presented his microfilm copies: details from O.R.’s Antonio Vivaldi, Quatro concerti autogafi, and Antonio Vivaldi, Due concerti manoscritti (Siena: Academia Musicale Chigiana, 1949 and 1950) (HRC).
‘the 100 best’: EP to Kitasono, 14 May 1938, EP&J 63–4.
256 ‘since Imagism’: Kitasono to EP, 26 Apr. 1936, EP&J 27.
‘a poet can not neglect’: EP to Kitasono, 24 May 1936, EP&J 27–8.
‘neither Zen’: EP to Kitasono, [13 Aug. 1936], EP&J 31.
‘to meet any member’: EP to Japanese Ambassador in Rome, 26 Dec. 1936, EP&J 34–5.
a three hour talk: EP to Kitasono, 1 Jan. 1937, EP&J 35.
‘The new microphotographic’: EP to Hajime Matsumiya, Secretary of the Japanese Embassy, Rome, 15 Dec. 1937, EP&J 248.
257 ‘bilingual or trilingual’: ‘Trilingual System Proposed for World Communications’, Japan Times and Mail, 15 May 1939, in EP&J 150.
‘Two young poets’: Kitasono to EP,10 Feb. 1939, EP&J 72.
‘my chinese Cantos/’: EP to Kitasono, 3 Mar. 1939, EP&J 72.
Anschluss
Details from William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1960), pp. 322–56.
Going wrong, thinking of rightness
258 ‘you are not to concede’: EP to Montgomery Butchart, 12 Dec. 1938 (HRC).
six or even eight sets: EP to DP, [? 2 June 1938] (Lilly).
‘copying out’: from an unpublished notebook kept by Noel Stock in the 1960s, as in Carpenter 520. About 17 July 1938 EP told DP he was ‘doing Vivaldis’. In ‘Muzik, as Mistaught’, Townsman I.3 (July 1938) 8, EP wrote: ‘No process with pen in hand teaches a man so much both of the thought and of the actual idiom; of the actual way to write down the sound desired and the durations desired as the copying out of work of genius’ (EP&M 436).
idea of relaxing: see EP to Laurence Binyon, 8 and 12 May 1938, L (1951) 412 and 414.
Guide to Kulchur: the copy marked by TSE is now in HRC. Gallup: 1983, 61–2 gives details.
‘Omar says’: DP to EP, 7 Aug. 1938 (Lilly).
259 ‘not yet very grown up’: DP to EP, 5 Aug. 1938 (Lilly).
‘Daily Mirror’: DP to EP, 20 July 1938 (Lilly).
‘A consciousness’: EP to DP, 26 July 1938 (Lilly).
‘Is the Pope’: DP to EP, 30 July 1938 (Lilly).
cutting from an Italian newspaper: enclosed with EP to DP letters (Lilly). Farrell, Mussolini, 309, cites L’Osservatore romano, 30 July 1938, and Il Giornale d’Italia, 20 Sept. 1938, to same effect.
the race laws: paragraph drawn mainly from Farrell, Mussolini, 303–11; some further details from Meir Michaelis, Mussolini and the Jews: German–Italian Relations and the Jewish Question in Italy 1922–1945 (Oxford: Clarendon Press for the Institute of Jewish Affairs, 1978)—see particularly pp. 171–2.
‘a spiritual enemy of the Fascist faith’: Farrell’s words, Mussolini 308.
‘policy of segregation’: Mussolini’s words, cited Farrell, Mussolini 310.
260 ‘a Jew could embrace the Fascist faith’: Farrell’s words, Mussolini 308.
‘excellent and sober stuff’: EP to DP, 21 Aug. 1938 (Lilly).
‘like it has been bottled’: EP to DP, [2 Sept. 1938] (Lilly).
Waaal all yits’: EP to DP, [3 Sept. 1938] (Lilly).
‘the jewish Problem’: Gerhart Münch to EP, 29 Aug. 1938 (Beinecke).
‘Lots today’: DP to EP, 2 Sept. 1938 (Lilly).
