Proportion, laws of proportion. Pier della Francesca having thought longer, knew more than painters who have not taken the trouble.
‘La section d’or’1 certainly helped master architects. But you learn painting by eye, not by algebra. Prosody and melody are attained by the listening ear, not by an index of nomenclatures, or by learning that such and such a foot is called spondee. Give your draughtsman sixty-four stencils of ‘Botticelli’s most usual curves’? And he will make you a masterpiece?
Beyond which we will never recover the art of writing to be sung until we begin to pay some attention to the sequence, or scale, of vowels in the line, and of the vowels terminating the group of lines in a series.
1 Traditions of architectural proportion
INDEX
Addison, Joseph, 170
Adolphe (Benjamin Constant), 90
The Aeneid (Virgil; tr. Douglas), 45, 58, 79, [115-20], 121, [122-23]
Aeschylus, 46, 47, 103, 204
Agamemnon (Aeschylus), 46, 47
Agassiz, Louis, 17-18
Agricola, Rodolfo, 66
‘Aillte’ (music), 54
Albertus (Gautier), 78
‘Alcaeus’ (Landor), 179
‘L’Alemanda’ (music), 157
Alisoun, 144
Amores (Ovid; tr. Marlowe), 58, 79, 135
The Anatomy of Melancholy (Burton), 61
Anne, Queen, 156
Aristotle, 84
Arnaut Daniel, 53, 57, 104, 194
Aucassin et Nicolette (anon.), 194
Austen, Jane, 61, 72, 89, 177
Avicenna, 141
Bach, Johann Sebastian, 43, 201, 203
Bacon, Roger, 20
Balfour, Arthur, 141
Basinio of Parma, 48
‘Batsabe sings’ (Peele), 144
Bayle, Peter, 186
Beddoes, Thomas, 132
Beowulf (anon.), 54
Bertrand de Born, 56
Bible, 92
Binyon, Robert Laurence, 202
Bion, 41, 42, 54
Bishop of Dunkeld [cf. Douglas, Gavin]
Boccaccio, 59, 101, 110
Boileau, Nicolas, 145, 152, 156
Borchardt, 56
The Borough (Crabbe), 176-78
Botticelli, 206
Bouvard et Pécuchet (Flaubert), 90
Boyd, Mark Alexander, 134, 173
Brancusi, 206
Browning, Robert, 78, 79, 80, 132, 133, 173, 174, 181, 188-91
Budé, Guillaume, 186
Bunting, Basil, 36, 92
Burnt Nial (anon.), 52
Burton, Robert, 61
Butler, Samuel, 160-65, 173
Byron, George Gordon, Lord, 79, 132, 162
Caesar, Julius, 33
A Call (F. M. Ford), 90
Camoens, Luiz de, 72
Campion, Thomas, 60, 79, 156, 173
The Canterbury Tales (Chaucer), 92, [98], [100], [108], [110]
Canzoni (Arnaut), 194
Cashel Byron’s Profession (G. B. Shaw), 86
Catullus, 47, 48, 104
Cavalcanti, Guido, 14, 57, 60, 73, 85, 90, 96, 104, 140
Chapman, George, 58
La Chartreuse de Parme (Stendhal), 90
Chaucer, Geoffrey, 56, 58, 59, 71, 79, 92, 98-104, 106-14, 115, 132, 142, 167, 173, 187, 206
Chinese ideograph, 19-22
El Cid (anon.), 52
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 31
Confucius, 29, 158
Congreve, William, 170
Constant, Benjamin, 90
Corbière, Tristan, 78, 79, 173
Cowley, Abraham, 162
Crabbe, George, 73, 79, 172, 173, 175-78, 186
Crestien de Troyes, 105
Criterion,74
Dante, Alighieri, 31, 37, 39, 45, 53, 56, 57, 59, 60, 71, 101, 103, 197, 202, 204
Daphnis and Chloe (Longus), 110, 194
Davray, Henri, 102
Death of Adonis (anon.), 54
Debussy, Claude, 24
Dempsey, Jack, 86-87
De Ouincey, Thomas, 31
De Schloezer, Boris, 24
De Vulgari Eloquio (Dante), 197
Dickens, Charles, 177
Diderot, Denis, 186
‘Dirce’ (Landor), 185
Disraeli, Benjamin, 177
La Divina Commedia (Dante), 191
Dolci, Carlo, 26
Don Juan (Byron), 162
