Early Writings

by Ezra Pound

  TENZONE

  This poem first appeared in Poetry in April 1913, in a series titled “Contemporania,” which also included “The Garden,” “Dance Figure,” “Pax Saturni,” “A Pact,” and the first version of “In a Station of the Metro.” It was reprinted in Lustra (1916).

  1 Tenzone: Italian for debate or dialogue.

  2 centaur: Mythological beast with the head, body, and arms of a man and the body and legs of a horse. In “The Serious Artist” (1913), Pound wrote that “poetry is a centaur. The thinking word arranging, clarifying faculty must move and leap with the energizing sentiment, musical faculties. It is precisely the difficulty of this amphibious existence that keeps down the census record of good poets” (LE, 52).

  THE GARDEN

  Part of the “Contemporania” series in Poetry, April 1913, reprinted in Lustra (1916). Richard Aldington parodied the poem; the first line was in turn reused by Pound in “1915: February.” Aldington begins, “Like an armful of greasy engineer’s-cotton/Flung by a typhoon against a broken crate of ducks’ eggs/She stands by the rail of the Old Bailey dock” (Egoist, January 15, 1914).

  1 En robe de parade: From the opening of Albert Samain’s Au Jardin de l ‘Infante (1893): “Mon ame est un infante en robe de parade.”

  1915: FEBRUARY

  Written in 1915 during the war, the poem appeared for the first time in 2003 in Pound, Poems and Translations, edited by Richard Sieburth (2003), 1176-77. Offsetting the realistic depiction of war is myth, as the narrator places both the “smeared” engineer and the artist on the margin as “outlaws.”

  1 Grettir: “Grettis Saga,” an Icelandic outlaw saga from about 1320 about Grettir the Strong, who kills a man at fourteen and is banished for three years to Norway where he does good deeds. On his return, he battles the ghost of Glam the Shepherd, who ravages the countryside terrorizing people. But Grettir is again outlawed for accidentally causing a fire that kills the son of a chieftain. He is himself killed by bounty hunters and the ghosts of those he has earlier murdered.

  2 Skarpheddin: Variously Skarphedinn or Skarp-Hedin, the oldest son of Njáil in “Njáls Saga” (also known as “The Story of Burnt Njál”), an epic Icelandic prose narrative from about 1289. The poem tells of a multigenerational feud in Iceland about A.D. 950 to 1015. At its core is the tragedy of the farmer and sage Njál, who with his family is burned alive in his home by a confederacy of enemies. Graphic violence and magic accompany the tragedy.

  3 Grendel: The demon fiend who haunts the countryside in Beowulf, at one point snatching thirty men from Herot, the mead hall of Hrothgar, the king of Danes. Beowulf arrives with fellow Geats to help, and engages Grendel in a bloody battle in which he wrenches away Grendel’s arm, proudly hanging it from the rafter of Herot. Grendel’s mother comes to seek revenge and Beowulf battles her underwater.

  4 dies irae: Latin, “day of wrath;” opening words of the first verse of a medieval Latin hymn sung at Requiem masses.

  COMMISSION

  Published first in the “Contemporania” series in Poetry, April 1913, reprinted in Lustra, first edition (1916), but omitted from the trade edition published the following month because the publisher, Elkin Mathews, objected. The indebtedness and echo of Whitman is apparent.

  A PACT

  Another work from the “Contemporania” series in Poetry, April 1913; reprinted in Lustra (1916). In the first published version of the poem, Pound had “truce” for “pact” in line 1.

  1 Walt Whitman: Whitman (1819-1892), American bardic poet, author of Leaves of Grass. See Pound’s essay, “What I Feel about Walt Whitman” (1909), where, after criticizing the poet, he writes, “The vital part of my message, taken from the sap and fibre of America, is the same as his.” Pound also refers to Whitman as his “spiritual father.” In Patria Mia, Pound wrote that Whitman “was not an artist but a reflex, the first honest reflex, in an age of papier-maché letters” (24).

  FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS

  Originally printed in Poetry, November 1913; reprinted in Lustra 1916.

  1 Santa Maria Novella: A Dominican convent in Florence.

  A SONG OF THE DEGREES

  Originally sections III-V in a series of seven poems published in Poetry, November 1913, under the title of “Xenia,” Latin for “a gift to friends.” Derived from a collection of mottoes with the same title by Martial, the Roman poet; reprinted in Lustra (1916). Aldington parodied Pound’s poem, beginning, “Rest me with mushrooms, / For I think the steak is evil.”

  1 A Song of the Degrees: Psalms 120-34 are subtitled “A Song of Degrees.”

  ITÉ

  Published first in Poetry III (November 1913); reprinted in Lustra (1916).

