Ezra Pound: Poet

by A. David Moody

  ‘The main line’: Cockburn, The Week (1 Nov. 1933).

  199 ‘German and Italian’: Shirer, Third Reich 298, citing Ciano’s Diplomatic Papers, ed. Malcolm Muggeridge, pp. 43–8.

  ‘The boss knows his business’

  199 a storm: see EP to Tinkham, 2 Sept. [1935], EP/GT 52.

  ‘Keep KAAAAAAM’: EP to HLP, 13 Sept. 1935 (Beinecke).

  ‘Seminole war’: Encyclopaedia Britannica (11th edn., New York, 1910), xxiv. 616.

  ‘clear conscience’: EP to Borah, 10 Oct. 1935, EP/WB 42.

  sorry: EP to Borah, [15 Nov. 1935], EP/WB 46.

  ‘necessary’: EP to WCW, [1935], cited in note, EP/WCW 174.

  ‘wrong’: EP to Borah, [15 Nov. 1935], EP/WB 46.

  ‘victim tribes’: EP to Borah, [Nov. 1935], EP/WB 49.

  ‘enormous advance’: EP to Borah, 10 Oct. 1935, EP/WB 42.

  uncivilized: see EP to Borah, [Nov. 1935], EP/WB 49.

  ‘had no battles’: PE 49, 51.

  ‘Italy needs Abyssinia’: EP, ‘The Fascist Ideal’, British–Italian Bulletin II.16 (18 Apr. 1936) 2. Mussolini had said on 23 Mar. 1936–XIV, that Italy, under siege in an economic war decreed by Geneva on account of its glorious victories in Abyssinia, ‘can and must attain the maximum level of economic independence’ (Benito Mussolini, The Corporate State, 2nd edn. (Florence: Vallecchi Publisher, 1938/XVI)).

  200 poison gas: see A. W. Palmer, A Dictionary of Modern History, 1789–1945 (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1964), p. 15.

  ‘Abyssinian acquisition’: GK 229.

  ‘Italian empire’: EP, ‘A Good Surgeon Does Not Always Amputate’, British–Italian Bulletin II.39 (24 Oct.1936) [1].

  ‘I am, if you like’: EP, ‘For a Decent Europe’, British–Italian Bulletin II.11 (14 Mar. 1936) 3.

  ‘international’: EP, ‘Twelve Years and Twelve Years’, British–Italian Bulletin I.8 (27 Dec. 1935) 1. According to Douglas Goldring, in a letter dated 4 Feb. 1944 to the editor of Tribume, Pound’s ‘views on Abyssinia were shared by most English Catholic converts as well as by a considerable number of English Army officers and Foreign Office high-ups. Admiration of Mussolini, as of Franco, was prevalent among our Conservative class, at least until June 1940’—a copy of Goldring’s letter is in Pound MSS II, Box 20 (Lilly).

  ‘for humanity’: EP, ‘“We Have Had No Battles But We Have All Joined In And Made Roads”’, PE 55.

  ‘during the two months’: EP, ‘For a Measure’, British–Italian Bulletin II.12 (21 Mar. 1936) 4.

  a project: see below.

  Minister of Agriculture: detail from EP to HLP, [Oct. 1935] (Beinecke).

  Olivia Rossetti Agresti: details from EP to DP, [Nov. 1935] (Lilly), and 76/452.

  ‘old New Age–Orage man’: Odon Por to EP, Apr. 1934, as in Redman 156.

  worked…with Por: see EP to DP, 31 Oct. 1935 (Lilly).

  British–Italian Bulletin set up: see EP, ‘Readers of the B. I. B. Listen!’, British–Italian Bulletin II.32 (5 Sept.1936) 3.

  201 ‘offered to pay’: EP to Por, [c.21 Dec. 1935], as in Redman 167.

  Por arranged: information in this para. from Redman 169–70. See also EP to Por, 4 Jan. [1936], EPEC 175–8.

  ‘anything except economics’: Por to EP, 14 June 1935, as in Redman 163.

  ‘can’t put [him]’: Por to EP, 21 Mar. 1936, as in Redman 170.

  ‘Foreign Office is afraid’: Por to EP, 13 May 1936, as in Redman 170.

  ‘A strong Italy’…‘pressure towards war’: EP, ‘Twelve Years and Twelve Years’, British–Italian Bulletin I.8 (27 Dec. 1935) 1.

  small war in Africa: see EP to Tinkham, 2 Sept. [1935], EP/GT 53; see also EP to Borah, 10 Oct. 1935, EP/WB 42.

