Cantos XXXI - LXXI by Ezra Pound
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Cantos XXXI – LI : Purgatory and Usury
In addition to the internal symmetries of A Draft of XXX Cantos , and the various analogical structures present to varying degrees in the text , there are also several indications that numbers in themselves had a structural importance for Pound. This, in fact, was a feature of The Cantos from their inception. In an early letter, he described his poem as ‘an endless affair which will probably […] run to 100.’ This is likely to be an early reference in itself to the hundred cantos of Dante’s Divine Comedy , which provides the most important structural analogue for Pound’s poem. Aside from such literary precedents, numbers were also important in various strands of Neo-Platonic and occult thinking, both important elements in The Cantos .
In the West, numerology has is roots in the supposed teachings of Pythagoras, and, in 1937, Pound used the Pythagorean term ‘decad’ for the volume of Cantos published in that year ( The Fifth Decad ). Before 1937, however, groups of ten do not seem to figure largely in Pound’s arrangements of Cantos. A much stronger case can be made for the significance of the Pythagorean tetrad or group of four (there are several key groups of four in A Draft of XXX Cantos ), while the number eleven is unquestionably the most frequent number found in the structures of The Cantos . In 1922, he had written of an initial ‘palette’ of eleven ( Letters , 180), and of the nine separately published sections of The Cantos , four are composed of groups of eleven: A Draft of Cantos 17 – 27, A Draft of Cantos XXXI – XLI, The Pisan Cantos and Rock-Drill . While Thrones contains fourteen Cantos and Drafts and Fragments only six (with some additional material), there is a case for seeing the Coke Cantos of Thrones (CVII – CIX) as a coda to a basic structure of eleven (XCVI – CVI), while Drafts and Fragments was presumably intended to form an eleven, concluding a complete poem of one hundred and twenty Cantos.
In addition to the internal symmetries of A Draft of XXX Cantos , and the various analogical structures present to varying degrees in the text , there are also several indications that numbers in themselves had a structural importance for Pound. This, in fact, was a feature of The Cantos from their inception. In an early letter, he described his poem as ‘an endless affair which will probably […] run to 100.’ This is likely to be an early reference in itself to the hundred cantos of Dante’s Divine Comedy , which provides the most important structural analogue for Pound’s poem. Aside from such literary precedents, numbers were also important in various strands of Neo-Platonic and occult thinking, both important elements in The Cantos .
In the West, numerology has is roots in the supposed teachings of Pythagoras, and, in 1937, Pound used the Pythagorean term ‘decad’ for the volume of Cantos published in that year ( The Fifth Decad ). Before 1937, however, groups of ten do not seem to figure largely in Pound’s arrangements of Cantos. A much stronger case can be made for the significance of the Pythagorean tetrad or group of four (there are several key groups of four in A Draft of XXX Cantos ), while the number eleven is unquestionably the most frequent number found in the structures of The Cantos . In 1922, he had written of an initial ‘palette’ of eleven ( Letters , 180), and of the nine separately published sections of The Cantos , four are composed of groups of eleven: A Draft of Cantos 17 – 27, A Draft of Cantos XXXI – XLI, The Pisan Cantos and Rock-Drill . While Thrones contains fourteen Cantos and Drafts and Fragments only six (with some additional material), there is a case for seeing the Coke Cantos of Thrones (CVII – CIX) as a coda to a basic structure of eleven (XCVI – CVI), while Drafts and Fragments was presumably intended to form an eleven, concluding a complete poem of one hundred and twenty Cantos.
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