ATBigger's video: Ezra Pound s Moeurs Contemporaines - A T Short 44 1080p HD-3D

Video number forty-four in the A T Short series: Ezra Pound reads his poem "Moeurs Contemporaines." Each A T Short has its own message (sometimes two: one musical and one visual), and because each A T Short video has a different message you may not like all of them but you will like enough of them. Moeurs Contemporaines I Mr. Styrax Mr. Hecatomb Styrax, the owner of a large estate and of large muscles, A "blue" and a climber of mountains, has married at the age of 28, He being at that age a virgin, The term "virgo" being made male in mediaeval latinity; His ineptitudes Having driven his wife from one religious excess to another. She has abandoned the vicar For he was lacking in vehemence; She is now the high-priestess Of a modern and ethical cult, And even now, Mr. Styrax Does not believe in aesthetics. His brother has taken to gipsies, But the son-in-law of Mr. H. Styrax Objects to perfumed cigarettes. In the parlance of Niccolo Machiavelli: "Thus things proceed in their circle;" And thus the empire is maintained. II Clara At sixteen she was a potential celebrity With a distaste for caresses. She now writes to me from a convent; Her life is obscure and troubled; Her second husband will not divorce her; Her mind is, as ever, uncultivated, And no issue presents itself. She does not desire her children, Or any more children. Her ambition is vague and indefinite, She will neither stay in, nor come out. III Soiree Upon learning that the mother wrote verses, And that the father wrote verses, And that the youngest son was in a publisher's office, And that the friend of the second daughter was undergoing a novel, The young American pilgrim Exclaimed: "This is a darn'd clever bunch!" IV Sketch 48 b. 11 At the age of 27 Its home mail is still opened by its maternal parent And its office mail may be opened by its parent of the opposite gender. It is an officer, and a gentleman, and an architect. V "Nodier raconte..." 1 At a friend of my wife's there is a photograph, A faded, pale brownish photograph, Of the times when the sleeves were large, Silk, stiff and large above the lacertus, That is, the upper arm, And décolleté. . . . It is a lady, She sits at a harp, Playing, And by her left foot, in a basket, Is an infant, aged about 14 months, The infant beams at the parent, The parent re-beams at its offspring. The basket is lined with satin, There is a satin-like bow on the harp. 2 And in the home of the novelist There is a satin-like bow on an harp. You enter and pass hall after hall, Conservatory follows conservatory, Lilies lift their white symbolical cups, Whence their symbolical pollen has been excerpted, Near them I noticed an harp And the blue satin ribbon, And the copy of "Hatha Yoga" And the neat piles of unopened, unopening books, And she spoke to me of the monarch, And of the purity of her soul. VI Stele After years of continence he hurled himself in a sea of six women. Now, quenched as the brand of Meleagar, he lies by the poluphloisboious sea-coast. Para thina poluphlois boio thalasses. SISTE VIATOR. VII I Vecchii They will come no more, The old men with beautiful manners. Il était comme un tout petit garçon With his blouse full of apples And sticking out all the way round; Blagueur! "Con gli occhi onesti e tardi," And he said: "Oh! Abelard!" as if the topic Were much too abstruse for his comprehension, And he talked about "the Great Mary," And said: "Mr. Pound is shocked at my levity." When it turned out he meant Mrs. Ward. And the other was rather like my bust by Gaudier, Or like a real Texas colonel, He said: "Why flay dead horses? "There was once a man called Voltaire." And he said they used to cheer Verdi. In Rome, after the opera, And the guards couldn't stop them, And that was an anagram for Vittorio Emanuele Re D' Italia, And the guards couldn't stop them.Old men with beautiful manners, Sitting in the Row of a morning; Walking on the Chelsea Embankment. VIII Ritratto And she said: "You remember Mr. Lowell, "He was your ambassador here?" And I said: "That was before I arrived." And she said: "He stomped into my bedroom....(By that time she had got on to Browning.)". . . stomped into my bedroom...."And said: 'Do I,"'I ask you, Do I "'Care too much for society dinners?' "And I wouldn't say that he didn't. "Shelley used to live in this house." She was a very old lady, I never saw her again. If you have been the victim of hate, of any kind, it is not your fault. Please do not suffer in silence because there are people who can help: http://www.stophate.us/links.html.