A Preface to Ezra Pound

Peter Wilson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781317890089
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Provides an introduction to the life and works of Ezra Pound, a major modernist poet, theorist and literary critic. Throughout his life Pound was regarded by many to be a contentious and controversial figure, and since his death in 1972, theoretical, literary, political and biographical comentators have done much to perpetuate this view. Peter Wilson's survey, however, presents a balanced view of his life and work allowing the reader to judge for themselves. The major sections of the book offer introductions to the complex life and work of Pound, outlining the various cultural, political and literary issues which are important to a full understanding of his place in twentieth century English literature. Critical commentaries are then given on all of Pound's major poetry, adopting some analytical techniques from stylistics. Brief biographies of important figures in Pound's career, and in the development of literary modernism are provided. A gazeteer, glossary, and suggestions for further reading complete the book.

Part One
The Writer and his Setting

Chronological table

	POUND’S LIFE	OTHER EVENTS
1885	Born 30 October in Hailey, Idaho.	D.H. Lawrence born.
1887		Alfred Krupp, German industrialist and arms manufacturer, dies.
1888		T.S. Eliot born.
1889		Robert Browning dies. Adolf Hitler born.
1890		Idaho becomes a state of the United States.
1892	Family finally settled in Wyncote, a suburb of Philadelphia.	Walt Whitman dies. Alfred Lord Tennyson dies.
1894		Aubrey Beardsley’s drawings for Oscar Wilde’s Salome.
1895		W.B. Yeats’s Poems published.
1898	First European tour, visiting London, Paris and Venice.	Ernest Hemingway born. Paris Metro opened.
1900		The Wallace Collection opened in London. John Ruskin dies.
1901–06	Student at University of Pennsylvania and Hamilton College: B Phil and MA degrees.
1901		Wigmore Hall opened in London.
1902	Begins lifelong friendship with William Carlos Williams.
1902 and 1906	Further visits to Europe, including London, Venice, Spain and Paris.
1903		Henry James’s The Ambassadors published. James Whistler dies.
1905		F.T. Marinetti’s Futurist Manifesto published. Jacob Epstein settles in London.
1905–07	Intensely romantic friendship with Hilda Doolittle, writes the poems collected in Hilda’s Book.
1907	Teaching post at Wabash College, Crawfordsville, Indiana, terminated because of a minor ‘scandal’.
1908	Leaves for Europe. William Brooke Smith, Pound’s ‘first friend’, dies, aged 25. A Lume Spento published in Venice. Settles in London.	Lord Northcliffe buys The Times newspaper.
1909	Meets and begins literary associations with W.B. Yeats, Ford	A.C. Swinburne dies. Wassily Kandinsky paints first abstract paintings.
	Madox Ford and Wyndham Lewis. Personae and Exultations published.
1910	The Spirit of Romance published.	H.G. Wells’s The History of Mr Polly published. The first Post-Impressionist Exhibition is mounted in London.
1911	Canzoni published.	Marie Curie wins Nobel Prize for Chemistry.
1912	Influenced by T.E. Hulme. First reference to ‘Imagistes’ in Ripostes.	Woodrow Wilson wins US presidential election. Amy Lowell’s A Dome of Many-Colored Glass published.
1913	Poems by ‘H.D. Imagiste’ first appear in Poetry. Begins friendship and artistic association with Henri Gaudier-Brzeska.	Suffragette demonstrations in London: Mrs Pankhurst imprisoned. Rabindranath Tagore wins Nobel Prize for Literature. John D. Rockefeller founds the Rockefeller Institute.
1913–16	Spends three consecutive winters at Stone Cottage with Yeats, working on Fenollosa manuscripts, Japanese Noh plays and the early cantos.
1914	The first imagist anthology, Des Imagistes, published. Marries Dorothy Shakespeare. Meets and begins literary association with	James Joyce’s Dubliners published. Outbreak of First World War.
	T.S. Eliot. Vorticism and the first issue of Blast. Promotes the serialization of Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in The Egoist.
1915	Cathay published.	Henri Gaudier-Brzeska killed in the trenches.
1916	Lustra published.	James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man published. Henry James dies.
1917	Three Cantos published.	America enters the war against Germany. The Russian Revolution takes place. T.S. Eliot’s Prufrock and Other Observations published. T.E. Hulme killed at the front.
1918	Promotes the serialization of Joyce’s Ulysses in the Little Review.	Women over 30 get the vote in Britain. Rebecca West’s The Return of the Soldier published. Wyndham Lewis’s Tarr published. Armistice between Allies and Germany ends First World War. Claude Debussy dies.
1919	Homage to Sextus Propertius published in full. Discovers the economic theories of Major C.H. Douglas.	Benito Mussolini founds Italian Fascist Party. Thomas Hardy’s Collected Poems published. Treaty of Versailles signed.
