Ezra Pound: Poet

by A. David Moody

  William M. Chace: see his ‘The Canto as Cento: A Reading of Canto XXXIII’, Pai 1.1 (1972) 89–100.

  ‘They say they are chosen’: David Anderson. ‘Breaking the Silence: The Interview of Vanni Ronsisvalle and Pier Paolo Pasolini with Ezra Pound in 1968’, Pai 10.2 (1981) 332, 338 (in part my translation).

  ‘Can impressions’: WBY, ‘Introduction’, The Oxford Book of Modern Verse 1892–1935 (Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1936) xxiv.

  A time of speaking, | A time of silence: see Ecclesiastes 3: 7.

  ‘Whatsoever thy hand’: Ecclesiastes 9: 10.

  162 Jefferson…the shaping force: see EP, J/M 14–17. See also EP, ‘The Jefferson–Adams Letters as a Shrine and a Monument’ (1937), ‘National Culture —A Manifesto 1938’, and ‘An Introduction to the Economic Nature of the United States’ (1944), all three in S Pr.

  164 ‘renascent civic sense’: EP, ‘The “Criterion” Passes’, British Union Quarterly III.2 (Apr./June 1939) 71.

  composition [of canto 34]: the drafts are at Beinecke.

  167 ideogrammic method: see pp. 76–8 above, and, inter alia, EP, ‘Abject and Utter Farce’ (1933), in PE.

  168 ‘deficient in capacity’: EP, J/M 37.

  169 ‘puritanitis’: EP, J/M 89.

  170 ‘le problème des surréalistes’: EP, [reply to questionnaire circulated by André Breton and Paul Éluard on ‘la rencontre capitale de votre vie’], Minotaure, Paris, I.3/4 (15 Dec. 1933) 112.

  Jefferson ‘informed’: EP, J/M 14.

  ‘in the mind indestructible’: 74/442; ‘in jeopardy’: 74/426; ‘formed in the mind’: 74/446.

  171 Van Buren and Jackson: see EP, J/M 95; ‘Nothing New’, NEW IV.9 (14 Dec. 1933) 215; ‘Woodward (W. E.) Historian’, NEW X.17 (4 Feb. 1937) 329.

  172 ‘life-long fight’: EP, ‘Woodward (W. E.) Historian’, NEW X.17 (4 Feb. 1937) 329.

  ‘saved the nation’: EP, J/M 95.

  misrepresenting the historical facts: on the issue of ‘historicity’ in this canto see Makin: 1985, 190–5. Pound may have held it against Andrew Jackson that—in John Quincy Adams’s words (which were refracted in canto 34)—he had, as a general in the army, ‘by the simultaneous operation of fraudulent treaties and brutal force’ deprived the Cherokee nation in Georgia of their lands ‘and [driven] them out of their dwellings’ (Terrell, Companion: I, 138 n. 83). See also EP to WCW, [Jan. 1935], EP/WCW 156.

  173 ‘where is FACTS’: EP to FMF, 16 Nov. [1933], EP/FMF 134.

  ‘the evil’: EP, ‘The Master of Rapallo Speaks’, Outrider, Cincinnati, I.1 (1 Nov. 1933) 1—in P&P VI, 96.

  ‘than the production of foodstuffs’: EP, ‘Is it War?’, Time and Tide XIV.39 (30 Sept. 1933) 1149—in P&P VI, 80.

  ‘100 francs on every 400’: both Monsieur Schneider’s words and those of the other French manufacturer are as in EP, ‘Orientation and News Sense’, NEW II.12 (5 Jan. 1933) 274.

  174 ‘between humanity’: EP, ‘Orientation and News Sense’, 273.

  ‘not proceeding’: EP, ABCE 37.

  The ‘thought’: Hugh Witemeyer reads these items very differently—see ‘Pound & the Cantos: “Ply over ply”’, Pai 8.2 (1979) 231–5.

  175 a tailor’s: cf. ‘the tailor Blodgett’, EP, ABCR 18–19.

  176 Hathor: details from Alain Blottière, Petit Dictionnaire des dieux égyptiens (Paris: Zulma, 2000).

  ‘Regina coeli’…‘fulvida di folgore’: Dante, Paradiso XXIII, 128, XXX, 62.

  ‘Coition, the sacrament’: see p. 114 above.

  177 ‘We were diddled’: EP, J/M 97.

