WYNDHAM LEWIS
259
scuffle in fourteenth-century Siena as fundamentally more interesting
than a similar scuffle in Wigan or Detroit today" marks his orthodoxy
in the romantic cult of faraway places with strange-sounding names.
Yet there are also strong positive gifts that go hand in hand with
these romantic limitations: Lewis notes Pound's uncanny ability to
"get inside the skin of somebody else, of power and renown, a Proper–
tius or an Arnaut Daniel" and praises his superb capacities as a
translator and imitator of other men's styles. In line with this comes
the suggestion that the insincerity or falseness often heard when Pound
speaks
in
his
own person is a measure of that poet's inability to
apprehend himself or other people as individuals: he is happier when
the individual can be converted into a satirical type or an illustrative
instance of some public category.
As
a practical critic of the
Cantos
(nineteen of which had ap–
peared when
Time and Western Man
was published), Lewis rolls up
his sleeves and writes three pages which should be required reading
for any young Poundian. He points to Pound's habit of expressing
himself in a "mock-bitter sententious
terseness,"
seen on one level in
the "Amurrican" fondness for words like "bunk" and "slush," on the
other by a manneristic "breaking off" in the middle of a line. Anyone
who breaks the pentameter today is likely to be regarded as at least
on the right poetic track; Lewis, forty years ago, gave another name
to certain effects in Pound's procedure with the verse-line, when he
spoke of the "histrionic pausing" in parts of the
Cantos,
and labeled
it as another aspect of Pound's romantic (if superficially classical)
affiliations. The value of speaking in such a rough way about Pound's
verse, particularly about what on a later occasion Lewis would refer
to as the "admirable"
Cantos,
is that it frees one from being merely
classically intimidated by all the rich, strange objects and people whom
the poet knows. Lewis suggests, by implication, that the line between
a passage from
The Cantos
which succeeds, and one that seems only
pretentious name-dropping or chic time-travel, is a thin line that
should be carefully inspected.
No such careful inspection is called for by what Lewis terms the
"ole Ez" aspect of the poem: "So I sez 'wall haow is it you're over
here, right off the Champz Elyza.?' "; Lewis simply calls this Pound
at his worst, the poet as heavy-footed, boring, Teutonic clown. With
a sort of comradely air of advice he suggests that, since Pound is so
interested in music (his fervent championing of George Antheil is
