Ezra Pound and his classical sources : 'The cantos' and the primal matter of Troy

diction. "Never have I heard the word 'PLIGHT' spoken. " 6 He suggested that Rouse only translate what is essential. "I just don't think you've yet got it. At any rate I' d like to see a 'rewrite' as if you didn't know the WORDS of the original, and were telling what happened. " 7 He demanded that Rouse invent new phrases for the Homeric epithets. "A LIVE phrase may get one out of dead epithet. " 8 He reminds Rouse of Homer's unique onomatopoeia. "What I hear in Homer with my three farden's worth of greek, is the SOUND of the old mens voices, or the poluphloisboious [loud-roaring] swish/swash on the beach. " 9 In Canto 2, Pound imagines a blind Homer hearing the cicada-like voices of the old men on the Skaian gate in Iliad book 3 from the sound of the waves on the coast of Chios. And poor old Homer blind, blind, as a bat, Ear, ear for the sea-surge, murmur of old men's voices: "Let her go back to the ships. " 10In Canto 74, Pound describes the "diminutive poluphloisboios [loud-roarings]" of Homer's sea (74/447). But Rouse wasn't getting it. Nor did he get the whole business of modernism. "As for the modernists, Sitwells + Co, they are idiots, so far as I have managed to read, without either sound or sense, but I know little. " 11 Pound sent Rouse a copy of A Draft of XXX Cantos (1930). Rouse was puzzled. "Your cantos are like sketches for poems, is that not so? I have not followed them yet, so forgive me if I am stupid. " 12 When Rouse sent Pound his translation of book 5 of the Odyssey, Pound found it "just plain damn bad. Careless, frivolous, missed opportunities all over it. " 13 Rouse had turned Odysseus into British gentlemen. Odysseus derives from the trickster of folklore, Pound argued: proud, lazy, impulsive: born un po' misero/ dont want to go to war / little runt who finally has to do all the hard work/ gets all Don Juan's chances with the ladies and cant really enjoy 'em/ Circe, Calypso, Nausika always some fly in the ointment/ last to volunteer on stiff jobs. 14 "This book uses Ezra Pound's The Cantos as a lens to understand modernism's ambition to revolutionize literature through mythical and scientific methods. Homer's Odyssey plays a unique methodological and structural role in The Cantos. The Cantos translates, interprets, abridges, adapts, critiques, parodies, trivializes, allegorizes, and "ritualizes" the Odyssey. Partly inspired by Joyce's use of different literary styles or "technics" in Ulysses, and partly inspired by medieval classicism and nineteenth-century philology, Pound uses a plethora of methods to translate Homer and other classical texts. This book argues that The Cantos is a modernist vision of the Matter of Troy, a term used by medieval authors to designate the cycle of texts based on the Trojan War and its aftereffects, including the nostoi (returns) of the Greek heroes. This is the first study to explore how medieval classicism and translation informs Pound's mythical method and to systematically outline the variety and evolution of Pound's Odyssey translations in The Cantos."--Page [4] of cover This book uses Ezra Pound's The Cantos as a lens to understand modernism's ambition to revolutionize literature through mythical and scientific methods. Homer's Odyssey plays a unique methodological and structural role in The Cantos . The Cantos translates, interprets, abridges, adapts, critiques, parodies, trivializes, allegorizes, and "ritualizes" the Odyssey . Partly inspired by Joyce's use of different literary styles or "technics" in Ulysses , and partly inspired by medieval classicism and 19th century philology, Pound uses a plethora of methods to translate Homer and other classical texts. This book argues that The Cantos is a modernist vision of the Matter of Troy, a term used by medieval authors to designate the cycle of texts based on the Trojan war and its aftereffects, including the nostoi (returns) of the Greek heroes. This is the first study to explore how medieval classicism and translation informs Pound's mythical method and to systematically outline the variety and evolution of Pound's Odyssey translations in The Cantos . "Using The Cantos as a lens to understand modernism's ambition to revolutionize literature through mythical and scientific methods, this book looks at how Homer's Odyssey plays a unique methodological and structural role in The Cantos and, more broadly, recalibrates the reader's sense of Pound's deployment of classical sources in them. Pound adapts techniques from philology and comparative anthropology in order to excavate the primordial lyric roots of epic poetry."-- Provided by publisher