1 "Le Paradis n'est pas artificiel:"

WATER AND PARADISE IN THE CANTOSPaper delivered at the 15th International Pound Conference,

Rapallo, Italy, July 4, 1993

[For some reason, I never published this paper. The present

version is unaltered from the paper read 21 years ago,

except for formatting, a couple of editorial alterations,

and one correction explained in footnote #9.]

The following discussion of Pound's representation of

paradise in the Cantos should properly be regarded as a

footnote to Demetres Tryphonopoulos's splendid reading of

canto 17 in The Celestial Tradition (108-27). Tryphonopoulos

explicates Pound's reliance on neoplatonic allegoresis --

particularly on Porphyry's commentary on "The Cave of the

Nymphs." He points out that for the neoplatonists – amongst

whom we must count G.R.S. Mead as well as Porphyry and

Thomas Taylor – caves symbolize the world, understood as a

comely order or kosmos, which is imposed upon formless

matter or hyle, symbolized by water. Pound's "cave of Nerea"

is equivalent to Porphyry's cave of the nymphs, a symbolical

representation of the transmigration of souls. In the words

of Thomas Taylor, caves signify "the descent of the soul

into an inferior nature and its ascent into the intelligible

world" (Cited by Tryphonopoulos 112). The descent is

understood to be the first or natural birth, while the

ascent is the second, palingenetic, or mystical birth. For

Tryphonopoulos, then, Canto 17 is a highly charged poetic

account of a mystical initiation told from the perspective

of the initiate -- although not in his own voice. The

mystical revelation is only darkly conveyed to the readers

of the Cantos; it is manifest only to the initiate. Although

the initiate in canto 17 is anonymous, he is addressed by

Persephone as "brother of Circe:"

Koré through the bright meadow,

with green-gray dust in the grass:

"For this hour, brother of Circe." (17/79)

(Tryphonopoulos explains that this is a formula for one

initiated into the mysteries.)

Tryphonopoulos' reading of canto 17 is based upon a

study of Pound's occultist sources, deriving ultimately from

the Hellenic world, especially Plotinus and the

neoplatonists. The importance of these influences remain

controversial among Pound scholiasts, many of whom regard

Pound as a sceptical relativist. Tryphonopoulos's position

-- and my own -- is that Pound did take these mystical and

occult topoi very seriously, and that

the Cantos are best understood as a religious poem within a

tradition that may be called either neoplatonic or occult. I

prefer to call it occult because Pound came to neoplatonism

through the filter of eighteenth and nineteenth century

occult writers. However, it must be acknowledged that Pound

is not faithful to his sources – no doubt because he gives

precedence to his own experiences. Some object to the label,

"occult" because it designates schlocky books and movies

about demons and the like. Such objections cannot be taken

seriously. The same problem exists for "exotic," which is

employed by strippers as an epithet for their art, and for

"aesthetic," which hair removal salons use in the same way.

One does not surrender "exotic" or "aesthetic" to those sub-

literate uses. No more should we surrender "occult" – which

means "hidden," "secret," or "unseen."

It is possible that Pound has incorporated occult topoi

in his poetry with a Rortyan ironic detachment, such as has

long been attributed to high modernist literature. Certainly

it is as easy to assemble Poundian remarks that are

susceptible to such an interpretation as it is to assemble

ones suggesting the contrary. He leans both ways in the

recently published interview with Jerome Kavka (an examining

psychiatrist at St. Elizabeth's). When asked about his

religious affiliations, Pound replied:

The family is northeast Presbyterian on one side

and Quaker on the other. I was brought up

Presbyterian, reading the Bible daily up to age

sixteen. Now, I'm a Confucian, a reaction. I

reacted against Christianity. I went aesthetico-

pagan. I went in for the Greek Gods. Years ago,

Eliot asked, "What does Pound believe?" At the age

of twelve, I was an earnest Christian. Between

sixteen and twenty-four came all this

mysticism ... a whole series of poems of mystic

illumination. Then came the paganism, Greek Gods

and finally, Confucianism" (Kavka 159).

