PETER SHAW
121
life as told by Charles Francis . One then goes on, beginning in the second
volume , to a mixture of Adams's diary account with his autobiographical
recollections; next to his early political essays and Revolutionary writings ;
and then to his late works on government . After these, one returns to the
middle part of Adams 's life as seen in his official correspondence . Finally,
one goes over the same middle period in personal letters, which continue,
through the tenth volume, into old age. Now , it might be argued that these
materials appear in a fortuitous thematic arrangement. But Pound obscures
even this by passing from one genre to another ofAdams's writings without
warning . He never indicates whether he is quoting from the biography,
from letters by or to Adams, from contemporary diary impressions, or from
the recollections of old age . In a rare instance of indicating a transition he
supplies the word "dash" :
88 battalions, September,
dash had already formed lucrative connections in Paris
Here the first line comes from part one of Adams's Autobiography, which
gives an account of the Continental Congress, and the second from part two
of his AutObiography, in which he gives an account of
his
diplomatic service
in Europe.
Elsewhere Pound goes from one volume to the next, and from diary to
letters to quotations within quotations without so much as the cryptic word
"dash ." By failing to do any more than quote the lines as they come along he
leaves behind an indistinguishable welter of points of view . In the case of
Kenner's misreadings the point of view
is
that of Charles Francis Adams,
not John Adams (Kenner believed that the Adams cantos were " taken from
the correspondence of John Adams"). Charles Francis offers varying
perspectives on Adams 's career throughout the
W orks,
quoting in footnotes
Adams himself, contemporaries, histOrians, and sometimes offering his
own remarks or excerpts from relevant documents . All of these, too , are run
into the Adams cantos without differentiation whenever Pound happens to
be copying from the bottom of a page and hence from a footnote. The
W orks
is a model of organizational clarity, but handled in this way
it
becomes an
untranslated Rosetta StOne, except that the Rosetta Stone had clearly
marked divisions among its three sections .
William Vasse's revelation of Pound's page-turning use of Adams 's
Works ,
although obscurely phrased, has been read and understood by
,.
Poundians after him . Yet, all who show familiarity with Vasse's essay
