CANTO XXVIII

“TRANSPORTATION is civilisation.” Whatever literary precocity may have led people to object to Kipling, or to “the later Kipling” as art, there is meat in this sentence from “The Night Mail.” It is about the last word in the matter. Whatever interferes with the “traffic and all that it implies” is evil: A tunnel is worth more than a dynasty.

Ezra Pound. “Provincialism the Enemy” IV [August 1917] Poetry & Prose II: 251.

The history of the world is the history of temperaments in opposition. A sane historian will recognize this, a sane sociologist will recognise the value of “temperament.” I am not afraid to use a word made ridiculous by its association with freaks and Bohemians. France and England are civilisation, and they are civilization because they, more than other nations, do recognise such diversity. Modern civilisation comes out of Italy, out of renaissance Italy, the first nation which broke away from Aquinian dogmatism; and proclaimed the individual; respected the personality. That enlightenment still gleams in the common Italian’s “Cosi son io” when asked for the cause of his acts.

Ezra Pound. “Provincialism the Enemy” III [August 1917] Poetry & Prose II: 235.

RELATED CANTOS

CANTO I [voyage to the world of the dead]

CANTO XXIV [Niccolò d’Este’s pilgrimage to Jerusalem]

CANTO XL [Hanno the Navigator’s voyage to West Africa]