This is the least cautious statement of his occultism that I

know of, and it was made in a context where he would be

strongly motivated to dissimulate any eccentric beliefs. The

only hedging I see is the implication that the Confucianism

was a late stage and incompatible with occultism. An

implication that is contradicted by Pound's remarks

elsewhere – for example canto 53: "Taught and the not

taught. Kung and Eleusis / to catechumen alone" (53/272).1

In any case, on this chronology cantos 1 through 8 belong to

his "aesthetico-pagan" period, and cantos 17 and 20 to his

pagan period.

Even if we grant the admissibility of inquiry into the

occult context of the Cantos, there remains the question of

just how it impinges on the poem. Is Pound a scholar of the

occult or a visionary himself? Clearly he is a scholar of

the occult. The New Critical and aestheticist position on

the question, adopted by all who follow Hugh Kenner and

Donald Davie is that the modernist author is merely using

occult materials in the manner of a Rortyan ironist --

without either endorsing or condemning them.2 The contrary

position, adopted by Carrol Terrell and his students, is

that Pound takes the occult material as seriously as any

pious Baptist or Catholic takes his or her religious

beliefs, and that we should do the same. Similarly esoteric,

but more radically allegorical readings, have been offered

by Forrest Read and Akiko Miyake.3

There remains a third position – the one Tryphonopoulos

and I adopt – that Pound was himself a visionary, and that

his poetry is often a kind of ritual re-enactment of his

visionary experiences. This position is in agreement with

the assertion that he wrote "a whole series of poems of

mystic illumination" between the ages of sixteen and twenty-

four. Of course, accepting Pound as a visionary does not

entail accepting that the visions are divinely inspired.

Clearly the scholar ought to maintain a sceptical – but not

dismissive – posture toward occultist dimensions of

literature and treat them as an object of scholarly research

like any other.

Despite a certain caution, Pound has not been entirely

evasive on the question. In his "aesthetico-pagan" period,

he committed the following well-known sentiments to print:

I believe in a sort of permanent basis in

humanity, that is to say, I believe that Greek

myth arose when someone having passed through

delightful psychic experience tried to communicate

it to others and found it necessary to screen

himself from persecution. Speaking aesthetically,

the myths are explications of mood: you may stop

there, or you may probe deeper. Certain it is that

these myths are only intelligible in a vivid and

glittering sense to those people to whom they

occur." (Spirit 93)

On the strength of the last sentence Pound is claiming for

himself (and for his canon of genuine poets) an

understanding of myth based on mystical experiences. A

consequence of this position is that mythopoetic poetry like

his own cannot be fully understood by the profane like

myself. Such poetry must be as opaque to the non-initiate as

a Latin Mass to a Baptist. Of course, the Baptist can gain

some insight by seeking instruction from a Catholic. Even

though her understanding would remain partial and imperfect

unless she were to become a believing Catholic, no doubt as

a sceptical recipient of instruction she would have more

understanding than as an uninformed observer. I see myself

as a not very devout empiricist taking instruction in

Pound's mysticism, paganism, and Confucianism. As a scholar,

I take instruction from Pound himself, and from his

instructors.

Tryphonopoulos follows the same strategy, concentrating

his analysis in The Celestial Tradition on the occult signification

of cantos 17, 23, 90 and 91. He finds enacted there the

three-fold soteriological pattern some scholars have found

in the Eleusinian mysteries. He calls this pattern,

"palingenesis" or "second birth," and subdivides it into

three ritual movements: a descent or katabasis; a wandering

or dromena; and a revelation or epopteia. This pattern is

applicable in fairly obvious ways to the macro-structure of

the poem as a whole, as well as micro-structurally to

individual cantos or groups of them. In addition it is a

pattern which can be applied to the Odyssey and the Commedia

without undue strain. Of course, it does not resolve all the

hermeneutic problems set by the Cantos. In particular, it

does not fit canto 20 very neatly. The paradigm suggested by

Porphyry's cave – where souls are continuously

transmigrating into and out of this world – seems better

adapted to canto 20.

