Abstract
EZRA Pound’s source for ‘Shun on Mt Taishan’, in the first of The Pisan Cantos, may have been The National Geographic Magazine for June 1945. Carroll Terrell in A Companion to the Cantos (Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984) is unable to cite a source available to Pound—see his gloss at 74:92. This issue of The National Geographic features a twenty-page illustrated article, ‘Tai Shan, Sacred Mountain of the East’, by Mary Augusta Mullikin, the opening paragraph of which contains the sentence: ‘Tradition is that the Emperor Shun climbed the peak … to proclaim himself the “Son of Heaven” ’ (699). The concentration of references to Mt Taishan in the The Pisan Cantos (there are at least fifteen) may also owe something to The National Geographic. I think it quite likely that, along with Stars and Stripes and Time Magazine (sources for The Pisan Cantos cited by Terrell), The National Geographic was received at the US Army Disciplinary Training Center near Pisa during the time Pound was held prisoner there (24 May to 17 November 1945), and that he read Mullikin’s article at the DTC while composing The Pisan Cantos.
Published Version
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