“It is conceivable that poetry of a far-off time or place requires a translation not only of word and of spirit, but of “accompaniment”, that is, that the modern audience must in some measure be made aware of the mental content of the older audience and of what these others drew from certain fashions of thought and speech” (Pound 1912: 2). Ezra Pound thus introduces the English translation of the Sonnets and Ballades of Guido Cavalcanti, drawing the attention of the reader to one of the most productive processes in modern literature: translation as a method by which a body of practices, which innovate the literary canon, can be constituted. The practice of translation can be seen to permit a double revolution within the poetic and novelistic literatures of the second half of the 19th century and at the dawn of the 20th century. On one hand, the process opens the way for an ampli cation of the expressive means within European languages, in breaking down the grammatical and stylistic limits imposed by these occidental languages and leading towards a poetics of multilingualism.