Let me briefly review the testimony we have that

justifies the interpretation of canto 17 as the record of an

extraordinary psychic experience couched in terms compatible

with the literature of ritual initiation – particularly of

the Eleusinian, Dionysian, Orphic, and Mithraic rites. Canto

17 was identified by Pound in a still unpublished letter to

his father as "a sort of paradiso terrestre." The preceding

canto he identified as a purgatorio in the much cited letter

to his father of 11 April, 1927 (Paige 285). On those

grounds the placement of the earthly paradise conforms

reasonably well to Dante's Commedia where it is placed at

the top of the mount of purgatory and is reached in canto 28

of the Purgatorio. Given that Pound has identified cantos 14

and 15 as "Hell" cantos, it is plausible to assume that he

would also devote two cantos to Purgatory. Finally, in the

same letter he described the "main subject" of canto 20 as

the "lotus eaters, or respectable dope smokers; and general

paradiso." This "subject" is conveyed to us in a "jumbled or

candied" manner by way of the delirium of Niccolo d'Este –

delirious with grief after having executed his wife and son

for adultery.

I have always found it difficult to accept a drug-

induced ecstasy as an appropriate representation of

paradise. This hesitation to accept Pound's characterization

of canto 20 as paradisal was reinforced by his apparent

rejection of the drug-induced "paradis artificiel" in the

Pisan Cantos. The phrase, "Le paradis n'est pas artificiel"

occurs there five times. It is an allusion to Baudelaire's

1860 study of drug-induced experiences, Les Paradis Artificiels.

Knowing that Pound did not use drugs I have read this phrase

as a rejection of drug-induced ecstasy. However, a look at

Baudelaire's study has impelled me to reconsider.

Baudelaire's accounts of hashish induced hallucination are

highly suggestive of some of Pound's visionary poetry:

Sometimes it happens that the personality

disappears and the world of the pantheistic poets

manifests itself in you so extraordinarily that

the contemplation of external objects makes you

forget your own existence, and you soon confuse

yourself with them. Your eye fixes itself on a

tree gracefully bent by the wind; in a few seconds

a very natural comparison in the mind of the poet,

becomes a reality in your mind. At first, you

ascribe your passions, your desire, or your

sadness to the tree, but soon you are the tree.

Similarly the bird soaring loftily in the sky at

first represents the eternal desire to soar above

human concerns, but soon you are the bird itself."

(Baudelaire 133. Trans. by the author)

In A Light from Eleusis I interpreted the tag, "Le paradis

n'est pas artificiel" as a declaration of faith in the

reality of the divine as known to us through momentary

ecstatic experiences. But perhaps it is better understood as

an affirmation of the validity of vision, however induced.4

Such an interpretation would render the inclusion of the

lotophagoi in a "general paradiso" less puzzling, and would

also account for the placing of the line, "States of mind

are inexplicable to us" in apposition with the second

occurrence of "Le paradis n'est pas artificiel" (canto

76/460).

If Pound's paradise is a state of mind rather than a

place – as I have long maintained; and if that state of mind

is one of ecstatic vision, then it would seem plausible that

Purgatory and Hell would also be states of mind. The latter

is represented in canto 14 by stench, ooze, excrement,

pimply male nudity, wax candles, rot, beetles, and so forth.

Canto 15 is apparently a higher circle of hell inhabited by

flatterers, the violent, and liars, mired in syrup, swill,

and bile, respectively. I take these images as symbolic

representations of the states of mind of the unredeemed

rather than as visions actually experienced by Pound. We are

dealing here with allegory and symbolism rather than vision.

Perhaps that is why the hell cantos have found few

admirers.5

The first of the purgatorial cantos begins in much the

same manner, with a dull (and somewhat obscure) allegorical

representation of Blake, Peire Cardinal, Dante, Sordello,

and St. Augustine.6 But on the second page of canto 16,

allegory is replaced with vision in a carefully detailed

"pastoral" setting marked by light air, saplings, blue

water, stones, quiet grass, trees, and gray granite stairs.

We descend by the stairs into "the quiet air / the new

sky, / the light as after a sun-set" (16/69), that is, into

a subterranean world. Having descended into patet terra, we see

"fount-pools" and nymphs. All of this is highly reminiscent

of the quiet water and pastoral pools of cantos 2, 3 and 4.

