Chapter 13 Ezra Pound
Ezra Pound was born in Hariley, Idaho. Although his view of poetry would seem to exclude the long poem as a workable form, Pound could not overcome the traditional belief that a really great poem had to be long. He hoped to write such a poem himself, a poem for his time, which would unite biography and history by presenting his mind and memory. To this end he began working on his cantos in 1915. The cantos were separate poems of varying lengths, combining reminiscence, meditation, description, and transcriptions from books Pound was reading, all of which were to be forged into unity by heat of the poet’s imagination. Looking for an explanation of what had gone wrong, Pound came upon the “social credit” theories of Major Clifford Hugh Douglas, a social economist who attributed all the ills of civilization to the interposition of money between human exchanges of goods. At this point, poetry and polities fused in Pound’s work, and he began to search for a society in which art was protected from money and to record this search in poems and essays. This became a dominant theme in his cantos.
Critical Perspectives
1.New Historicism
Christos Hadjiyiannis, in “We Need to Talk About Ezra: Ezra Pound’s Fascist Propaganda, 1935-1945”, argues that Ezra Pound’s Fascist Propaganda, 1935-1945 calls attention to the extensive propaganda work that Ezra Pound undertook (both paid and gratis) in the years before and during World War Ⅱ on behalf of the British Union of Fascists, Mussolini’s Fascist Italy, and the shortlived Nazi satellite Said Republic. Feldman presents compelling evidence that challenges the view that Pound was an “accidental” or “aloof” fascist, and that exposes him as a dedicated and fervent fascist propagandist. While Feldmans thesis that Pound was a devout believer in the “political religion” of fascism fails to capture the complexity of his thought and activism at the time, it sheds light on this dark—and curiously understudied—aspect of Pound’s career, significantly adding to our knowledge of Pound’s fascist work. Primarily for this reason, it is an invaluable contribution to Pound scholarship, and one that deserves a wide readership, even if it lacks the finesse, scope, and depth of more scholarly accounts of Pound’s work.[1]
2.Cultural Studies
Tanja Klankert, in “Strange Relations: Cultural Translation of Noh Theatre in Ezra Pound’s Dance Poems and W. B. Yeats’s At the Hawk’s Well”, draws on the reception of Noh drama by Ezra Pound and William Butler Yeats, analyses both the literary and cultural “translations” of this form of Japanese theatre in their works, focusing on Yeats’s play At the Hawk’s Well (1917). Tanja conceptualizes “cultural translation” as the staging of relations that mark a residual cultural difference. Referred to as “foreignizing” in translation theory, this method enables what Erika Fischer-Lichte has termed a “liminal experience” for the audience—an effect Yeats intended for the performance of his play. It evokes situations in which opposites collapse and new ways of acting or new combinations of symbols can be tried out. Yeats’s play is used to sketch how an analysis of relations could serve as a general model for the study of cultural transfer as cultural translation in general”.[2]
Diego Pellecchia, in “Ezra Pound and the Politics of Noh Film”, suggests that poet Ezra Pound’s engagement in disseminating Noh overseas was crucially stimulated by the vision of Noh films in the late 1930s. Topics discussed include the turning point in Pound’s engagement with Noh, the reason that Pound appreciated the didactic propaganda film, and the period of intense didactic production for Pound in the 1930s.[3]
Qingjun Li, in “Ezra Pound’s Poetic Mirror and the ‘China Cantos’: The Healing of the West”, argues that of all non-Asian figures in twentieth-century American literature, Ezra Pound (1885-1972) had the most overt relation to China. Pound made Confucianism an integral part of his project of rethinking the future of the West and committed himself to updating Confucian values to correspond to social changes in the modern world. In this article, Qingjun analyzes Pound’s Canto ⅩⅢ and Cantos LⅢ, LⅤ, and LⅥ from the “China Cantos”, arguing that Pound used poetry as his medium to mirror those Confucian values that he felt were indispensable for the healing of Western civilization and culture. Pound’s use of Chinese characters and concepts in his “China Cantos” therefore acts as an intaglio, mirroring onto the reader the truth that Pound believed: whenever Confucian ideas were put into action, the human experience was the better for it; and if the West could appropriate these ideals and values, its decay could be healed.[4]