  178 civic responsibility…life of the spirit: see pp. 75–6 above.

  Fugue: for a pioneering and still insufficiently noticed investigation see Kay Davis, Fugue and Fresco: Structures in Pound’s Cantos (University of Maine at Orono: National Poetry Foundation, 1984).

  Yeats…failed to understand: see WBY, A Packet for Ezra Pound (1929), as in A Vision (1937) 4–5.

  Note: A historian, the Bank Wars, and the New Deal

  181 The source of this note is Arthur Schlesinger Jr, ‘History and National Stupidity’, New York Review of Books LIII.7 (27 Apr. 2006) 14.

  4. Things Fall Apart, 1933–1937

  To spread order about him

  182 Bard…lecture: from TS copy of lecture in Hugh Kenner Archive (HRC).

  ‘get action’: EP to WCW, [Mar. 1935?], EP/WCW 169.

  183 ‘build in his own’: EP, ‘Possibilities of Civilization: What the Small Town Can Do’ (1936), Impact 81. The rest of this paragraph is from the same article—see Impact 75–82.

  Herr Hitler: paragraph drawn from William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany (Secker and Warburg, 1961), pp. 189–213. Sebastian Haffner wrote that there was ‘a one-day—1 April 1933—boycott of Jewish shops’, in his The Meaning of Hitler (1978) (Phoenix Press, 2000), p. 27.

  ‘Miss Weaver present’: EP to DP, [? 15 May 1933] (Lilly).

  184 ‘beeyewteeful blue’: EP to DP, 3 June [1933] (Lilly).

  ‘“entre nous”’: EP to DP, [24 July 1933] (Lilly).

  ‘O is livin’: EP to DP, 7 June 1933 (Lilly).

  ‘Settimana Mozartiana’: details of concerts in June and July 1933 from EP&M 331–4.

  ‘done privately’: EP to Tibor Serly, Apr. 1940, L(1951) 442.

  ‘too complicated’: DP to EP, 27 July 1933 (Lilly).

  ‘deader than mutton’: DP to EP, 15 May 1933 (Lilly). Further details from her letters to EP of 6 and 29 June, and 7 July 1933.

  ‘All right’: DP to EP, 30 July 1933 (Lilly).

  ‘Don’t purrpose’: EP to DP, 2 Aug. 1933 (Lilly).

  ‘pride of the town’: BB to James G. Lieppert (J. Ronald Latimer), 30 Oct. 1932, as cited in Peter Makin, Bunting: The Shaping of his Verse (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), p. 64.

  185 ‘more savage disciples’: WBY to OS, 2 Mar. 1929, as cited in Norman: 1960, 300.

  ‘to see you’: LZ to EP, 12 July 1933, EP/LZ 151.

  ‘chiefly to meet’: from the account in Norman: 1960, 318. Further details, Norman: 1960, 316–18. Bunting spoke of their efforts to reform Pound’s way of reading his cantos at the International Pound Conference, Durham, 27–30 Mar. 1979, when reading from them in his own very fine Northumbrian voice.

  ‘wit and brilliance’: BB’s phrase for EP’s conversation, in interview with Jonathan Williams cited in Carroll F. Terrell, ‘An Eccentric Profile’, Basil Bunting: Man and Poet (Orono, Me.: National Poetry Foundation, 1981), p. 50.

  telling Zukofsky: see EP to JL, 24 Dec. 1933, EP/JL 9, 10n.

  ‘about bombarding’: JL to EP, 21 Aug. 1933, EP/JL 3. Further details from the editor’s extracts from JL’s letters to EP, 29 Aug. and 8 Oct. 1933, and from his notes. See also JL’s poem ‘Ezra’, as printed in Pai 26, 2–3 (1997) 231–5.

  186 prose blasts: e.g. ‘Abject and Utter Farce’, Harkness Hoot IV.2 (Nov. 1933) 6–14 (included in PE); and ‘Ignite! Ignite!’, Harvard Advocate CXX.3 (Dec. 1933) 3–5.

  at Pound’s instigation: ‘It was Ezra’s idea and Munson seems to approve of it and want it’ (JL to WCW, 20 Sept. 1935, William Carlos Williams and James Laughlin: Selected Letters, ed. Hugh Witemeyer (New York: W. W. Norton, 1989) p. 3).