Although not so baldly allegorical as the opening lines of

the canto, these lines are formulaic, that is to say, they

have the hallmark of ritual – a formulaic re-enactment of

spiritual phenomena within the sensory realm.7 In this

respect these cantos are very much indebted to Dante's

allegorical and symbolic techniques. But that is not to say

that they can be reliably glossed by Dante's medieval

Catholic vision. Pound's vision is manifestly neither

Catholic nor medieval.8

The "pastoral" scene is terminated in canto 16 by the

transitional lines -- "Prone in that grass, in sleep; / et

j'entendis des voix:..." -- which lead us into accounts of

the violence of war. Terrell interprets this as an allusion

to Dante's faint in Purgatorio 31. When he awakes Dante is

being carried across Lethe by Matilda. But such a reading

fails to take account of the matching lines in canto 17:

"Now supine in burrow, half over-arched bramble, / One eye

for the sea, through that peek-hole" (17/78). Instead of

being carried across Lethe into Heaven as Dante is, Pound's

adept first hears voices speaking of war as he lies prone in

the grass, and then sees a procession as he lies "supine in

burrow." The procession he sees in the supine position is

not entirely unlike that seen by Dante in Purgatorio 29 ll.

52-96. Both Dante and Pound's adept are on this side of

Lethe, observing a procession on the other side, in Heaven.

I confess I have no clear idea of the significance of the

change from prone to supine, but the former is generally

seen as less passive and defenceless than the latter.

Worshippers typically prostrate themselves before

divinities, some of whom are represented in a supine

position – as indeed, are the recumbent figures in canto 20.

As Tryphonopoulos has shown, the setting in canto 17

corresponds far more closely to Porphyry than to Dante. The

water described is either in pools, or is the sea itself

("the flash of waves under prows") as in canto 4 – as

opposed to Dante's river of forgetfulness, Lethe. I know of

no similarly good fit between the "general paradiso" of

canto 20 and another text. It does have a river, but it is

not crossed, as Dante's is, and it is not a river of water,

but of air, incense, or smoke upon which the souls in canto

20 float, "each on invisible raft." In contrast to the

earthly paradise as depicted in cantos 2, 3, 4, and 17 with

"quiet air" and "quiet water," in the heavenly paradise of

canto 20 the air is "faceted" and the sea below is agitated,

"churning shingle." The souls are floating like flames in

the air "recumbent," "wrapped each in burnous," "each man in

his cloth, as on raft, on / The high invisible current." The

whole is suffused with the smoke of the olibanum, that is,

of the incense burned at Dionysian festivals.

From toe to head

The purple, blue-pale smoke, as of incense;

Wrapped each in burnous, smoke as the

olibanum's

Swift, as if joyous.

Wrapped, floating; and the blue-pale smoke of

the incense

Swift to rise, then lazily in the wind

as Aeolus over bean-field,

As hay in the sun, the olibanum, saffron,

As myrrh without styrax;

Each man in his cloth, as on a raft, on

The high invisible current; (20/93)

This portion of canto 20 has the allegorical/symbolic

flavour we noticed in canto 16. The scene is much more

"observed" than it is "experienced." Indeed, readers of the

Cantos will remember that Dionysus himself told Acoetes in

canto 2 that he would be

Safe with my lynxes

feeding grapes to my leopards,

Olibanum is my incense,

the vines grow in my homage (2/8-

9).

A distinctly non-visionary component of canto 20 is the

anecdote of Pound's visit to the scholar of Provençal, Emil

Lévy to seek advice about a crux in a poem of Arnaut

Daniel's. It turns out that the crux, "noigandres," completes

a phrase beginning "e l'olors" which Pound translates as "the

smell of that place," and emends "noigandres" to "d'enoi ganres"

– equivalent to modern French "d'ennui gagnes." Terrell

renders it rather passively as "wards off boredom," but a

more active rendering is justified -- say, "conquers

boredom." I would like to suggest that the exegetical focus

on noigandres has occluded the importance of the odour which

dispels boredom. It is above all odour that is celebrated in

the canto:9

Wind over the olive trees, ranunculae ordered,

By the clear edge of the rocks

The water runs, and the wind scented with pine

And with hay fields under sun-swath.

Agostino, Jacopo and Boccata.

You would be happy for the smell of that place

And never tired of being there, either alone

Or accompanied.

Sound: as of the nightingale too far off to be

heard.

Sandro, and Boccata, and Jacopo Sellaio;

The ranunculae, and almond,

Boughs set in espalier,

Duccio, Agostino; e l'olors --

The smell of that place -- d'enoi ganres

Air moving under the boughs,

The cedars there in the sun,

Hay new cut on hill slope (20/90).

