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Liebregts (Leiden Univ.) argues that Pound’s poetry and prose—from early collections such as “Hilda’s Book” and A Lume Spento (1908) to late works such as Drafts and Fragments of Cantos CX-CXVII (1969)—reveal both explicit and implicit uses of various elements of the Neoplatonic tradition. Extending and yet qualifying the insights of Demetres Tryphonopoulos’s The Celestial Tradition (CH, Dec’92) and Leon Surette’s The Birth of Modernism (CH, Sep’93), Liebregts focuses on Pound’s interest in the metaphysical side of the occult tradition. The “metaphysical occult,” the author declares, frequently inspired Pound to record epiphanic moments and to express “his personal, often consciously vague, and never systematized religio-philosophical worldview.” One positive feature of this book is its inclusion of previously unpublished materials, notably Pound manuscripts relating to Neoplatonism that are housed at Yale University’s Beinecke Library. On the negative side, the author sometimes attributes to Neoplatonism certain influences on Pound that in fact may have derived from other sources, e.g., Theosophy or Confucianism. Erudite, amply documented, broad in its coverage of Pound’s writings, Liebregts’ analysis is a worthy contribution to the scholarly literature. Summing up: Recommended. Graduate and research collections; Pound devotees.

D.D. Kummings, University of Wisconsin-Parkside
Choice, January 2005