‘Donna Mi Prega’ (Cavalcanti), 60, 85, 140
Donne, John, 60, 73, 79, 90, 137-40, 157, 166, 167, 173
Dorset, Earl of, 79, 159, 162, 173
Douglas, Gavin, 45, 58, 59, 79, 115-23, 173
Dowland, John, 151
Dry Sticks (Landor), 183
Dryden, John, 167, 168
‘The Duke of York’s Statue’ (Landor), 182
The Dunciad (Pope), 167-71, 172
‘The Ecstasy’ (Donne), 60, 79, 137-40
L’Éducation Sentimentale (Flaubert), 90
Einstein, Albert, 18
Eliot, T. S., 113
Elizabethan tradition, 59, 71, 113, 135
Elizondo, Fr. José Maria de, 141
Émaux et Camées (Gautier), 78
‘Epithalamium’ (Landor), 179-80
Erigena, John Scotus, 101
Ernst, Max, 76
Essay on the Chinese Written Character (Fenollosa), 18-19
Euphues (John Lyly), 71
Euripides, 204
‘Exile’s Letter’ (Li Po), 51
Fabre, Jean Henri, 100
Fenollosa, Ernest, 18, 19, 20, 22, 96
Ficino, Marsilio, 100
Fielding, Henry, 60, 61, 72, 89, 114, 178
FitzGerald, Edward, 69, 79, 133, 136, 159, 173
Flaubert, Gustave, 39, 52, 60, 65, 74, 90, 97, 176, 205
Florio, John, 61
Fontenelle, Bernard Le Bovier de, 187
Ford, Ford Madox, 90
France, Anatole, 70, 187
Francesca, Piero della, 206
Frazer, James George, 100, 103
Froissart, Jean, 101, 105, 112
Galileo, 20
Gaudier-Brzeska, Henri, 21
Gautier, Théophile, 78, 79, 173
Gay, John, 170
George, Stefan, 55
Germinie Lacerteux (Goncourts), 77, 90
Gilbert, William S., 162
Giordano, Umberto, 159
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 55
Golding, Arthur, 58, 59, 79, 124-31, 173, 191
Goldoni, Charles, 186
‘Go, Lovely Rose’ (Waller), 155
Goncourt, Edmond and Jules, 74, 77, 90
Gongora, Luis de Argote y, 71
Gower, John, 101-02
Grettir (anon.), 52
Guido delle Colonne, 56, 90
Guillaume de Poictiers, 56, 101
Hardy, Thomas, 193
Harvey, Col., 202
Hegel, Georg, 88
Heine, Heinrich, 159
Heinrich von Morungen, 55
Hemingway, Ernest, 74
Henry VIII, 144, 156
Hero and Leander (Marlowe), 72
Heroic Idylls with Additional Poems (Landor), 183-84
Heroides (Ovid), 78
Herrick, Robert, 79, 142, 143, 173
Hokusai Katsushuka, 206
Holbach, Paul, 186
Homer, 29, 41, 43, 44, 46, 47, 48, 89, 92, 123, 204
Hood, Thomas, 162
Horace, 33, 136
How to Read (Pound), 11, 23, 28, 38, 76, 89
Hudibras (Butler), 160-65, 172
Hudson, W. H., 133
Huxley family, 20
Ibsen, Henrik, 103, 197
Ibycus, 47
ideogrammic method, 26-27, 59, 90, 96
Iliad (Homer), 58
Inferno (Dante; tr. Binyon), 202
Imaginary Conversations of Literary Men and Statesmen (Landor), 58-59, 110, 186, 187
Instigations (Pound), 95
James, Henry, 43
, 61, 76, 90, 133
Jamyn, Amadis, 44, 58
Janequin, Clement, 54
Jefferson, Thomas, 202
Jenkins, John, 143, 151
Johnson, Samuel, 186
Joyce, James, 113
Keats, John, 64, 132
Kennedy-Frasers, 54
Kipling, Rudyard, 61, 74, 89, 193
Kodály, Zoltán, 198
Kreuger, Ivar, 25
Laforgue, Jules, 38, 74, 78, 79, 173
Landor, Walter Savage, 58-59, 80, 110, 132, 173, 178, 179-87
Last Fruit off an Old Tree (Landor), 182
Laurencie et Lavignac Encycléopdie de la Musique et Dictionnaire du Conservatoire,198
Lawes, Henry, 60, 151, 155, 156
Leger, Fernand, 88
‘Lenvoy to King Richard’ (Chaucer), 111
‘A Letter from Artemisa in the Town to Chloe in the Country’ (Rochester), 172
Lévy-Bruhl, Lucien, 21
Lewis, Wyndham, 113
Li Po, 51
logopoeia, 37, 63, 102
Lombardo, Pietro, 151
McAlmon, Robert, 90
Macaulay’s Peerage’ (Landor), 183
