Ezra Pound: Poet
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325 Pound’s notes: ‘Notes on Act III’, CPMEP (2) 126.
‘fortune shows her power’: Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince, trans. George Bull (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1961), p. 91.
Guido’s failure: see Fisher and Hughes, CPMEP 113, for a somewhat different account of the failure.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS AND COPYRIGHT NOTICE
When one works on Pound one does not work alone. I have enjoyed support both material and moral, together with encouragement, incitement, and provocation from many persons and institutions, and it is a pleasure to recall once again what I owe to them and to record my gratitude.
There are the great libraries which collect, conserve, and make available to researchers the vast treasury of Pound’s unpublished writings and drafts. I am most grateful for the courteous welcome, the frequent kindness, and the willing and expert assistance accorded me at Yale University’s Beinecke Library, at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center of the University of Texas at Austin, at the Lilly Library of Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, and at the Daniel Burke Library of Hamilton College, Clinton, New York.
Next I must thank the phalanx of scholars who have edited valuable resources from those archives, to the great benefit of other readers and researchers: D. D. Paige, Richard Reid, Noel Stock, Forrest Read, William Cookson. Eric Homberger, Michael John King, R. Murray Schafer, Leonard W. Doob, Harriet Zinnes, Vittoria I . Mondolfo, Margaret Hurley, Brita Lindberg-Seyersted, David Anderson, Donald Pearce, Herbert Schneidau, Omar Pound, A. Walton Litz, Timothy Materer, Mary de Rachewiltz, Barry Ahearn, Sanehida Kodama, Robert Spoo, Thomas L. Scott, Melvin J. Friedman, Jackson R. Bryer, Lea Baechler, James Longenbach, Richard Sieburth, Richard Taylor, Ira B. Nadel, David M. Gordon, Walter Sutton, Hugh Witemeyer, E. P. Walkiewicz, Philip J. Burns, Maria Luisa Ardizzone, Demetres Tryphonopoulos, Leon Surette, Sarah C. Holmes, Robert Hughes, Margaret Fisher, Massimo Bacigalupo, Roxana Preda, Joanna Moody, Miranda B. Hickman, and Alec Marsh. Here the late Carroll F. Terrell deserves a special honourable mention for his outstanding services to Ezra Pound scholarship, as founding editor of Paideuma, compiler of A Companion to the Cantos of Ezra Pound, animator of conferences, and generous instigator, supporter, and publisher of others’ work, especially that of younger scholars. In another special category is Donald Gallup—his Ezra Pound: A Bibliography (1983) is an indispensable resource always at hand. I have reason to be grateful also for Volker Bischoff’s Ezra Pound Criticism 1905–1985: A Chronological Listing of Publications in English (Marburg, 1991); and for Archie Henderson’s thesaurus of ‘new notes on the Pound/Agresti correspondence’, ‘I Cease Not to Yowl’ Reannotated (Houston, Tex., 2009).
The good and useful critics and interpreters of Pound’s work are legion, and though it is invidious to single out individuals, I must name a few to whom I feel especially indebted. Foremost is Hugh Kenner, the inventor of literary modernism in his time. Then I would name as they come to mind, each for some particular donation: Donald Davie, Eva Hesse, Hugh Witemeyer, George Kearns, David Gordon, M. L. Rosenthal, Walter Baumann, Ian Bell, Guy Davenport, Christine Brooke-Rose, Jean-Michel Rabaté, Richard Sieburth, Massimo Bacigalupo, Peter Makin, Marjorie Perloff, Michael Alexander, James Longenbach, Wendy Flory, Emily Mitchell Wallace, Kay Davis, Ronald Bush, Tim Redman, William McNaughton, Christine Froula, Peter Nichols, Leonardo Clerici, Leon Surette, Demetres Tryphonopoulos, Luca Gallesi, Maria Luisa Ardizzone, Colin McDowell, Scott Eastham, Robert Hughes, and Margaret Fisher. More generally, I have enjoyed being a member of a lively, contentious, and collaborative community of scholars at the biennial International Ezra Pound Conferences, from the first in 1976, and have profited from innumerable discussions in various agreeable settings with fellow scholars and critics.
‘Biography, a minor form of fiction’, Hugh Kenner wrote somewhere, not altogether dismissively, though with reason; yet, as a biographer, I have been glad to be able to check out the facts of Pound’s life against the biographies of Noel Stock, J. J. Wilhelm, and Humphrey Carpenter. Mary de Rachewiltz’s memoir Discretions: Ezra Pound, Father and Teacher has been an inimitable inspiration. Anne Conover’s Olga Rudge & Ezra Pound has been a mine of information.