Pound places some of his favourite artists in "that

place" -- a garden world redolent with odours of almond,

cedar, and hay. It is difficult to be sure just what

relation is posited between this paradisal "place" and

Freiburg, where everything seemed clean "after Italy." The

standard reading of this juxtaposition is that Pound is

mocking the scholar's inadequacy to understand poetry, and

celebrating the poet's superior insight. I think a less

harsh and oppositional reading is possible. It is true that

Lévy does not know what "noigandres" means and Pound – at

least by the time he writes this canto – does. But to make

Lévy represent the obtuseness of literary scholars, is to

construe the canto as satirical – a construal which must

infect our interpretation of the lotus eaters as well.

Scholars are perhaps prompt to endorse ridicule of

other scholars, fearing an unflattering identification with

the satirical target. But it is not clear that Lévy is a

target of ridicule. He is represented as the leading

authority on Provençal poetry, and Pound consults him in the

anecdote – as he consulted many scholars throughout his

life, scorning only those with whom he disagreed. But even

if Pound had not shown respect for literary scholarship

elsewhere, his own poetry is itself a form of scholarship,

and would have been impossible without standard scholars

like Lévy and Fenollosa. Moreover, what is the use of poets’

registering their visions if they have no readers? And who

is a more devoted reader than the scholar?

If we take the point that artworks are a sort of

antechamber to paradise – not just a report on the nature of

paradise, but a manifestation of it, showing the way

thereto, and perhaps even assisting in the transport of the

soul from here to there, then we can understand scholarship

as an antechamber to art. Hence Old Lévy's clean Freiburg,

and amiable puzzlement, is sandwiched between evocations of

a Meditteranean landscape evoking a regained earthly paradise

– one occupied by artists as well as nymphs and oreads. It

is, of course, a pagan redemption, that is to say, it is

beauty that is regained, rather than virtue or divine

favour, as is the case in the Christian redemption.

There is no space to discuss the rather surprising

route through passionate violence that canto 20 follows from

Lévy's garden to the Dionysian "general paradiso" marked by

souls floating in the air "as hay in the sun." But some

features of the transition belong to the story I am telling

here. In contrast to canto 17 where everything was still and

quiet (except for the shaking of the sistrum) we have moving

air redolent with fragrance. Whereas the birds were silent

in canto 17, now we hear the clear sweet song of the sirens,

denied to Odysseus' men. The waters are moving, even

tumbling and noisy. Instead of trees, stone, nymphs, dryads

and fauns we see Helen and other souls ascending into the

empyrean:

Yellow, bright saffron, croceo;

And as the olibanum bursts into flame,

The bodies so flamed in the air, took flame,

"...Mi mise, il mio sposo novello."

Shot from stream into spiral. (20/91)

It is this ascent that distinguishes canto 20 from the

palingenetic pattern culminating in epopteia found elsewhere

in the Cantos. Instead of beholding a brightness, these

souls become flames themselves, that is, become god-like.

These are not flames of torment such as those in Dante's

Inferno V, the second circle of Hell, where suffer "the carnal

sinners who subject reason to desire" (i peccatori carnali, / che la

ragion sommettono al talento) (ll. 39-40). Canto 20 contains

identifying tags that evoke Inferno V: "cosi Elena vedi" (Inferno V

64. Pound supplied the cosi) and "le donne e i cavalieri" ("le donne

antiche e' cavalieri" V 71). The damned in Inferno V are described

as being violently blown about by conflicting winds. When

Dante wishes to speak to the damned lovers, Paolo and

Francesca, they are "borne by their will through the air" to

him so as to speak of their love. These air-borne damned

lovers are suggestive of Pound's air-borne souls, and are

also reminiscent of Porphyry's ascending souls. It is not

unlikely that Pound would deliberately move lovers from the

second circle of hell to a paradisal realm – given his

celebration of amor.

It is all the more plausible when we remember that

Paolo is an ancestor of Sigismundo Malatesta, and that the

visionary parts of the canto are conveyed by way of Niccolo

d'Este's delirium occasioned by a crime of passion. In

short, the "general paradiso" of canto 20 is a state

achievable by means of the passion of love as well as by

pharmaceutical aids. There are two categories of floating

souls: the lovers who become flames, and the lotophagoi who

speak scornfully of the sailors who continued to toil and

wander with Odysseus, and who were not even allowed to hear

the ligur' aoide of the sirens:

"Give! What were they given?

