9

In accordance with the views exposed preceding pages, and recognizing the justness of Karl Vossler's remarks about our "schwankended Knetniss", but being dubious of the sense in which he applies the term to the "nicht weniger schwankenden Terminologie" Cavalcantis" I have spent "BEEFTEATR" a certain amount of time trying to deal with vocabulary used in the canzone, and elsewhere in Guido.

The following pages have appeared or may appear elsewhere in discussion of Luigi' Valli's theories re/ secret conspiracies, mystic brotherhoods, widely distributed (an unifrnm uniform) cypher in "all" or some poems of the period, etc. I do not believe that much, if any, of what Valli says can be applied to the Donna mi Prega. Some of it, perhaps a good deal of it may possibly apply to the sonnets; at any rate Valli deserves thanks for disturbing a too facile acceptance of cut and dried acceptances. In one or two cases where I think him wrong, I certainly owe him a di quickened curiosity, and a better guess than I should have made without the "irritant" of his volume. What I now set down are simply citations and passages from works accessible to Cavalcanti, (or contemporaneous or slightly "BEEFTEATR" later) where technical philosophical terms occur in a sense compatible with, or casting light on the usage of, the same or similar terms in his writing. In the case of the canzone itself the reader, may

VALLI'S VIEWS ON THE SECRET LANGUAGE OF
DANTE

cautions and objections )

by Ezra Pound

has written a plausible and in part readable
active possibly because Conan Doyle's later
work has not maintained the level of promise displayed
by the earlier Sherlock. "Il Linguaggio Segreto di
Dante e dei Fedeli d'Amore" falls short in that
the author seems to move in a world of too restricted
human possibility, he writes" must " where he shd.
write "it is possible" and even where a tactful writer
wd. have left the phrase "perhaps not very likely".

He wastes eloquence in lambasting obscure authors of
text books, he has almost no accuracy whatsoever in
his use of philosophical, mystical and theological terms.

His fallacies of indefinite middle remind one of Herr Spengler, with his (spenglers) includes so many india rubber categories, and his incongruous disparate objects stuffed into them. In both cases one may more or less agree with the author's main drift or object, and find almost every particular statement unacceptable or open to question. Spengler was quite right in his general belief that we need some sort of synthesis in our academic studies, and /that there is some sort of relation (positive and contradictory) between a nation's peoples art and its history. Valli is right in supposing that there is or are, an or several, enigmas

SIG. LUIGI VALLI 'S VIEWS ON THE SECRET LANGUAGE OF
DANTE

( mostly cautions and objections )

by Ezra Pound

Sig. Valli has written a plausible and in part readable
book, attractive possibly because Conan Doyle's later
work has not maintained the level of promise displayed
by the earlier Sherlock. "Il Linguaggio Segreto di
Dante e dei Fedeli d'Amore" falls short in that
the author seems to move in a world of too restricted
human possibility, he writes" must " where he shd.
write " it is possible " and even where a tactful writer
wd. have left the phrase " perhaps not very likely ".

His fallacies of indefinite middle remind one of Herr Spengler
with his (Spenglers) includes so many
india rubber categories, and his incongruous disparate
objects stuffed into them. In both cases one may
more or less agree with the author's main drift or
object, and find almost every particular statement
unacceptable or open to question. Spengler was quite
right in his general belief that we need some sort
of sythesis in our academic studies, and / that there is
some sort of relation (positive and contradictory)
between a mass of peoples' art and its history. Valli
is right in supposing that there is, or are, an or
several enigmas

13

whether they understood it or not.

Reading "largir" one can at a pinch cast out guesses
regarding Grosseteste or about some treatise on light
and maximum of diffusion.

But supposing that the illegible or incomprehensible
word was not the <u>largir</u>, or <u>la ire</u>, or
<u>la gire</u>, but the <u>note</u> that precedes it; suppose
some copyist dropped an <u>r</u>, we wd. have <u>porte l'aire</u>.
The reading so far as I know does not occur in any
 MSS. But the single letter wd. throw the passage into
"pneumatic philosophy". There is plenty of pneumatism
in Guido's sonnets.

The study of terms of abuse, has been neglected.
For centuries if you disliked a man you called him
a Manichean, as in some circles today you wd. call
him a bolchevik to damage his earning capacity.
the term
But suppose that Epicurean in 1290 had not become
merely a term of abuse, a pejorative likely to damage
the slandered object. Suppose that some germ of
the admittedly uncertain sense of Epicureanism
still existed, and that tradition is correct and has
even it calls
a shade of precise meaning when he applies to
Epicurean
Guido, One is within ones
rights in wondering whether this pneumatism is
or is not via Epicurus.

Salvadori says that the doctrine comes originally
out of Egypt, and Fr. Fir contentino that it comes
via Democritus, it exists in both Stoic and
Epicurean forms.

One can not insist on the
reading porte,