/lit/ - Literature

>‘Him who disobeys me disobeys’
OH NO NO NO
Milton bros...

>>22415302
>>22415417
>>22415518
>>22415976
>Don’t use such an expression as “dim lands of peace.” It dulls the image. It mixes an abstraction with the concrete. It comes from the writer’s not realizing that the natural object is always the adequate symbol.

>Him who disobeys me disobeys
Miltonfags will defend this.

>>21800536
are you a bot bro or just regarded?

>>21603488
Ezra Pound was right (as usual) pointing out that Anglos have a strange disdain for translations as works of English literature, whereas the French and Italians never had any issues listing translations as some of the best work in their literary history. They don't hesitate to consider them superior to the originals in some cases, and not without reason, see Amyot vs Plutarque or Galland versus the pulp original of the Arabian Nights, both of which were the basis of English translations for a while.
A related effect is that the quality of translations is usually lower in English, though I don't know which is cause and which is effect. I understand Wilbur is an exception while not better than Moliere.

Why didn't they teach me about this dude in any English class I had? Seems like he is literally the most influential American writer of all time?

>Ezra Pound (1885 – 1972) is widely considered one of the most influential poets of the 20th century; his contributions to modernist poetry were enormous. He was an early champion of a number of avant-garde and modernist poets; developed important channels of intellectual and aesthetic exchange between the United States and Europe; and contributed to important literary movements such as Imagism and Vorticism. His life’s work, The Cantos, remains a signal modernist epic. Its mix of history, politics, and what Pound called “the periplum,” that is a point of view of one in the middle of a journey, have given countless poets permission to develop a range of poetic techniques that capture life in the midst of experience. In an introduction to the Literary Essays of Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot declared that Pound “is more responsible for the 20th-century revolution in poetry than is any other individual.” Four decades later, Donald Hall reaffirmed in remarks collected in Remembering Poets that “Ezra Pound is the poet who, a thousand times more than any other man, has made modern poetry possible in English.” Pound never sought, nor had, a wide reading audience during his lifetime; his technical innovations and use of unconventional poetic materials often baffled even sympathetic readers. Early in his career, Pound aroused controversy because of his aesthetic views; later, because of his political views, including his support for the Fascist government in Italy. For the greater part of the 20th century, however, Pound devoted his energies to advancing the art of poetry.

>Ezra Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) is widely considered one of the most influential poets of the 20th century; his contributions to modernist poetry were enormous. He was an early champion of a number of avant-garde and modernist poets; developed important channels of intellectual and aesthetic exchange between the United States and Europe; and contributed to important literary movements such as Imagism and Vorticism. His life’s work, The Cantos, remains a signal modernist epic. Its mix of history, politics, and what Pound called “the periplum,” that is a point of view of one in the middle of a journey, have given countless poets permission to develop a range of poetic techniques that capture life in the midst of experience. In an introduction to the Literary Essays of Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot declared that Pound “is more responsible for the 20th-century revolution in poetry than is any other individual.” Four decades later, Donald Hall reaffirmed in remarks collected in Remembering Poets that “Ezra Pound is the poet who, a thousand times more than any other man, has made modern poetry possible in English.” Pound never sought, nor had, a wide reading audience during his lifetime; his technical innovations and use of unconventional poetic materials often baffled even sympathetic readers. Early in his career, Pound aroused controversy because of his aesthetic views; later, because of his political views, including his support for the Fascist government in Italy. For the greater part of the 20th century, however, Pound devoted his energies to advancing the art of poetry.

If he didn't know Chinese, then what the fuck are all these Chinese "translations" of his?

*blocks your path*

>>18708204
>Anyone who is too lazy to master the comparatively small glossary necessary to understand Chaucer deserves to be shut out from the reading of good books for ever.

>>18234080
>Still it flatters the mob to tell them that their importance is so great that the solace of lonely men, and the lordliest of the arts, was created for their amusement.

His early work is vastly superior to his late work. What changed? He became political. Simple as.

>>16582645
based

>blocks your path

Ezra Pound - The Study In Aesthetics

The very small children in patched clothing,
Being smitten with an unusual wisdom,
Stopped in their play as she passed them
And cried up from their cobbles:

Guarda! Ahi, guarda! Ch’ è be’ a!

But three years after this
I heard the young Dante, whose last name I do not
know--
For there are, in Sirmione, twenty-eight young Dantes
and thirty-four Catulli;
And there had been a great catch of sardines,
And his elders
Were packing them in the great wooden boxes
For the market in Brescia, and he
Leapt about, snatching at the bright fish
And getting in both of their ways;
And in vain they commanded him to stafermo!
And when they would not let him arrange
The fish in the boxes
He stroked those which were already arranged,
Murmuring for his own satisfaction
This identical phrase:

Ch’ è be’ a

And at this I was mildly abashed.

>>15320667
I'm still gonna go with this smug bastard.

Nicotine- Ezra Pound

Hymn to the Dope


Goddess of the murmuring courts,
Nicotine, my Nicotine,
Houri of the mystic sports,
trailing-robed in gabardine,
Gliding where the breath hath glided,
Hidden sylph of filmy veils,
Truth behind the dream is veiléd
E'en as thou art, smiling ever, ever gliding,
Wraith of wraiths, dim lights dividing
Purple, grey, and shadow green
Goddess, Dream-grace, Nicotine.

Goddess of the shadow's lights,
Nicotine, my Nicotine,
Some would set old Earth to rights,
Thou I none such ween.
Veils of shade our dream dividing,
Houris dancing, intergliding,
Wraith of wraiths and dream of faces,
Silent guardian of the old unhallowed places,
Utter symbol of all old sweet druidings,
Mem'ry of witched wold and green,
Nicotine, my Nicotine:

Neath the shadows of thy weaving
Dreams that need no undeceiving,
Loves that longer hold me not,
Dreams I dream not any more,
Fragrance of old sweet forgotten places,
Smiles of dream-lit, flit-by faces
All as perfume Arab-sweet
Deck the high road to thy feet

As were Godiva's coming fated
And all the April's blush belated
Were lain before her, carpeting
The stones of Coventry with spring,
So thou my mist-enwreathéd queen,
Nicotine, white Nicotine,
Riding engloried in they hair
Mak'st by-road of our dreams
Thy thorough-fare.

How mean thy hates, fostered in falsity,
Pull down thy vanity,
Rathe to destroy, niggard in charity,
Pull down thy vanity, I say pull down.

>hasn't mastered Homeric, Attic, and Koine Greek
>hasn't mastered Latin, medieval Italian, Provencal, and French (modern and medieval), and middle English
>doesn't understand the qualities that give a poem musicality

Pathetic

Say what you will about him, the Cantos are comfy

sorry, wrong picture.

Sadly I can only buy one of his works, what do you recommend?

Has there ever been anyone more pretentious in the history of literature?