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

is implicit to baroque criticisms of taboo, is an important aspect of Pound‘s work,
however, the problem that McGann‘s theory delivers for contemporary criticism lies in
its limited selection of that which is being reflected. Pound‘s efforts, for McGann, are
ultimately a reflection of Pound‘s immediate moment. Alas, they are objects that are,
perhaps, too easily ―biodegradable.‖
An example of McGann‘s observation of Pound‘s reflective criticism is available
in his discussion of A Draft of XXX Cantos. He discusses their value by placing them
within a chronological discussion of Pound's publications. An earlier edition deployed a
direct reference to the aesthetics of the Kelmscott tradition of fine printing. William Bird
at Three Mountains Press printed A Draft of XVI Cantos in red and black as a purposeful
homage to William Morris. XXX Cantos, we discover, replaces the Three Mountains
publication and reduces the original homage to Kelmscott by giving it modernist décor:
the allusion to Pre-Raphaelite medievalism, incorporate to the red historiated initialling of
each Canto, is redone with provocative Vorticist initials. The Kelmscott tradition is
reduced to a sack-cloth cover. McGann points out the commemorative and political
significances in Pound's choice of Roman numerals. XXX Cantos is printed in 1930 by
Nancy Cunard at her Hours Press. XXX Cantos, that is, reflects Morris's revolutionary
socialism, instead of its decadent fancy, in the materials it uses. The complaint of cultural
loss in the poetic surface of XXX Cantos is positively reflected in the utopic aspirations
that the book‘s materials serve to remind us of.
We might believe that McGann's reading of the latent fascism implied by the
symbolic value (‗X‘‘s look like the crossed fasces used in Imperial Rome) of the title, A
Draft of XXX Cantos, contradicts his commitment to interrogating only the materiality of
52