TABOO: THE ACTUAL MODERNIST AESTHETIC, MADE REAL A ...

to posit a fictional author being narrated by each poem‘s implied narrator(s) in acts of
fictional creativity – we can positively adduce what was actually at stake in Pound‘s de-
personalized narratives.
This chapter takes Benjamin‘s understanding of the way the symptoms of
depersonalization – the self‘s alienation from its body as its emotions become deadened –
leads to ―the concept of the pathological state, in which the most simple object appears to
be a symbol of some enigmatic wisdom because it lacks any natural, creative relationship
to us.‖ What we see occurring in Pound‘s work is his ongoing development of a style that
allowed him to play with just this sort of pathology. Pound‘s poetry can be read for how
it entertains examples of just this kind of hermeneutic pathology for the end of producing
―an incomparably productive context.‖ Past criticism has often stopped short in its
registration of the significance of Pound‘s investment in, and representation of, symbolic
acts of augury, believing Pound‘s play with mythical hermeneutics to be Pound‘s actual
textual strategy and belief system. In fact, Pound‘s effort to de-personalize his poetic
narrative(s) allows him to confront Benjamin‘s irony such that the ―productive context‖
of his work is the real manner through which his poetry comes to be manufactured. That
is to say, Pound‘s de-personalized authorship provides him with the opportunity to co-
create A Draft of XXX Cantos. The import of the creative friendship that Pound held with
Nancy Cunard and the natural history of their relationship is the subject of this chapter. I
return to discussing the way Pound‘s de-personalized stance sheds light on Benjamin‘s
theory after discussing this history and how it has been variously discussed and
misunderstood in recent criticisms of Pound and his often disagreeably difficult politics
that persistently obviate his social commitment.
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