Contra Naturam

THE FIFTH DECAD OF CANTOS--Ezra Pound--Farrar & Rinehart ($1.50).

By about 1953 U. S. expatriate Poet Ezra Loomis Pound, if he continues to compose at his current rate, will have finished his life's masterwork. That masterwork, if its specifications remain unchanged, will finally round out to 100 constituent poems, or cantos. Cantos I-XVI appeared in 1925. Recently Poet Pound passed his masterwork's equatorial line by finishing The Fifth Decad of Cantos-- Cantos numbered XLII to LI.

The Cantos, one by one, record Poet Pound's attempted circumnavigation of the world of space-time curved within the convolutions of his brain. The voyage proceeds along a course unexploited by earlier epic navigators. These poet-navigators attempted to carry their loads to their readers' understandings somewhat as Australian grain boats, knot by knot, carry wheat to Liverpool. Poet Pound's boating is more like a torpedo bug's: he scoots about his map every which way, and tries to be everywhere on it as simultaneously as possible.

Echoed and re-echoed throughout the Cantos are two ancient legends--the Homeric tale of Odysseus' journey through Hades, the Ovidian tale of the seamen who, while kidnapping Bacchus, were transformed to dolphins as their ship, becalmed, sprouted grape-laden vines. The legends appear indiscriminately in ancient. Renaissance and modern dress, according to whichever time or whatever place Poet Pound's eruditely literate, expatriated sensibilities lead him to be thinking about. The resultant confusion is only skin-deep --since to any man, anywhere, any time, life may seem like Hell; and some sea-change in men or matter may, anywhere, any time, startle any man into his creative senses. Into the roomy holds of these seagoing truths Poet Pound crowds everybody and everything he most abhors or admires, pops the stowaways on deck whenever they call for an airing.

Abhorrence No. 1, Hell-devil No. 1, to Poet Pound, is usury. In nine of these ten Cantos he does some powerful cursing at usury in English, Latin, and Greek: he calls it commune sepulchrum helandros kai heleptolis kai helarxe (everybody's grave --man-destroying--and city-destroying-- and state-destroying). Throughout history Poet Pound sees the same monetary blood-sucking going on, whether in profaned ancient Greek temples, perverted lyth-Century Mounts of Pity (i.e., municipal pawnshops), or stone-faced 20th-century banks:

with usura, sin against nature, is thy bread ever more of stale rags is thy bread dry as paper . . . Usura rusteth the chisel It rusteth the craft and the craftsman It gnaweth the thread in the loom None learneth to weave gold in her pattern ; Azure hath a canker by usura; cramoisi

is unbroidered

Emerald findeth no Memling Usura slayeth the child in the womb It stayeth the young man's courting . . . CONTRA NATURAM They have brought whores for Eleusis Corpses are set to banquet at behest of usura.

Ten empires fell on this grease spot, meditates Poet Pound, takes bitter note of Napoleon and others of his heroes who took a stick to usury and either failed to catch it, or ended up impaled. Most readers will agree that Poet Pound's attack on usury succeeds in giving some sinister validity to the Hell that in earlier Cantos appeared merely grotesquely dull and* dirty. Outside Hell all is as beautiful as ever :

Sail passed here in April; may return in

October

Boat fades in silver; slowly; Sun blaze alone on the river.

Where wine flag catches the sunset Sparse chimneys smoke in the cross light

Comes then snow scur on the river And a world is covered with jade Small boat floats like a lanthorn, The flowing water clots as with cold. . . .

Some will feel that such passages accomplish, or at least adumbrate the sea-change implicit in Poet Pound's thematic material. Others will feel that they are merely adept professional steals from worn-out bags of poetic tricks--in this instance ancient Chinese--exquisitely lighted and beautifully shaped, like every drop of water that ever pleased a duck, and ran right off his back. Opinions pro or opinions con, Poet Pound has 49 Cantos still to go before he circumnavigates to judgment day.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.