  ‘music in winter’: details of the ‘Concerti “Inverno Musicale”’ from EP&M 336–65 and 377–83.

  articles for Il Mare: EP wrote these in English, they were published in Italian translation, and translated (not by EP) from the Italian into English for EP&M.

  187 Le Chant des Oiseaux… for solo violin: thus EP in Il Mare, 11 Nov. 1933, EP&M 346. See also GK 152–3.

  ‘Maestro Sansoni’: EP in Il Mare, 16 Sept. 1933, EP&M 337–8.

  League of Nations Disarmament: paragraph drawn from Farrell, Mussolini: A New Life, 247–9; and Shirer, Third Reich 210–12.

  Mary Barnard: 1909–2002; details from her Assault on Mount Helicon: A Literary Memoir (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), pp. 52ff.

  ‘How ha
rd’: EP to Mary Barnard, 29 Oct. 1933, Assault on Helicon 53, also L (1951) 331.

  ‘the medium’: EP to Mary Barnard, 2 Dec. 1933, Assault on Helicon 55.

  188 ‘rules’: EP to Mary Barnard, 23 Feb. 1934, Assault on Helicon 56, 57; cf. L (1951) 339.

  ‘work to a metric scheme’: EP to Mary Barnard, 28 Nov. 1934, Assault on Helicon 76.

  translation of Sappho: Sappho: A New Translation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1958).

  ‘Do understand’: EP to Mary Barnard, 22 Jan. 1934, Assault on Helicon 56; L (1951) 336. As to the lessons in ABCR, see particularly EP’s ‘Treatise on Metre’, ABCR 197–206.

  ‘How to Read’: see LE 15–40.

  ‘The teacher’: ABCR 83.

  ‘shd. consume itself’: this formulation is from EP to Laurence Binyon, 30 Aug. 1934, L (1951) 347.

  ‘dance of the intellect’: EP, ‘How to Read’, LE 25, q.v. for EP’s definitions of all three terms.

  ‘you will never know’: ABCR 45–6.

  189 ‘Literature is news’: ABCR 29.

  eases the mind: cf. EP, ‘How to Read’, LE 20; maintaining the language: cf. LE 21, and ABCR 32–5.

  ‘natural destructivity’: ABCR 192–3.

  ‘complete exposure’: JL to EP, 8 Oct. 1933, EP/JL 4.

  ‘point of this experiment’: ABCR 23–4; see also EP&M 323–4.

  William Young: see EP&M 356–60.

  ‘Nevuh’: EP to AB, 4 Apr. 1934 (Lilly).

  ‘about 95%’: EP to Langston Hughes, 13 May 1935, David Roessel, ed., ‘“A Racial Act”: The Letters of Langston Hughes and Ezra Pound’, Pai 29.1-2 (2000) 229.

  ‘wackin a tennis ball’: EP to Viola Baxter Jordan, 7 Apr. 1936 (Beinecke).

  ‘to the movies’: EP to Viola Baxter Jordan, [? 1934] (Beinecke).

  190 ‘a new heave’: EP to John Drummond, 4 May 1933, L (1951) 329.

  ‘syllable by syllable’: EP to Laurence Binyon, 21 Jan. 1934, L (1951) 336. See ‘Hell’, LE 201–13, for EP’s review of Binyon’s version.

  ‘putting money-power’: EP to Laurence Binyon, 6 Mar.1934, L (1951) 340.

  ‘would talk of nothing’: WBY, The King of the Great Clock Tower, Commentaries and Poems (New York: Macmillan Company, 1935), pp. vi–vii. For ‘nobody language’ and ‘the buzzard’ see Richard Ellmann, Eminent Domain: Yeats among Wilde, Joyce, Pound… (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), pp. 81–2.

