ABSTRACT
The musical scores within Ezra Pound's poetic sequence and Samuel Beckett's novel Watt challenge conventions of literary form in visually arresting terms, and extend the possibilities of formal literary experimentation. The Pisan Cantos and Watt are not resolved, formally complete texts; they are replete with allusive riddles and half-submerged references, and display residues of accidental and intentional erasures. The Pisan Cantos nor Watt attempts to manifest the Gesamtkunstwerk or to mount a comparative valuation of the arts. Ezra Pound composed the typescript of The Pisan Cantos in the medical compound of the United States Army Detention Training Center (DTC) in the hills outside Pisa, Italy, some time between 24 May and 16 November 1945. Pound's gesture towards transcendence, by means of a musical score in a literary work, seems paradoxical. The score is visually arresting and reveals part of its transmission history within the frame of The Pisan Cantos.
