this last book of Mr. Ezra Pound's. But is he the instrument, or is he the wind in the instrument? So much of his inspiration seems bookish, so much of his attraction lies in the vivid picturesqueness of his romance-besprinkled page. Look at his variegated record: In 1908 he published A Lutne Spento, in the same year A Quinzaine for this Yule, then followed his Personae, his Exultations, largely reprints of the two preceding books, and now come his Canzoni. Then, if you run your eye over the pages of his books, you meet Latin and Mediaeval Latin, the 'langue d'oc' and the 'langue d'oil,' Dante's Italian and modern Italian, Spanish, French, German, quaint (or queynt!) forgotten English; and, lastly, English. Yes, lastly English. So it is in this volume of Canzoni. If Mr Pound can find a foreign title to a poem, he will do so. Queer exotic hybridity! It would almost be true to say, also, that if Mr Pound can translate a poem, he will do so, rather than make one. He translates from Heine, Propertius, Dante, Pico della Mirandola, Joachim du Bellay, Leopardi; the bulk of the work in this book is not ostensibly translated, but it reads as though it were. Therefore, again, is Mr Pound the instrument, trumpeting the authentic note, or is he the wind in the instrument? You can state it both ways: either Mr Pound is the instrument, accredited with the keys, and attuned for the wind of the old songs and the old dreams, or his is the breath that, once more, gives to songs and dreams their ancient fullness. Whichever way you look at it, the note is the same, the true note of poetry, not as it is understood by the sixpenny dullness of weekly journalism, or in the literary dysentery of halfpenny newspapers—in neither can there be understanding, but as it is heard by the poet who takes the stars for his guide and the fairness of the earth to wife. The point to settle—though not here—is, has the singer of the Canzoni married . . . by proxy? Of course, criticism could not answer, crudely, yes or no. The question is much more complex than that.