Ear-wax.

"Poison and ear-wax,

and a salt grave by the bull-

field,

"nessun amumona, their heads like sea crows in the

foam,

"Black splotches, sea-weed under lightning;

"Canned beef of Apollo, ten cans for a boat load."

Ligur' aoide. (20/94)

Read occultly – as it is by Poryphyry, Iamblichus,

Plutarch, and G.R.S. Mead – the Odyssey is an account of the

journey of the soul toward immortality. In his epic,

Odysseus alone achieves "the full eidous" (canto 81/520)

through a prolonged dromena, symbolically punctuated by

erotic encounters. Canto 20 focusses on the moment of

revelation or ecstatic "translation" achievable through

either eros or intoxication – as represented respectively by

Aphrodite and Dionysus.

The "signature" of this rendering of the paradisal

state would seem to be the Dionysian incense, olibanum.

Pound names it in four cantos only (4, 20, 90, and 93). The

occurrence in 90 binds to canto 20 through the incense

itself and the Latin tag, "ac ferae familiares" ("and

domesticated wild beasts"). But it also echoes the choros

nympharum of canto 17. Canto 90 appears to represent a

cultic or ritual scene rather in contrast to the visionary

scene of canto 20. It even includes an altar:

Faunus, sirenes,

the stone taking form in the air

ac ferae,

cervi,

the great cats approaching

Pardus, leopardi, Bagheera

drawn hither from woodland,

woodland EPI CHTHONI

the trees rise

and there is a wide sward between them

OI CHTHONOI myrrh and olibanum on the altar stone

giving perfume,

and where was nothing

now is furry assemblage

and in the boughs now are voices

(90/608).

Pound here draws the earthly and celestial paradises even

closer together than he did in cantos 17 and 20. He invokes

the procession of 17 and the ascending air-borne souls of

20, and even repeats the tag, e i cavalieri.

For the procession of Corpus

come now banners

comes flute tone

OI CHTHONOI

to new forest,

thick smoke, purple, rising

bright flame now on the altar

the crystal funnel of air

out of Erebus, the delivered,

Tyro, Alcmene free now, ascending

e i cavalieri,

ascending,

no shades more (90/608-9).

Tyro and Alcmene were encountered by Odysseus in the nekuia

of canto one as mere shades. The implication is clearly

soteriological. They are "no shades more" but are ascending

like the souls in 20 into the empyrean. It remains to be

determined just what has happened to redeem Tyro and

Alcmene, but it seems clear that their redemption is on the

pagan model of palingenesis, and remote from the Christian

model of surrogate suffering and sacrifice. If there is a

rite or cultic practice involved, the rite is perhaps the

poem itself.

Surette: Paradise

WORKS CONSULTED

Baumann, Walter. The Rose in the Steel Dust. Bern: Franck Verlag

1967.

Baudelaire, Charles. Les Paradis Artificiel. 1860 rprt. Paris:

Gallimard 1961.

Kavka, Jerome. "Ezra Pound's Personal History." Paideuma 20

(Spring & Fall 1991) 143-85).

Miyake, Akiko. Ezra Pound and the Mysteries of Love. Durham: Duke

University Press 1991.

Pound, Ezra. The Cantos of Ezra Pound. London: Faber 1973.

-----------. The Selected Letters of Ezra Pound. ed. D.D. Paige.

London: Faber 1951.

-----------. Spirit of Romance. 1929 rprt New York: New

Directions 1970.

Swedenborg, Emmanuel. A Compendium of the Theological Writings of

Emanuel Swedenborg. ed. Samuel M. Warren. 1875 rprt New

York: Swedenborg Foundation 1974.

Surette, Leon. A Light from Eleusis. Oxford: Clarendon Press

1979.

Terrell, Carroll F. A Companion to the Cantos of Ezra Pound. 2 vols.

Berkeley: University of California Press 1980 & 1984.

Tryphonopoulos, Demetres. The Celestial Tradition. Waterloo, Ont.:

Wilfrid Laurier University Press 1992.

Surette: Paradise Wilhelm, James J. Dante and Pound. Orono: University of Maine

Press 1974.