  202 ‘attempt to starve’…‘main purpose’: EP to Borah, [1935], EP/WB 55. EP/WB gives ‘large scare crime’, but ‘larger scale’ appears to be intended.

  ‘The question’: EP to Borah, 1 Oct. 1935, EP/WB 40; carbon copy to Tinkham, EP/GT 57.

  ‘signed statements’: EP, ‘Italy’s Frame-up’, British–Italian Bulletin II.5 (1 Feb. 1936) 2.

  Eden…‘married into’: EP to Tinkham, 27 Dec. [1935], EP/GT 60; see also EP to Borah, [Dec.] 1935, EP/WB 52.

  Lord Cranbourne: EP to Tinkham, [Jan. or Feb. 1936], EP/GT 65.

  ‘the men now crying out’: EP, ‘Twelve Years and Twelve Years’, British–Italian Bulletin I.8 (27 Dec. 1935) 1.

  Mussolini’s secretariat…project: The project is reproduced in Zapponi, L’Italia di Ezra Pound, pp. 205–8; for the secretariat’s comments see Zapponi, L’Italia di Ezra Pound, p. 51.

  203 ‘The total’: EP, ‘A Good Surgeon Does Not Always Amputate’, British–Italian Bulletin II.39 (24 Oct. 1936) [1].

  in the Fascist press: see Farrell 268. EP told Cunningham Graham (in late 1935?) that the letter from Captain Goldoni was ‘not press propaganda’ but a ‘private letter from a chap I know, sent to a friend in this village’ (Beinecke).

  204 ‘a blind eye’: BB to EP, ‘last of 1935’ (Beinecke).

  time he was got rid of: BB to EP, 21 Mar. 1934 (Beinecke).

  his faith in Mussolini: see for example, EP, ‘Moneta fascista’, La Vita Italiana, Rome, XXIV.274 (Jan./June 1936) [33]–37.

  military virtues: see EP, ‘Confucius’ Formula Up-to-date’, British–Italian Bulletin II.3 (18 Jan. 1936) 4; ‘The Treasure of a State’, British–Italian Bulletin II.13 (28 Mar. 1936) 4.

  Bank of Italy nationalized: see EP, ‘Great Comfort of Latin Mind: The Italian Bank Act’, British–Italian Bulletin II.14 (4 Apr. 1936) 4; ‘Organic Democracy’, British–Italian Bulletin II.15 (11 Apr. 1936) 2; ‘A Civilising Force on the Move: The Bank Reform’, British–Italian Bulletin II.21 (23 May 1936) 3.

  ‘DUCE!’: EP to Mussolini, 22 Dec. 1936, in Zapponi, L’Italia di Ezra Pound, 52.

  Music, money, cantos

  204 announced in Il Mare: [EP], ‘Studi Tigulliani’, Il Mare XXIX.1409 (14 Mar. 1936) [1]; in English translation in EP&M 384–7.

  ‘being interned’: EP to OR, 5 May 1935 (Beinecke/OR)—cited Conover, 122.

  had resolved themselves: EP, ‘A Letter from Rapallo’, Japan Times & Mail, Tokyo (7 and 8 Jan. 1940) [8]—in EP&M 455, in EP&J 158.

  ‘eccentric musicologists’: from Stephen J. Adams, ‘Pound, Olga Rudge, and the “Risveglio Vivaldiano”’, Pai 4.1 (1975) 118. This article, and R. Murray Schafer’s pp. 328–30 in EP&M, provide expert information on the Vivaldi revival. Further details concerning Olga Rudge’s part from Conover, 125–8.

  205 makes order…‘an example of order’: see GK 255 and 281–3.

  would deliver to Faber & Faber in November: information from EP to LZ, 29 Nov. 1936 (HRC); also EP to AB, 2 Dec. 1936 (Lilly),

  Swabey’s recollections: Henry Swabey, ‘A Page Without Which…’, Pai 5.2 (1976) 329–30.

  206 Pound had suggested: EP to Swabey, 3 Mar. [1935], L (1951) 359. See also EP to Swabey, 26 Mar. [1936], L (1951) 367–8.

  defeated by the champion: EP to WCW, 28 Apr. 1936, EP/WCW 180, 181n.

  ‘I don’t see you’: EP to Antheil, 4 May 1936 (Lilly).

