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Tuesday 3 November 2015

Ezra Pound: Canto CXIII: preparation for sky burial


Vultures come from skies over ethnic Tibetans gathering for a sky burial near the Larung valley located some 3700 to 4000 metres above the sea level in Sertar county, Garze Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan province...Vultures come from skies over ethnic Tibetans gathering for a sky burial near the Larung valley located some 3700 to 4000 metres above the sea level in Sertar county, Garze Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan province, China October 31, 2015. In early afternoons, on a hill near famous Larung Wuming Buddhist Institute, relatives and onlookers gather for sky burials in which bodies of deceased people are offered to vultures to prey upon it. Such burials are practiced by some Tibetans and Mongolian in China as an extreme type of Buddhist's "self-sacrifice almsgiving". It is believed that feeding vultures with decomposed corpse of relatives on top of a mountain is a respectful to pay tribute to their passed-away beloved ones. Picture taken October 31, 2015. REUTERS/Damir Sagolj

Vultures flock overhead as ethnic Tibetans gather for a sky burial near the Larung valley, Garze Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan province. Relatives and onlookers gather for sky burials in which bodies of deceased people are offered to vultures. Such burials are practiced by some Tibetans and Mongolians in China as an extreme type of Buddhist “self-sacrifice almsgiving”. It is believed that feeding vultures with decomposed corpses of relatives on top of a mountain is a respectful way to pay tribute to passed-away beloved ones: photo by Damir Sagolj/Reuters, 3 November 2015

Thru the 12 Houses of Heaven
                   seeing the just and the unjust,
                   tasting the sweet and the sorry,
Pater Helios turning.  
“Mortal praise has no sound in her ears”
                                                  (Fortuna’s)
θρήνος
And who no longer make gods out of of beauty
θρήνος     this is a dying
Yet to walk with Mozart, Agassiz and Linnaeus
       ‘neath overhanging air under sun-beat
Here take thy mind’s space
And to this garden, Marcella, ever seeking by petal, by leaf-vein
                 out of dark, and toward half-light

And over Li Chiang, the snow range is turquoise
Rock’s world that he saved us for memory
                   a thin trace in high air
And with them Paré (Ambroise) and the Men against Death
Twedell, Donnelly,
                         old Pumpelly crossed Gobi
“no horse, no dog, and no goat.”

“I’d eat his liver, told that son of...
and now bigod I have done it”                   
                                            17 Maggio,
                                                            why not spirits?
But for the sun and serenitas
                                   (19th May ’59)
H.D. once said “serenitas"
                                      (Atthis, etc.)
                     at Dieudonné’s
                                            in pre-history.
No dog, no horse, and no goat,
The long flank, the firm breast
                             and to know beauty and death and despair
and to think that what has been shall be,
                              flowing, ever unstill.

