HERMETIC+STRUCTURES+OF+THE+CANTOS

**Hermetic Structures for the Cantos of Ezra Pound.**
toc "He postulates that there is a hidden key to Pound's lifework, a hermetic coherence created from a pagan calendar that Pound devised and published in 1922 and from the Great Seal and Constitution of the United States.--" 76' One world and the Cantos of Ezra Pound by Forrest Read, (1981, University of North Carolina Press).

I first picked up the above text in the United States around 2005, and kept it close by ever since. The description from the back-flap, quoted above, grabbed my attention although I am still somewhat in the dark about the 'hidden key', I suspect that the Hermetic influence upon Pound maybe a part of it. And for our TTOTT study I would like to suggest Giordano Bruno, and Giambattista Vico, directly and via' Yeats; as likely craftsman of Read's 'key', and try to trace and describe these influences.

One interesting aspect to '76' that links with our 'Ideogrammic Fullerene' theme of week three, is geometry, and so by extension mathematics. Forrest Read keeps up a relentless critical prose, of a critical 'Hologrammic style', I feel, and through his prose reminds us of precise 'structures' and 'balanced systems' employed by Poets, and especially by poets and artists in the broader sense of the Hermetic persuasion, or those somewhat familiar with the teachings, tracts, principles and practice of the Hermetic arts and crafts.

Pound's calendar employs his geometry and his mathematics, and like how Forrest Read views it, I think it works as a codex, or a map, that can be used to better interpret the Cantos, and Ez himself and his innovations, while also illustrating the Hermetic current spread between the characters of RAWs TTOTT.

Pound's mixture of Hermetic styles and 'ideogramic styles' together in the Cantos, might help drag some of the ideas we have whisked up already into the Cantos, present us with an example of a 'tale of the tribe' and showing to us the kind of language and the kind of execution of that language required to produce such a globally relevant synthesis. Or one man's effort to produce a Global Epic.

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William Butler Yeats had IMPACT on Ezra Pound, especially concerning some esoteric systems of thinking, although Pound often bombastically rejected many of the traditional Hermetic schools and their ideas, at least in his speech and letters, I doubt that Pound threw the baby out with the bath water, and that he probably retained and synthesized so called Occult and/or Hermetic knowledge he got from Yeats into his work.

Also Joyce in the capacity that Yeats was the Hermetic link, or a part of the process that led to Pound's Cantos and Joyce's Finnegans Wake displaying such Hermetic/hologrammic tendencies. Maybe Pound and Joyce had to work in a coded secrecy, much like the earlier heretics like Bruno and Vico, and seemingly up against similar counter-forces, working to discredit and obstruct these geniuses, to generally keep them from the masses, with all that obscenity, bad-language, swearing, cuss-words and words of cutting criticism of almost every and any authoritarian power structure on earth. I digress a little here, and have been trying to zone in on the 'methods' and 'innovations' of our characters, avoiding the biographical, social, matrix of interpretations and discussion.

Although I'm all for the wider discussion of Pound and Joyce, for the purposes of 'email to the tribe' I wish to focus on the Hermetic/Hologrammic and Ideogrammic innovations more closely, as potential tools for new learning environments.

As far as I can deduct, Yeats deployed his Hermetic coda in a work called Avision, where he outlines his innovative, Hermetically attenuated symbolist prose. But this work came much latter in yeat's 'life' although the systems therein reach back to the turn of the century, and probably intersect with uncle Aleister Crowley, lets not forget the Great Beast, and his deployment of the Hermetic arts and crafts combined with a whole lotta' swank.

Correspondants of mine have kicked around various scenarios where Crowley and Joyce corresponded, and/or possibly met, signed books to each other, who knows? but here by way of W.B Yeats we can build a network of ideas that may result in a similar 'train' of thought, or rather different methods for roughly attaining the same goal of awakening to the Hermetic current.

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EZ's HOLOGRAMMIC CANTOS

 * "alphabet/ideogram**
 * joyce/pound**
 * shannon/mcluhan**
 * TV/Internet."--RAW, Recorsi.**

I reproduced Pound's Canto LXVI for the MaybeLogic Quarterly Webzine due to my discovery that it contained reference to 'Stourbridge', a small village in Mid England where I lived, worked and wrote this article originally, in 2006.

Stourbridge also appears in Finnegans Wake on page 186. I edited the 'Stourbridge' wikipedia entry with this information, that for me registered as a major epiphany, the surprise at finding your own doorstep in a footnote! Evidence, for me, of truly 'globalist epic's'

Once again, I have to refer you to the 'hyperlinked' article, for the punch-lines to really PUNCH! The following HYPERTEXT exhibit of Canto LXVI is presented to inspire and spark others to discover for themselves the integrated relationships in their local and non-local environments.

