CONFUCIANISM AND THE MEANING OF 'THE CANTOS OF EZRA POUND'

Even an admirer of Ezra Pound like W. B. Yeats has found the Cantos seriously undermined by incoherence. My dissertation, however, builds on the work of those few critics who have argued that the poem is unified thematically. I attempt to demonstrate that a crucial group of themes which runs throughout and binds together the Cantos derives from the philosophy of Confucius. Pound so ardently embraced the ethics of the ancient Chinese sage that he considered Socrates "a distinguished gas-bag" and Jesus "the irresponsible Galilean" in comparison to Confucius. His enthusiasm also motivated him to translate four Confucian classics into English. My dissertation makes clear the connections between Confucius' philosophy and the Cantos by means of a comprehensive, extensive, and detailed examination of the Cantos and all four of the classics translated by Pound.; That examination reveals both an extensive number of allusions to Confucianism in the Cantos and a much larger implicit presence of the philosophy. There is a myriad of heroes and villians drawn from history, literature, and Pound's contemporaries who serve in the Cantos to make the philosophy attractive. While these figures are not themselves disciples of Confucius, their actions and beliefs nevertheless implicitly illustrate the efficacy, timelessness, and universality of the ancient ideals. Furthermore, the notoriously disjunctive procedures of the poem reflect fundamental Confucian concerns. Confucius' values are so pervasive in the Cantos that it seems that Pound's advocacy of the philosophy is among the most dominant purposes of the poem. And the Confucian themes furnish the Cantos with more than coherence and unity. Although one critic has gone so far as to compare Pound to Adolph Eichmann, the Confucian themes make clear how humane and compassionate the spirit of Pound's masterpiece really is.