Cantos II.

The Cantos are Pound's life's poetry: their second volume contains the sections "Jefferson: Nuevo Mundo" (XXXI-XLI) and "Siena: Leopold's Reforms" (XLII-LI). The stultification of central Europe is intertwined with the struggles for a new state; the struggle over the American monetary system is compared with the former banking system in Siena and Florence. Napoleon and the Carthaginian warlord Hannon enter the Cantos. In Cantos XXXVI, Pound presents his concept of Love. And in Cantos XXXIX and then XLVII, he embarks on the "second and third journey of Ulysses": to Cyrcae. Canto XLV, the famous canto against usury (usura), is varied in the final Canto LI. Canto XLIX, the Canto of the Seven Lakes, is a pause in the limpid paradise, a reminder of the Confucian Canto XIII and a foreshadowing of the following section of the Chinese Cantos.

Czech edition