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

eviewer in the journal The New Age, November 27, 1919, Vol. 26 pp.82-83, writes, ―It is
however hardly fair to judge the 'Homage to Sextus Propertius' by reference to
Propertius. It is obviously not meant as a translation, though it ventures rather too near
the original to be taken as a free fantasia on Roman themes. Yet the seven major blunders
in No.12 and the five in No.5 are enough to show that Mr. Pound refuses to make a fetish
of pedantic accuracy.‖ In the same issue of The New Age Wilfred Rowland Childe
chimed in, ―He ought to be whipped for errors a fourth form schoolboy would detect.‖
Similarly, Mr. Martin Gilkes thinks that Propertius‘s ―intention had been twisted beyond
recognition,‖ while Logan Pearsall Smith noted the risible attitude of Latin scholars
towards Pound. He envied Pound his ―thickness of skin.‖
Unlike these first critics, Sullivan takes Pound at his word and argues that
Homage was never meant to be a translation, or only just a translation. Drawing on the
1934 ―Date Line‖ essay, where Pound outlined five different categories of criticism,
Sullivan finds in the second, criticism by translation, the key to considering the
―Homage‖ as an impressionistic criticism of Propertius' work. Pound's homage, for
Sullivan, shows us what is too often neglected in Propertius, but otherwise leaves his skill
as a translator open to dim views.
Brian Arkins explains that Pound was never entirely enamored of that element in
Propertius‘s elegies that dealt with his fascination for Cynthia. Pound, Arkins argues,
thought Propertius to be the ―dupe of magniloquence‖ when writing about his maudlin
attraction to Cynthia (31). It is customary in this regard to recall Pound's expressed
motive. In an exchange of letters with Iris Barry (the founder of MOMA's film
department), Pound outlined what he felt to be the necessary training for a serious
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