CANTO XI

If you consider the Malatesta and Sigis­mundo in particular, a failure, he was at all events a failure worth all the successes of his age. He had in Rimini, Pisanello, Pier della Francesca. Rimini still has “the best Bellini in Italy”. If the Tempio is a jumble and junk shop, it nevertheless registers a concept. There is no other single man’s effort equally registered. Sigismundo brought back Gemisto’s cοffin, and I leave the reader to decide whether without that incitement to curiosity even Herr Schulze wd. have dug up the illegible ms. in the Laurenziana or anyone noticed the latin pages bound in at the end of an almost unfindable edtn. of Xenophon. 1460, 140 years after Dante.

Ezra Pound. Guide to Kulchur, frontispiece. Italics in original.