22 / CHRONICLESn(though he hardly leaves it as he found it) over from thendramatic monologue of Robert Browning, whose forevernunread, unknown, and unpraised masterpiece, Sordello,nPound called “perfect” mask.nSordello, the original, was, for reasons of poetic simplicity,none of Pound’s special favorites among the troubadours,nappearing not only in the Purgatorio but also in Pound’snown 36th canto, masks both, and if you ever wondered whynon earth the second beginsnHang it all, Robert Browning,nthere can be but the one “Sordello.”nBut Sordello, and my Sordello?nI guess that partly solves it. But the balance of that samencanto takes up the betrayal at the hands of sailors of the godnDionysus, a radical retreatment in mask out of Ovid, and itnwas Ovid, in Heroides, an assemblage of made-up lovelornnletters by legendary women, who first brought mask (out ofnits occasional use by Vergil, who drew on Theocritus and anGreek tradition going back at least as far as Arehilochus) tonfull-blown opus-sustaining prominence.nBut (to return to our opening query; what is civilization?)nrespect for fact, for meaningful wealth, for people, for thendivine mystery of being, and for the integrity of the state andnits body of law are in all phases of human history—like thenDionysus of the Ovidian second canto—betrayed. In thenmidst of the portrait of John Adams, which is as memorablenin its unread way as Stuart’s Washington, Pound readsnbetween the lines of Adams’ letters and strokes onto hisncanvas a panoply of infamy—call it Federalist OriginalnSin—as the Hamilton clique pull off the Scandal of thenAssumption. The word “mask” actually appears in the text,nassuming outright its grand-theft sense:nTo T. Jefferson:n”You fear the one, I the few.”nIn this matter of redeeming certificatesnthat were used payin’ the sojers . . .nMr. Madison proposed that the originalnshareholdersnshd / get face valuenbut not speculators who had bought in the papernfor nothingnov the 64 members of the House of reppyzentativsn29 were security holders,nlappin cream that is, and takin itnoff the veterans.nan’ Mr. Madison’s move wuz DEE-featednMaelay and Jim Jackson stood out against dirtinessnsmelled this stink before Madisonnsmelled it or before he told Tom about it.nThe facts are that revolutionary-period promissory notesnused to salary the army were at first to be redeemed at 20npercent until the congressional speculators bought them upnat 25 to then redeem at “face,” creating fortune by fiat,nushering us into the hell of money where, in this poem, wenspend most of our time:nThe evil is usury . . .nWith usuranHath no man a painted paradise on his churchnnnwall . . .n. . . between the usurer and any man whonwants to do a good jobn(perenne)nwithout regard to production—na chargenfor the use of money or credit . . .nIn the texture of this poem, everything recurs in modulatorynsequence. Later, a mask is crafted out of Thirty Years’nView, the magisterial (unread!) memoir of Senator ThomasnHart Benton. The mask dissolves at the very moment whennHenry Clay, Secretary of State for the Quincy AdamsnAdministration, and the resolute and statesmanly Randolphnof Roanoke might have shot one another over the PanamanAffair. In fact, both fired wide, shook hands, and stoodneveryone a needed drink. But Pound deliberately modulatesninto the earlier crisis, when Aaron Burr, marksman, definitivelyndispatched the conniving and corrupting AlexandernHamilton.nThis modulatory maneuver is a trademark of Tfte Cantos,nand the author has termed this sort of thing the “repeat-inhistory.”nIt is a creative transformation of the concept ofnmetempsychosis—that a soul (psyche) may transfer fromnform to form—at the heart of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Whatnreally motivate this entire drama are the out-of-circulationncoins about which Pound, as usual, tells us absolutelynnothing.nThey are (for the interested) Gold Eagles, with resplendentnportrait busts of Lady Liberty on their obverse,nwithdrawn at the end of Jefferson’s term of office to keepnthem out of the hands of speculators. One of Hamilton’snmany perfidies as first Secretary of the Treasury was thendeliberate undervaluing of the gold-silver ratio (15- insteadnof 16-to-one) so that the beautiful symbols of the soundnessnof the new nation—Jefferson was, among so many otherntriumphs, the virtual father of the American dollar—werencarried abroad and melted down for their gold. The roughnreversion of Jackson—who restored the coin and paid,npaid, the National Debt—was yet to be.nNow nothing fascinates the American character—Poundnbeing the only offspring of the Ghief Assayer for thenFranklin Mint in Philadelphia—like hard, cold cash. Tonmake (artistically) so much of it—Dante and Balzac asiden—was an achievement reserved for a Yank. But what ofnOvid, that poet of erotic iridescences and people turned tonbirds and trees?nThe Eagle replaces the British “Sovereign,” and LadynLiberty has taken over the place of a particularly pig-visagednportrait bust medallion of George III swathed, like anRoman, in laurels. Point is, the first of these laureledn”majesties” was Ovid’s contemporary—his busts at leastnlooked like emperors, and the Roman race was very keen onntheir coin, standing as it did for the integrity of markets,nweights, measures, standards, the treasury itself, in fact thennational heritage. Coining was sole prerogative of the HighnPriest (Pontifex Maximus) of the temple of Juno Monetanatop the Capitoline, moneta meaning the coin, the die, thenmint, the goddess Moneta being mother of the Camenaen(Rome’s Muses), monitae (from the same verb, moneo, tonwarn) being prophecies: the so-called Sibylline Books lodgedn