4pQonT

178 THIS DIFFICULT INDIVIDUAL
simple. 30
It is the form of conversation. When two people, or a
group, meet and have converse, they form a relationship (really
a new form), and their converse or intercourse takes place within
that relationship. The Cantos take place within the interrelated
aspects of man's existence, and as such, they can only puzzle
those who are unfamiliar with that existence.
In one of the first comments on the Cantos, T. S. Eliot wrote,
in 1917, "We would leave it as a test: when anyone has studied
Mr. Pound's poems in chronological order, and has mastered
'Lustra' and 'Cathay,' he is prepared for the Cantos—but not
until then." 31
This suggestion still holds true. The reader should not approach
the Cantos as his first step in discovering Pound. The
necessity of familiarizing oneself with the body of Pound's poetical
and critical work is not as painful a duty as it may sound,
particularly to those who are not wedded for life to their preconceptions
and prejudices. That work offers the only guide
extant for young people who wish to write either prose or poetry;
the rest of our contemporary writers have seen fit, for reasons best
known to themselves, to shroud the creative act in mystery, or at
least in Mother Hubbards.
The Cantos have served to excite much of that contumely that
Pound, alone of present-day writers, seems able to arouse in the
reader, the beholder, or the one who has merely heard his name.
It is curious that Mr. Eliot and Mr. Yeats, no mean talents,
have been unable to touch the wellsprings of fury in the populace
as Mr. Pound seems able to do with his slightest work. Perhaps
this is because Mr. Pound deals with realities, and realities are
apt to touch us where we do not wish to be touched. As long as
poets confine themselves to writing about how pretty the roses
are, or praising or excoriating those currently managing the
state, or wondering whether the Second Coming has come or
gone, they do not really reach us. The discussion of such problems
does not lead to the stake.
Richard Aldington stated in 1939 that "The proper place for
Pound's Cantos is in D'Israeli's Curiosities of Literature, unless indeed
it fits better into his Calamities of Authors. . . . Pound is