The Italian Cantos of Ezra Pound - Faith, Heroism and Deathskull's Return!

 

 

 "...A skull lies bleaching in the desert sand
& SINGS
Tireless, strident, sings, & sings, & sings:
– Alamein! Alamein!
We shall return!
We shall return!"

By the end of the year [1944] he had written Cantos 72 and 73 in Italian ... Full of vigor and images, exalting his old friends ... Marinetti, the founder of the Futurist movement, who, true to himself and his “interventism,” had gone to fight in Russia. And Admiral Ubaldo degli Uberti, whose phrase chi muore oggi fa un affare – untranslatable: dying today is a good bet – sums up the state of mind of the loyal Italians as defeat inevitably approached. Idealism and heroism were by no means all on the side of the partisans. [Pound] was infected by a desperate fighting spirit and faith. It is hard these days to define that faith or that spirit; it no longer seems a component of the air one breathe

Mary de Rachewiltz - Discretions (1971) 

 

 "...Where the skull sings our soldiers
Will return, those banners will come in."

SEE ALSO:

Ezra Pound (1885 - 1972) 

The Rider From a Dream

 Aesthetics of War