Ezra Pound’s <span class='italic'>Pisan Cantos</span>

doi:10.1017/9781108614719.004

Chapter 3 - Ezra Pound’s Pisan Cantos

The Promise and the Limits of the Archive

from Part I - Pound’s Texts

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 October 2019

Ronald Bush

Edited by

Mark Byron

Show author details

Mark Byron: Affiliation:
University of Sydney

Book contents

Get access

Summary

Writing in Ezra Pound and Referentiality, the poet Bob Perelman notes that ‘we have been living in … the Golden Age of Pound Studies’ in which ‘Pound’s already-published writing was read assiduously; much of the huge bulk of his other public and private writing was published; the ramifications of his references were exfoliated, his ellipses were spelled out, the ideograms were translated’. So why, he (provocatively) asks, has it not ‘become increasingly possible and even easy to read Pound’? Perelman’s question, as Pound’s papers continue to surface, becomes ever more pertinent. What in particular has been the value of Pound’s manuscript materials for reading his poems? I wish to suggest that it has been considerable, but also that it does not and can never absolve readers of their critical obligations or resolve certain fundamental ambiguities in Pound’s work.

Keywords

archive pedagogy hermeticism textual criticism Italian cantos unpublished drafts manuscript evidence textual corruption

Type: Chapter
Information: The New Ezra Pound Studies , pp. 40 - 56

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108614719.004 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Bacigalupo, Massimo, ‘Ezra Pound’s Cantos 72 and 73: An Annotated Translation’, Paideuma 20 (1991), 11–41.Google Scholar

Bacigalupo, Massimo, The Forméd Trace: The Later Poetry of Ezra Pound (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980).CrossRef Google Scholar

Charles, Bernstein, ‘Pounding Fascism’, in A Poetics, 121–41 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992).Google Scholar

Breisach, Ernst, Caterina Sforza: A Renaissance Virago (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967).Google Scholar

Bush, Ronald, ‘Confucius Erased: The Missing Ideograms in The Pisan Cantos’, in Ezra Pound and China, ed. Qian, Zhaoming, 163–92 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003).Google Scholar

Bush, Ronald, ‘“The Descent of the Barbarians”: The Pisan Cantos and Cultural Memory’, Modernism/Modernity 14.1 (January 2007), 71–95.CrossRef Google Scholar

Bush, Ronald, ‘The Expatriate in Extremis: Caterina Sforza, Fascism, and Ezra Pound’s Pisan Cantos’, Revista di Letteratura d’America, 25 (2005), 27–43.Google Scholar

Bush, Ronald, ‘Pisa’, in Ezra Pound in Context, ed. Nadel, Ira, 261–73 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).Google Scholar

Bush, Ronald, ‘“Quiet, Not Scornful”?: The Composition of the Pisan Cantos’, in A Poem Including History: The Cantos of Ezra Pound, ed. Rainey, Lawrence, 169–212 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996).Google Scholar

Bush, Ronald, ‘Towards Pisa: More from the Archives about Pound’s Italian Cantos’, Agenda 34 (1996/97), 89–124.Google Scholar

Bush, Ronald, and Ten Eyck, David, ‘A Critical Edition of Ezra Pound’s Pisan Cantos: Problems and Solutions’, Textual Cultures 8.2 (Fall 2013), 121–41.Google Scholar

Deegan, Marilyn, and Sutherland, Katheryn, ‘Introduction’, in Text Editing, Print, and the Digital World, ed. Deegan, Marilyn and Sutherland, Katheryn, 1–9 (Oxford: Routledge, 2009).Google Scholar

Feldman, Matthew, Ezra Pound’s Fascist Propaganda (London: Palgrave, 2013).Google Scholar

Gallup, Donald C., ‘The Ezra Pound Archive 1947–1987’, in Pigeons on the Granite: Memories of a Yale Librarian, 191–210 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988).Google Scholar

Kenner, Hugh, Letter to James Laughlin, 24 June 1974, New Directions Collection, 2921a, Folder 9, Houghton Library, Harvard University.Google Scholar

Kenner, Hugh, ‘Proposed Procedure’, 15 December 1963, New Directions Collection, 2921a, Folder 3, Houghton Library, Harvard University.Google Scholar

Kindellan, Michael, The Late Cantos of Ezra Pound: Composition, Revision, Publication (London: Bloomsbury, 2017).Google Scholar

Mantemaggi, Amadeo, Linea Gotica 1944 (Museo dell’Aviazione: Rimini, 2002).Google Scholar

Nicholls, Peter, ‘Ezra Pound’s Lost Book: Orientamenti’, Modernist Cultures 9.2 (2014), 139–57.CrossRef Google Scholar

Perelman, Bob, ‘Pound’s Legibility Today: Pedagogy and/or Imitation’, in Ezra Pound and Referentiality, ed. Aji, Hélène, 31–41 (Paris: Presses de L’Université de Paris-Sorbonne, 2003).Google Scholar

Pound, Ezra, I Cantos, a cura di Mary de Rachewiltz (Milan: Mondadori, 1985).Google Scholar

Pound, Ezra, Carte italiane 1930–1944, Cesari, cura di Luca (Milano: Archinto, 2005).Google Scholar

Pound, Ezra, Caterina Sforza typescript (Italian), YCAL MSS 53 Box 29, Folder 627, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.Google Scholar

Pound, Ezra, Idee fondamentali. «Meridiano di Roma» 1939–1943, cura di Caterina Ricciardi (Roma: Lucarini, 1991).Google Scholar

Pound, Ezra, Letter of 13 August 1953, Achilles Fang Papers, YCAL MSS 99, Box 2, Folder 24, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.Google Scholar

Pound, Ezra, Orientamenti (Vibo Valentia: Grafica Meridionale, 1978).Google Scholar

Pound, Ezra, ‘Totalitarian Scholarship and the New Paideuma’, Germany and You, ed. Fox, Douglas, 4/5 (April 1937), 95–6, 123–4.Google Scholar

Rainey, Laurence, Ezra Pound and the Monument of Culture (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1991).Google Scholar

Redman, Tim, Ezra Pound and Italian Fascism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).Google Scholar

Seelye, Catherine, ed., Charles Olson and Ezra Pound: An Encounter at St. Elizabeths (New York: Viking, 1975).Google Scholar

Shillingsburg, Peter L., Scholarly Editing in the Computer Age: Theory and Practice, 3rd ed. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996).CrossRef Google Scholar

Stock, Noel, Reading the Cantos: A Study of Meaning in Ezra Pound (New York: Minerva Press, 1968).Google Scholar

Taylor, Richard, ‘Towards a Textual Biography of The Cantos’, in Modernist Writers and the Marketplace, ed. Chernak, Warren, Gould, Warwick and Willison, Ian, 223–57 (London: Macmillan, 1996).Google Scholar

Young, G. F., The Medici, 2 vols. (1909; London: John Murray, 1930).Google Scholar