Literature in English, North America Commons^™

"Ego, Scriptor Cantilenae": The Cantos And Ezra Pound, Steven R. Gulick

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Can poetry "make new" the world? Ezra Pound thought so. In "Cantico del Sole" he said: "The thought of what America would be like/ If the Classics had a wide circulation/ Troubles me in my sleep" (Personae 183). He came to write an 815 page poem called The Cantos in which he presents "fragments" drawn from the literature and documents of the past in an attempt to build a new world, "a paradiso terreste" (The Cantos 802). This may be seen as either a noble gesture or sheer egotism.

Pound once called The Cantos the "tale of the …