Ce Rosenow, in “ ‘High Civilization’: The Role of Noh Drama in Ezra Pound’s Cantos”, offers criticism on the epic poem Cantos by American author Ezra Pound. Ce focuses on the importance of Noh drama in Pound’s poetry, suggesting that Pound viewed Noh as a representation of civilization and art in Japan and used it in the poem to counterbalance his views of the destruction of civilization. Ce also explores references to Noh in Cantos, including Canto Ⅳ and The Pisan Cantos.[5]
3.Biographical Study
Charles Lock, in “Ezra Pound in Athens: Words Spoken to Zissimos Lorenzatos in 1965”, argues that there is some confusion evident in biographies concerning Ezra Pound’s movements at the time of his eightieth birthday, on 30 October 1965. A little-known source from Greece establishes the dates of the week that Pound and Olga Rudge spent in Athens, and fills in some of the details as to whom he met and which sites he was shown. The recollections of Zissimos Lorenzatos (1915-2004) are themselves not always accurate, nor entirely without their own purposes, especially with regard to the role played by George Seferis. Sorting the chronology, the essay considers what it might have meant for Pound to visit Greece for the first time; Lorenzatos’s memories are used to assess the weight of the words spoken by Pound in Greece, words that resonate in Canto CⅩⅥ.[6]
4.Psychoanalytical Criticism
Ian Freckelton, in “Fitness to Stand Trial: Learning from the Ezra Pound Saga”, argues that the famous United States poet and literary figure Ezra Pound (1885-1972) was indicted for treason in the District of Columbia after being extradited from Italy for participation during the Second World War in propaganda broadcasts on behalf of the Italian dictator, Benito Mussolini. With his life at risk, he successfully pleaded that he was unfit to stand trial by reason of mental impairment. A review of the evidence given by the four psychiatrists and of the judge’s charge to the jury casts doubt on the claim that the trial was politically directed to ensure that Pound was not executed. However, later diagnoses from St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, after he was detained, suggest that his principal impairment may have been a personality disorder, perhaps with cyclothymic or bipolar traits, raising the issue of whether such a diagnosis should be sufficient for a finding of unfitness to stand trial.[7]
5.Comparative Study
Robert Zamsky, in “Ezra Pound and Charles Bernstein: Opera, Poetics, and the Fate of Humanism”, offers a comparison of Ezra Pound’s Le Testament and Charles Bernstein’s Shadowtime. A brief background on how Pound and Bernstein turned to opera is given. The allegorical elements of both works, their choice of main characters and the idea of humanism reflected in these works, are discussed. The influence of text-setting in the development of an opera and the function of music in pedagogy per Plato’s teachings are also tackled.[8]
Reed Way Dasenbrock, in “ ‘Paradiso ma non troppo’: The Place of the Lyric Dante in the Late Cantos of Ezra Pound”, analyzes the influence of poet Dante on the poem The Cantos, by Ezra Pound; difference between the works of Dante and Pound; reason behind the difficulty in distinguishing the relevance of the non-epic work of Dante in the epic work of Pound; background on the works of Dante.[9]
6.New Historicism