Surette: Paradise

END NOTES

1. Peter Dale Scott has sharpened my understanding of the relation between Kung and Eleusis from that found in my comment in A Light from Eleusis on the line in canto 52/258: "Between Kung and Eleusis" (p. 150). Scott grounds his reading on 53/272: "Taught and the not taught. Kung and Eleusis / to catechumen alone," which he sees as contrasting the Western (Eleusinian) and Eastern (Confucian) revelations as the untaught (or esoteric) and the taught (or exoteric) respectively. I think he is right. The second line I read to mean firstly that the two are compatible and secondly that they are sufficient unto themselves; the "catechumen," (a convert under instruction, or an adept preparing for initiation) requires nothing else. I take this to mean that Pound excludes the Mosaic revelation, preserving only those aspects of Christianity that he can trace to his eclectic "Eleusis" made up of Zarathustra, Manes, Eleusis, Neoplatonism, and Mithras among others.2. Walter Baumann's commentary on canto 20 is an early and excellent exemplar of this school of interpretation. He reads 20 as essentially a moralization of the Odyssean adventure understood in purely secular and moralistic terms. See Baumann 67-72.3. Forrest Read's '76, One World and the Cantos of Ezra Pound (Chapel hill: NorthCarolina UP 1981) is the most extreme – and least credible – allegorical reading of the Cantos that I know of. Although fully esoteric, it is primarily secular and Masonic.

Akiko Miyake's Ezra Pound and the Mysteries of Love is a much more responsible and plausible study, but it too is fully allegorical in its approach. Unlike Read, Miyake's reading is religious and mystical. She offers a highly allegorized reading of cantos 17 and 20 that overlaps to some degree with that offered here. (See especially 129-37.) Space does not permit a detailed enumeration of our points of agreement and disagreement. Where we disagree in our hermeneutic principals is that Miyake treats all the cantos as equivalently allegorical while I argue for a supple modulation between allegory, symbolism, metaphor, and literalism between, and even within, cantos.

4. There is no evidence that Pound used drugs at any time, nor was he even a habitual user of alcohol. Kavka asked him directly: "have you used alcohol much, or drugs?" and Pound replied:

No. ... I have drunk very moderately. I had a few historic drunks, one when I arrived at the Russian point of view and another when I prophesied the return of the Pagan Gods about ten years ago. ... I don't take wine regularly with meals. No drugs... (Kavka 157).

5. Pound's Hell may well be inspired by Swedenborg, an author whose importance to Pound is still under-studied. Compare the following description of the damned from Heaven and Hell (n 553):

Their faces in general are horrible, and void of life, like corpses; those of some are black, of some fiery, like torches, of some hideouswith pimples, warts, and ulcers; with many no face appears, but in its place a something hairy or bony, and with some only the teeth appear. (cited in Warren)Another Swedenborgian description suggestive of canto 14 is his account of souls that "are immersed in quagmires that appear like bogs; and there they are harassed by the fantasies into which their falsities are turned" (n 209).

6

. Of all the cantos discussed in this paper 16 is the only one that Pound included in his 1966 Selected Cantos. I am not sure what one is to makeof this, but it should be noted. In Selected Cantos 16 is identified as "limbo" rather than purgatory. In Catholic doctrine limbo is the circle where the innocent or virtuous, but unbaptised, languish. Canto 16 does not conform to this formula unless we regard Blake, Dante, Sordello and St. Augustine as ones uninitiated in Pound's Eleusis – precursors, as it were, like Dante's Virgil.7. In the Companion Terrell interprets this passage by means of a supposed allusion to Purgatorio 28. Clearly we are meant to compare these scenes to Dante's purgatory, but I cannot accept Terrell's assumption thatthese lines are "based on" Purgatorio 28-33.8. On this point it is worth noting that Wilhelm makes no comment on canto 17. He takes considerable notice of canto 20, but stresses its non-Dantescan nature (55-6, & 110-11).9. When I read this paper in Rapallo, I had mistakenly construed the evoked garden as Levy's garden in Freiburg. My Swiss friend, Walter Baumann was quick to point out that olive trees are not to be found in that part of the world. Being less familiar with European floral geography, I had imagined that Pound was locating his vision in Levy's "redolent garden," as I put it. I was mislead by the pine trees and hay-fields. The revised interpretation of the passage, retains my central point that the scholar, too, has some part of the vision.