CrowleyHead

Well-known member
Can you get him to start posting on Dissensus? I got some questions

Possible. He tends to avoid forums in favor of shitty computer games though, so I can't make promises.

Also, I'm halfway through Lispector's "The Passion of G.H." and I'm literally reading a description of a woman undergoing an existentialist crisis after killing a cockroach. I am not sure if this is supposed to be hiarious (which it was for the first quarter of the book) or just great. But its definitely the latter. This'll be the third Lispector book I've read when its done.
 

jenks

thread death
Second volume of Moody's Pound biog

Wayfaring Stranger by James Lee Burke

Lady Diana Cooper's autobiography

all three fascinating in different ways - the first chapter of the Burke could almost be a short story on its own.
I'm interested in how Moody is going to deal with Pound's move towards Fascism and descent into crazy economic theory. His work on the poems in Vol 1 was clear and detailed. It'll be a slow read...

Cooper writes well and has a great story to tell - one of those people who is in the middle of everything - like the Mitfords, Morrell and other dynamic women of the early 20th C.
 

luka

Well-known member
I'm not into fascism, it doesn't suit me, but I've never been convinced pounds economic theories are completely crazy. As far as I can make out the positive money movement, which is at least semi-respectable, has a lot in common with the cantos
 

luka

Well-known member
The last couple of days I've been reading the selected cantos alongside the guide to the selected cantos. I needed a break from the cia. Today I picked up a copy of Yeats the initiate by Kathleen raine from treadwells. I'm reading an essay from it, yeats, the tarot and the golden dawn.
 

vimothy

yurp
They're hard work, aren't they, The Cantos. I recall someone said of Pound, "he makes art out of literature, not life", and I think there's some truth to that.
 

luka

Well-known member
Yeats is not hard work. The cantos are impossible to enter without notes. Too much of it is rooted in an unexplicated private universe. The reference points are so personal. Even if you take the historical figures, about half of them are so obscure they are almost historically invisible
 

luka

Well-known member
But I can't leave them alone. I've been at it for 10 years. Craner got me into them. I'm also fascinated by the occult/poetry crossover. It's more explicit in yeats but it's there in pound too.

(unexplicated might not be a word.)
 
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luka

Well-known member
Reading Ovid helped a little bit. Reading kenner helped a lot. Reading pounds essays helped a little bit. I've got the spirit of romance out the library at the moment
 
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vimothy

yurp
There are some amazing passages -- probably lots if you have patience. How do you read it? Do you open the pages at random or do you have a more systematic method?
 

luka

Well-known member
I've done both over the years but reading the selected cantos (chosen by pound) in order, and alongside George kearns guide to the selected cantos is working for me at the moment.
I remember reading that when pound read the cantos aloud he did so more slowly than you would think possible and I think that's a useful clue
 
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vimothy

yurp
Have you read Tytell's bio? I keep meaning to pick it up, but I'm so short of time I wonder if I would ever manage to read it.
 

luka

Well-known member
I find you cant get close to the meaning (the literal explicit meaning, not sum inner mystical secret meaning) of a poem without cracking the rhythm, and I don't think that's always straightforward at all. You are smarter than I am though
 

vimothy

yurp
Ursura rusteth the chisel
It rusteth the craft and the craftsman
It gnaweth the thread in the loom
None learneth to weave gold in her pattern;
Azure hath a canker by usura; cramoisi is unbroidered
Emerald findeth no Memling
Usura slayeth the child in the womb
It stayeth the young man's courting
It hath brought palsey to bed, lyeth
between the young bride and her bridegroom
CONTRA NATURAM​
They have brought whores for Eleusis
Corpses are set to banquet
at behest of usura.
 

vimothy

yurp
Betuene Aprile and Merche
with sap new in the bough
With plum flowers above them
with almond on the black bough
With jasmine and olive leaf,
To the beat of the measure
From star up to the half-dark
From half-dark to half-dark
Unceasing the measure
Flank by flank on the headland
with the Goddess' eyes to seaward
By Circeo, by Terracina, with the stone eyes
white toward the sea
With one measure, unceasing:
"Fac deum!" "Est factus."
Ver novum!
ver novum!
Thus made the spring,
Can see but their eyes in the dark
not the bough that he walked on.
Beaten from flesh into light
Hath swallowed the fire-ball
A traverso le foglie
His rod hath made god in my belly
Sic loquitur nupta
Cantat sic nupta

Dark shoulders have stirred the lightning
A girl's arms have nested the fire,
Not I but the handmaid kindled
Cantat sic nupta
I have eaten the flame.
 
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