I am especially grateful to the following for their generosity in providing me with books, articles, unpublished results of their own research, or critical dialogue: Michael Alexander, Massimo Bacigalupo, Stefano Maria Casella, Danilo Breschi, Bernard Dew, Scott Eastham, Margaret Fisher, Leah Flack, Luca Gallesi, Dryden Gilling-Smith, Robert Hughes, A. Walton Litz, Charles Lock, Alec Marsh, Marie-Noelle Little, Philippe Mikriammos, Alan Navarre, Catherine Paul, Caterina Ricciardi, Richard Sieburth, Richard Taylor, Noel Stock, Demetres Tryphonopoulos, Emily Mitchell Wallace, William Watt.
Poets, like those who write about them (and those who would read them), need publishers. Beyond the copyright acknowledgements below, we must be grateful to Elkin Mathews, Pound’s first publisher in London; to Charles Granville, Harriet Shaw Weaver, John Rodker, William Bird, and Nancy Cunard, who brought out his early and wholly uncommercial poetry through their private presses; to Alfred A. Knopf, Boni and Liveright, and Farrar and Rinehart, his first publishers in New York; to Faber & Faber, who became his publishers in London after 1933; to Stanley Nott; and above all to James Laughlin, whose New Directions became his American publisher, and ultimately the leading publisher of his work. Other publishers helped keep his work in print in his later years, notably Peter Owen of London. In recent years we owe edited collections of his correspondence and prose to the enterprise of a number of North American and British university presses. To Garland Publishing we owe the invaluable ten-volume collection of Pound’s contributions to periodicals. To the Library of America we owe Richard Sieburth’s comprehensive selection of Pound’s poems and translations. And to Robert Hughes and Margaret Fisher we owe the now complete series of editions of his music.
There are more personal debts. To the late Hugh Kenner for opening his personal Pound archive to me and for generous hospitality. To Hugh Witemeyer for his conversation and kindness. To the late George Kearns and to Cleo Keams, for their hospitality and conversation, and to George in particular for a gift of books from his Pound collection. To Noel Stock for his warm hospitality and informed conversation. To Geoffrey Wall, biographer and translator of Flaubert, for his close attention to my prose and for his constructive advice. To Declan Spring at New Directions for extraordinary courtesies and helpfulness. To Mary de Rachewiltz for permission to quote from Pound’s published and unpublished writings; for generous practical assistance, including giving access to her library and making freely available her collection of photographs; also for her wholly Poundian principle of placing no restriction on the use of her father’s work. To Elizabeth Pound and the estate of Omar S. Pound for generous and unrestricted permission to quote from Pound’s published and unpublished writings and from Dorothy Pound’s letters and diaries.
I owe much to the impressive expertise and enthusiasm of all who have worked on the book at Oxford University Press.
I am grateful for the skilled photographic work of Paul Shields of York University’s Photographic Unit.
Visits to the archives in the United States were supported by a British Academy Leverhulme Visiting Professorship, and by two British Academy research grants. Yale University’s Beinecke Library awarded me its Donald C. Gallup Visiting Fellowship, and the Lilly Library of Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana awarded me its Everett Helm Visiting Fellowship. This book owes a great deal of its substance to those grants and awards.
COPYRIGHT
Grateful acknowledgment is given to New Directions Publishing Corporation, New York, and to Faber & Faber Ltd., London, for permission to quote from the following copyrighted works of Ezra Pound:
ABC of Economics. All rights reserved.
ABC of Reading. All rights reserved.
The Cantos. Copyright © 1934, 1937, 1940, 1948, 1956, 1959, 1962, 1963, 1966, 1968, 1970 by Ezra Pound; Copyrigh
t © 1969, 1972 by the Estate of Ezra Pound; Copyright © 1973, 1986, 1993 by the Trustees of the Ezra Pound Literary Property Trust,
The Chinese Written Character. Copyright © 1936 by Ezra Pound. All rights reserved.
The Classic Noh Theatre of Japan. Copyright © 1959 by New Directions Publishing Corporation.
Confucius: The Great Digest, The Unwobbling Pivot, The Analects Copyright © 1947, 1950 by Ezra Pound.
Correspondence:
Ezra Pound to his Parents. Copyright © by Mary de Rachewiltz and The Estate of Omar S. Pound.