I turned on to the poetry of Ezra Pound and James Joyce in particular through my study at TTOTT with Dr. Wilson himself, I wish to pass on this advise for better processing in the 21st century. At the same time the writing process i experienced through this essay facilitates my own relative truth-seeking and my own ploughing for verifiable evidence of non-local transfer of meaningful information operating backwards and forwards throughout time-space, blueprints for my own time-machine. MIFOS?

 www.maybelogic.org/maybequarterly/08/0813CantoLXVI.htm

Canto LXVI by Ezra Pound
"Could not let us bring their sugar to Europe  wd/ lessen the number of french and of Spanish  seamen  Generally rode twice a day till made master  of this curiopus forest (Bois de Boulogne)  view of Issy and castle of Meudon  game is not very plentiful. Dined at Amiens  put up at Abbeville. Dover view. Mr Johnson  Gt Tower hill who informs me  that a vessel with one thousand hogshead of tobacco  is passed by the Channel from Congress <span class="fb_quote"> to Messrs Willinicks 27 Oct '83 <span class="fb_quote"> Hague June 22, '84 <span class="fb_quote"> So there is no drop not American in me <span class="fb_quote"> Aye we have noticed that said the Ambassador <span class="fb_quote"> Sends to Morocco no marine stores <span class="fb_quote"> sends 'em glaces and other things of rich value <span class="fb_quote"> Said Lord Carmarthen wd/ present me <span class="fb_quote"> but that i shd/ do business with Mr Pitt very often <span class="fb_quote"> Posts not surrendered <span class="fb_quote"> are Preq'isle, Sandusky etc <span class="fb_quote"> Detroit Michilimakinac <span class="fb_quote"> St JosephSt Mary's <span class="fb_quote"> | daughter married less prudently <span class="fb_quote"> and they were thinking of sending her to America <span class="fb_quote"> Presented <span class="fb_quote"> Mr Hamilton to the Queen at the drawing room <span class="fb_quote"> Mr Jefferson <span class="fb_quote"> and i went in a post chaise <span class="fb_quote"> Woburn Farm,Stowe, Stratford <span class="fb_quote"> [|Stourbridge], Woodstock, High Wycombe and back to <span class="fb_quote"> Grosvenor Sq <span class="fb_quote"> A national debt of <span class="fb_quote"> 274 million stg <span class="fb_quote"> accumulated by jobs contracts salaries pensions in <span class="fb_quote"> the course of a century <span class="fb_quote"> might easily produce all this magnificence <span class="fb_quote"> Pope's pavilion and Thompson's seat made the excursion <span class="fb_quote"> Poetic <span class="fb_quote"> Shenstone's the most rural of all <span class="fb_quote"> 19th, Wednesday, anniversary of the battle of Lexington <span class="fb_quote"> and of my reception in Holland <span class="fb_quote"> which latter is considered of no importance <span class="fb_quote"> to view the seat of the banker child <span class="fb_quote"> three houses, in fact, round and square <span class="fb_quote"> blowing roses, ripe strawberries plums cherries etc <span class="fb_quote"> deer sheep wood doves guinea-hens peacocks etc <span class="fb_quote"> Dr Grey speaks very lightly of Buffon <span class="fb_quote"> Mr H. prefers the architecture of this house because it <span class="fb_quote"> reminds him of Palladio <span class="fb_quote"> windows with mahogany columns <span class="fb_quote"> three are two stoves but at neither of them <span class="fb_quote"> could a student be comfortable in cold weather

<span class="fb_quote"> July 18th, yesterday, moved all the grass to Stony Hill field <span class="fb_quote"> this day my new barn was raised <span class="fb_quote"> their songs never more various than this morning <span class="fb_quote"> Corn by two sorts of worm <span class="fb_quote"> Hessian fly menaces wheat <span class="fb_quote"> Where T. has been trimming red cedars <span class="fb_quote"> Otis full of election: Henry, Jefferson, Burr <span class="fb_quote"> T. cutting trees and leaves of white oaks <span class="fb_quote"> To barely and black grass at the beach <span class="fb_quote"> said one thing wd/ make Rhode Islandunanimous <span class="fb_quote"> --meaning funding-- <span class="fb_quote"> They wanted Hamilton for vice president <span class="fb_quote"> I said nothing. <span class="fb_quote"> WHERETOWARD THE ARGUMENTS HAD BEEN <span class="fb_quote"> as renouncing the transactions of Runing Meade

