Ezra Pound, Homage to Sextus Propertius

Peter Wilson

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.08: English Writing and Culture of the early Twentieth Century , 1900-1945.
Vol. editors: Chris Baldick (Goldsmiths College, University of London), Peter Childs (Newman University), Louise McDonald (Newman University)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1919

Places

United States (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Poetry (any)

Resources

Sextus Aurelius Propertius is widely considered to be the finest Latin elegiac poet. Elegiac, technically, because he wrote in a Classically formulated couplet consisting of a hexameter and a pentameter line. Elegiac, more connotatively, because of a tonal pensiveness and themes of a personal, emotional or even mournful nature. Pound, though, rated Propertius for quite other reasons: the beauty of his cadence, even though in a single metrical pattern; the quality of his irony; the playfulness of his language, in Pound’s own terminology, his logopoeia. Ironic logopoeia was, of course, Pound’s exemplary mode as realized by some of his literary heroes: Browning, Flaubert, Laforgue. To discern this mode in Propertius was a kind of …

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1948 words

Citation: Wilson, Peter. "Homage to Sextus Propertius". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 18 April 2006 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=9067, accessed 26 November 2024.]

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