Then a partridge-shaped cloud over dust storm.
The hells move in cycles,
                               No man can see his own end.
The Gods have not returned. “They have never left us.”
                                They have not returned.
Cloud’s processional and the air moves with their living.
Pride, jealousy and possessiveness              
                      3 pains of hell
and a clear wind over garofani
                      over Portofino 3 lights in triangulation
Or apples from Hesperides fall in their lap
                      from phantom trees.
The old Countess remembered (say 1928)
                      that ball in St. Petersburg
and as to how Stef got out of Poland...
                      Sir Ian told ‘em help
                                          would come via the sea
(the black one, the Black Sea)
                                          Pétain warned ‘em.
And the road under apple-boughs
                      mostly grass-covered
And the olives to windward
                                Kalenda Maja.
Li Sao, Li Sao, for sorrow
            but there is something intelligent in the cherry-stone
Canals, bridges, and house walls
                                             orange in sunlight
But to hitch sensibility to efficiency:
                      grass versus granite,
For the little light and more harmony
Oh God of all men, none excluded
and howls for Schwundgeld in the Convention
                                                    (our Constitutional
                                                      17...whichwhat)
Nothing new but their ignorance,
                              ever perennial
Parsley used in the sacrifice
           and (calling Paul Peter) 12%
           does not mean one, oh, four, 104%
Error of chaos. Justification is from kindness of heart
            and from her hands floweth mercy.
As for who demand belief rather than justice.
And the host of Egypt, the pyramid builder,
                      waiting there to be born.
No more the pseudo-gothic sprawled house
                          out over the bridge there
                                   (Washington Bridge, N.Y.C.)
                             but everything boxed for economy.
That the body is inside the soul --
                            the lifting and folding brightness       
                                    the darkness shattered,
                                             the fragment,
That Yeats noted the symbol over that portico
                                                              (Paris)
And the bull by the force that is in him --
                  not lord of it,
                           mastered.
And to know interest from usura
(Sac. Cairoli, prezzo giusto)
                  In this sphere is Giustizia.
In mountain air the grass frozen emerald
                    and with the mind set on that light
                                 saffron, emerald,
                                                      seeping.
“but that kind of ignorance” said the old priest to Yeats
    (in a railway train) “is spreading every day from the schools” --
    to say nothing of other varieties.
Article X for example -- put over, and 100 years to get back
                                                           to the awareness of
                                         (what’s his name in that Convention)
And in thy mind beauty,
                                        O Artemis.
As to sin, they invented it -- eh?
                                         to implement domination
eh? largely.
                  There remain grumpiness,
                  malvagità
Sea, over roofs, but still the sea and headland.
And in every woman, somewhere in the snarl is a tenderness.
                                                 A blue light under stars.
The ruined orchards, trees rotting. Empty frames at Limone.
And for a little magnanimity somewhere,
And to know the share from the charge
                                  (scala altrui)
God’s eye art ‘ou, do not surrender perception.
And in thy mind beauty, O Artemis
                Daphne afoot in vain speed.
When the Syrian onyx is broken.
             Out of dark, thou, Father Helios, leadest,
but the mind as Ixion, unstill, ever turning.
Ezra Pound (1885-1972: Canto CXIII, May 1959 
Vultures come from skies over ethnic Tibetans gathering for a sky burial near the Larung valley located some 3700 to 4000 metres above the sea level in Sertar county, Garze Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan province...Vultures come from skies over ethnic Tibetans gathering for a sky burial near the Larung valley located some 3700 to 4000 metres above the sea level in Sertar county, Garze Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan province, China October 31, 2015. In early afternoons, on a hill near famous Larung Wuming Buddhist Institute, relatives and onlookers gather for sky burials in which bodies of deceased people are offered to vultures to prey upon it. Such burials are practiced by some Tibetans and Mongolian in China as an extreme type of Buddhist's "self-sacrifice almsgiving". It is believed that feeding vultures with decomposed corpse of relatives on top of a mountain is a respectful to pay tribute to their passed-away beloved ones. Picture taken October 31, 2015. REUTERS/Damir Sagolj  
Vultures flock overhead as ethnic Tibetans gather for a sky burial near the Larung valley, Garze Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan province. Relatives and onlookers gather for sky burials in which bodies of deceased people are offered to vultures. Such burials are practiced by some Tibetans and Mongolian in China as an extreme type of Buddhist’s “self-sacrifice almsgiving”. It is believed that feeding vultures with decomposed corpse of relatives on top of a mountain is a respectful to pay tribute to their passed-away beloved ones: photo by Damir Sagolj/Reuters, 3 November 2015

Image from page 362 of "The Bible hand-book: an introduction to the study of Sacred Scripture" (1883) | by Internet Archive Book Images

Syrian onyx: an Ammonite, or Fossil shell (from a photograph). These curious shells are found embedded in the cream-colored chalk, or limestone cliffs of Palestine. This specimen was found among the mountains of Galilee. It is apparently A. Syriacus, with a Nerinea Syr. turretted  shell on the side and a Natica Syr. or Turritella Syr. on the end: Image from page 362 of The Bible hand-book: an introduction to the study of Sacred Scripture (1883): image by Internet Book Archive Images

File:Cordoba Mezquita.jpg
 
 Mezquita de Córdoba, España: photo by Jim Gordonl,  30 October 2008

Ammonite shell | by Captain Tenneal

 Ammonite shell under cross polarized light: photo by Captain Tenneal, 8 November 2008


Vultures in Africa and Europe could face extinction within our lifetime, conservationists have warned. Veterinary drug diclofenac that wiped out 99% of vultures in India, Pakistan and Nepal, has been commercially available in at least two European countries. And in Africa they are facing increasing threats mainly due to poisoning.: photo by Ramon Elosegui/BirdLife International via The Guardian, 12 September 2014

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Beautiful Egyptian #Vulture in #Greece. Thanks to @Birdwingeu for photo: image via WildHils @WildHils, 29 October 2015

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/73/Aerial_View_of_Flying_Eagle_over_Green_Forested_Land.jpg/1280px-Aerial_View_of_Flying_Eagle_over_Green_Forested_Land.jpg

Aerial view of Turkey Vulture gliding over forested area, Enchanted Rock State Natural Area, Texas
: photo by Wing-Chi Poon, 12 April 2008


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CONSERVATION: 11 of #Africa's #Vulture species are flying towards extinction @Ken_Birdlife: image via Wako Joel @WajoJoel, 29 October 2015

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Griffon vulture (Gyps fulvus), beak sideview: photo by Thermos, 2006
 
Traditional Tibetan Sky Burial in which vultures pick clean the bones of the dead.