  ‘Now that I had reached’: Henry Swabey, ‘A Page Without Which…’, Pai 5.2 (1976)

  330. Pound’s ‘Guide to Italy’ is printed on pp. 336–7.

  207 painted ceiling: cf. EP from Siena to Katue Kitasono, 12 Aug. 1936, ‘This is the only town where I have ever been able to live in a palace with a painted ceiling’ (EP&J 31).

  ‘Depressing country’: DP to EP, 27 July 1936 (Lilly).

  ‘Main points’: EP to DP, 29 July 1936 (Lilly).

  what he had written: see Social Credit: An Impact: reprinted, revised and condensed, in Impact 147; also ‘Banking Beneficence and…’, NA LVI.16 (14 Feb. 1935) 184–5.

  interest-bearing current account: information from EP, Personal Papers (Beinecke).

  ‘hot here’: EP to HLP, 29 July 1936 (Beinecke).

  ‘damn HARD’: EP to DP, 20 Aug. [1936] (Lilly).

  five notebooks: now with Poe
try Notebooks in Beinecke.

  ‘the 10-vol bloke’: Il Monte dei Paschi di Siena e le Aziende in Esso Riunite, ed. Narciso Mengozzi (Siena, 1891–1925). EP’s principle other historian was Antonio Zobi, Storia civile della Toscana dal MDCCXXXVII al MDCCCXLVIII, 5 vols. (Firenze, 1850–2).

  good music in Siena: EP to HLP, 7 Aug. 1936 (Beinecke).

  208 ‘thanks & love’: DP to EP, 26 Aug. 1936 (Lilly).

  ‘new raise in pay’: EP to DP, 20 Aug. 1936 (Lilly).

  ‘money money money’: EP, ‘Ezra Pound Shouts the Money Money Money Chorus’, Attack! ([after 10 July] 1935) [2]. The ‘Venison’ song was first printed in NEW V.9 (14 June 1934) 205, and was collected with the other ‘Poems of Alfred Venison’ in a pamphlet published by Stanley Nott in 1935—reprinted in P&T; the collection was included in appendix II of the new edition of Personae (1926) published by New Directions in 1949, and in Faber & Faber’s 1952 edition of Personae.

  ‘OUT of Bloomsbury’: EP to Hargrave, 21 Jan. 1935, as cited (with informative commentary) by Wendy Flory in her The American Ezra Pound, p. 76.

  didn’t think much of…Mosley: e.g. EP to Gorham Munson, [16 June 1935], ‘do can those asses who talk of fascism as if the Corporate State/Hitler & stinky Mosley were all one’ (HRC).

  ‘Big nooz’: EP to HLP, 12 Aug. 1936 (Beinecke). Also EP to DP, 12 Aug. 1936, ‘BUF agrees to Social Credit analysis’ (Lilly).

  209 ‘pickin’ daiseyes’: EP to DP, 26 Aug. 1936 (Lilly).

  ‘the word “fascism”’: DP to EP, 26 Aug. 1936 (Lilly).

  ‘Stalinists’: EP to DP, 29 Aug. 1936 (Lilly).

  ‘end of Analects again’: EP to HLP, 29 Aug. 1936 (Beinecke).

  One of the sayings: see EP, Analects 13.III, 1–2; then S Pr 99, 303; GK 16; etc.

  left Siena: EP to DP, 2 Sept. 1936 (Lilly).

  ‘hottern Siena’: EP to HLP, [3 Sept. 1936] (Beinecke).

  ‘this machine sticks’: EP to HLP, [4 Sept. 1936] (Beinecke).

  ‘imperfect copy’: EP to DP, 5 Sept. 1936 (Lilly).

  210 ‘frame for a fourth’: EP to DP, 7 Sept. 1936 (Lilly).

  sent them off: EP to HLP, [10 Sept. 1936] (Beinecke). ‘Cantos XLII–XLIV’ were in Criterion XVI, no. LXIV (Apr. 1937) 405–23.

  ‘Dunning mss’: EP to DP, 10 Sept. 1936 (Lilly). Concerning Dunning see pp. 62–3 above.

  ‘amateur publisher’: EP, ‘Responsibility? Shucks!’, Globe II.4 (Feb./Mar. 1938)110.

  new music at the Venice Biennale: paragraph drawn from EP&M 399–417, including EP, ‘Mostly Quartets’, Listener XVI.405 (14 Oct. 1936) 743–4; ‘Music in Ca’ Rezzonico’, Delphian Quarterly XX.1 (Jan. 1937) 2–4, 11; and ‘Ligurian View of a Venetian Festival’, Music & Letters XVIII.1 (Jan. 1937) [36]–41.

  record of a struggle: see GK 135, and Schafer, EP&M 400.