Andrea Rinaldi, in “Caged verses: Some New Notes on the Politics of The Pisan Cantos”, argues that The Pisan Cantos is the most notorious section of Pound’s masterpiece The Cantos, which was named after the concentration camp of Coltano, near Pisa, where Pound was imprisoned by the US army after the fall of Italian Fascism. There, the exiled American poet was detained in the infamous “gorilla cage” because of his propagandist activity in favour of Mussolini and his regime, for which he was indicted for treason against his own homeland. Despite his inhuman treatment, Pound wrote there some of the most renowned and appreciated verses of the twentieth century, worthy of the first Bollingen Prize as awarded to him in 1949 by the Fellows in American Letters of the Library of Congress. Apart from their undisputable artistic value, praised for decades by critics, these verses also attained an important political function, inspiring generations of fascist intellectuals and activists. This article aims to shed further light on this political relevance by uncovering archival material not yet analysed by scholars.[10]
Barry Ahearn, in “Ezra Pound and Otto Kahn”, argues that Ezra Pound’s obsessive concern with economics and the role of the Jews began in 1932. Yet there is no consensus about the immediate cause of this fateful turn. A look at the relation between Pound and Otto Kahn, however, indicates that Pound’s unhappiness with Kahn must have been a contributing factor. Their relation was at its most intense in 1931 and 1932. During those years, Pound appealed to Kahn to come to the aid of such writers as Louis Zukofsky and George Oppen. Kahn politely deflected these appeals. Pound’s failure to move Kahn convinced him that capitalism could not provide a living wage for the true artist, either in the “free market”, or in the form of funds from a wealthy patron. Therefore, a radical reconstruction of economics was necessary. After 1932, Pound considered Kahn symptomatic of economic injustice and (eventually) racial degeneration.[11]
Jon Schneider, in “Ezra Pound: Foreign Correspondent”, focuses on the contributions of poet and journalist Ezra Pound to the Virginia newspaper Richmond News Leader. It mentions an editorial article “Keynes Brainwashed Electorate with Economic Hogwash” written by Pound which was published by the newspaper on July 14, 1959. The essay represents the first and last publication of Pound for the Virginia newspaper. Pound’s writings for the paper remained unprinted and unknown which were kept by his editor, James J. Kilpatrick. His link with the newspaper dates back to 1941 when he started recording his notorious broadcasts for Radio Rome’s “The American Hour” wherein he attacked and made slanderous criticisms against politicians and other persons or institutions.[12]
Chantal Bizzini, in “The Utopian City in The Cantos of Ezra Pound”, focuses on the process of city building discussed in the book The Cantos, by Ezra Pound. Overview of the various stages of development of a historical city; information on real cities where Pound actually lived, including Venice, Italy; emergence of a utopian city from the images of real and mythical cities.[13]
Massimo Bacigalupo, in “America in Ezra Pound’s Posthumous Cantos”, presents information on the writings of Ezra Pound. “Canti postumi” presents material written by Pound over fifty years, from the Three Cantos of 1917 in the Poetry text, to some “Lines for Olga” that he composed not long before his death in homage to his loyal companion. Therefore, as one reviewer suggested, Canti postumi is a sort of Cantos in a nutshell, since we are confronted with Pound’s various ways of writing, from the more discursive style of circa 1915, to the visionary allusiveness of the 1920s, to the toughening of the 1930s to the breaking down and recovery of the 1940s, to the “atomic” style of the 1950s and the final softening as “Old Ez” approaches death.[14]
7.Aesthetic Study(https://www.daowen.com)
David Barnes, in “Fascist Aesthetics: Ezra Pound’s Cultural Negotiations in 1930s Italy”, argues that although the nature of Ezra Pound’s Fascism has generated substantial critical study, the mechanics of his actual engagement in the cultural projects of the Mussolini regime has received less attention. Using as its starting point lines from Pound’s controversial “Italian Canto” 72—explicit in its praise of the Fascist regime—the essay examines Pound’s correspondence with Italian cultural figures in the 1930s. Focusing on his relationship with the academic librarian Manlio Torquato Dazzi and the celebrated Futurist F. T. Marinetti, the essay demonstrates the blurred distinctions between aesthetic and political spheres in Pound’s engagements with Italian culture in the 1930s. The essay further argues that Pound’s avant-garde aesthetics and neo-platonic philosophy colored the way he engaged with the cultural projects of the regime, making his Fascism a mixture of spirituality, modernism and totalitarianism.[15]