1920	Hugh Selwyn Mauberley published. Meets Joyce for the first time.
	Leaves London for good.
1921	Settles in Paris. Writes an opera, Le Testament de Villon. Musical association with American composer, George Antheil.
1922	Helps to raise money for the first publication of Ulysses in book form. Gives Eliot substantial editorial help with the manuscript of The Waste Land.	Mussolini marches on Rome and forms fascist government in Italy. Eliot’s The Waste Land published. Joyce’s Ulysses published. Marcel Proust dies.
1923	Begins a lifelong relationship with the violinist Olga Rudge.	Yeats wins Nobel Prize for Literature. Katherine Mansfield dies.
1924		Lenin dies. Sigmund Freud’s Collected Writings published.
1924–25	Moves to Italy and eventually settles in Rapallo.
1925	A Draft of XVI Cantos published. Mary, daughter of Pound and Olga Rudge, born.	Hitler’s Mein Kampf published. Amy Lowell dies.
1926	Omar, son of Dorothy Pound, born. Personae: The Collected Poems of Ezra Pound published.	General Strike followed by miners’ strike in Britain.
1926 onwards	The ‘Ezuversity’ at Rapallo: new literary associations with Basil
	Bunting, Louis Zukofsky, James Laughlin and others.
1928	Pound’s parents, Homer and Isabel, settle in Rapallo.	Thomas Hardy dies. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover published. Virginia Woolf’s Orlando published. Mussolini’s My Autobiography published.
1929		George Antheil’s opera Transatlantic first performed. Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms published.
1930	A Draft of XXX Cantos published.
1932	Major work on Cavalcanti, resulting in the publication of Guido Cavalcanti Rime.
1933	Audience with Mussolini. ABC of Economics published. Begins innovative series of yearly musical concerts in Rapallo.	Hitler appointed Chancellor of Germany. Franklin D. Roosevelt becomes president of the USA. Gertrude Stein’s The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas published.
1934	Eleven New Cantos XXXI–XLI, Make It New and ABC of Reading published.
1935	Jefferson and/or Mussolini published.	Italy invades Abyssinia.
1936		Outbreak of Spanish Civil War.
1937	The Fifth Decad of Cantos published.	Pablo Picasso’s Guernica exhibited in Paris. Maurice Ravel dies.
1938	Guide to Kulchur published.
1939	Visits America to promote economic theories and prevent American involvement in a future European war.	Joyce’s Finnegans Wake published. Yeats dies. Freud dies. Outbreak of Second World War.
1940	Cantos LII–LXXI published.	Winston Churchill becomes British prime minister. F.D. Roosevelt elected president of the US for a third term. Italy declares war on the Allies.
1941	Begins to broadcast on Rome Radio.	Germany invades the Soviet Union. Japan bombs Pearl Harbor and America enters the war against the Axis powers. James Joyce dies. Virginia Woolf dies.
1942	Homer Pound dies.
1943	Indicted for treason by the United States government for broadcasting what is judged to be Axis propaganda.	Mussolini overthrown. Italy surrenders and declares war on Germany. Eliot’s Four Quartets published in full.
1944	Wartime circumstances force Pound, Dorothy and Olga to live together in Sant’Ambrogio, above Rapallo.
1945	Arrested by Italian partisans and transferred to Detention Training Centre, Pisa. Writes Pisan Cantos. Flown to Washington for trial, but found unfit to stand on grounds of insanity. Begins confinement in St Elizabeth’s Hospital for the insane.	Mussolini executed. F.D. Roosevelt dies. Second World War ends with the surrender of Germany and Japan.
1946	Charles Olson becomes the first of many regular visitors Pound has throughout his incarceration.	H.D.’s Trilogy published.
1948	Isabel Pound dies. The Pisan Cantos finally published.	T.S. Eliot wins Nobel Prize for Literature.
1949	Awarded the Bollingen Prize for the Pisan Cantos.
1951		Marianne Moore’s Collected Poems wins the Pulitzer Prize.
1954	The Classic Anthology defined by Confucius and The Women of Trachis published.	Ernest Hemingway wins the Nobel Prize for Literature.
1955	Section: Rock-Drill de los cantares published.
1956		Allen Ginsberg’s Howl published.
1957		Wyndham Lewis dies.
1958	Indictment for treason dismissed, thirteen years after his first imprisonment in Pisa. Returns to Italy, initially to live with his daughter.
1959	Thrones de los cantares XCVI–CIX published.	Jacob Epstein dies.
1959–62	A period of restlessness, domestic tension and illness at the end of which he begins to live with Olga Rudge for the rest of his life.
1961		Ernest Hemingway dies.
1963		William Carlos Williams dies.
1964		Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast published posthumously.
1965	Visits London for Eliot’s memorial service and Dublin to see Yeats’s widow.	T.S. Eliot dies. Winston Churchill dies.
1967	Visits Joyce’s grave in Zürich.
1969	Drafts and Fragments of Cantos CX–CXVII published. Visits America for the last time.
1971		Mary de Rachewiltz’s Discretions published.
1972	Dies in Venice on 1 November.