Ezra Pound’s Economic Correspondence. Copyright © by Mary de Rachewiltz and The Estate of Omar S. Pound.
Pound/Borah. All rights reserved.
Pound/Chinese Friends. Copyright © by Mary de Rachewiltz and The Estate of Omar S. Pound.
Pound/Cutting. All rights reserved.
Pound/Dial. Copyright © 1994 by the Trustees of the Ezra Pound Literary Property Trust.
Pound/Ford. Copyright © 1972, 1973, 1982 by the Trustees of the Ezra Pound Literary Property Trust.
Pound/Henderson. Copyright © 1993 by the Trustees of the Ezra Pound Literary Property Trust.
Pound/Ibbetson. Copyright © 1979 by the Trustees of the Ezra Pound Literary Property Trust.
Pound/Joyce. Copyright © 1967 by Ezra Pound.
Pound/Laughlin. Copyright © 1994 by James Laughlin and the Ezra Pound Literary Property Trust.
Pound/Lewis. Copyright © 1985 by the Trustees of the Ezra Pound Literary Property Trust.
Pound/Little Review. Copyright © 1988 by the Trustees of the Ezra Pound Literary Property Trust.
Pound/Nott. All rights reserved.
Pound/Quinn. Copyright © 1991 by the Trustees of the Ezra Pound Literary Property Trust.
Pound/Williams. Copyright © 1996 by the Trustees of the Ezra Pound Literary Property Trust.
Pound/Zokofsky. Copyright © by the Trustees of the Ezra Pound Literary Property Trust.
Ezra Pound and Japan. Copyright © 1987 by the Trustees of the Ezra Pound Literary Property Trust.
Ezra Pound and Music. Copyright © 1977 by the Trustees of the Ezra Pound Literary Property Trust.
Ezra Pound and the Visual Arts. Copyright © 1926, 1935, 1950, 1962, 1970, 1971, and 1980 by the Trustees of the Ezra Pound Literary Property Trust.
Gaudier-Brzeska: A Memoir. Copyright © 1970 by Ezra Pound.
Guide to Kulchur. Copyright © 1970 by Ezra Pound.
Jefferson and/or Mussolini. Copyright © 1935. 1936 by Ezra Pound; renewed 1963 by Ezra Pound. Used by permission of Liveright Publishing Company.
Le Testament. Copyright © 1972 by the Trustees of the Ezra Pound Literary Property Trust.
Literary Essays. Copyright © 1918, 1920, 1935, 1954 by Ezra Pound.
Personae. Copyright © 1926, 1935, 1971 by Ezra Pound. As Collected Shorter Poems. Copyright © 1971 by Ezra Pound.
Polite Essays. All rights reserved.
Selected Letters 1907–1941. Copyright © 1950 by Ezra Pound.
Selected Prose 1909–1965. Copyright © 1960, 1962 by Ezra Pound. Copyright © 1973 by the Estate of Ezra Pound.
The Spirit of Romance. Copyright © 1968 by Ezra Pound.
Translations. Copyright 1953, 1963 by Ezra Pound.
Excerpts from Ezra Pound’s contributions to periodicals as reprinted in Ezra Pound’s Poetry and Prose: Contributions to Periodicals (Garland Publishing Inc., 1991). Copyright © 1991 by The Trustees of the Ezra Pound Literary Property Trust.
Previously unpublished material by Ezra Pound. Copyright © 2014 by Mary de Rachewiltz and Elizabeth S. Pound. Used by permission of New Direction Publishing Corporation, agents.
Excerpts from previously unpublished letters and from a diary of Dorothy Shakespear Pound Copyright © 2014 by Elizabeth S. Pound, used by permission of New Direction Publishing Corporation, agents.
Excerpts from previously unpublished letters of Homer and Isabel Pound. Copyright © 2014 by Mary de Rachewiltz and Elizabeth S. Pound.
Previously published and hitherto unpublished letters of Olga Rudge © 2001, 2014, by Mary de Rachewiltz, used by permission of Mary de Rachewiltz.
Excerpts from Discretions by Mary de Rachewiltz. Copyright © 1971, 1975, 2005 by Mary de Rachewiltz.
Excerpts from published works by William Carlos Williams used by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation.
Excerpts from The Letters of T. S. Eliot, i: 1898–1922, and The Letters of T. S. Eliot, ii: 1923–1925. Copyright © Set Copyrights Limited 1988, 2009, used by permission of Faber & Faber Limited
Excerpts from unpublished letters of Basil Bunting Copyright © 2014 The Estate of Basil Bunting.
