Irony in Pound's Cantos

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IRONY IN POUND'S CANTOS LXXX AND LXXXI

Of the great modernist poets, Ezra Pound stands apart as the most elliptical. His omnivorous learning, obscure allusions and frequent obtuseness make much of his work inaccessible to the general reader. For Pound's poetry to be readily understood, if such a thing is possible, a reader ought to be familiar with Eastern and Western philosophies, politics, history, several languages and the poet's own life. Even then, comprehending Pound's meaning in a given poem requires diligence and a willingness to allow for great ambiguity. His central work, the Cantos, represents Pound's greatest achievement, containing his most profound comments on the world and his art in all their learned and abstruse glory.

Within this collection of poems, Pound sought to trace the world's history using a Ulyssean/Dantesque framework. The poet within the narrative journeys through the myths, political upheavals and religious systems of the world in a decisively iconoclastic and unapologetically erudite style. The reader, traveling with the poet through the detritus of civilization, confronts an elegiac vision in the Cantos: a post-mortem in which the poet addresses both the totality of civilization's intellectual efforts and his own c

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ance here in a comic sense: That also was an era (Mr. W. Runmel) an era of croissants. Then an era of pains au lait and the eucalyptus bobble is missing. Come Pan, Nino! (Pound, Canto LXXX 507). To describe a period of time as an "era of croissants" is a devilish and coy business. Pound has a sense of history about him, preferring to define the grandiose pretensions of the world's course with specific relation to the type of food he enjoys. More ironic is the comment regarding the eucalyptus bobble: "On the day that Pound was arrested by the partisans, he picked up a seed of the eucalyptus tree on the salite carried it as a good luck charm (Terrell 429). Now, his luck is gone. He has the memory of a grand era of bread, but the good fortune that was symbolized by the eucalyptus seed has flown. Fond memories of bread are replaced by momentary absence of hope. Another passage within Canto LXXX that contains much ironic comment is the section discussing the Irish revolution of 1916 and Yeats' eventual election to that country's senate. Pound plants his tongue firmly in his cheek when he says "The problem after any revolution is what to do with/your gunmen" (Pound, Canto LXXX 510). Pound is drawing parall

Category: Literature - I