Between Apocalypse and Extinction: Eschatology in Ezra Pound’s Poetry
Mark Byron
Ezra Pound’s lifelong poetic project, The cantos, aspired to comprise ‘the best that had been thought and read’ in history by way of citation, gloss, allusion quotation a formidable variety sources. Although Pound intended his poem perform as repository for important ideas their often-precarious textual transmission, project was also aimed at the representation paradiso terrestre, an ideal state intellectual community end history. Consequently, critical phase during 1930s he drawn models theological political eschatology, not least those Confucian cosmos Italian Fascism. This intensified interest have drastic consequences: arrested on charges treason subsequently detained US Army Disciplinary Training Center outside Pisa radio broadcasts World War Two Italy. During incarceration wrote much Pisan which pastoral observation is combined with vituperation nostalgic reminiscence. makes sustained reference John Scottus Eriugena, ninth-century Hibernian-Carolingian theologian poet who condemned account disseminating heretical doctrines lifetime again posthumously Averroist condemnations University Paris thirteenth century. Following war publication cantos (for controversially awarded inaugural Bollingen Prize), epic turned increasingly fragmented meditations law, economics, cultural production. In these later ruined dream paradise terrestre glimpsed world Na-Khi, Chinese ethnic minority adhering matriarchal social structures demonstrating deeply ecological system knowledge. essay will explore ways apparently disparate sources provide means imagine midst its disillusion own life.
Studia Neophilologica