8.Translation Study
Kimberly Fairbrother Canton, in “Opera as Translation: Ezra Pound’s Le Testament”, argues that in Ezra Pound’s Le Testament, the first of his three operatic compositions, the relentless drive for linguistic precision is undermined by an ironic recourse to the imprecise, even mystical, signifying capacity of music and rhythm. Given Pound’s lifelong engagement with translation, it is likely not surprising that his turn to opera was essentially literary in purpose, serving the poet as a means to “translate” the category of poetic language he termed melopoeia (in this case, François Villon’s Le Testament). What is surprising, however—particularly given Pound’s notorious fascist sympathies and his own esoteric poetic style—is Pound’s determination to make this poetry accessible, intellectually and materially. Though Le Testament unapologetically valorizes Villon’s poems for their unique difficulty, the use of opera (and later radio opera) as the means of translation reflects Pound’s desire to make Villon’s poetry “sing” to the masses—calling into question the common conflation of modernist difficulty with modernist elitism.[16]
9.Canonization Study
Rachel Blau Duplessis, in “Elliott Carter’s Ezra Pound”, discusses the musical compositions of American composer Elliott Carter that were based on the poems of poet Ezra Pound, particularly the On Conversing with Paradise. The work, which was premiered by the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group on June 20, 2009, was based on Pound’s The Pisan Cantos”.[17]
【注释】
[1]Hadjiyiannis C. “We Need to Talk About Ezra: Ezra Pound’s Fascist Propaganda, 1935-1945”. Journal of Modern Literature, 2015, 39(1):112-126.
[2]Klankert T. “Strange Relations: Cultural Translation of Noh Theatre in Ezra Pound’s Dance Poems and W. B. Yeats’s At the Hawk’s Well”. Word ＆ Text: A Journal of Literary Studies ＆ Linguistics, 2014, 4(2):98-111.
[3]Pellecchia D. “Ezra Pound and the Politics of Noh Film”. Philological Quarterly, 2013, 92(4):499-516.
[4]Li Q. “Ezra Pound’s Poetic Mirror and the ‘China Cantos’: The Healing of the West”. Southeast Review of Asian Studies, 2008, 30:41-54.
[5]Rosenow C. “‘High Civilization’: The Role of Noh Drama in Ezra Pound’s Cantos”. Papers on Language ＆ Literature, 2012, 48(3):227-244.
[6]Lock C. “Ezra Pound in Athens: Words Spoken to Zissimos Lorenzatos in 1965”. Journal of Modern Literature, 2015, 39(1):72-86.
[7]Freckelton I. “Fitness to Stand Trial: Learning from the Ezra Pound Saga”. Psychiatry, Psychology ＆ Law, 2014, 21(5):625-644.
[8]Zamsky R. “Ezra Pound and Charles Bernstein: Opera, Poetics, and the Fate of Humanism”. Texas Studies in Literature ＆ Language, 2013, 55(1):100-124.
[9]Dasenbrock R W. “‘Paradiso ma non troppo’: The Place of the Lyric Dante in the Late Cantos of Ezra Pound”. Comparative Literature,2005, 57(1):45-60.
[10]Rinaldi A. “Caged Verses: Some New Notes on the Politics of The Pisan Cantos”. Vegueta: Anuario de la Facultad de Geografía e Historia, 2019(19):381-401.
[11]Ahearn B. “Ezra Pound and Otto Kahn”. Journal of Modern Literature, 2009,32(2):118-132.
[12]Schneider J. “Ezra Pound: Foreign Correspondent”. Virginia Quarterly Review, 2008, 84(2):218-237.
[13]Bizzini C. “The Utopian City in The Cantos of Ezra Pound”. Utopian Studies, 2004, 15(1):30-43.
[14]Bacigalupo M. “America in Ezra Pound’s Posthumous Cantos”. Journal of Modern Literature, 2003, 27(1/2):90-98.
[15]Barnes D. “Fascist Aesthetics: Ezra Pound’s Cultural Negotiations in 1930s Italy”. Journal of Modern Literature, 2010, 34(1):19-35.
[16]Canton K F. “Opera as Translation: Ezra Pound’s Le Testament”. University of Toronto Quarterly, 2010, 79(3):941-957.
[17]Duplessis R B. “Elliott Carter’s Ezra Pound”. Chicago Review, 2014, 58(3/4):173-186.