Macbeth (Shakespeare), 122
Madame Bovary (Flaubert), 90
Malatesta, 101
Marconi, Marchese, 25
Marie de France, 105
Marlowe, Christopher, 58, 59, 60, 72, 79, 135, 136, 173
Maupassant, Guy de, 65, 74, 177
The Mayor of Casterbridge (Hardy), 193
Medici, Lorenzo de’, 100
melopoeia, 37, 42, 48, 52, 56, 61, 63, 102
Memmi, Simone, 132
Metamorphoses (Ovid; tr. Golding), 58, 79, 92, [124-25], 126-27, [128-31]
metre, 142, 157-58, 197-206
Michelet, Jules, 177
Milano, Francesco da, 54
Milton, John, 51, 78, 103, 204
minnesingers, 55
‘Miss Kilmansegg and her Precious Leg’ (Thomas Hood), 162
Montaigne, Michel de, 61, 192
Morris, William, 133
Moschus, 41, 147
Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 201, 203
Münch, Gerhart, 23, 54
Nash, Rev. T. R., 162
‘Neiges d’antan’ (Villon), 109
Noh plays, 92
North American Review,202
Odyssey (Homer), 43-44, 58, 85
Oldham, John, 145
‘Old Style’ (Landor), 185
Omar Khayyám, 69, 136, 159
On the Common Tongue (Dante), 71
Ovid (P. Ouidius Naso), 33, 45, 48, 58, 78, 79, 92, 98, 127, 135
The Oxford Book of Seventeenth Century Verse (eds. H. J. Grierson & G. Bullough), 140
The Oxford Book of Sixteenth Century Verse (ed. E. K. Chambers), 120
Paris, Gaston, 11
‘Pastime and good company’ (Henry VIII), 144
‘A Pastoral In Imitation of the Greek of Moschus Bewailing the Death of the Earl of Rochester’ (anon.), 147-153, 154
Peele, George, 144
Perugino, 134
Petrarch, Francis, 59, 103, 110
Petronius Arbiter, Gaius, 110
phanopoeia, 37, 42, 52, 56, 63, 102
Picasso, Pablo, 154
Pisanello, 30
Pisistratus, 92
pitch, 197, 198
Plato, 110
Platonism, 140
Poe, Edgar Allan, 79
Poems and Epigrams (Landor), 180-81
‘Poikilothron’ (Sappho), 47
Pope, Alexander, 73, 79, 152, 158, 162, 165, 166-171, 172, 173, 175, 176
Prior, Matthew, 170
Propertius, Sextus, 38, 48, 118
Provençal tradition, 52-54, 55-57, 69, 101, 104, 109, 111, 113, 142, 157
Puccini, Giacomo, 159
Purgatorio (Dante), 96
Quattrocento, 48, 132
Rabelais, 61, 186
Ravel, Maurice, 24
Reinach, Salomon, 11
Renaissance, 48, 132
Renan, Ernest, 191
rhyme, 142, 163
rhythm [cf. metre]
Richardson, Samuel, 178
Richter, Friedrich, 200
Rimbaud, Arthur, 78, 79, 173
Rochester, John Wilmot, Earl of, 79, 145-46, 147, 152, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 162, 172, 173
Rockefeller, John D., 25
Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 80, 105, 133, 174
Le Rouge et le noir (Stendhal), 90
The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám (FitzGerald), 69, 79, 133
Rudge, Olga, 23
The Sacred Fount (Henry James), 90
Salammbô (Flaubert), 74
Salel, 58
Sansoni, Luigi, 23
Sappho, 41, 47, 48
Sauzay, 201
Schelling, Felix, 60, 103
‘Seafarer’ (anon.), 51, 52, 54, 58
Seneca, 156, 159
A Sentimental Journey (Sterne), 89, 178
Seres, Willyam, 127
‘The Serious Artist’ (Pound), 96-97
Serly, Tibor, 198
Shakespeare, 33, 39, 51, 58, 59, 60, 71, 72, 79, 99-103, 106, 108, 114, 127, 132, 136, 173, 187, 202, 204
Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 132
Sidgwick, J. B., 59
Sirventes, 69, 157
Smollett, Tobias, 178
Socrates, 110
sonnet, 134, 157
Sophocles, 46
Sordello, 55, 56, 57, 157, 191
Spenser, Edmund, 151
Spinoza, Baruch, 88
Stendhal (Henri Beyle), 60, 74, 90, 97, 176, 186
Sterne, Laurence, 13, 89, 178
