Reading the Cantos as a Troubadour
A Look into the Diverse Realms of Ezra Pound's Poetry
The article conveys the sense in which Pound drew on the troubadors themselves and their writings in creating his life long work, the Cantos.
The Cantos present difficult reading, especially with regard to Ezra Pound’s references. Focusing on troubadour references in the poem shows how Pound can be read in a pretty much straightforward manner, without a lot of symbolism.
Troubadour poetry flourished in France in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The subject matter focused on courtly love and other themes, and many of the lyrics were sung.
The written words of Ezra Pound’s poems in the Cantos present sounds as well as meanings, and the lines written in foreign languages, especially, can be read simply for their sound value. Pound has been quoted as saying that the meanings of these foreign phrases are contained in the rest of the poem, that is in the English sections.
The poem is composed of about 119 separate pieces written during most of Pound’s life. Most of the entries are cantos and the rest are fragments at the end of the work. The various cantos are connected by shared references and images throughout the text, and Pound intended that the reader gain understanding of the work as he or she went along.
He wrote an essay entitled “Troubadours - Their Sorts and Conditions” that relates the life stories of the troubadours. Pound was reputedly fascinated by the “real” life stories the troubadours poetry told, but they were often apocryphal.
Pound said about art: “You are trying to render life in a way that won’t bore people.”
In the Cantos, Pound wrote of a troubadour named Sordello, referred to in the third line of the second Canto who was, according to Wilhelm, a ladies man of the first rank - “an incorrigible but lovable seducer of women.”
At least in part, Pound’s treatment of Sordello is to praise his amorous feats. Wilhelm translates the Cantos in the following way: “’Sacrum, sacrum, inluminatio coitu’ (Sacred, sacred, the illumination in the sexual act)” (p. 40, Wilhelm).
Pound felt strongly about the troubadours perhaps because of their extreme lives and stories - many of them became monks, several went off to a remote location and died. They were tragic, but they had something to show for it at the end of the day.
The last fragment written in 1966 was not directed toward his wife, but to his mistress, Olga. He writes “Her name was Courage & was written Olga.” Elevating his mistress to become the subject of his last entry in the Cantos continues the tradition found in the troubadour cycles of pain and hope, loss and desire.
Reading the Cantos is a process of finding small threads here and there in the hopes of discovering some more over-arching relevance.
Pound writes in another section of the Cantos (p. 93): “Lotophagoi of the suave nails, quiet, scornful, Voce-profondo: ‘Feared neither death nor pain for this beauty; If harm, harm to ourselves.’”
Odysseus visited the Lotophagoi in the Odyssey. They are a people of lotus-eaters who only eat the plant and thus incur a narcotic effect.
Roger Waters, a more modern day troubadour, has a similar sentiment expressed in Pink Floyd’s song “Comfortably Numb:” “Just a little pinprick. There’ll be no more aaaaaah; but you may feel a little sick.”
Pound was therefore linked to the troubadours in three respects: he wrote about love, he sought a good story, and he was aware of the painful potential of beauty.
Works Used: James Wilhelm, The Late Cantos of Ezra Pound (1977); Peter Makin, Ezra Pound's Cantos (2006); David Perkins, A History of Modern Poetry (1987); and Alex Preminger and T. V. F. Brogan, editors, The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics (1993).
