Ezra Pound: His Metric and Poetry Part 3

And great wings beat above us in the twilight, And the great wheels in heaven Bore us together ... surging ... and apart ...

Believing we should meet with lips and hands ...

There shut up in his castle, Tairiran's, She who had nor ears nor tongue save in her hands, Gone, ah, gone--untouched, unreachable!

She who could never live save through one person, She who could never speak save to one person, And all the rest of her a s.h.i.+fting change, A broken bundle of mirrors...!

Then turn at once to "To a Friend Writing on Cabaret Dancers."

It is easy to say that the language of "Cathay" is due to the Chinese. If one looks carefully at (1) Pound's other verse, (2) other people's translations from the Chinese (e.g., Giles's), it is evident that this is not the case. The language was ready for the Chinese poetry. Compare, for instance, a pa.s.sage from "Provincia Deserta":

I have walked into Perigord I have seen the torch-flames, high-leaping, Painting the front of that church,-- And, under the dark, whirling laughter, I have looked back over the stream and seen the high building, Seen the long minarets, the white shafts.

I have gone in Ribeyrac, and in Sarlat.

I have climbed rickety stairs, heard talk of Croy, Walked over En Bertran's old layout, Have seen Narbonne, and Cahors and Chalus, Have seen Excideuil, carefully fas.h.i.+oned.

with a pa.s.sage from "The River Song":

He goes out to Hori, to look at the wing-flapping storks, He returns by way of Sei rock, to hear the new nightingales, For the gardens at Jo-run are full of new nightingales, Their sound is mixed in this flute, Their voice is in the twelve pipes here.

It matters very little how much is due to Rihaku and how much to Pound. Mr. Ford Madox Hueffer has observed: "If these are original verses, then Mr. Pound is the greatest poet of this day." He goes on to say:

The poems in "Cathay" are things of a supreme beauty. What poetry should be, that they are. And if a new breath of imagery and handling can do anything for our poetry, that new breath these poems bring....

Poetry consists in so rendering concrete objects that the emotions produced by the objects shall arise in the reader....

Where have you better rendered, or more permanently beautiful a rendering of, the feelings of one of those lonely watchers, in the outposts of progress, whether it be Ovid in Hyrcania, a Roman sentinel upon the great wall of this country, or merely ourselves, in the lonely recesses of our minds, than the "Lament of the Frontier Guard"?...

Beauty is a very valuable thing; perhaps it is the most valuable thing in life; but the power to express emotion so that it shall communicate itself intact and exactly is almost more valuable. Of both these qualities Mr. Pound's book is very full. Therefore, I think we may say that this is much the best work he has done, for, however closely he may have followed his originals--and of that most of us have no means of judging--there is certainly a good deal of Mr.

Pound in this little volume.

"Cathay" and "l.u.s.tra" were followed by the translations of Noh plays. The Noh are not so important as the Chinese poems (certainly not so important for English); the att.i.tude is less unusual to us; the work is not so solid, so firm. "Cathay" will, I believe, rank with the "Sea-Farer" in the future among Mr.

Pound's original work; the Noh will rank among his translations.

It is rather a dessert after "Cathay." There are, however, pa.s.sages which, as Pound has handled them, are different both from the Chinese and from anything existent in English. There is, for example, the fine speech of the old Kagekiyo, as he thinks of his youthful valour:

He thought, how easy this killing. He rushed with his spearshaft gripped under his arm. He cried out, "I am Kagekiyo of the Heike." He rushed on to take them. He pierced through the helmet vizards of Miyanoya. Miyanoya fled twice, and again; and Kagekiyo cried: "You shall not escape me!" He leaped and wrenched off his helmet. "Eya!"

The vizard broke and remained in his hand, and Miyanoya still fled afar, and afar, and he looked back crying in terror, "How terrible, how heavy your arm!" And Kagekiyo called at him, "How tough the shaft of your neck is!" And they both laughed out over the battle, and went off each his own way.

The "Times Literary Supplement" spoke of Mr. Pound's "mastery of beautiful diction" and his "cunningly rhythmically prose," in its review of the "Noh."

Even since "l.u.s.tra," Mr. Pound has moved again. This move is to the epic, of which three cantos appear in the American "l.u.s.tra"

(they have already appeared in "Poetry"--Miss Monroe deserves great honour for her courage in printing an epic poem in this twentieth century--but the version in "l.u.s.tra" is revised and is improved by revision). We will leave it as a test: when anyone has studied Mr. Pound's poems in _chronological_ order, and has mastered "l.u.s.tra" and "Cathay," he is prepared for the Cantos-- but not till then. If the reader then fails to like them, he has probably omitted some step in his progress, and had better go back and retrace the journey.

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF BOOKS

AND PARTIAL BIBLIOGRAPHY OF NOTABLE CRITICAL ARTICLES BY EZRA POUND

POEMS

A LUME SPENTO (100 copies). Antonelli, Venice, June, 1908.

A QUINZAINE FOR THIS YULE.

First 100 printed by Pollock, London, December, 1908.

Second 100 published under Elkin Mathews' imprint, London, December, 1908.

PERSONAE. Mathews, London, Spring, 1909.

EXULTATIONS. Mathews, London, Autumn, 1909.

PROSE

THE SPIRIT OF ROMANCE. Dent, London, 1910.

POEMS

PROVENcA (a selection of poems from "Personae" and "Exultations" with new poems). Small Maynard, Boston, 1910.

CANZONI. Mathews, London, 1911.

THE SONNETS AND BALLATE OF GUIDO CAVALCANTI (translated).

Small Maynard, Boston, 1912.

A cheaper edition of the same, Swift and Co., London, 1912.

The bulk of this edition destroyed by fire.

RIPOSTES. Swift, London, 1912.

(_Note_.--This book contains the first announcement of Imagism, in the foreword to the poems of T. E. Hulme.)

OTHER PUBLICATIONS

"A FEW DON'TS BY AN IMAGISTE," in "Poetry," for March, 1913.

"CONTEMPORANIA" (poems), in "Poetry," April, 1913.