  ‘large dog kennel’: JL, Pound as Wuz: Essay and Lectures on Ezra Pound (St Paul, Minn.: Graywolf Press, 1987), pp. 13–14. Note: Many of the details in JL’s account appear to be more colourful than accurate. Though he wrote that he ‘was in Rapallo’ when Henghes, ‘a bedraggled figure with his feet bleeding turned up on Ezra’s doorstep’, he was not in fact in Rapallo at that moment (see EP/JL 30–2), and it may be that it amused Henghes to tell a tall tale to his friend JL. Ian Henghes, the sculptor’s son, has kindly communicated the following information. Heinz Clusmann (1906–75), who called himself Heinz Henghes after 1934, ‘had a Jewish mother, a Lutheran father and a Lutheran upbringing’. He was not a refugee from the Nazis, nor did he walk from Hamburg to see Pound. He ran away from home in Hamburg in 1924 and stowed away to America where he lived until 1932. He was then in Paris, where he briefly assisted Brancusi, and went on by train to Italy where he called on Pound. (That was in April 1934.) From Rapallo he wrote to a Dr Kahn: ‘Ezra Pound has given me a place to stay, food & marble to work on for 3 months to finish 3 statues.’ Donna Virginia Agnelli bought three pieces by Henghes in 1934 and 1935, but not (as JL wrote) ‘the striking figure of a centaur, which later became the model for the New Directions colophon’. So far as Ian Henghes knows that drawing was never made into a sculpture. One further correction: the editor of EP/JL writes that the ‘perfect schnorrer’ in 35/174 is Henghes, though this is improbable since Cantos 31–41 were already with the US publishers by Feb. 1934 (L(1951) 338).

  ‘New sculptor’: EP to Sarah Perkins Cope, 22 Apr. 1934, L (1951) 342.

  ‘unable to do’: DP to EP, July 1934 (Lilly).

  ‘This family life’: DP to EP, 20 Aug. 1934 (Lilly).

  ‘Child very good’: EP to DP, 4 Sept. 1934 (Lilly).

  He would write: rest of paragraph from MdR, Discretions 43–57.

  191 ‘whatever his crimes’: Shirer, Third Reich 230.

  ‘Education by provocation’: Samuel Becket, ‘Ex Cathezra’, Bookman 87 (Dec. 1934) 10, cited by JL in ‘Pound the Teacher’, The Master of Those Who Know (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1986), p. 26.

  Hugh MacDiarmid: in Scottish Observer, 24 Dec. 1931, writing under his proper name, C. M. Grieve.

  ‘bundle of prejudices’: ‘Current Literature’, Spectator 153 (13 July 1934) 66. This and the next five notes are drawn from Vittorio Mondolfo and Helen Shuster, ‘Annotated Checklist of Criticism on Ezra Pound, 1930–1935’, Pai 5.1 (1976) 155–87.

  ‘insulting’: Eda Lou Walton, ‘Ezra Pound lops off a few more heads’, New York Times Book Review V.7 (7 Oct. 1934) 8.

  ‘atrocious style’: ‘Mr. Pound as critic’, TLS 1709 (1 Nov. 1934) 751.

  192 ‘stumped’: Philip Blair Rice, ‘The Education of Ezra Pound’, Nation 139 (21 Nov. 1934) 600.

  ‘design is wanting’: Babette Deutsch, ‘With Seven League Boots’, New York Herald Tribune Book Review, 25 Nov. 1934, 18.

  ‘serious menace’: Rayner Heppenstall, ‘Poetry’, NEW VII.18 (Apr. 1935) 10.

  Pound would complain: e.g. in ‘The Acid Test’, Biosophical Review IV.2 (1934/35) 24.

  ‘more bloody work’: EP to JL, 18 Oct. 1934, EP/JL 34.

  ‘some brat’: EP to LZ, 16 Oct. [1934] (HRC).

  two or three weeks: JL was never specific as to exactly how long he spent at what he called the ‘Ezuversity’ on this his most extended stay. It is usually said that he was there in Nov. and Dec. JL said in Pound as Wuz (p. [3]) that it was arranged for him ‘to study with Pound in his famous Ezuversity for several months’. However, in the summer and autumn of 1934 JL was mostly in London and Paris, and EP/JL gives letters from EP to JL through Oct. and Nov., with one dated 2 Dec.: since JL was spending a good part of every day he was in Rapallo in EP’s company it seems improbable that EP would also be typing full letters to him while he was there. JL’s thank-you letter to EP from Lausanne is dated 21 Dec. 1934—it is cited by Emily Mitchell Wallace in her invaluably informative portrait, ‘“A Bridge over worlds”: A Partial Portrait of James Laughlin IV’. Pai 31 (2002) 210. Also, EP was away from Rapallo for at least a day or two around the 10th, when he went down to Rome to record a radio talk. Evidently the magnitude of the occasion for JL was not to be measured by the amount of time but by its intensity.