‘I am sorry for you’: reported by Aldo Tagliaferri, ed. Ezra Pound Lettere (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1980), p. 115, as cited by David Anderson in Pai 10.2 (1981) 440.
an earlier Fascist statement: see Farrell, Mussolini 306.
‘where they touch Russia’: EP to DP, [3 Sept. 1938] (Lilly).
‘What are Jews to do?’: Lina Caico to EP, 2 Aug. 1938 (Beinecke).
261 ‘Get down to USURY’: EP to Lina Caico, [? before 10 Aug. 1938] (Beinecke). Preda, EPEC 215–16, prints this letter and dates it [3 Aug. 1938].
‘when you have seen’: Lina Caico to EP, 25 Mar. 1939 (Beinecke).
‘The Revolution Betrayed’: EP, British Union Quarterly II.1 (Jan./Mar. 1938) 36–8.
‘aryio-kike’: EP wrote a verse squib: ‘Did I not coin the term: “Aryio-kike” | to designate just those Aryan bastards | whom, quo ante | Our eminent brother Dante | had also found need to stigmatise; sic vide: | Che fra voi | di voi | Il Guideo non ride!’—‘Usury’, NEW XIV.19 (16 Feb. 1939) 292.
‘It will be a great pity’: EP, ‘Pity’, Action 139 (15 Oct. 1938) 16.
262 Another contribution to Action: ‘Infamy of Taxes’, Action 120 (4 June 1938) 13.
‘could not get at the masses’: Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1975), pp. 116–17.
praising Wyndham Lewis: see GK 134.
Leihkapital: international loan capital. In ‘Symposium-I. Consegna’, Purpose X.3 (July/Sept. 1938) EP wrote: ‘Hitler’s declaration on the bases of German currency, this spring (1938) was a public event, important and interesting to some people as the “axis” to others. Hitler’s statement on Leihkapital in “Mein Kampf”, so masterfully cited by Wyndham Lewis and used at chapter head in his “Hitler” already pre-existed as an idea in J. A. Hobson’s exposition of the syphilitic venom of international lending.’
‘the German terror’: LZ to EP, 14 Nov. 1938, EP/LZ 196–7.
‘Why curse Adolphe’: EP to LZ, 2 Dec. 1938 (HRC).
‘You know as well as any man’: BB to EP, 16 Dec. 1938, as cited by A. David Moody, ‘“EP with two pronged fork of terror and cajolery”: The Construction of his Anti-Semitism (up to 1939)’, Pai 29.3 (2000) 78–9.
263 ‘Dear Zuk’: EP to LZ, 7 Jan. 1939 (HRC).
‘let’s not correspond’: LZ to EP, 18 Jan. 1939, EP/LZ 198–9.
‘theoretical’: Carlo Izzo, [Notes accompanying] ‘Three Unpublished Letters by Ezra Pound’, Italian Quarterly (Riverside, California) XVI.64 (1973) 118.
‘not anti-semite’: EP, ‘Symposium-I. Consegna’, Purpose X.3 (July/Sept. 1938) 167–8.
thinking of rightness: cf. ‘And as to why they go wrong, | thinking of rightness’ (116/797).
Czechoslovakia sacrificed
264 ‘the most democratic’: Shirer, Third Reich 358. This section is based on Shirer’s chaps. 12 and 13, ‘The Road to Munich’ and ‘Czechoslovakia Ceases to Exist’, pp. 357–427 and 428–54.
‘a quarrel in a faraway country’: Neville Chamberlain, radio broadcast to the nation, 27 Sept. 1938, as cited by Shirer, Third Reich 403.
‘symbolic of the desire’: declaration of Hitler and Chamberlain, 30 Sept. 1939, as in Shirer, Third Reich 419.
‘peace with honour’: Neville Chamberlain, 30 Sept. 1939, as reported by Shirer, Third Reich 420.
‘under protest’: Czechoslovak official statement, 30 Sept. 1939, as reported by Shirer, Third Reich 420.
‘We have been forced’: Dr Kamil Krofta, Foreign Minister, as cited in dispatch to Berlin of German Chargé d’Affaires in Prague, in Shirer, Third Reich 420–1.