Sullivan, Arthur, 162
Swift, Jonathan, 168
Swinburne, Algernon Charles, 77-78, 80, 105, 132
Tacitus, 33, 70
Ta Hio (Confucius), 29, 58
Tennyson, Alfred, Lord, 132, 202
Theocritus, 78
‘They flee from me’ (Wyatt), 144
Tilden, Bill, 75
‘To His Sacred Majesty On His Restoration’ (Rochester), 146
Tom Jones (Fielding), 89, 178
Torquemada, 95
Tristram Shandy (Sterne), 89, 178
Trois contes (Flaubert), 90
Trollope, Anthony, 76, 89, 90
Tunney, Gene, 86
Tura, Cosimo, 26
Umewaka Minoru, 92
Urquhart, Thomas, 61
Valla, Lorenzo, 186
Ventadour, 55
Villon, François, 56, 57, 96, 104-05, 109, 173
Vinci, Leonardo da, 201
‘Violets’ (Robert Herrick), 142
Virgil, 44, 45, 58, 107, [118], 121, 123
La Vita Nuova (Dante; tr. Borchardt), 55
Voltaire, 60, 176, 186
Vorticist manifesto of 1914, 76
Wallace, Edgar, 44, 89
Waller, Edmund, 60, 79, 154-55, 173
Walsinghame, 144
Walther von der Vogelweide, 55
‘The Wanderer’ (anon.), 96
‘Welcome to Charles’ (Rochester), 154
Wells, H. G., 141
Whistler, James Abbott McNeill, 133
Whitman. Walt, 79, 173, 192
Whittaker, William Gillies, 143
Wordsworth, William, 73, 77-78, 132
Wyatt, Thomas, 144
Yeats, William Butler, 44, 80, 96, 99, 159, 197-98
Yellow Book, 71
Young, William, 143, 151
EZRA POUND
AVAILABLE FROM NEW DIRECTIONS
A B C of Reading
The Cantos of Ezra Pound
The Classic Noh Theatre of Japan
Collected Early Poems of Ezra Pound
Confucius (Translations)
Confucius to Cummings (Anthology)
Diptych Rome—London
A Draft of XXX Cantos
Elektra (Translation)
Ezra Pound and Dorothy Sh
akespear 1909-1914
Ezra Pound and Music
Ezra Pound and the Visual Arts
Gaudier-Brzeska: A Memoir
Guide to Kulchur
Literary Essays
New Selected Poems and Translations
Pavannes and Divagations
Personae
The Pisan Cantos
Pound/Ford: The Story of a Literary Friendship (Letters)
Pound/Joyce: Letters & Essays
Pound/Lewis: The Letters of Ezra Pound and Wyndham Lewis
Pound/The Little Review: Letters
Pound/Zukofsky: Selected Letters
Selected Cantos
Selected Letters 1907-1941
Selected Prose 1909-1965
The Spirit of Romance
Translations
A Walking Tour in Southern France
Women of Trachis (Translation)
Copyright © 1934 by Ezra Pound
Introduction copyright © 2010 by Michael Dirda
All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in a newspaper, magazine, radio, television, or website review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.
First published in 1934. First published in the New Directions Classics series in 1951, then as New Directions Paperbook 89 in 1960. Reissued with a new introduction by Michael Dirda (New Directions Paperbook 1186) in 2010.
Pound, Ezra, 1885-1972.
[A B C of reading]
ABC of reading / by Ezra Pound; introduction by Michael Dirda.
p. cm. -- (New Directions paperbook; 1186)
Originally published: 1934.
“First published as New Directions paperbook 89 in 1960. Reissued with a new introduction … in 2010”--T.p. verso.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-0-8112-2316-4 (e-book)
1. Literature--Study and teaching. 2. Literature--History and criticism. 3. Poetry. 4. English poetry--History and criticism. I. Title.
PN59.P6 2010
807--dc22 2010021429
New Directions books are published for James Laughlin
by New Directions Publishing Corporation,
80 Eighth Avenue, New York 10011