<span class="fb_quote"> Prince of Orange, King William by the people <span class="fb_quote"> that their rights be inviolable <span class="fb_quote"> which drove out James Second...IS still active. <span class="fb_quote"> Nothing less than this seems to have been meditated for us <span class="fb_quote"> by somebody or other in Britain <span class="fb_quote"> reprinted by Thos. Hollis <span class="fb_quote"> OB PECUNIAE SCARSITATEM <span class="fb_quote"> this act, the stamp act, wd/ drain cash out of the country <span class="fb_quote"> and is, further, UNconstitutional <span class="fb_quote"> yr/ humanity counterfeit <span class="fb_quote"> yr/ liberty cankered with simulation <span class="fb_quote"> Earl Clarendon to Bill Pym in the Baastun Gazette <span class="fb_quote"> Jan 17th 1 7 6 8 <span class="fb_quote"> Danegold emptied the land of coin <span class="fb_quote"> what are powers of these new admiralty courts in America <span class="fb_quote"> per pares et legem terrae <span class="fb_quote"> is there any grand jury to bring an indictment <span class="fb_quote"> to find presentments <span class="fb_quote"> any petit for fact <span class="fb_quote"> IS this trial per legem terrae <span class="fb_quote"> or by Institutes Digests Roman? <span class="fb_quote"> Become attentive to their liberties <span class="fb_quote"> counties, towns, private clubs and sodalities <span class="fb_quote"> most accurate judgement <span class="fb_quote"> about the real constitution <span class="fb_quote"> which is not of wind and weather <span class="fb_quote"> what is said there <span class="fb_quote"> is rather a character <span class="fb_quote"> than a true

<span class="fb_quote"> ching <span class="fb_quote"> ming

<span class="fb_quote"> definition. It is a just observation. <span class="fb_quote"> Jury answers questions of fact <span class="fb_quote"> thus regarding the subject... <span class="fb_quote"> pompous rituals theatrical ceremonies <span class="fb_quote"> so successfully used to <span class="fb_quote"> delude to terrify men out of virtue and liberty <span class="fb_quote"> Elizabeth tried, James First put out Goodwin <span class="fb_quote"> and the commons reversed it <span class="fb_quote"> (London Chronicle) <span class="fb_quote"> By this course, said one member, free election is taken away <span class="fb_quote"> common rights our ancestors have left us <span class="fb_quote"> By this course, said another, the Chancellor <span class="fb_quote"> could call a parliament of only such as he please <span class="fb_quote"> After repeal of American Stamp Act <span class="fb_quote"> we have mortification to see one act of Parliament after <span class="fb_quote"> another, <span class="fb_quote"> money collecting from us continually without our consent <span class="fb_quote"> by an authority <span class="fb_quote"> in the constitution of which we have no share <span class="fb_quote"> and see the little coin that remained among us <span class="fb_quote"> transmitted to distance <span class="fb_quote"> with no hope of return <span class="fb_quote"> RESOLUTION to maintain duty and loyalty to our sovreign <span class="fb_quote"> and to Parliament as legislative in all cases of necessity <span class="fb_quote"> to preserve the Empire as a whole <span class="fb_quote"> 17 June, 1768 <span class="fb_quote"> Instructions to Braintree'srepresentatives <span class="fb_quote"> We mean by 6th Anne chap. xxxvii section 9 <span class="fb_quote"> IT IS ENACTED <span class="fb_quote"> no mariner <span class="fb_quote"> be retained on any privateer ship or vessel <span class="fb_quote"> in any part of America... be impressed on any ship of <span class="fb_quote"> Her Majesty's any time after St Valentine's day 1707 <span class="fb_quote"> on pain of L 20. per man <span class="fb_quote"> Small field pieces happened, said Governor Hutchinson, <span class="fb_quote"> to point at the door of the Court House [Pg. 383]

