German Universities: By the early twentieth century, German universities were among the world's top-ranked institutions, attracting many foreign students, including T. S. Eliot, who briefly attended a summer school at Marburg University before fleeing for London once the First World War broke out in August 1914.

I wasted time … Lope's plays: The “Gracioso” or clown in Lope de Vega's plays is a stock character akin to the Shakespearean fool, who alternates between comic witticisms and serious sermonizing (cf. notes GK 28, 39).

Elias Lowe's story … arbres”: Elias Avery Lowe (1879–1969), American palaeographer. The source of Lowe's anecdote is unknown to the editor. The hapless scientist pursued by a crocodile exclaims, “But no! But NO! Crocodiles do NOT climb trees.”

Bibliothèque Nationale: The National Library of France, in Paris. In the spring of 1931, Pound spent six weeks at the Bibliotheque Nationale conducting research on early American history, especially about John Adams, a material that would seminally inform his development of the Adams Cantos (62–71).

my Cavalcanti: Pound's opera (1931–1933) (cf. note GK 366).

Edison: Cf. note GK 71.

Luigi Valli's Linguaggio Segreto: Il linguaggio segreto di Dante e dei “Fedeli d'Amore” (1928), by the literary critic and Dante scholar, Luigi Valli (1878–1931) (cf. note GK 294).