“And as to Who Will Copy this Palimpsest?” Selected Cantos of Ezra Pound (Ezra Pound. Selected Cantos. Bilingual edition. Ed. by B. Avdeev. Vancouver: Ibi Oculus Press, 2025. 415 p.)

The review focuses on the 2025 Russian translation of Ezra Pound’s Selected Cantos (translation and commentary by Boris Avdeyev, illustrations by Anna Trussler). This bilingual edition uses the English-Italian version of the Cantos, edited by the poet’s daughter, Mary de Rachewiltz. The translator selects 25 Cantos out of the whole Pound’s epic poem to present the better demonstration of the Cantos’ various styles and methods across Pound’s creative periods. The review also comments on Avdeyev’s translation strategies, noting his sensitivity to the poetic intonation of the original poem and his focus on sound. The differences in translation of this epic poem’s title into Russian are discussed separately: the original title, The Cantos of Ezra Pound, in the Russian-speaking world either retains the original spelling (Cantos), is transliterated (Кантос – B. Avdeyev’s version), or is translated (Песни (Songs)); this phenomenon is compared with versions of the title proposed in other foreign languages. The commentary on The Cantos, which occupies the last quarter of the book, is assessed as useful both to specialists and to readers new to Pound.