  ‘some WANT’: EP to DP, 15 Sept. 1936 (Lilly).

  ‘for 500 lire’: EP to Tibor Serly, [Sept. 1936], L (1951) 372–3; also in EP&M 400–1.

  ‘fixed to come’: EP to Münch, Dec. 1936, L (1951) 374. Details of March concert from EP, ‘The New Hungarian Quartet’, EP&M 421–2, and ‘The Return of Gerhart Münch’, EP&M 422–3—translated from Il Mare of 13 Feb. 1937, and 13 Mar. 1937. ‘Sandwiched between’ is from GK 183. See EP to Tibor Serly, Apr. 1940, L (1951) 442–3, for his clearest account of his ‘laboratory idea’ in the construction of a concert programme.

  ‘richness and abundance’: EP, ‘Mostly Quartets’, Listener XVI.405 (14 Oct. 1936)—in EP&M 405.

  211 a great man, ‘Any man’: Tinkham to EP, 20 June 1936, EP/GT 75.

  The congressman arrived: details of the visit drawn from EP/GT 75, 80, 82, and from EP letters to HLP and DP.

  ‘talked relentlessly’: MdR, Discretions 82–3.

  ‘Eleven hours’: EP to DP, 21 Sept. 1936 (Lilly).

  ‘much more concentrated’: EP to DP, 22 Sept. 1936 (Lilly).

  ‘brother tinkham’: EP to HLP, 22 Sept. 1936 (Beinecke).

  ‘We putt in nine hour’: EP to HLP, 25 Sept. 1936 (Beinecke).

  ‘Better not say’: EP to DP, 24 Sept, 1936 (Lilly).

  ‘for all your courtesies’: Tinkham to EP, 17 Oct. 1936, EP/GT 87.

  ‘whereafter’: EP to DP, [c.25 Sept. 1936] (Lilly).

  ‘articl/ a day’: EP to DP, 16 Oct. 1936 (Lilly).

  ‘Worst supposed’: EP to HLP, 20 Nov. 1936 (Beinecke).

  212 ‘cdn’t figure’: EP to OR, [Nov. 1936] (Beinecke/OR)—as cited Conover, 128.

  Rome on his own: see EP to DP, 29 Dec. 1936 (Lilly).

  ‘turkey and chocolates’: OR to EP, [?Dec.1936] (Beinecke/OR)—as cited Conover, 128

  ‘The Fifth Decad’: against Usura

  In this section I have found especially helpful—whether in following or in departing from—the guidance of George Kearns and Peter Makin: George Kearns, Guide to Ezra Pound’s Selected Cantos (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1980), and Ezra Pound: The Cantos (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); Peter Makin, Pound’s Cantos (George Allen & Unwin, 1985).

  212 scholar-sleuths: see the invaluable researches of Ben Kimpel and T. C. Duncan Eaves, ‘Sources of Cantos XLII and XLIII’, Pai 6.3 (1977) 333–58—the misreading or change of ‘animo’ is noted on p. 345; ‘The Sources of the Leopoldine Cantos’, Pai 7.1–2 (1978) 249–77; ‘Pound’s Use of Sienese Manuscripts for Cantos XLII and XLIII’, Pai 8.3 (1979) 513–18.

  220 Canto 47: my discussion is indebted to Daniel Pearlman’s profoundly insightful chapter ‘Man, Earth and Stars’, in his The Barb of Time: On the Unity of Ezra Pound’s Cantos (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969), pp. 172–92.

  223 ‘annoying interruption’: George Kearns, Ezra Pound: The Cantos 42.

  224 Von Unruh: information from Walter Baumann, ‘The German-Speaking World in The Cantos’, Pai 21.3 (1992) 44–6.

  ‘the sergeant tramping down’: EP, ‘Waiting’, New Democracy IV.2 (15 Mar. 1935) 28.

