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How does poetry work ?
How does a modernist poet craft his phrases, his lines ?
Hugh Kenner in the first chapter of the Pound Era demonstrates it with an example from “Cantos 79/499:520”, an excerpt of the so-called Pisan Cantos.
The Pisan Cantos as we know was written in the detention camp in which Ezra Pound was locked-up at the end of the Second World War.
Death was often on the Poet’s mind. Not only did Pound fear for his own life when he was arrested by Italian Partisans on 3 may 1945, but he also witnessed regularly the disappearance of fellow inmates, who were escorted by their executioners to their grave. Most famous a certain Louis Till, who was made immortal by Pound when he inserted his name in the Cantos.
Probably thinking over the idea and the role of an executioner, Pound remembered an anecdote, told or witnessed, of an encounter between self-exiled Henry James and exiled Princess Lydia Yavorska Bariatinsky.
The Russian Princess had approached the famous American writer during a garden party in the Temple and, as I understand it, brought up similarities of their exiled status and the barbarity of their homelands. The Princess bragged that her bodyguard had previously been the town executioner. The unbelieving Henry James and bystanders retorted:
“So they said to Lidya: no, your body-guard is not the
town executioner
the executioner is not here for the moment
the fellow who rides beside your coachman
is just a Cossack who executes…”
The Princess must have been taken aback by the repartee and temptationously closed in on James.
“Which being the case, her holding dear H. J.
(Mr. James, Henry) literally by the button-hole…”
Not really “come il faut”, and even quite shocking to the public in the chique garden of the Temple.
“in those so consecrated surroundings
(a garden in the Temple, no less)”
and saying, for once, the right thing
namely: “Cher maître’
to his checqued waistcoat, the Princess Bariatinsky,
as the fish-tails said to Odysseus, ἐνὶ Τροίῃ,
Pound, in a modernist twist, compares the ingratiating deference of Lydia Bariatynski and the conventions - constrained Henry James, with the “Singing Sirens” and the mast-bound Ulysses.
A banal everyday anecdote, related as in a Sapphic fragment, infused with the radiance of an eternal Classic…( the Odyssey, The Oxen of the Sun 12/200 )
The two last words, "ἐνὶ Τροίῃ" (eni Troiēi): Ancient Greek for "in Troy”, however do not seem to fit. The Sirens do not speak to Ulysses in Troy, but somewhere at sea…As there is a comma, these two last words may as well be the start of the next sentence were it not for the alinea separation.
saying, for once, the right thing namely: “Cher maître”,
The flattering and luring words ( Thèlxis ) in the Odyssey sound as follows : «Δεῦρ᾽ ἄγ᾽ ἰών, πολύαιν᾽ Ὀδυσεῦ, μέγα κῦδος Ἀχαιῶν, νῆα κατάστησον, ἵνα νωϊτέρην ὄπ᾽ ἀκούσῃς.» (Deûr’ ag’ iōn, polýain’ Odyseû, méga kŷdos Achaiôn, nêa katástēson, hína nōïterēn op’ akoúsēis.)
- Δεῦρ᾽ ἄγ᾽ ἰών (Deûr’ ag’ iōn): "Come hither/come forward"
- πολύαιν᾽ (polýain’): "Much-praised" or "famous" (a unique epithet they use specifically for him)
- Ὀδυσεῦ (Odyseû): "Odysseus"
- μέγα κῦδος Ἀχαιῶν (méga kŷdos Achaiôn): "Great glory of the Achaeans (Greeks)"
- νῆα κατάστησον (nêa katástēson): "Bring your ship to a stop / land your ship"
- ἵνα νωϊτέρην ὄπ᾽ ἀκούσῃς (hína nōïterēn op’ akoúsēis): "So that you may hear the voice of us two."
That Pound still describes the Sirens as fish-tails is either a concession to his unknowing reading public or a poetic liberty. Since the display in London in the mid-19th century of the Vulci Siren Vase ( -480 BCE ), people had understood that the Sirens from ancient Greece were half women half bird instead of the Christian inspired half fish.
Evidence The painter John William Waterhouse who depicted in 1891 the creatures in the Classical way.