<span class="fb_quote"> To the Hnbl James Otis and Thos Cushing Esquires <span class="fb_quote"> Mr Sam Adams and John Hancock Esquire <span class="fb_quote"> ;;;;......demands tr <span class="fb_quote"> fortitude virtue and wisdom <span class="fb_quote"> to remove anything that may appear to awe or intimidate <span class="fb_quote"> late attack flagrant and formal <span class="fb_quote"> on the constitution itself <span class="fb_quote"> and the immunities of our charters <span class="fb_quote"> Unnecessary to repeat our known sentiments on the revenue <span class="fb_quote"> this 41st section repeals MAGNA <span class="fb_quote"> CHARTA the 19th chapter <span class="fb_quote"> as follows the words: NO FREEMAN...to... by his peers <span class="fb_quote"> and the law of the land <span class="fb_quote"> Whereon said Lord Coke, speaking of Empson and Dudley, <span class="fb_quote"> the end of these two oppressors <span class="fb_quote"> shd/ deter others from continuing the like <span class="fb_quote"> and they bring not in the absolute and partial trials by direction <span class="fb_quote"> ...by every legal measure, sirs, we recommend you... <span class="fb_quote"> Natural tendency of the legal profession to side with authority <span class="fb_quote"> freeholders and other inhabitants (Cambridge 21st December. '72 <span class="fb_quote"> constitutional <span class="fb_quote"> means the redress...natural rights...charter right <span class="fb_quote"> money extorted from us, appropriated to the augmentation of <span class="fb_quote"> burdens upon us <span class="fb_quote"> independent of grants of our commons. <span class="fb_quote"> attest <span class="fb_quote"> Andrew Boardman town clerk <span class="fb_quote"> Judges salaries shd/ be independent both of the king <span class="fb_quote"> and of the people <span class="fb_quote"> great danger if commission hang upon either <span class="fb_quote"> a civil commission gives no new powers <span class="fb_quote"> tyranny in them to assume it <span class="fb_quote"> common lay of England, BIRTHRIGHT of every man here <span class="fb_quote"> and at home <span class="fb_quote"> 'not look on my self as in a state of nature <span class="fb_quote"> and is pity that other man shd/' <span class="fb_quote"> Wm Brattle <span class="fb_quote"> It is the wish of almost all good men, replied Adams <span class="fb_quote"> that what Brattle states were good law. <span class="fb_quote"> But from Edward First's time to the present letters patent <span class="fb_quote"> are otherwise worded <span class="fb_quote"> sic: beneplacitu nostro <span class="fb_quote"> Ad regis nutum duratura <span class="fb_quote"> says Fortescue <span class="fb_quote"> chancellor <span class="fb_quote"> will it be shown that by ' judges ' Genl Brattle <span class="fb_quote"> means barons of Exchequer <span class="fb_quote"> custos rotolorum and clerk of the peace <span class="fb_quote"> were created by statue not erected by common law <span class="fb_quote"> Sir Edward Coke, who being in King's displeasure, <span class="fb_quote"> was removed from his place by writ of the king <span class="fb_quote"> reciting that whereas etc

<span class="fb_quote"> ...appointed to desist from... <span class="fb_quote"> timid jurors and judges who held during pleasure <span class="fb_quote"> never failed to second the views of the Crown <span class="fb_quote"> he, James Second, was obliged before he brought Hales' case <span class="fb_quote"> to displace 4 of his judges <span class="fb_quote"> By concerts between King james and Sir Edward... <span class="fb_quote"> his coachman was employed to bring action... <span class="fb_quote"> Jones had the integrity to tell the king to his face <span class="fb_quote"> that he might make 12 judges but wd/ scarce find 12 lawyers <span class="fb_quote"> of his opinion. <span class="fb_quote"> 'wishing genl Brattle success in his researches ' <span class="fb_quote"> J Adams <span class="fb_quote"> By another clause (in our Charter) <span class="fb_quote"> that the great and general court or assembly <span class="fb_quote"> shd/ have power <span class="fb_quote"> to erect judicatories courts of record <span class="fb_quote"> and other courts <span class="fb_quote"> to determine please processes plaints actions etc <span class="fb_quote"> whereby a law (2 William III) have established etc <span class="fb_quote"> and in Edward IV this Beauchamps commission <span class="fb_quote"> was, for the uncertainty, VOID <span class="fb_quote"> By letters patent and under great seal <span class="fb_quote"> in all shires, counties palatine and in Wales <span class="fb_quote"> and any other dominions

www.maybelogic.org/maybequarterly/08/0813CantoLXVI.htm


 * ...the alphabet vs. the equation....?**


 * ...language as Class Warfare...?**

with HIGHLIGHTS illuminated by Fly.

<span class="fb_quote">"The Calendar and its mathematics are not ends in The Cantos, but means. They are referred to indirectly in the text, they appear in many **visual arcana**, and they organize the text into its proportions and sequences. But as Pound was wont to insist, "The what is so much more important than how." He meant that all arcana refer to the forms of '76 according to which he is trying to conduct a 'revolt of intelligence,' to evolve a revolutionary 'nuova persona' and to 'think out a sane state," all by "thinking in Poetry." The documents of '76 have mathematical aspects and the Seal is a mathematical form."--Forrest Read, The revolutionary calendar, pg. 48.

