BK. Ezra Pound

198. Nadel, Ira B. Introduction to The Letters of Ezra Pound to Alice Corbin  Henderson (88), 1993.

Of the newly discovered materials collected in the volume Nadel believes the most important to be Pound’s version of Takasago (see 88d). Noting that Pound had earlier cited the play as ‘an essential prototype’ for The Cantos (see 70c), Nadel outlines the theme and equates it with the construction of Pound’s ‘long Imagiste poem’: ‘This identity and union beyond space and time emerges as a central theme in the early as well as late Cantos. To build The Cantos around the legend of the twin pines of Takasago and Sumiyoshi, displaying a union between places and people remote from each other, appealed to Pound as a structure as well as a theme for the poem which is constantly uniting unlike cultures and figures which vary from China and America to Jefferson and Mussolini’.