I am grateful to the following holders of copyright material who have granted access and permission to quote:
The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University
Daniel Burke Library, Hamilton College
The Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas, Austin
The Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana
Illustrations from the collection of Mary de Rachewiltz reproduced by courtesy of Mary de Rachewiltz.
INDEX
Note: Includes writings indexed by title. Bold entries in parentheses refer to Plate numbers.
ABC of Economics 154 gists 151
ABC of Reading 128, 188–9 critical reception of 191
Abyssinia, Italian invasion of 197 Pound’s reaction to 199–200, 202, 383n
Action (weekly publication) 261, 262, 268
Active Anthology 126, 129
Adams, Brooks 80
Adams, Charles Francis 164
Adams, John xii biography 285n
in Cantos 162, 163, 164
‘John Adams’ cantos 284–96
Pound’s vision of 284, 295
Adams, John Quincy, in Cantos 164–5, 168–9
Agresti, Olivia Rossetti 200
Aldington, Hilda (née Doolittle, Hilda (HD)) 41
Aldington, Richard 35, 36, 97, 126
America xi–xii Cantos 31–34 160–9
Cantos 37–40 169, 171–7, 221
Cantos 62–71 286–95
censorship 104–5
challenge of Italian Fascism 142–3
journalists question Pound 301
New Deal 143
Pound at Hamilton College 309–12
Pound at Harvard 304–5
Pound in New York 303, 306
Pound in Washington 302
Pound issued with new passport 46
Pound meets Borah 305–6
Pound on university education 299
Pound on unsuitability of Fascism for 142–3, 303
Pound sails to (23), 300–1
Pound’s aim in going to 300, 307
Pound’s American identity 297–8
Pound’s disillusion with state of 73–4, 99–100, 104–5, 298
Pound’s ideas for revival of American culture 299
Pound’s impatience with democracy 105
Pound’s instructions for government of 295–6
Pound’s loss of readers in 244
Pound’s love-hate relationship with 124–5
Pound’s promotion of his economic ideas 307–8, 310
unemployment 147
American Revolution, in Cantos 146, 160, 162–3, 171–2, 228, 287, 289–92
American Social Credit Movement 245
Anderson, David 110
Anderson, Margaret 4, 39 on Pound 7–8
Angleton, James Jesus 305
Angold, J P 205, 268
D’Annunzio, Gabriele 42, 103, 364n
Anschluss 257–8
Antheil, George (5), 118, 206 concert with Rudge 57, 60
Le Testament or Villon 19–20, 23, 24, 25, 26, 58, 318
noisy rehearsals in Pound’s studio 57–8
Pound impressed by 55–6
Second Sonata for Violin and Piano 61–2
String Quartet 62
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Transatlantic 124
Antheil and the Treatise on Harmony 59
anti-Semitism: Bunting’s criticism of Pound’s views 262–3
in Cantos 273
difference between Germany and Italy 236
Hitler 242
Italian race laws 259–60
Nazi Germany 183, 196–7, 236, 239, 257–60
Pound a liability because of 245
Pound refuses to help Jewish musician 242–3
Pound warned against 242
Pound warns against 158
Pound’s association of Jews with usury 240–2, 243, 261–2, 263
Pound’s attitude to 239–40
Pound’s endorsement of racist violence 261–2
Pound’s endorsement on economic grounds 243
Pound’s reaction to Italian race laws 260
racial language 45
used by Pound to further economic ideas xii, 157–8, 242
views of Pound’s friends on his attitude 263
appeasement of Hitler 198, 263, 264
‘Appunti’ 103, 104
Aquila Press 109, 127
arms industry, in Cantos 173–4
art: as part of biology 72–3
social function of 51–2, 72–8, 102–3
Aryan Path (magazine) 247
Atheling, William (pseudonym of EP) 59, 254
Attack! (journal) 208
Auric, Georges 7
Bacon, Frank 40, 303
Baldwin, Stanley 236
Bank of England, founding of 218, 327–9
Bank of the United States, in Cantos 171–2
banks: in Cantos 81, 85, 146–7, 163, 164, 168, 171–2, 174, 177, 212–14, 216, 218–20, 287, 290–1, 292, 330
control of credit 148, 172, 218
creation of money 330
Monte dei Paschi bank 207, 212–14, 216 see also credit; economics; money; usury
Bard, Joseph 72, 117, 182, 268
Barnard, Mary 26, 159 Pound’s encouragement of 187–8, 306