Ezra Pound, ABC of Reading (71-2):
The cult of Latin. After the thinness, the ‘transparency’, of mediaeval authors, the reading world was once again drunk on antiquity, Greece and Rome; the most educated wrote in Latin; each writer wanted to show that he knew more Latin than the other; there are bales of their Latin poems; the Italians took over the style and extended the vocabularly, the Spaniards and English imitated the Italians; Camoens tried it in Portugal. It was the gold rush for the largest vocabulary. I suspect that Marlowe started to parody himself in Hero and Leander. He had begun with serious intentions.
I recognize that this suspicion may be an error.
The next phase in France and England was to attempt to squeeze the katachrestical rhetoric into a strait-waist coat.
Hey guys! I love the Ezra Pound stuff. Would you mind posting some stuff he said regarding Dionysos if there is any you can think of? I’m leading a Dionysian group in a series of hero feasts next year and one of those heroes just so happens to be Ezra Pound. Please and thank you for the help gathering sources on him!
Hail Ezra Pound! May your memory be nourished!
You are killing me with this Pound and Eliot stuff!