1 Biographical background

‘A man on whom the sun has gone down’

It is customary for epics to begin in medias res. Since Pound’s life was in many ways as much of an epic as The Cantos, his vast ‘poem including history’, I begin this outline of his life at the Detention Training Centre, Pisa, in 1945, where Pound was to spend his 60th birthday as a prisoner of the US army. The hole he had got himself into was more of a life-threatening hell-hole than the ‘beastly hole’ in which Mr Polly finds himself at the beginning of H.G. Wells’s novel. Just as that novel traces Polly’s life up to that point of crisis, this biographical outline traces Pound’s life to the Pisan prison camp, trying to pick up along the way pointers to his arrival at such a place, before recounting the events of his later years. Whereas the aftermath of Mr Polly’s crisis is one of comic struggle, triumph and peace, the denouement of Pound’s life was to be much sadder, more salutary and elusive of any real peace before that of the grave.

A fictional parallel is appropriate here because any biographical account that goes, however briefly, beyond the most minimal facts involves the construction of a narrative that is both selective and interpretative. The amount of biographical material relating to Pound is vast, ranging from full biographies to letters, interviews, memoirs and personal anecdotes. In making a selection and interpretation of this material it is necessary to try to avoid reiterating unsupported speculations and opinions. Pound has, understandably perhaps, given his controversial and politically sensitive views and actions, attracted much partisan comment. For the most part I have been selective in favour of relating Pound’s life to his work for two reasons. Firstly, although literary texts, like any other texts, take on a linguistic autonomy of their own that outlives their authors, I nevertheless take the view, as I noted in my introduction, that a knowledge of the interplay between biographical detail and artistic output enhances their understanding. Secondly, I am haunted by Pound’s own dictum: ‘You can spot the bad critic when he starts by discussing the poet and not the poem’ (ABC, p. 84).