Traditional Tibetan Sky Burial in which vultures pick clean the bones of the dead: photo by Alistair Coombs via Ancient Origins. 27 October 2015

The Vulture Stone of Göbekli Tepe.

The Vulture Stone, Göbekli Tepe archeological site, southeast Turkey. The vulture pictogram is one of the most graphically charged and complex reliefs so far excavated at the site. Müslüm Ercan describes the scene as a sky burial, in which the ‘soul’, sometimes symbolized as a head, is figuratively carried up to the sky world.: photo by Alistair Coombs via Ancient Origins, 27 October 2015

In Rock's World: A lovers' sky burial

http://international.loc.gov/service/asian/asnaxi/nza/nza079/0003v.jpg


http://international.loc.gov/service/asian/asnaxi/nza/nza079/0003v.jpg


http://international.loc.gov/service/asian/asnaxi/nza/nza079t/0001v.jpg

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http://international.loc.gov/service/asian/asnaxi/nza/nza079t/0003v.jpg

Panel from Naxi pictographic manuscript containing myths detailing Sacrifices to the Highest Deity (lovers' suicide ritual)
: [Yunnan Sheng][1500?-1934]; transliteration and translation by Joseph F. Rock (Naxi Collection, Asian Division, Library of Congress)


http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c9/DSCN1728.JPG

And over Li Chiang, the snow range is turquoise. Yulong Xueshan on the left, rising above Tiger Leaping Gorge, Yunnan, China: photo by ZiCheng Xu, 28 December 2006

http://ids.lib.harvard.edu/ids/view/280714

House where Joseph Rock lived in old Lijiang, Yunnan, China
: photographer unknown, 29 July 1998, from Joseph Rock's Images, Harvard University (via Pratyeka)


http://ids.lib.harvard.edu/ids/view/245407

Rock's World that he saved us for memory / a thin trace in high air: Joseph F. Rock with some of his Naxi assistants: photographer unknown, 14 November 1928, from Joseph Rock's Images, Harvard University (via Pratyeka)

http://ids.lib.harvard.edu/ids/view/243954

Cloud's processional and the air moves with their living: The backbone of the Min Shan Range, Gansu, China
: photo by Joseph F. Rock, 18 October 1926, from Joseph Rock's Images, Harvard University (via Pratyeka)

http://ids.lib.harvard.edu/ids/view/243123

Cloud's processional and the air moves with their living: The Snow Peaks of the Liang-chow Nan Shan, Gansu, China: photo by Joseph F. Rock, 11 November 1925, from Joseph Rock's Images, Harvard University (via Pratyeka)

http://ids.lib.harvard.edu/ids/view/243212

Cloud's processional and the air moves with their living: The Ta-pan Shan Range, Gansu, China: photo by Joseph F. Rock, 9 October 1925, from Joseph Rock's Images, Harvard University (via Pratyeka)


http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/5c/Lijiang_Snow_Mountain_Summit.JPG

And over Li Chiang, the snow range is turquoise: Lijiang Snow Mountain summit, Yunnan, China:
photo by Corymgrenier, 22 October 2009

10 comments:

STEPHEN RATCLIFFE said...

Beautiful post Tom -- Pound's Canto + photos -- vultures, sky burial, Rock's World -- all of it giving one pause on a chilly, early November night . . .

Steve

Sandra said...

interesting post...yes!

Be the BQE said...

What a feast for eyes and ears. "Everything boxed for economy" seems a beautiful irony.
-David

Curtis Faville said...

Thanks, Tom, for this.

Reminds me of Hugh Kenner.

The California Condor, reintroduced after being extinct in the wild, is hanging on.

I usually think of scavengers as ugly beasts, but the photo of the griffon is impressive, a nobl beastie.

Gaunt, like Ezra's halting reminiscence.



Hilton said...

