The Rhetoric of Presence: Reading Pound’s Cantos I to III (1988)

T H E R H E T O R I C O F P R E S E N C E : R E A D I N G P O U N D ’ S C A N T O S I T O I I I V IC TO R LI Dalhousie University The literally present moment is a purely verbal supposition, not a position. — William James In his contribution to a symposium on the study of literature, the late Paul de Man noted that close attention to the language of a text can “transform critical discourse in a manner that would appear deeply subversive to those who think of the teaching of literature as a substitute for the teaching of theology, ethics, psychology or intellectual history.” “Close reading,” de Man argued, “accomplishes this often in spite of itself because it cannot fail to respond to structures of language which it is the more or less secret aim of literary teaching to keep hidden.” 1 Though de Man’s conspiracy theory is undoubtedly exaggerated, it must be conceded that in approaching the Cantos critics have generally shied away from a close reading of the poem’s language and have, in the main, devoted their energies to exegesis, source-hunting, generic clarification, debates on the poem’s lack or possession of structural unity, and discussions on its economic, political, or ideological aspects. Unlike de Man, I do not wish to indulge in a polemical devaluation of those various critical approaches, especially since I believe that they have contributed much to our understanding of the complex erudition and difficult brilliance of the Cantos. But there is still a need, it seems to me, for a critical close reading of how language works in individual cantos. The present paper can be seen as an attempt to meet this need by applying de Man’s advice to the first three cantos, poems which Pound described as “preparation of the palette” for those to follow.2As we shall see, what a close reading of these cantos uncovers is a paradoxical and disturbing compositional or discursive mode I call a “rhetoric of presence” : a discourse in which whatever is proposed as present is present not as reality but as a simulacrum of reality, an “intertextual” or rhetorical figure; a discourse in which whatever is given as a stable presence turns out to be only a figure of speech. The opening lines of the Cantos acknowledge other antecedents. E n g l is h Stu d ie s in C an ad a , x iv , 3, September 1988 And then went down to the ship, Set keel to breakers, forth on the godly sea, and We set up mast and sail on that swart ship, Bore sheep aboard her, and our bodies also Heavy with weeping, and winds from sternward Bore us out onward with bellying canvas. Circe’s this craft, the trim-coifed goddess.3 “And,” the first word, is a conjunction that reminds us that something has already preceded the text even as it propels our reading forward. The Cantos, therefore, open in medias res, with a word that functions much as a limit or threshold does, promising more to come and indicating that much has gone on before. Thus the progressive nature of the text is immediately established (aided in part by the vigorous verbs of action). At the same time, we are made to realize that Canto I is a translation of a translation, that is to say, a displace­ ment inscribed in a series of textual displacements. Process and intertextuality are thus closely related. The acts of voyaging and ritual sacrifice are actions already textual in origin, and what is textual is animated into action during the act of translation. Acts are translations from texts, and texts are acts of translation. The launching of Odysseus’s ship is also the act of translation by which Andreas Divus’s Latin version of Homer’s Odyssey is displaced and given over to the Anglo-Saxon alliterative rhythms of “The Seafarer.” The ritual act of giving blood to ghosts so that they may speak parallels the verbal transfusion given by Pound’s translation of the...