Comings and goings
265 ‘Chamberlain is the f irst’: EP, ‘Who Profits?’, NEW XIV.4 (3 Nov. 1938) 55–6.
‘If ever war’: EP, ‘A Money Is’, Delphian Quarterly XXI.4 (Oct. 1938) 47.
‘a ruler promotes’: EP, ‘Ubicumque lingua Romana’, Fascist Europe/Europa Fascista (Milano), 1 (28 Oct. 1938) 41–6—this paragraph and the one following are based on this article.
267 composition was interrupted: EP to Willis Overholser, [after 21] Nov. 1938, ‘Just home after 5 weeks in London/continuity broken’ (Beinecke).
a temperature of 102°: DP, entry for 2 Oct. in her 1938 diary (Lilly). On 3 Oct. DP noted ‘Olivia died’ and ‘four telegrams’; and on 5 Oct. ‘EP returned’.
‘animated and indignant’: MdR, Discretions 111.
‘gotta start’: EP to OR, 13 Oct. 1938 (Beinecke/OR).
‘Oh…Cremate’…‘against letters’…‘For goodness sake’: DP
to EP, 19 Oct. 1938 (Lilly).
‘ridiculously generous terms’: Henry Swabey, ‘A Page Without Which’, Pai 5.2 (1976) 330–1. Swabey also provides the detail about WL and a chair.
‘pockets bulging’: Ronald Duncan, All Men Are Islands (Hart-Davis, 1964), p. 197—as cited in Carpenter: 1988, 555.
‘bring her back some thing’: DP to EP, 16 Nov. 1938 (Lilly).
13 cases: detail from Carlo Rupnick to EP, Jan. 1939 (Beinecke).
268 ‘acted as the leader’: Swabey, ‘A Page Without Which’, Pai 5.2 (1976) 331.
a Noh play: details from Wilhelm: 1994, 139–40.
‘coat-tails flying’: WL, ‘Early London Environment’, T. S. Eliot: A Symposium, compiled by Tambimuttu and Richard March (Frank Cass & Co., 1965), p. 29.
what to put in on the left: see WL to EP, 17 Dec. 1938, EP/WL 202.
‘rapturous applause’: WBY to his wife, 18 Nov. 1938, as cited in Foster: 2003, 642.
‘he cd/ buy’: EP to Tinkham, 13 Jan. 1939, EP/GT 161.
not ‘a moral coward’: EP, ‘Does the Government of England Control the B.B.C.?’, Action 150 (7 Jan. 1939) 3.
‘vivacious, bustling and practical’: Oswald Mosley, My Life (Nelson, 1968), p. 226—as cited in Carpenter: 1988, 551.
‘what he was headed for’: EP, ‘To Albion’, ‘Ezra Pound Speaking’: Radio Speeches of World War II, ed. Leonard W. Doob (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1978), p. 397.
269 ‘in 13 years’: OR to EP, 31 Oct. 1938 (Beinecke/OR). See also Conover, 133–4.
‘damn unfair’: OR to EP, 2 Nov. 1938 (Beinecke/OR). See also Conover, 134.
‘in great anxiety’: OR to EP, 8 Nov. 1938 (Beinecke/OR).
‘assured durable’: EP to OR, 9 Nov. 1938 (Beinecke/OR).
‘He ain’t stayin’: EP to OR, 9 Nov. 1938 (Beinecke/OR).
‘She breathing again’: OR to EP, 10 Nov. 1938 (Beinecke/OR).
‘To make up’: MdR, Discretions 111—paragraph drawn from Discretions 111–14.
‘projecting continuance’: EP to WL, 9 Jan. [1939], EP/WL 204.
‘deeply shaken’: TSE, The Idea of a Christian Society (Faber & Faber, 1939) 63–4.
270 ‘depression of spirits’: TSE, ‘Last Words’, Criterion XVIII.71 (Jan. 1939) 274.
‘Who killed Cock Possum’: EP to Ronald Duncan, 10 Jan. 1939, L (1951) 415.
