In The Cantos Ezra Pound wrote a poem in which he tried to include the whole world. He used many languages, ideas from many traditions, and quotations from some of the greatest works of literature. In the first group of poems, which are called A Draft of XXX Cantos, Pound begins with Greek literature and goes to Chinese philosophy and then to nineteenth-century economic ideas. Canto I is about Odysseus and his men who are involved in one of their adventures from Homer's Odyssey, the ancient Greek poem that was the first work of European literature. Canto XIII deals with a conversation between the Chinese philosopher Kung (another way of saying Confucius) and some of his followers. The teachings, or sayings, of Confucius are the basis of a whole way of thinking and believing in many parts of Asia. Canto XIX is set in modern times and the narrator and an American businessman talk about Karl Marx and money and modern business. If the parts of this very long poem are looked at separately, they might seem to be about completely unrelated subjects. Pound's attempt to include the whole world in his poem meant that he had to build connections between all these different parts. By studying these three cantos it is possible to see how he did this by giving every idea its own particular voice.
In all thirty cantos the tone and the manner of speaking are very important. The backgrounds and cultures of the characters in the poems are expressed in how they speak as much as in what they say. Part of the overall connection that Pound makes between so many unlinked parts is his treatment of everything in the world as though it was visible and audible to him. He tries to make the voices of the past, and even of fictional characters, come alive for the reader. By taking this approach, a speaker in ancient Greece or ancient China is just as real to him, and to the reader, as the speakers from modern New York or England. A comparison of t...