The Cantos

[woops]

I really like the use of all the different languages, I think it's important to read through them even if you don't bother looking up all the translations because their rhythms seem to be informing the rhythm of the English too, or at least it seems to have that affect on me when I read it and I guess is intentional.

there's an invocational quality to them too

 

[woops]

the American stuff looks a lot less interesting than all the classical mythology and Italian Renaissance gear.

@suspended

 

[luka]

7 Things Invented or Popularized by Thomas Jefferson

• Revolving book stand.
• Dumbwaiter.
• The great clock.
• Wheel cipher.
• Polygraph.
• Macaroni machine.
• Pedometer.

Yeah I might have to, just casting my eye over the next few cantos and the American stuff looks a lot less interesting than all the classical mythology and Italian Renaissance gear.

 

[Benny Bunter]

there's an invocational quality to them too

Yeah, even just the names of all the different deities are amazing and how he's mixing them all up and even inventing new ones of his own like ZOTHAR.

Was surprised and delighted to see the name of my partner, Nerea, crop up in one of the cantos. It's a Basque name in origin but looks like it has classical mythological roots as some kind of sea nymph. Cool, I never knew!

 

[Benny Bunter]

Between them,

Cave of Nerea,

she like a great shell curved,

And the boat drawn without sound,

Without odour of ship-work,

Nor bird-cry, nor any noise of wave moving,

Nor splash of porpoise, nor any noise of wave moving,

Within her cave, Nerea,

she like a great shell curved

In the suavity of the rock,

cliff green-gray in the far,

In the near, the gate-cliffs of amber,

And the wave

green clear, and blue clear,

And the cave salt-white, and glare-purple,

cool, porphyry smooth,

the rock sea-worn.

 

[Benny Bunter]

I want to shake his hand for writing that

 

[woops]

Sounds like Mrs @Benny B liked it too.

 

[Benny Bunter]

I'll have to try and find a Spanish translation and send her it, she would love it.

She sends me love poems in Spanish (written by her) by WhatsApp sometimes so it will be good to give at least something back.

 

[Benny Bunter]

Skipped through a few of the dry Adams ones, but this picks up again big time with canto 39, the one on Circe's island, with the ritual sex rite scene at the end. Spent a nice morning in bed reading through it a few times along with the notes, one of my favourites so far. (36, the translation of that Italian lyric poem looks good as well but knotty, haven't cracked it yet)
------------------------------------------------------------------

Canto XXXIX

Desolate is the roof where the cat sat,
Desolate is the iron rail that he walked
And the corner post whence he greeted the sunrise.
In hill path: "thkk, thgk"
of the loom
"Thgk, thkk" and the sharp sound of a song
under olives
When I lay in the ingle of Circe
I heard a song of that kind.
Fat panther lay by me
Girls talked there of fucking, beasts talked there of eating,
All heavy with sleep, fucked girls and fat leopards,
Lions loggy with Circe's tisane,
Girls leery with Circe's tisane
κακά φάρμακ έδωκεν
kaka pharmak edoken
The house of smooth stone that you can see from a distance
λύκοι όρέστεροι ήδε λέοντες
lukoi oresteroi ede leontes
wolf to curry favour for food
---born to Helios and Perseis
That had Pasiphae for a twin
Venter venustus, cunni cultrix, of the velvet marge
ver novum, canorum, ver novum
Spring overborne into summer
late spring in the leafy autumn
καλὸν ἀοιδιάει
KALON AOIDIAEI
ἢ θεὸς ἠὲ γυνή..... φθεγγώμεθα θᾶσσον
e theos e guné.... ptheggometha thasson
First honey and cheese
honey at first and then acorns
Honey at the start and then acorns
honey and wine and then acorns
Song sharp at the edge, her crotch like a young sapling
illa dolore obmutuit, pariter vocem

ἀλλ' ἄλλην χρὴ πρῶτον ὁδὸν τελέσαι καὶ ἱκέσθαι
εἰς Ἀίδαο δόμους καὶ ἐπαινῆς Περσεφονείης,
ψυχῇ χρησομένους Θηβαίου Τειρεσίαο,
μάντηος ἀλαοῦ, τοῦ τε φρένες ἔμπεδοί εἰσι:
τῷ καὶ τεθνηῶτι νόον πόρε Περσεφόνεια,

When Hathor was bound in that box
afloat on the sea wave
Came Mava swimming with light hand lifted in overstroke
sea blossom wreathed in her locks,
"What are you box?"
"I am Hathor."
Che mai da me non si parte il diletto
Fulvida di folgore
Came here with Glaucus unnoticed, nec ivi in harum
Nec in harum ingressus sum.
Discuss this in bed said the lady
Euné kai philoteti ephata Kirkh
Εὺνή καἰ φιλότητι, ἕφατα Κἱρκη“
es thalamon
Ες θάλαμον
Eurilochus, Macer, better there with good acorns
Than with a crab for an eye, and 30 fathom of fishes
Green swish in the socket,
Under the portico Kirké:......
"I think you must be Odysseus....
feel better when you have eaten....
Always with your mind on the past....
Ad Orcum autem quisquam?
nondum nave nigra pervenit.....
Been to hell in a boat yet?

