/lit/ - Literature

open it and close it on your balls hard enough to make you scream. keep doing this until your screams turn into FUCKING JEWS

OP here again, can someone help me understand this poem also? I vaguely get it but I think I'm missing something

Stillness, then silence, then random speech,
Then knowledge, intoxication, annihilation;

Earth, then fire, then light.
Coldness, then shade, then sunlight.

Thorny road, then a path, then the wilderness.
River, then ocean, then the shore;

Contentment, desire, then Love.
Closeness, union, intimacy;

Closing, then opening, then obliteration,
Separation, togetherness, then longing;

Signs for those of real understanding
Who find this world of little value.

>>16408691
The book assumes that the reader has had a classical education, without that the references will be meaningless.

>>16408719
can you give me a list of what i need to read to be clasically educated?

Ezra Pound? More like Ezra Pounding your mom’s fat ass amiritefolks?

>>16408691
>How the fuck do I read this?
aloud
maybe do one canto a day, alongside a commentary

>Is this some type of joke?
it's the greatest poem in english literature
but yes, it does have its funny moments

>>16408726
The Greeks
The Romans
The Medievals
The Moderns
The Chinese

If you want to start, read Ezra Pound's very own ABC of Reading. He will be your guide.

Seriously, in The Cantos Pound assumes that the reader has had a classical education. If you don't have it, you'll be lost.
He also assumes that you are familiar with a few foreign languages - languages with which every European reader of the time was at least familiar to some basic degree (and I myself am, with the exception of Chinese and Greek). It sounds "too demanding", but it's modern education that has failed you.

Also, there are some companions to the Cantos. I own the one by William Cookson. You might wish to check it.

>>16408834
Reading it aloud is a good idea. He should also listen to Pound himself reading, with the right intonation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xn6r2Nm0ZMo

It's also a good idea to read some of Pound's lyrical poetry before entering the Cantos. There is a good anthology by Richard Sieburth, published by New Direction. The whole stuff can be gotten at the Modern Library edition (including all the translation from Confucius).

>it's the greatest poem in english literature

Agreed, but Anglos themselves will never see this (if you're an Anglo, you're the exception, good on you).

>>16408710
This is really bad. It doesn’t mean anything. If it does, it’s purposefully obscure. If you want real English poetry, OP, read Shakespeare, Dryden, Marlowe, Pope, the Romantics, and Tennyson. You’ll get much more value out of them.

>>16408726
start here

>>16408691

You need to get a decent companion to it and go through and annotate it really. The problem is that even after you understand the references, the connecting themes are very obscure (maybe even non-existent, to be honest), so the game probably isn't worth the candle.

There are some good bits which more-or-less stand on their own, but you have to hunt those out.

>>16408942
Are the translations chosen well in this chart?

>>16408960
There all the best, Fagles is the best for first reading Homer and will always be good. But Lattimore is by far the best translation of Homer and Hesiod but you shouldn't read him first.

Definitely second-rate. A total fake. A venerable fraud.

>>16409153
>shouldn't read him first

What do you mean?
He should read Lattimore first. Other options are Pope, Chapman, and Fitzgerald.

There's no point whatsoever in reserving the best for later. Homer is extremely easy to read. In the past, he used to be read by children.

>>16409163
Pound was all that Nabokov always wanted to be.

>>16409187
>Pound was all that Nabokov always wanted to be.
Both are second-rate fakes.

>>16408710

Pound was an "imagist," he's trying to invoke images in your mind. There's no narrative.

What I get out of this is different images arranged around different stages of life.

Poetry professors love claiming that their interpretations of this kind of stuff is the correct one. They're full of shit but if this is for some kind of class you might have to play the game.

>>16409780
You think Pound wrote that? Are you serious?

>>16409879

Haha, I see my mistake.. but I stick by it. It's believable in context that this is an Ezra Pound poem and fucking right anyway.

>>16409916
No, it isn't. That is a terrible poem.
I googled and it seems to come from an old anthology of Sufi poetry. The original is perhaps good, but that translation is just mediocre as poetry.
Pound would never have written that. For one, it has no sense of rhythm.

>>16409967

I agree - the poem is terrible and Ezra Pound's poems are good. But we all have sentimental days, it totally could have happened.

>>16408726
If you want to really start at the beginning and follow the manifestation of spirit in letters chronologically, translations of Greeks won't cut it. You are looking at a formidable, probably insurmountable challenge which could take many, many lives. However, it is also invigorating, transformative, heart-breaking, empowering and fun.

The true path begins with intimate knowledge of Homer's epics and the Old Testament in their original tongues. I recommend Clyde Pharr's Homeric Greek and Sidney W. Allen Vox Graeca for the former and Thomas O. Lambdin's Introduction to Biblical Hebrew for the latter. All are easily find online. Iliad, Odyssey and תנ"ך are already enough to fill up a lifetime. Once you have found your footing in these texts, you will know enough to be able to proceed as you wish.

Forgo any completionistic tendencies if you want to endure on this road and maintain sanity.

>>16408863
>Azura
When did Pound become a dunmer?

>>16408691
The Cantos are difficult. But some of his other stuff is immensely pleasurable to read even without a strong background in the classics. Sestina: Altaforte, anyone?

>>16408800
stfu my mom is a version

>>16408691
I was gonna buy a copy of this until I noticed it wasn't actually Ezra's cantos, it was a "modernized", "revised" version of his cantos so that they would be "accessible to the modern man".