‘Olga, scandalized’: EP to TSE, [Jan. 1939] (Beinecke), cited Conover, 134. The source is an unpublished poem, ‘Elegy (1936)’—though obviously written 1939—beginning ‘O weep for Buck Possum | the arrow-collared Adonis’ (Beinecke).
‘constitute a source’: EP,’Concerti Mozartiani a Rappalo, in Marzo’, Il Mare 1561 (11 Feb. 1939) [1], translated in EP&M 448. For the programmes see EP&M 446–8.
to Washington in the spring: see EP to Tinkham, [21 Dec. 1938], EP/GT 160; also EP to WL, 8 Dec. [1938], EP/WL 200, with WL’s response of 17 Dec. on p. 201.
acquired in November 1937: in a letter to W. H. D. Rouse, 1 Dec. [1937] (Beinecke), EP wrote, ‘Moyriac de Mailla “Histoire de Chine” which I have just bought from continental bookseller for 200 lire’.
in June 1938: information from Dr Gyorgy Novak. In Jan. 1939 EP wrote to TSE, ‘Took me 53 years to find out Braintree; Quincy, Merrymount wuz all on or by “a plantation named Weston’s”/damn all my folks don’t never stik to their real estate till it rizes’ (Beinecke)—he turned 53 in Oct. 1938, and would have found that information on p. 4 of vol. i of John Adams’s Works. EP also told Tinkham in Jan.1939,‘Has taken me years to get John Adams’ works’ (EP/GT 161). Near the close of canto 62 (62/350) there is the line ‘(11th Jan. 1938, from Rapallo)’, a misdating for ‘1939’ originating in the notebook draft.
‘Chewing thru Adams’: EP to OR, 1 Feb. 1939 (Beinecke/OR).
‘on vol. Ten’: EP to OR, 3 Feb. 1939 (Beinecke/OR).
‘got to the end’: EP to OR, 7 Feb. 1939 (Beinecke/OR).
‘much more the father’: EP to Willis Overholser, [Jan.–Mar. 1939] (Beinecke).
‘pater patriae U.S.A.’: EP to Katue Kitasono, 3 Mar. 1939, EP&J 72.
‘helluva time’: EP to OR, 19 Feb. [1939] (Beinecke/OR).
271 up to canto 67: see EP to Katue Kitasono, 3 Mar. 1939, EP&J 72.
polished and shined: see EP letters to TSE in Jan. 1939 (Beinecke).
sent off to Faber: ‘Cantos 52/71 to Faber’, EP to AB, 4 Apr. 1939 (Lilly).
The end of Czechoslovakia
Details from William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1960), pp. 427–54.
271 ‘Neither Britain nor France’: Shirer, Third Reich 450.
Two books for governors: (1) cantos 52–61
This section is particularly indebted to: Carroll F. Terrell, ‘History, de Mailla and the Dynastic Cantos’, Pai 5.1 (1976) 95–121; Carroll F. Terrell, A Companion to the Cantos of Ezra Pound, [vol. i] (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), pp. 199–258; David Gordon, ‘“Confucius Philosophe”: An Introduction to the Chinese Cantos 52–61’, Pai 5.3 (1976) 387–403; David Gordon, ‘The Sources of Canto LIII’, Pai 5.1 (1976) 122–52; John J. Nolde, Blossoms from the East: The China Cantos of Ezra Pound (Orono, Me.: National Poetry Foundation, 1983); Dun J. Li, The Ageless Chinese (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1968).
271 More than the history: Marcel Granet, Chinese Civilization (New York: Meridian Books, 1958), p. 132. A page from the abridged version of Joseph Needham’s Science and Civilisation in China provides further valuable background: Confucianism appeared in the sixth century B.C. and is named after its founder…[whose] family name was Khung…[and who] is always referred to by his title of honour as Khung Fu Tzu (Master Khung) of which Confucius is the Latinised form. Born in 525 B.C. in the state of Lu (now Shantung) he traced his descent from the Imperial house of Shang, and spent his life developing and propagating a philosophy of just and harmonious social relationships. From about 495 B.C. he spent a number of years in enforced exile from Lu, wandering from state to state with a group of disciples and conversing with feudal princes, ever hoping for a chance to put his ideas into practice. For the last three years of his life he was back in Lu, writing and instructing his students. In 479 Confucius died, his life an apparent failure; yet as it turned out his influence proved, in the end, so great that he has often been called ‘the uncrowned emperor of China’.
