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The Martinelli Cantos [XC-XCV] take up love as their subject, celebrating both manifested nature and metaphors of light as projections of a newly-perceived joy and spirituality. Sheri Martinelli, it must be said, had been a New Age advocate long before that term had been invented. As idealized by the poet, she embodies both love and redemption, mediating between the poet and a spiritual universe which now becomes his paradiso. Richard St Victor (an early Church father whom Dante had admired) is invoked at the outset: “The soul is not love itself, but love flows from it. It does not delight in itself, but rather in the love which flows from it.” A further reference, although not a literal quotation, occurs in lines 75-76 of Canto XC: “Birds for the mind” said Richardus, “Beasts for the body, for know how” The idea is that direct observation and contemplation of nature elevates the mind beyond its normal limitations: watch birds in order to understand spiritual exertions of the mind, animals for external or bodily manifestations. |
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The arcane rituals that Pound and Martinelli enacted on the lawns of St. Elizabeths gave rise to the invocation of obscure philosophers such as Ocellus (2nd or 3rd century B.C.), Erigena (b. 810), and John Heydon (b. 1629), who shared a perceived pattern of relationships between material and supernatural worlds. The Federal Asylum had been established on the grounds of an earlier arboretum which E.P. and S.M. came to think of as their sacred grove. On a small flat stone which served them as altar they burned incense (olibanum) to various gods and later experienced the vision of a classical altar, of which Pound made a sketch (11 May 1954) that was meant to be reproduced between lines 83 and 84 of Canto XC. Unfortunately his publishers disappointed him, but that was hardly the first time. The introduction of Leucothoe, daughter of Orchamus [XCVIII:39 & CII:55], whose love affair with the Sun (usually Apollo, but some sources say Helios) was glossed over by her transformation into either an incense bush [XCVIII:39 & CII:55] or a Heliotrope, makes great sense in this context, as do references to Leucothea (originally Ino, Cadmon’s daughter and sister to Semele, who was transformed into a sea goddess and given to succoring imperiled mariners). In Pound’s version she brandishes a bikini, rather than a veil, when rescuing Odysseus [XCI:168-169, 191; XCVIII:7; & CV:80, 132]. H.D. has already noted the photograph of Sheri in a bikini. “A spirit in cloth of gold” so Merlin’s moder said [XCI:151-152] La Martinelli, who preferred her identification with Undine to all others, resurfaces in Drafts & Fragments as a gold (not cold) mermaid (CXI:37), and there are also a number of abscure references to her in Thrones. For example: the python associated with the sybil at Delphi. of the blue sky and a wild cat, Pitonessa the small breasts snow-soft over tripod [CIV:67-69] In fact, the last three gatherings of cantos abound in specific allusions to her, but very few of them have yet been acknowledged. With Canto CVI, however, and those which follow, it becomes rather more difficult to make hard and fast identifications. But then, the effort is not altogether necessary. Idealization itself, the outpouring of universal love, and the welling up of poetic inspiration, is both purpose and point. Pound’s renewed spirituality at this time gave rise to fits of conventional religiosity and he translated Martinelli’s rather traditional Roman Catholic prayers to the Virgin Mary into Italian. A more remarkable and original effort is seen in “Prayer for a Dead Brother,” written on the occasion of Buddy’s (Walter Brennan’s) sudden death in rather uncertain circumstances. Earlier, Pound had had recourse to the syntax of “Psalms” in Canto XLV (‘With Usura’), “Ecclesiastes” in LXXXI (‘Pull down thy vanity’), and even the Roman Catholic Mass in LXXIX (‘Kyrie eleison’), but Rock-Drill makes a special point of liturgical responses as in the recurrence of ‘m’elevasti’ (you lifted me up) with reference to Sybilla (Sheri Martinelli) in Canto XC (40-52) and the invocations, ‘oro’ (pray [for us]) and ‘have compassion’ [XCIII:158-165]. A similar note is sounded in “Prayer for a Dead Brother”, which again refers to Castalia, the crystal fountain of divine inspiration so often linked to idealized figures representing La Martinelli [cp. XCIV: 149-151]: May his soul walk under the larches of Paradise May his soul walk in the wood there and Adah Lee come to look after him.
Queen of Heaven receive him. Mother of the Seven Griefs receive him Mother of the seven wounds receive him May he have peace in heart.
By a stream like Castalia, limpid, that runs level with the green edge of its banks Mother of Heaven receive him, Queen of Heaven receive him, Mother of the Seven Griefs give him Peace.
Out of the turmoil, Mother of Griefs receive him, Queen of Heaven receive him. May the sound of the leaves give him peace, May the hush of the forest receive him, Queen of Griefs, give him peace. [23 September 1954] The last two cantos of the Martinelli sequence combine themes of spiritual love and its manifestation in nature with the celebration of public heroes and social order [XCIV-XCV]. The first of them ends in an apotheosis of both light and love; not physical love, but rather a more universal and spiritual concept which illuminates the human condition, or at least so Pound then supposed. Canto XCV ends with a specific reference to Sheri Martinelli who rescues the poet/Odysseus when all control over his immediate world had been lost: That the wave crashed, whirling the raft, then Tearing the oar from his hand, broke mast and yard-arm And he was drawn down under wave, The wind tossing, Notus, Boreas, as it were thistle-down. Then Leucothea had pity
Although Pound’s representation of his relationship with Sheri Martinelli is very moving, the verses he wrote for Charlie Parker, and at her behest, are rather light-hearted, more in the vein of T.S. Eliot’s “King Bolo and his Big Black Kween” (see Letters, Vol. 1), but nonetheless serious in intention. Pound seems to have had a rather high opinion of them, and the first two lines of “the voice of experience” later found their way into Canto XCVII (357-362). Sometime in February or March 1955 E.P. sent both lyrics to S.M., who was then in New York:
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(possibly OMIT this strophe, might diminish hill billy sales) |
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There was a girl in our town
Hers was a generous nature
She was tall and she was kindly
On the other hand the two unpublished fragments of Pound’s work in progress which have been preserved among Martinelli’s papers, are wholly serious. He neither ascribed titles nor dates them, but their relevance is striking and emphasizes his understanding of her essential insight and perception. She later recorded that they had been written in 1954 or 1955 and captioned the more important of them (the second fragment), “Nice Quiet Heaven,” because of a line contained in it. She believed that that phrase was echoed in “a nice quiet paradise” which later appears in Cantos CXI (33) and CXVI (49). “Last trace of justice |