Canzoni (1911)
A7
Editions
a. First edition
[In black:] CANZONI | OF | EZRA POUND | [in red: device] | [in black:] LONDON | ELKIN MATHEWS, VIGO STREET | MCMXI
viii, 51, [1], [4] pp. 19.3 x 13.3 cm. Streaky grey cloth boards lettered in gold at top of front cover, and, on spine: CAN | ZONI | OF | EZRA | POUND | ELKIN | MATHEWS , or (later) brown paper boards lettered in gold at centre of front cover, and, on spine: CAN | ZONI | ELKIN | MATHEWS ; end-papers; fore and bottom edges untrimmed.
Published July 1911 at 3s. 6d; 1000 sets of sheets printed (of which an undetermined number—not more than 500—were issued as part of Canzoni & Ripostes (1913)). Imprint at foot of page [52]): Chiswick Press: Printed by Charles Whittingham and Co. Tooks Court, Chancery Lane, London.
Dedication on page [v]: To Olivia and Dorothy Shakespear
Contents: Canzon: The Yearly Slain (written in reply to Manning’s “Korè”)— Canzon: The Spear—Canzon: To Be Sung beneath a Window—Canzon: Of Incense—Canzone: of Angels—To Our Lady of Vicarious Atonement (Ballata) —To Guido Cavalcanti [formerly “Epilogue: To Guido Cavalcanti”]—Sonnet in Tenzone—Sonnet: Chi è questa?—Ballata, Fragment II (formerly “Of Grace”]—Canzon: The Vision—Octave—Sonnet (“If on the tally-board of wasted days”)—Ballatetta—Madrigale—Era mea [Latin & English]—Threnos—The Tree—Paracelsus in excelsis—De Aegypto [formerly “Aegupton”]—Li bel Chasteus—Prayer for His Lady’s Life, from Propertius—Speech for Psyche in the Golden Book of Apuleius [“Psyche of Eros”]—“Blandula, tenulla, vagula”—Erat hora—Epigrams. I, II (The Sea of Glass)—La Nuvoletta: Dante to an Unknown Lady ... —Rosa sempiterna—The Golden Sestina, from the Italian of Pico della Mirandola—Rome, from the French of Joachim du Bellay—Her Monument, the Image Cut Thereon, from the Italian of Leopardi Victorian Eclogues. I. Excuses; II. Satiemus; III. Abelard—A Prologue [formerly “Christmas Prologue”|—Maestro di tocar (W[alter Morse]. R[ummel].)— Aria—L’Art—Song in the Manner of Housman [“Mr. Housman’s Message”]— Translations from Heine, I-VII—Und Drang, I-XII
Publisher’s advertisements, [4] pages following page [52], are an integral part of the volume.
Notes: Ezra Pound had originally intended to include in Canzoni three additional sonnets, two additional longer poems, and some notes. This material was set up by the printers and is present in page-proofs sent to the author between 13 and 22 May 1911. In these proofs (now in the Humanities Research Center of the University of Texas at Austin), “L’Art” is the third of a group of four sonnets headed “Leviora,” the others being “I. Against Form,” “II. Hic jacet,” and “IV. To My Very Dear Friend—Remonstrating for his Essay ‘Mighty Mouths.” This group is followed in the page-proof by the poem there entitled “To Hulme (T. E.) and Fitzgerald (a Certain [i.e. Desmond]).” The next, “Song in the Manner of Housman,” retained in the book as printed, is followed in the proof by a poem of 114 lines with printed title “Redondillas, or Something of that Sort,” retitled in manuscript: “Locksley Hall fourty [sic] years further.” In the proof the book ends with “Notes”—on the canzoni, on the proper names in the “Redondillas,” and on “The Golden Sestina.”
All the poems in Canzoni, plus those cancelled in proof in 1911, were reprinted in Collected Early Poems ([1976])—A98. (Redondillas was also published separately in 1968—A90.)
b. Re-issue, with Ripostes (1913)
[In black:] CANZONI | & | RTPOSTES | OF | EZRA POUND | WHERETO ARE APPENDED THE | COMPLETE POETICAL WORKS oF | T. E. HULME | [in red: device] | [in black:] LONDON | ELKIN MATHEWS, CORK STREET | M CM XIII
4 leaves, vii-viii, 51, [1] pp. 2 leaves, 7-63, [1], [4] pp. 19.3 x 13.7 cm. Brown paper boards lettered in gold on front cover and on spine; end-papers; fore and bottom edges untrimmed.
Published May 1913 at 3s. 6d; not more than 500 copies issued. (Available with Personae & Exultations as Ezra Pound’s Poems, Volumes 1 and 2, at 3s. 6d. each.) This volume consists of first-edition sheets of the two books (with the changes mentioned below) with new half-title and title-leaf for the volume (the latter with title-page as above) inserted at the front. The Canzoni sheets have the original title-leaf excised and the dedication leaf (pages [v—vi]) with which it had been conjugate is consequently pasted in. The two leaves of advertisements, which formed pages [53-56] in the first issue, have been excised and are inserted at the end of the volume, following Aipostes, the leaves with which they had been conjugate (pages 49~-[52]) are consequently pasted in. The Ripostes sheets have the original half-title and title-leaf excised and a new half-title-leaf pasted in, with, on its verso, in lieu of the original list of Ezra Pound’s books, the motto from the verso of the original title-leaf. Pages 13-16, with which the two excised leaves had been conjugate, are consequently pasted in. (The separate final 32-page gathering of Swift and Co. advertisements does not appear.) Of the matter actually reprinted, 500 copies were prepared by the Chiswick Press. The rare occurrence of the composite volume in comparison with its separate components indicates that fewer than the intended number were issued.
Artefacts
No artefacts available for this item.
Content is now editable.