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

emotional timbre of Cynthia's world while remaining clinical about its contents. Pound's
Propertius, as Sullivan understands it, is designed to confront a sympathetic yet generic
reception of Propertius as a tragic ―servitium amoris.‖ This is the tradition of modern
classicists who read Propertius as a sincere, impassioned, but foolish love slave.
Pound's Propertius, ironically, bases itself in historic critical authority. ―Classic‖
critics, those contemporary to Propertius himself, were not fooled by Propertius‘s
perfervid declarations and portrayals of abjection. Classic poetic theories determined
rigorously that sincerity is always and only a function of style. They distinguished
between biographical facts and literary creation, poetry and history: ―Sincerity for them is
a function of style; no specific or necessary connections are to be made between personal
poetry and personal experience. The point is obvious with Ovid, but is also highly
relevant to the love poetry of Propertius‖ (Sullivan 39). Propertius, Sullivan notes, is
unusual because of his avowal of his Alexandrian influence and care to incorporate its
stylistic features in his work.
Roman elegists usually use Alexandrian epigrams to signal a specific style and
mode. They do not, however, mean to elicit a deeper affiliation or obeisance to the timbre
of the Greek tradition they appropriate. Propertius, though, asserted forcefully that the
Greek elegists, Callimachus and Philetas, were his masters. This means that he
purposefully aligned himself with a tradition that sought to find nuance, tone, and
psychologically accurate portrayals of the emotional realities expressed in mythical love
stories. Where other Roman elegists use myth for ornament and have an ambivalent, if
not hostile, belief in their veracity (making them comparable to the Troubadours of
Languedoc of the 11 th and 12 th C), Propertius's elegies provide their reader with the
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