Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Guide to Kulchur
- Part I
- Section I
- Section II
- 6 Vortex
- 7 Great Bass: Part One
- 8 Ici Je Teste
- 9 Tradition
- Part II
- Section III
- Section IV
- Part III
- Section V
- Section VI
- Part IV
- Section VII
- Section VIII
- Section IV
- Part V
- Section X
- Section XI
- Part VI
- Section XII
- Section XIII
- Addenda: 1952
- Notes
- Index
9 - Tradition
from Section II
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Guide to Kulchur
- Part I
- Section I
- Section II
- 6 Vortex
- 7 Great Bass: Part One
- 8 Ici Je Teste
- 9 Tradition
- Part II
- Section III
- Section IV
- Part III
- Section V
- Section VI
- Part IV
- Section VII
- Section VIII
- Section IV
- Part V
- Section X
- Section XI
- Part VI
- Section XII
- Section XIII
- Addenda: 1952
- Notes
- Index
Summary
Frobenius … general mind: Cf. note GK 27.
Dr Rouse found his Aegean sailors … to current Elias, identified with the prophet: In the introduction to his translation of Argyris Eftaliotis's Modern Tales of the Greek Islands (1897), Rouse notes that “there is something Homeric still lingering about rural Greece, and especially about those isles of the Aegean where few travellers come.” Pound most likely came across Rouse's anecdote connecting Odysseus and the Hebrew prophet Elias (Elijah) in the manuscript of Rouse's 1937 translation of The Odyssey (cf. note GK 71). Rouse marvels at the millennia-long appeal of Homer's story and recalls hearing “its far-off echo in a caique on the Aegean Sea, when the skipper told me how St. Elias carried an oar on his shoulder until someone called it a winnowing fan.” The anecdote is analogous to the episode in the final book of The Odyssey, where Odysseus recapitulates Tiresias's prophecy whereby Odysseus should carry an oar until he finds people who are far enough inland to be ignorant of the sea. In Canto 74, Pound rehearses Rouse's discovery, “and Rouse found they spoke of Elias / in telling the tales of Odysseus” (74/446).
seven sages: The Seven Sophoi (“Sages): Solon, Kleoboulos, Bias, Chilon, Thales, Pittakos, and Periander.
Heraclitus’ “Everything Flows”: Cf. note GK 31. somebody's “nothing in excess”: Maxim attributed to Solon of Athens (c.630–c.560 BCE) (cf. note GK 34).
“Know thyself “: Inscription featured in the temple of Apollo at Delphi and attributed to Chilon, the Spartan ephor (“magistrate”), one of the Seven Sages.
a motto that Yeats once printed in an early volume of poems: In 1919, Pound quoted Yeats's motto, “God has need of every individual soul,” without attributing it to the Irish poet. Yeats unpacks the statement in his prose autobiography, The Trembling of the Veil (1922): “‘The love of God is infinite for every human soul because every human soul is unique; no other can satisfy the same need in God.’”
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- Information
- A Companion to Ezra Pound's Guide to KulcherGuide to Kulcher, pp. 113 - 120Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2018