A Critical Edition of Ezra Pound’s Pisan Cantos: Problems and Solutions

Abstract

If for no other reason the fact that all published editions of theIf for no other reason the fact that all published editions of the Pisan Cantos have been unable to execute Ezra Pound's instructions for the insertion of Chinese and Greek and have omitted over fifty sets of Chinese characters that he directed his publishers to include would be suf-

Texts ofThe Cantosand Theories of Literature

“…Ron Bush and David Ten Eyck, for example, have counted some five hundred corruptions of Pound's typescript text for The Pisan Cantos alone. 7 Though Pound and his publishers took extraordinary steps to keep things accurate, the intricacy of the verse and, with regard to collected editions the scale of the project, meant that attempted corrections were at times both uncoordinated and necessarily imperfect. Owing to the logistical hardships involved in bringing such heteroclite poetry into print, suspect passages often passed through several reprints before being put right, if ever.…”