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

the bibliographic code, delicate as his comparisons to other lettering choices and font
types used in Pound's publication history may be. McGann, that is, must read the title in
order to suggest that Pound‘s utopianism was also dangerously aligned with sadder
fascinations. This transgression is sustained within the larger argument that McGann
makes about how the protocols of interpretation appear to be governed by the publication
history of Pound's texts: ―[T]he Cantos will want to preserve the integrity of those
separate parts – which are, after all, devices for organizing the reading experience. New
Directions and Faber have always preserved the distinctions by printing the first thirty
cantos as a single unit‖ (134-5). McGann's attentions to Pound's conservative approach to
publication allow him to argue against maintaining a liberal distinction between editing
and interpretation:
I bring up this matter of textual and editorial theory because the
case of the Cantos illustrates in the most dramatic ways the
difficulty, if not the impossibility, of separating textual/editorial
work from critical/interpretive work. A decision about how to treat
the physical presentation of Cantos 1-30 in an edition will
drastically affect how the work is read and understood. (Textual
Condition 135)
The antecedent continuum from which the bibliographic and semantic codes are
inseparably expressed is something like, in McGann's terms, ―the socio-materiality of
things.‖ Granting that Pound did have such aims in mind for each of his work's iterations,
it is certainly incumbent upon us to concur that Pound's sensitivity to the sociomateriality
of his poetry entered directly into the garden of his poetic text. McGann concludes that in
order to preserve the rich sociomaterial instances of the Cantos we must be aware of how
Pound has already carefully selected their means and modes of best publication. We
want, that is, to be cognizant of the editorial horizons each title signals towards the
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