and the world of life after death is a "joyless region" (4). But Kung, on the other hand, "said nothing of the 'life after death'" (59). The businessmen who talk in Canto XIX do not look into life after death at all. But they are not like Kung, who sees life as a time to be filled up and spent well. Instead they are greedy for whatever they can get from life. Yet nothing they get satisfies them. By comparing what is said, and how it is said, in these three cantos it is possible to see how Pound made the different aspects of human culture work with and against each other to build a complex picture of the range of human actions and thoughts. There are also many other cantos in the selection. But the comparison and contrasting of these three gives an idea of how he worked--even though they all relate to other cantos as well.
The first canto begins right in the middle of something and the reader does not see until the third line that the words are being spoken by someone who is telling about something he has done. It is not until the seventh lin
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