The Celestial Tradition: A Study of Ezra Pound’s The Cantos by Demetres P. Tryphonopoulos

Abstract

169). Sedulous readers will admonish me for failing to notice that “Malcolm Lowry” is killed in prose and resurrected only in textual forms. Moreover, the genius celebrated in these books is an imaginative projection; it is not just a talented self, but a heroic selfand even an indwelling spirit. My point is that the special demands of Lowry research force us to reverse our perspective, so that we seek the tissue of lived experience, not just the textual weave of that experience. We sense, not the subject-as-written, but the writer in his habit as he died. Or in Lowry’s terms, you can expel the author from his text, but he returns with a pitchfork. jo n KERTZER / University of Calgary Demetres P. Tryphonopoulos, The Celestial Tradition: A Study of Ezra Pound’s The Cantos (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1992). xviii, 214. $29.95. The Celestial Tradition is a provocative work of scholarship that casts its celestial light upon one aspect of typically modernist obscurity. While Tryphonopoulos does not try to interpret every line of Ezra Pound’s The Cantos, he offers a helpful framework that allows a reader to interpret for him/herself. Illumination is also provided by placing the poem in the spe­ cial context of “the rising psychic tide” (a phrase of G.R.S. Mead’s) of the early modern period. The context also provides important connections with other modernist writers closely related to Pound, such as T.S. Eliot and W.B. Yeats as well as D.H. Lawrence. The Celestial Tradition combines the strengths of scholarship with the task of critical interpretation in ways that can be accommodated to the demands of critical theory. The Celestial Tradition is provocative because it allows for a re-evaluation of the little understood and little regarded occult concepts in determining the character of modernism. Chapter 11 of the book summarizes the history of occult movements from ancient times to the modern period; the sub­ sequent chapter establishes the occult context of The Cantos and Pound’s relationship to the occult tradition. Chapter 11 draws heavily on established secondary sources; however, neither the average reader nor the academic spe­ cialist is necessarily familiar with such material. The author accomplishes two goals in this chapter: he defines clearly the parameters of the occult and clarifies the separate, though interwoven, strands that comprise the history of occult ideas. He also clearly separates a theurgic tradition of the occult, or “practical magic,” from the metaphysical, ideological, secret or “hidden” tradition of the occult. Tryphonopoulos, like Pound, concentrates upon the latter. I have only one critical question to raise about this chapter of the 494 book: the Neoplatonic, Gnostic, Kabbalistic, and alchemical strands of the tradition need to be presented more distinctly. I perceive a sharper distinc­ tion between a Neoplatonic tradition that opposes spirit and mind to the physical body and the alchemical tradition that perceives the body as an aspect of mind. Pound makes important use of the latter position. Chapter III places the occult tradition firmly within the context of mod­ ernism by introducing a picture of the London of the early decades of mod­ ernism as overtaken by Mead’s rising tide of occultism. Mead is presented as a central figure who bridges the gap between popular occultism and the in­ tellectual order in anthropology, religion, and psychoanalysis. This chapter presents the fruits of original research into Pound’s published and unpub­ lished correspondence and the writings ofoccultists such as Edward Upward and A.R. Orage. Particularly distinctive is the emphasis upon the role of Katherine Ruth Heyman. Tryphonopoulos shows that Pound had a contin­ uing relationship with this concert pianist, who was versed in the occult and wrote upon Scriabin. Pound’s close relationship with W.B. Yeats is obvi­ ously presented as ofmajor significance; Tryphonopoulos shows that Pound’s consistent opposition to theurgy or practical magic led him to oppose Yeats’s involvement in this branch of the occult. Yeats’s occult metaphysics, on the other hand, were a major influence and can be so acknowledged. Tryphonopoulos applies creatively his new scholarly material to the prob­ lems of interpretation. He suggests that Pound...