<span class="fb_quote"> "But as the cyclic moves within the "Great Bulk", huge mass, thesaurus" of history and draws its materials into its own "triangualr spaces," are it and its materials of the same substance or different? The Renaissance Platonist **Giordano Bruno, burned as a heretic, thought "di diversa natura."**

<span class="fb_quote"> Bruno's natural philosophy joins that of Neo=Platonists of V and of "serious characters" like Aristotle against transcendental "belly-aches" of Plotinus and St. John of the Cross. The vision "falls white" upon the senses as in Calvacanti's love canzone (XXXVI) but may be unseen because dark may obscure the gods wherever the mind may be. Nevertheless "triangular spaces" have been made into "Gems sunned as mirrors, alternate" - into **cantos laid in tiers**, alternately on base and on apex - to build a singular triangular Mount.--Forrest Read, Drafts and Fragments CX-CXVII and 120 Cantos. Pg, 425.

<span class="fb_quote">"Pound has made old history and old revolution new by taking over Odysseus's narration and by replacing Odysseus's Providence, Circe, with his own."--Forrest Read, History and 76, Pg. 27.

<span class="fb_quote"> "Four is the form at once of what is added to, of what is added, and of the result (cf. "and the whole creation concerned with FOUR," Rock-Drill 91).--Forrest Read, The revolutionary calendar, pg. 44.

<span class="fb_quote">"One can imagine the first Canto establishing a preliminary Golden Section form with archetypal discovery and colonization and then adding the fourfold revolt of the dead, each phase of which is also a whole projecting the whole canto. The same form occurs when XXX Cantos is expanded draft by draft in four drafts to the first phase (LXXI Cantos) and thence phase by phase in four phases to the **whole poem.**--Forrest Read, The revolutionary calendar, pg. 44

<span class="fb_quote">"The decad was related to the monad, the dyad, the triad, and the tetrad by the tetraktys, numerologically the sum of the first integers (1+2+3+4) and **geometrically a four-tiered triangle**:--Forrest Read, The revolutionary calendar, 45

<span class="fb_quote">"The Epitome I-as-ONE. <span class="fb_quote"> To begin, four old voices (Odysseus, Elpenor, Tiresias, and Divus) under an **old providence (Circe) will become four renewed voices** (Odysseus, Elpenor, Tiresias, and Pound) under a new Providence (Aphrodite). The transformation will be brought about by ten narrated events in the fourfold form ONE.

<span class="fb_quote"> The canto will be constituted of seventy-one lines of narration extended by invocation to seventy-six lines. Odysseus will speak for tradition in lines 1-53 (congress 1-53). For personae, Elpenor addressing Odysseus "but thou, O King" (54) and Tiresias naming him "Odysseus" (65) will frame Elpenor's request for burial and Tiresias's challenge and command, lines 54-65 (presidency 54-65). For justice Tiresias's prophecy, Pound's acknowledgement of Divus, and Pound's completing of the narration by sending **Odysseus back to Circe's** (lines (66-71) will complete judgements and destines (judiciary) 66-71)--Forrest Read, The revolutionary calendar, pg. 48.

<span class="fb_quote">"History, nature, cosmic order (the source of justice), and the gods presiding over human arts square with the four themes of all Pound's arcana, both in The Cantos and out. **The four belts moving around the Room of the months**, analogous to the Seal symbols and voices articulated by the concurrent documents, in effect build the four-fiered frescoes and thence, figuratively, the new building. The 'something similar' Pound had done is the Calendar derived from the tiered Seal. Finally, **Yeats mentioned 'the mathematical structure"** and speculated that "when taken up into imagination" (which Pound's poem works toward) it might appear "more than mathematical, that seemingly irrelevant details" might "fit together in a single theme." They never did. But while Yeats's descriptions cannot be put together themselves, the Seal/Calendar form clarifies each one and their relations like a circle emerging from tangents, or like "the rose in the steel dust," or like '76 informing The Cantos.--Forrest Read, Early prose and the "Personae" Volumes, pg. 73.

www.questia.com/library/book/76-one-worl...-by-forrest-read.jsp

p.s Forrest Read also wrote the book "//The Letters of Ezra Pound to James Joyce//"!!!

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"The Poundian calendar, designed by Ezra Pound, attempts to define the post-Christian era and dates everything from 31 October 1921 (Gregorian)--the date Joyce wrote the last words of Ulysses.

www.kelsung.com/calendar/RAW.htm

Steven 'Fly Agaric 23' Pratt. Email to the tribe. 2010/11.

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