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

CHAPTER TWO:
LONG SERIES OF TRANSLATIONS: THE ―UR-CANTOS‖ CRITICAL
ANTIQUARIANISM
In his 1953 reissue Diptych: London-Rome, Ezra Pound made it clear that the full
text of “Homage to Sextus Propertius” was meant to include the Ovidian epigram “quia
pauper amavi” that he had once used as the title for the entire volume of poems in which
it was first collected. What this authorial directive entails to the reception of the 1919
publication of Quia Pauper Amavi is the focus of the following two chapters. This
chapter focuses specifically on the relationship between that title and the so-called “Ur-
Cantos,” through an interrogation of the genetic production of that poem as it occurs in
the publication venues that eventuate their final condition as a finished work in QPA. The
next chapter complements this through an interrogation of the other long poem under this
title, “Homage.” These two sequences compose the bulk of the volume of poetry gathered
under this title and participate specifically in its argument: fate‟s role as the force of
nature in the production of natural history is not something that can be made to reside in a
totalizing moment or attitude. With reference to the Collector and Allegorist figures
discussed in the first chapter, I show that Pound criticism makes a mistake when it seeks
to locate meaning singularly in Pound‟s reactionary stance towards his own present
moment. His was as much a criticism of, about, and from the past as it was of the present.
This critical antiquarianism is made apparent once we attend to Pound‟s stance towards
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