  ‘learned more’: JL, as cited from his Random Essays by Emily Mitchell Wallace in ‘“A Bridge over worlds”’, Pai 31 (2002) 210.

  ‘trying…to write poetry’: JL, Pound as Wuz 7—rest of paragraph from JL, Pound as Wuz 7.

  the daily class: JL, ‘Pound the Teacher’, The Master of Those Who Know 2–5. Cf. the similar account in Pound as Wuz 4–6.

  193 ‘So that he could easily find’: JL, Pound as Wuz 6–7.

  ‘spose the keynote’: EP to Francesco Monotti, 22 Nov. [1934] (Beinecke). Further details from letters exchanged between EP and Monotti in Nov. 1934 (Beinecke). The article seen by Ciano would have been ‘Mussolini Defines State as “Spirit of the People”: Fascism Analyzed by Ezra Pound, Noted American Writer’, Chicago Tribune, Paris (9 Apr. 1934) 5.

  ‘greatly honoured’: EP to Galeazzo Ciano, 23 Nov. 1934, as cited in Redman, Ezra Pound and Italian Fascism 158.

  ‘economic triumph’: William Bird to EP, 2 May 1935, as cited in Redman, Ezra Pound and Italian Fascism 158.

  ‘don’t understand’: [? Ciano] to EP, 17 Jan. 1935 (Beinecke).

  194 ‘onlie begetter’: W. H. D. Rouse, ‘Note’, The Story of Odysseus: A Translation of Homer’s ‘Odyssey’ into Plain English (Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1937), p. v.

  ‘about the campaign’:
EP to W. H. D. Rouse, 30 Dec. 1934, L (1951) 349–51.

  ‘a readable story’: W. H. D. Rouse, ‘Note’, The Story of Odysseus v.

  ‘What we have done’: William Atheling (E.P.), ‘Throttling Music’, NEW VII.13 (11 July 1935) 247–8, as in EP&M 377.

  ‘save ten lire’: EP, ‘Money versus Music’, Delphian Quarterly XIX.1 (Jan. 1936), as in EP&M 382.

  195 ‘a racket’: EP, ‘Throttling Music’, EP&M 375.

  ‘black rot of usury’: EP, ‘Throttling Music’, EP&M 375.

  ‘Serly sees’: EP, ‘Tibor Serly, Composer’, NEW VI.24 (28 Mar. 1935) 495, in EP&M 372.

  ‘Stravinsky’: NEW VI.24 (28 Mar. 1935) 495, in EP&M 372.

  ‘at Dead End’: EP to DP, 1 July 1935 (Lilly).

  ‘no use arguing’: EP to DP, 5 July 1935 (Lilly).

  into Austria…Wörgl: details from EP to HLP, 5 Aug. 1935 (Beinecke); EP to DP, 5 Aug. 1935, (Lilly); Wallace, ‘“A Bridge over worlds”’, Pai 31 (2002) 212; 74/441; JL, Pound as Wuz 12; see also p. 155 above.

  troops…to the Brenner: cf. Farrell, Mussolini, 250–1.

  ‘proudly showed’: MdR, Discretions 79.

  196 ‘Marieka’: EP to DP, 2 Sept. 1935 (Lilly).

  ‘amazin kid’: EP to JL, 23 Sept. 1935, EP/JL 44.

  laws for maria: MdR, Discretions 69–70.

  The turning point: 1935–1936

  Sources: G. M. Gathorne-Hardy, A Short History of International Affairs, 1920–1939 (Oxford University Press under the auspices of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, 4th edn., 1950); William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany (Secker and Warburg, 1961); Nicholas Farrell, Mussolini: A New Life (Weidenfield and Nicolson, 2003).

  196 ‘Jews had been excluded’: Shirer, Third Reich 233.

  197 Hitler…mad: see Farrell, Mussolini, 249–50.

  ‘First of all’: Mussolini to Jean-Louis Malvy, June 1936, Farrell, Mussolini, 279, citing Renzo de Felice, Mussolini il duce, i. 749–50.

  198 ‘A large and influential’: Claud Cockburn, The Week (18 Oct. 1933). Further details from The Week (30 Aug. 1933). Cockburn’s weekly newsletter was mimeographed from typewritten copy and published from 34 Victoria St., London SW1. In Pound’s library (now in HRC) were forty-two issues, starting with no. [20], 9 August 1933.