Pound was arrested by Italian partisans at his home in Sant’Ambrogio, near Rapallo, early in May 1945 and eventually handed over to the American authorities in Genoa: it was well known that he had been under an indictment for treason since 1943. There were already doubts about his sanity, suggested, for example, by his apparent lack of reality with regard to his dire situation: one American newspaper reported that, ‘He is probably the only man ever to be interviewed while awaiting trial for treason who talked more of various interpretations of Oriental ideographs than he talked of his own impending trial’ (Carpenter, 1990, p. 652).

By late May Pound had been transferred to the DTC at Pisa. The Centre was effectively a prison for American forces personnel who had committed crimes of various sorts while in occupied Italy. Within its concentration camp perimeter lesser offenders lived in one-person tents and were put through a gruelling regime to prepare them to return to their units. Major offenders, such as rapists and murderers, were kept in security cages, awaiting their execution or return to America for trial, though even they had small tents against the night and the weather and were allowed out for exercise. Pound was incarcerated in one of these cages for three weeks, at first without a tent, and always without being allowed out: he paced the narrow confines of his cage for exercise. He was also kept incommunicado under armed guard and at night his cage was floodlit. There is little doubt that this treatment would now be considered a form of torture.

After three weeks Pound’s condition had so deteriorated in terms of weight loss, eyesight problems and incipient mental breakdown that he was moved to a tent in the Centre’s medical section. Here, his living conditions improved and his physical health to some extent restored, he began to write, at first with paper and pencil. Later, with access to a borrowed typewriter. The Pisan Cantos began to emerge, remarkably, in more or less the form they are known today. More incredibly in some ways, when Pound had finished this section of his epic he went on to complete a translation of the Confucian text, using his own Italian version of an English translation as a crib. The result. The Unwobbling Pivot, was later published during Pound’s subsequent years in St Elizabeth’s Federal Hospital for the Insane.

As his detention at Pisa dragged on, without the preoccupation of composition and translation Pound’s state grew worse. Rare visits by his wife, Dorothy, his partner, Olga, and their daughter, Mary, must have served to reinforce his sense of isolation. Access to English language newspapers and magazines with their versions of the war’s events must at least have given him pause for thought and probably contributed to his depression. However, by November the American authorities judged that they had sufficient evidence for his prosecution and ordered Pound to be brought back to Washington.

Opinion as to what should be done with him was already polarized in the USA: there were those who wanted him summarily executed and others who wished him spared for his poetry’s sake. On his arrival in America, even in his uncertain mental state. Pound began to realize that he was seen as a criminal and not the long-lost emissary he imagined himself to be. With the Nuremberg trials taking place and the horrific revelations of the concentration camps becoming more widely known, this was no time to be a traitor.

This, then, was the extreme situation in which the 60-year-old Pound found himself at the end of 1945. The most interesting question is whether his plight was the result of some aberration, some psychological defection, or whether it was a consequent development of earlier, deep-rooted values that are charted in Pound’s poetry as well as his life.

‘Bom in a half savage country’

Ezra Pound was born in 1885 in Hailey, Idaho. Since Idaho Territory did not become a state until 1890 and Hailey was one of many mining towns in what might still be regarded as the ‘wild west’, there is an element of truth in Pound’s ironic assertion at the beginning of Hugh Selwyn Mauberley that the country of his birth was indeed half savage. However, the reality behind that truth is rather different from any inferences Pound might wish us to make.

Far from being born into a poor mining family and raised in the Rockies, he was the only child of quite wealthy parents who were temporarily stationed in Idaho. His father, Homer, had gone to Hailey to check out the family silver mines as Register of the Hai...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part One: The Writer and his Setting
• Part Two: Critical Survey
• Part Three: Reference Section
• Bibliography
• Further reading
• Index