 These figures, Witemeyer writes, reflect the spiritualism common in the period, in which the different "personae" Pound adapts are considered "mediumistic channelings" of the deceased.In his biography of Pound, David A. Moody writes that the collection included an implicit challenge to the "crepuscular spirit" prevalent in contemporary literature, one which has drawn little attention yet can be found in certain poems and the collection's arrangement.He notes a progression in which persons who let their passion get the best of them are, implicitly, relegated to a Dantean Hell.