  225 intelligence of insects: see pp. 139–40 above.

  canto 49: the spacing between the ‘Seven Lakes’ verses was incorrect in the first edition, and though corrected in Faber & Faber’s 1954 edition, and in the bilingual I Cantos in 1985, the error persists in both the New Directions and the current Faber editions. The four stanzas should begin: ‘For the seven lakes’, ‘Autumn moon’, ‘Where wine flag’, ‘Wild geese swoop’—there should not be a line-space after ‘cross light’. For the fullest account of the background and sources see Zhaoming Qian, ‘Painting into Poetry: Pound’s Seven Lakes Canto’, in Ezra Pound & China, ed. Zhaoming Qian (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003), 72–95. Qian gives reproductions of the eight scenes. See also ‘Miss Tseng and the Seven Lakes Canto. “Descendant of Kung and Thseng-Tsu”’, in Ezra Pound’s Chinese Friends: Stories in Letters, ed. Zhaoming Qian (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 9–17. For the original poems and further commentary see Sanehide Kodama, ‘The Eight Scenes of Sho-Sho’, Pai 6.2 (1977) 131–43.

  ‘The still centre’: William Cookson, A Guide to the Cantos of Ezra Pound (Croom Helm, 1985), p. 53. In a 1941 article EP explicitly stated that Confucianism is not quietist, ‘meno quietista’, but rather ‘a philosophy for anyone taking up state office, a party seat, to administrate or to perform some public function’ (‘Ta Hio’, Meridiano di Roma VI.46 (16 Nov. 1941) 7).

  ‘turned government over’: Qian, ‘Painting into Poetry’, Ezra Pound & China 73.

  Confucian historians: see John J. Nolde, Blossoms from the East: The China Cantos of Ezra Pound (Orono, Me.: National Poetry Foundation, 1983), pp. 237, 240.

  227 re emperor Shun’s hymn, and the peasants’ folk song, see Hugh Kenner, ‘More on the Seven Lakes Canto’, Pai 2.1 (1973) 45–6; Sanehide Kodama, ‘The Eight Scenes of Sho-Sho’, Pai 6.2 (1977) 142–5; Achilles Fang to James Laughlin, 23 May 1950, EP/JL 205. These helpful commentators are not responsible for my reading.

  228 ‘the dimension of stillness’: here I have been stimulated by Demetres P. Tryphonopoulos, ‘�
��The Fourth; The Dimension of Stillness”: D. P. Ouspensky and Fourth Dimensionalism in Canto 49’, Pai 19.3 (1990) 117–22; also by Peter Makin, Makin: 1985, 208–9.

  229 Napoleon’s ‘brilliant Italian campaigns’: Thomas Carlyle, ‘Lecture VI. The Hero as King. Cromwell, Napoleon, Revolutionism’, On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History (1841).

  ‘The force which he challenged’: Christopher Hollis, The Two Nations: A Financial Study of English History (George Routledge and Sons, 1935), pp. 88, 133–4.

  ‘weighed down’: Hollis, The Two Nations, p. 134.

  230 ‘the century of usury’: EP, ‘The Revolution Betrayed’, British Union Quarterly II.1 (1938) 36–7.

  231 ‘Wellington was the key’: Jerome J. McGann, ‘The Cantos of Ezra Pound, the Truth in Contradiction’, Critical Inquiry 15.1 (1988) 18–23.

  ‘Shines | in the mind of heaven’: there is a translation of Guinicelli’s canzone by Dante Gabriel Rossetti in his Early Italian Poets (1861).

  232 The Art of Angling: information and opinion from Robert Demott, ‘Ezra Pound and Charles Bowlker: Note on Canto LI’, Pai 1.2 (1972) 189–98.

  ‘since fly-fishing’: Terrell: Companion 198 n. 7.

  ‘That hath the light’: EP gives the source in Albertus Magnus in ‘Cavalcanti’, LE 186.

  Among the drafts for Canto LI in Beinecke there is his translation of the passage: ‘“that thy mind be the receiver of images (speculativa) receiving with them the light of the doer (lumen agentis) of the doer, daily more like one to other and when this is accomplished | hath the possible the light of the agent, as it were a form cleaving to it so the god’s mind may give largess to it, all thing[s] mirrored, perceived/.”’

  233 ‘trout rise’: EP to Eva Hesse, 17 Apr. 1959 (Beinecke).256

  ‘a system of living’: EP TS note (Beinecke). EP’s citation of Hess is problematic. My reading of the lines in the canto trusts the text and the historical context which together make Hess figure as one fraudulently speaking peace. I cannot be sure that that was Pound’s intention. A draft of canto 45 begins with Hesse’s words and appears to endorse them wholeheartedly as having ‘the light of the doer’ about them (Za Pound/2612, Beinecke).