Illustrated Pound. Great idea. One more illustration to add: There was a statue of Agassiz on the roof of one of the buildings at Stanford. When the 1906 earthquake hit the statue took a dive and was stuck headfirst in the ground. There's a photo of that somewhere!

TC said...

Many thanks to all.

The previous year Pound had left St Elizabeths and an America that now terrified him -- "everything boxed for economy" catches that, as David notices -- to sail back to Italy, where, in failing heath, and despite the family and domestic complications (the "hells") that in these last "drafts and fragments" insistently press up through the wandering reminiscence to become the thematic life of the poetry (Pound was unusually shy and private about personal matters, always preferring to write by indirection), he managed a few final poems, and one sad, fitful, doomed romance, before giving up on both projects (poetry, love) and falling silent for the remaining thirteen years of his life.

Those suddenly chill November nights Steve mentions had something to do with this post. Ruined old bones...

Talking of which, when I went looking for Pound at the ruined castle his son in law had only incompletely renovated, at Brunnenberg, high in the Dolomites, where he was his daughter's guest, I found he'd gone off to Venice, something he did intermittently in that period; he had various reasons for doing that, not least among which would have been the harsh toll of a mountain climate on stiff old bones; the castle was perched on the windswept slope of a mountain that looked up a long valley a hundred miles into Austria.

Pound's bone-chilled-grumpy-old-man familiarity with the high mountain climate at Brunnenberg would have made Joseph Rock's Na-Khi romances -- transcribed from pictograms made by the shaman-priests of a primitive and unlettered nature-worshipping tribal people dwelling in the remote snow mountains at the China border -- readily accessible to Pound's alert visual imagination. The content of the stories of the muan bpo ceremonial ritual, involving illicit love relationships, community tensions, and lovers' suicides, suggested to him a tragic dimension in love and fate and an Orphic aspect of the poet's calling which now, nearing an end, was slipping away.

He could feel it going:

θρήνος
And who no longer make gods out of of beauty
θρήνος this is a dying
Yet to walk with Mozart, Agassiz and Linnaeus
‘neath overhanging air under sun-beat
Here take thy mind’s space
And to this garden, Marcella, ever seeking by petal, by leaf-vein
out of dark, and toward half-light

And over Li Chiang, the snow range is turquoise
Rock’s world that he saved us for memory
a thin trace in high air
And with them Paré (Ambroise) and the Men against Death
Twedell, Donnelly,
old Pumpelly crossed Gobi
“no horse, no dog, and no goat.”

Hilton, as they used to say down on The Farm,

‘Agassiz was great in the abstract but not in the concrete.’

Up here in the '89 quake the head fell off one of the stone Muses put up at the women's pool during the grand days of Hearst philanthropy at Cal.

When the head fell off, all that was left was a broken stalk of rusty iron rebar poking out of the neck.

The university had to assume for the nth time an attitude of solicitation and soon enough, lo and behold, the finest stonecrafters on earth came in with bids, and lo! --

Hearst Muse Recapitulated.

TC said...

By the by, when after twenty years of his carefully compiling 700 manuscripts containing all the finished versions of his translations -- indeed the ONLY known translations -- of the Na-Khi pictograms, war came along, and Joseph Rock was forced to abandon his life's work, he carefully packed everything into a steamer trunk, and, in advance of anticipated Japanese occupation, shipped it all back to America.

A Japanese torpedo sank the ship and Rock's life's work along with it.

Rock's comment, in response to the commiseration of a colleague, regarding his loss:

"I felt it keenly".

A beautiful understatement, ranking in this regard with the diffidence of Cherry-Garrard, returning to England after enduring the Worst Journey in the World to deposit the first Emperor Penguin egg with a nonchalant clerk at the British Museum, and being made to stand in line.

Barry Taylor said...

Thanks Tom - good to be reminded of the beauty of Pound's music, springs bubbling up among the ruins:

Here take thy mind’s space
And to this garden, Marcella, ever seeking by petal, by leaf-vein
out of dark, and toward half-light

And over Li Chiang, the snow range is turquoise ...

Hazen said...

Tom, This is one of those days when the comments, and then your comments on the comments, are like a post-within-a-post. As the herbalists around Li Chiang might say, a second boiling brings out further benefits from the herbs in use.

TC said...

Joseph Rock reported that in the highest reaches of the snow ranges there are plants that sprout up between the rocks, and stay perpetually green.

Well, no, he didn't.

And these wandering lines might have been the leaves.