Confucianism…strove for as much social justice as was possible in a feudal-bureaucratic society. This was to be achieved by a return to the ways of ‘the ancient Sage Kings’—a use of legendary historical authority that led Confucius to term himself a transmitter rather than an innovator. In a chaotic feudal society torn apart by wars between states, Confucius sought order. In a society in which human life was cheap, where there was little law and order save what each man could enforce by personal strength, armed followers, or intrigue, Confucius preached peace and respect for the individual.…He advocated universal education and taught that diplomatic and administrative positions should go to those best qualified academically, not socially: in this sense he was revolutionary. The true aim of government, he taught, was the welfare and happiness of all the people, brought about by no rigid adherence to arbitrary laws but by a subtle administration of customs that were generally accepted as good and had the sanction of natural law. In early Confucianism, then, there was no distinction between ethics and politics…(Colin A. Ronan, The Shorter Science and Civilisation in China: An Abridgement of Joseph Needham’s Original Text, vol. i (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), pp. 78–9)
273 de Mailla’s translation: to be exact, what de Mailla translated was the version in the Manchu language made for Emperor K’ang-hsi, of the most recent revision of the ‘Outline and Digest of the Comprehensive Mirror’, originally compiled in the mid- twelfth century under the direction of the Sung neo-Confucian scholar Chu Hsi (1130–1200), that being a condensation of ‘A Comprehensive Mirror for the Aid of Government’ put together in the eleventh century by a team of scholars led by Ssu-Ma Kuang (1019–1086).
De Mailla’s Histoire générale de la Chine was published in 13 vols., in Paris, between 1777 and 1783—(from Nolde, Blossoms from the East 25–7).
‘having to do with instruction’: see EP: Poet I 24.
to Italy’s Il Duce: see 55/298—‘put up granaries | somewhat like those you want to establish’—and 61/335 where Mussolini’s Italian term is used, ‘amassi or sane collection, | to have bigger provision next year, | that is, augment our famine reserve | and thus to keep the rice fresh in store house’.
‘if you remain keen’: TSE to EP, 15 July 1939 (Beinecke).
274 so Li Ki goes on: see Li Ki: ou Mémoires sur les bienséances et les cérémonies, Texte Chinois avec une double traduction en Français et en Latin par S. Couvreur S.J. (Ho Kien Fou: Mission Catholique, 1899), tome premier, chap. IV, article iii, §19 (p. 358). Canto 53 is drawn from IV.iii–vi (pp. 353–410).
De Mailla’s history: the title and opening pages are reproduced in Terrell, ‘History, de Mailla and the Dynastic Cantos’, Pai 5.1 (1976)100, 110–21.
275 ‘luminous details’: see EP/Poet I 170. Cf. GK 277 re picking ‘the live details from past chronicle’.
277 a song to be found in the Shih King: see CA 8 (no. 16).
two odes in The Classic Anthology: see CA 190–3 (nos. 262, 263).
279 Ngan, the next great reformer: see The Shorter Science and Civilisation in China: An Abridgement of Joseph Needham’s Original text, i. 53.
280 a gigantic encyclopedia: see Dun J. Li, The Ageless Chinese 306.
281 a Jesuit’s version: i.e. A. De Lacharme, Confucii Chi-King, ed. Julius Mohl (Stuttgart and Tübingen, 1830).
283 ‘one of [the poem’s]’: Robert Fitzgerald, ‘Mr Pound’s Good Governors’, Accent 1 (Winter 1941) 121–2, as in Homberger: 1972, 352.
‘this survey’: George Dekker, Sailing After Knowledge: The Cantos of Ezra Pound (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1963), p. 182.
‘monotonous didacticism’: Randall Jarrell, ‘Poets: Old, New and Aging’ (1940), Kipling, Auden & Co.: Essays and Reviews 1935–1964 (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1980), pp. 43–4.
Ezra Pound: Poet Page 60
