ABSTRACT

THERE IS no principle of unity visible in these cantos, at least twenty of which suffer from major obscurities. The most we can say is that they bear every sign of Pound’s authorship. This is the one unity visible at present. But what is he trying to do? The first 19 lines of canto 3 are about Venice and Tuscany; but the Venetian lines are too personal to have any meaning as they stand, as are the last two of the Tuscan section. Granted, however, that they are about Italy, why are they without explanation placed in the same canto with an incident about Ruy Diaz? What is the connexion in canto 5 between Pieire de Maensac (even if we know who he is-the canto doesn’t tell us except in the most cryptic manner) and John Borgia? Canto 6 is mostly about Troubadours, with an implied connexion between sex and artistic creation. But the hint is vague and there is no telling what he really means. What is the connexion, we may ask, in canto 18 between Kublai Khan and the items which follow? We look in vain for the pressure of significance or form which has forced them together into the same canto. The first page of canto 28 contains four separate pieces without any indication of what they have in common, if anything, or why they are there. And so on for another six and a half pages, with nothing tangible to grasp. Not that this is all. The same cantos are full of fine lines and musical passages, apt turns of phrase and remarkable stylistic invention. Our difficulty is that we have no means of knowing where we are, or what we are doing. It does not help much to say that the first canto is a descent into the underworld. That particular thread gives out some nine lines before the end of the canto. The Malatesta section, beginning at canto 8, has a certain unity, so too have the ‘Hell’ cantos. But we are conscious for the most part only of an endless shifting, without anything to hold to, even for a moment, while we get our bearings. A line understood in isolation is not necessarily understood in relation to the canto, the section, or the poem. A passage which pleases is not therefore, on that account alone, provided with threads which reach out to the passages surrounding. Skill to please in the short run does not of itself mean skill to please in the long.