Sumus in fide
Puellaeque canamus
sub nocte....
there in the glade
To Flora's night, with hyacinthus,
With the crocus (spring
sharp in the grass,)
Fifty and forty together
ERI MEN AI TE KUDONIAI
Betuene Aprile and Merche
with sap new in the bough
With plum flowers above them
with almond on the black bough
With jasmine and olive leaf,
To the beat of the measure
From star up to the half-dark
From half-dark to half-dark
Unceasing the measure
Flank by flank on the headland
with the Goddess' eyes to seaward
By Circeo, by Terracina, with the stone eyes
white toward the sea
With one measure, unceasing:
"Fac deum!" "Est factus."
Ver novum!
ver novum!
Thus made the spring,
Can see but their eyes in the dark
not the bough that he walked on.
Beaten from flesh into light
Hath swallowed the fire-ball
A traverso le foglie
His rod hath made god in my belly
Sic loquitur nupta
Cantat sic nupta

Dark shoulders have stirred the lightning
A girl's arms have nested the fire,
Not I but the handmaid kindled
Cantat sic nupta
I have eaten the flame.

 

[Corpsey]

"ἀλλ' ἄλλην χρὴ πρῶτον ὁδὸν τελέσαι καὶ ἱκέσθαι
εἰς Ἀίδαο δόμους καὶ ἐπαινῆς Περσεφονείης,
ψυχῇ χρησομένους Θηβαίου Τειρεσίαο,
μάντηος ἀλαοῦ, τοῦ τε φρένες ἔμπεδοί εἰσι:
τῷ καὶ τεθνηῶτι νόον πόρε Περσεφόνεια,"

Indeed.

 

[luka]

Jack I'm having a beer round Southwark this evening do you fancy it?

 

[Benny Bunter]

"ἀλλ' ἄλλην χρὴ πρῶτον ὁδὸν τελέσαι καὶ ἱκέσθαι
εἰς Ἀίδαο δόμους καὶ ἐπαινῆς Περσεφονείης,
ψυχῇ χρησομένους Θηβαίου Τειρεσίαο,
μάντηος ἀλαοῦ, τοῦ τε φρένες ἔμπεδοί εἰσι:
τῷ καὶ τεθνηῶτι νόον πόρε Περσεφόνεια,"

Indeed.

This is just Circe advising Odysseus to go to Hades and seek the blind soothsayer Teiresias. It's not hard.

 

[Benny Bunter]

Highly erotically charged poem this, some might say pervy, with all the dirty words and the voyeuristic description of the springtime sex ritual, peering through the foliage.

This essay on it linked from the cantos project website was definitely worth reading

 

[yyaldrin]

Between them,

Cave of Nerea,

she like a great shell curved,

And the boat drawn without sound,

Without odour of ship-work,

Nor bird-cry, nor any noise of wave moving,

Nor splash of porpoise, nor any noise of wave moving,

Within her cave, Nerea,

she like a great shell curved

In the suavity of the rock,

cliff green-gray in the far,

In the near, the gate-cliffs of amber,

And the wave

green clear, and blue clear,

And the cave salt-white, and glare-purple,

cool, porphyry smooth,

the rock sea-worn.

this one is so beautiful, is it in the selected poems? i just looked up the entire part http://ezrapoundcantos.org/index.ph...-cantos/cantos-17-27/xvii/275-canto-xvii-poem and it has all my favorite poem elements: bees and pollen, waves and sea, stones and columns, caves and palaces.

1. Beyond, sea, crests seen over dune
2. Night sea churning shingle,
3. To the left, the alley of cypress
4. a boat came
5. One man holding her sail,
6. Guiding her with oar caught over gunwale, saying:
7. " There, in the forest of marble,
8. " the stone trees---out of water---
9. " the arbours of stone---
10. " marble leaf, over leaf,
11. " silver, steel over steel,
12. " silver beaks rising and crossing,
13. " prow set against prow,
14. " stone, ply over ply,
15. " the gilt beams flare of an evening

i'm reading a book on van gogh and he was in love with cypress trees, according to him they looked like egyptian obelisks

 

[Benny Bunter]

this one is so beautiful, is it in the selected poems? i just looked up the entire part http://ezrapoundcantos.org/index.ph...-cantos/cantos-17-27/xvii/275-canto-xvii-poem and it has all my favorite poem elements: bees and pollen, waves and sea, stones and columns, caves and palaces.

I don't know if its in the selected poems or not, but if it isn't it should be.
If you love all of those poem elements you will love a lot of the cantos I reckon, especially when he's writing about the sea. Have a look at Canto 1

 

[Benny Bunter]

]
i'm reading a book on van gogh and he was in love with cypress trees, according to him they looked like egyptian obelisks


View attachment 9826

I went to the Roman necropolis in Carmona near Sevilla recently and the most impressive thing about it was it was full of cypresses - they're associated with death generally I think.

 

[woops]

if you mean the big mustard coloured faber selected, it skips blithely from canto 14 to 26. massive book i was annoyed when i bought that and it didn't have the complete cantos in it!

 

[Corpsey]

Do you read Ancient Greek @craner?

Togawrapped in a Welsh flag, standing atop the highest promontory in Barry, declaiming to the wine dark Bristol Channel?

 

[craner]

Do you read Ancient Greek @craner?

Togawrapped in a Welsh flag, standing atop the highest promontory in Barry, declaiming to the wine dark Bristol Channel?

Why are you asking me this question you mischievous sprite?

 

[craner]

The Bristol Channel is more cement grey, than wine dark.

Possibly also radioactive, as I can see Hinkley Point twinkling on the horizon from my bedroom window.