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

the political implications of that thought to Aldus, Hieronymous Soncinus, the Borgia
family, and the Malatestas.
Rainey spends too much energy intervening into Pound‘s aesthetic portrait of
Sigismondo by relating it to his interest in Mussolini‘s political manner and misses this
aspect of collaboration in his biography altogether. Rainey‘s insistence that Pound lapses
into a kind of psychological torpor grounded in his need to find transcendent authority
allows him to fixate on one line in particular from ―Canto X‖: ―All I want you to do is to
follow the orders.‖ For Rainey there is no clearer moment in the Cantos of Pound‘s
transference of interest in Malatesta on to Mussolini. However, to discuss Pound‘s
sensitivity to communicative practices and the materiality of cultural production we must
include his published interest in all forms of Renaissance transmission (including Aldus,
Bembo, et al.), not just the pretentious gestures and battlefield utterances Pound
dramatizes and on which Rainey chooses to focus. Bornstein‘s approach seems best when
it is complemented by studies of poetic themes that encompass both the history of a text‘s
production – what resources were available and when – and the creation of a work in time
focusing on apt biographical details that can actually illuminate the production of the text.
In fact, Pound directly implicates and critiques the martial language of Malatesta
with his reading of the cultural production of Aldus Manutius, showing his interest in the
condottiere to have always been split between his admiration of his talents as a fierce
leader and his role in preserving and supporting the humanities. Malatesta‘s role in
―Canto XXX‖ is much different than it is in ―Canto X,‖ showing the earlier Canto to have
been a strategic development within a larger narrative arc. This fact asks us to revise the
hermeneutic institutions Rainey believes to be underpinning Pound‘s ―faith‖ in
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