Notes on Ezra Pound (2): “eternal war” and “Sagetrieb”

(My intention in the following is mainly to collect citations, drawing together a few threads through Pound’s Cantos on “the eternal war between light and mud.”)

 

1—Fango

In Canto 72, an “I” (Pound?), says to Marinetti’s unquiet spirit (who is eager to return to life and to war—“seule hygiène du monde”): “Lascia a me la parola. | Lascia a me ch’io mi spieghi, | ch’io faccia il canto della guerra eterna | Fra luce e fango” (which E.P. translates as “leave the talking to me. | And let me explain, | sing of the eternal war | between light and mud”).

The briefest of allusions at the incipit of Canto 87 suggests who the combatants in this eternal war are: “…between the usurer and any man who | wants to do a good job | (perenne).”

That this is indeed an allusion to the “guerra eterna” is confirmed in the following Canto 88, of which a passage begins, “Bellum perenne,” which goes on to cite a few significant dates (1694, 1750, 1878) in this apparently economic war. Then again a page later, in a very delicate epic allusion: “one, eight, seven, eight, | Mencius on tithing, | PERENNE. | Cano perenne.” “Arma virumque cano” (Aen., 1.1): eternal war, eternal song (see §3, infra).

Ezra Pound on France, Italy and Sacred Empire

More from the F.B.I. file on Pound. The Bureau’s translation of a wartime broadcast made in French, aimed at Vichy. I haven’t found the original document; but Feldman reproduces it.

Begins with an interesting statement of his Europeanism; collapses into the usual invective; then ends with “Rome was reborn. The Sacred Empire was reborn”; i.e., the empire of antiquity was reborn in the Holy Roman Empire; and the H.R.E. was reborn in Mussolini. More of Pound’s modernist Ghibellinism. So I think anyway.

Source: Matthew Feldman, “The ‘Pound Case’ in Historical Perspective: An Archival Overview,” Journal of Modern Literature, 35.2 (winter, 2012), p. 93 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/jmodelite.35.2.83).

Related to Pound’s Ghibellinism:

Contributions by Guy Davenport and Boris de Rachewiltz to Eva Hesse (ed.), New Approaches to Ezra Pound (London, 1969);

Reed Way Dasenbrock, “Ezra Pound, the Last Ghibelline,” Journal of Modern Literature, 16.4 (Spring, 1990), pp. 511–533 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/3831417);

Robert Casillo, “Ezra Pound, L. A. Waddell, and the Aryan Tradition of ‘The Cantos,’” Modern Language Studies, 15.2 (Spring, 1985), pp. 65–81 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/3194433).