Canto XXXVI Comments

Canto XXXVI opens with a translation of Cavalcanti's canzone Donna mi pregha (A lady asks me) . This poem, a lyric meditation of the nature and philosophy of love, was a touchstone text for Pound. He saw it as an example of the post-Montsegur survival of the Provençal tradition of clear song, precision of thought and language, and nonconformity of belief. The canto then closes with the figure of the 9th-century Irish philosopher and poet John Scotus Eriugena, who was an influence on the Cathars and whose writings were condemned as heretical in both the 11th and 13th centuries.