Eliot is one-L, always, and I think you mean HENRY Adams for the historian? The one who also wrote the novel Democracy and the rather imaginary history of Mont-St.-Michel called that? But perhaps I am wrong and there was a Charles one-d to differentiate from the delightful cartoonist Charles Addams who gave us the Addams family with his proto-Far Side weirdness.
I think - it may be wishful thinking -- that Pound did have SOME regret -- when you hear him read "pull down thy vanity, pull down" there is a weariness and sorrow that encompasses for me the knowledge that he first remade poetry with Yeats and Eliot, then wasted his life making it tiresome and dreary again. The last cantos (is it the Rock-Drill segment?) when he is very old, and I think beginning to drift into dementia, so writing short fragments more like George Oppen (read Oppen! Serously, read him!) than Basil Bunting (he's also good, for all his reputation is as a Pound-imitator), are suffused with melancholy and regret. I thought, when I read them.
Throughout my life, at low points and pompous ones, the voice of Pound rings in my head, "Pull down thy vanity/ Pull down" and centers me to the good and real work, and I go read Gary Snyder for another, much superior Pound follower. Also Paul Blackburn, who followed the troubadour thing deep and well.
Yes, that’ll teach me to write these late at night. Charles Adams was his father. I agree that there’s a real sense of artistic regret in the late cantos, but on the other hand he was corresponding with Neonazis in the 50s and 60s, so how much repentance was there truly? Thanks for commenting!
Eliot is one-L, always, and I think you mean HENRY Adams for the historian? The one who also wrote the novel Democracy and the rather imaginary history of Mont-St.-Michel called that? But perhaps I am wrong and there was a Charles one-d to differentiate from the delightful cartoonist Charles Addams who gave us the Addams family with his proto-Far Side weirdness.
I think - it may be wishful thinking -- that Pound did have SOME regret -- when you hear him read "pull down thy vanity, pull down" there is a weariness and sorrow that encompasses for me the knowledge that he first remade poetry with Yeats and Eliot, then wasted his life making it tiresome and dreary again. The last cantos (is it the Rock-Drill segment?) when he is very old, and I think beginning to drift into dementia, so writing short fragments more like George Oppen (read Oppen! Serously, read him!) than Basil Bunting (he's also good, for all his reputation is as a Pound-imitator), are suffused with melancholy and regret. I thought, when I read them.
Throughout my life, at low points and pompous ones, the voice of Pound rings in my head, "Pull down thy vanity/ Pull down" and centers me to the good and real work, and I go read Gary Snyder for another, much superior Pound follower. Also Paul Blackburn, who followed the troubadour thing deep and well.
Yes, that’ll teach me to write these late at night. Charles Adams was his father. I agree that there’s a real sense of artistic regret in the late cantos, but on the other hand he was corresponding with Neonazis in the 50s and 60s, so how much repentance was there truly? Thanks for commenting!
Reading this while watching my garbage team play Aussie Rules Football in Melbourne. That’s my devotion to your devotion to the Cantos!
They lost after leading for 90% of the game. But the post was great!