  1 Ité: Latin for “go.”

  2 Sophoclean light: Pound told Harriet Monroe, editor of Poetry, in January 1915, that he wished for “a bit more Sophoclean severity” to counteract the current preference for “looseness, lack of rhythmical construction and intensity” (SL, 50).

  LIU CH’E

  First published in Pound’s Imagist anthology, Des Imagistes (1914) and reprinted in Lustra (1916), the poem may have derived from H. A. Giles, A History of Chinese Literature (1901). Giles begins his version withThe sound of rustling silk is stilled,

  With the dust the marble courtyard filled,

  No footfalls echo on the floor[.]

  1 Liu Ch’e: Also Wu-ti (157-87 B.C.E.), author of the original. In 140 B.C.E., he became the sixth emperor of the Han Dynasty.

  THE COMING OF WAR: ACTÆON

  Published in Poetry, March 1915; reprinted in Lustra (1916). In book III of the Metamorphosis, Ovid tells how Actæon was changed into a stag by the goddess Artemis (Diana) and torn to pieces by his own hounds because he had seen her bathing. Pound also incorporates the story in Canto IV and mentions Actæon in Canto LX.

  1 Lethe: River over which dead souls pass to Hades. Also the river of forgetfulness.

  2 greaves!: Armor to cover the shins.

  IN A STATION OF THE METRO

  There are two versions of the poem, which differ in spacing and punctuation. The first version appeared in Poetry, April 1913, as part of the “Contemporania” series. The second version appears in Lustra (1916). Pound provides an account of the composition of the poem in “How I Began” (1913) and in his essay “Vorticism,” reprinted in Gaudier-Brzeska (1916). He writes, in part, that “in a poem of this sort one is trying to record the precise instant when a thing outward and objective transforms itself, or darts into a thing inward and subjective” (GB, 89). On the importance of the spacing of the rhythmic units in the early printings of the poem—in Poetry and the New Freewoman (August 1913)—see SL, 17. The poem first appeared in its revised form in Lustra (1916). Aldington’s parody of the work reads:

  THE ENCOUNTER

  Originally poem IX of “Zena,” in Smart Set for December 1913; reprinted in Lustra (1916).

  L’ART, 1910

  Originally in BLAST (I, June 1914); reprinted in Lustra (1916).

  ANCIENT MUSIC

  First published in BLAST (II, July 1915); reprinted in the first American edition of Lustra (1917). The reference is to the essayist and scholar William P. Ker (1855-1923), who, according to Pound, “put an end to much babble about folk song by showing us Summer is ycummen in [is] written beneath the Latin words of the first known example of a canon” (Poetry, January 1914).

  PROVINCIA DESERTA

  Published originally in Poetry (V, March 1915) and reprinted in Lustra (1916); the title refers to C. M. Doughty’s Travels in Arabia Deserta (1888). The place-names in the poem are sites Pound visited during his walking tour through southern France in the summer of 1912. Rochecouart, Chalais, Montagnac, and Hautefort are all associated with Bertran de Born. Mareuil was the home of the troubadour Arnaut de Mareuil; Ribyrac, the home of Arnaut Daniel. Chalus is where Richard Coeur de Lion was killed. Excideuil was the birthplace of the troubadour Giraut de Borneil.

  VILLANELLE: THE PSYCHOLOGICAL HOUR

  Ap
peared first in Poetry (VII, December 1915); reprinted in Lustra (1916). A villanelle is a sixteenth-century French form composed of an uneven number (usually five) of tercets rhyming aba, with the final quatrain rhyming abaa. The first and third lines of the opening tercet are repeated alternately as the third lines of the succeeding tercets and together as the final couplet of the quatrain. The form was originally used for pastoral songs. The best-known villanelle in English is Dylan Thomas’s “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” (1952).

  NEAR PERIGORD

  Published in Poetry in December 1915 and then Lustra (1916). Pound’s notes to the poem accompany its appearance in Poetry, along with a translation of Bertran de Born’s “Dompna puois de mi no’us cal,” a work that long intrigued Pound. Pound glosses this poem in his epigraph to “Na Audiart” and in The Spirit of Romance. The poem by Bertran sees the poet seeking consolation for being rejected by his lady Maente of Montaignace, by constructing an ideal Lady composed of the qualities of the outstanding women of Provence. In his Poetry note, Pound wrote that of the “possibility of a political intrigue behind the apparent love poem we have no evidence save that offered by my own observation of the geography of Perigord and Limoges” (Poetry, December 1915, 145-46). Perigord is the Provençal town of Périgueux, the center of the counts of Périgord.

  In the poem Pound imagines that Bertran de Born, enemy of the Count of Périgord and his brother-in-law Tairiran, who holds the castle of Montaignac, addresses a song (the “Dompna puois”) to Maent, chatelaine of Montaignac. In this song, Bertran says he will make a “borrowed lady” from the finest qualities of all the region’s women. A series of question then fashions Pound’s poem, such as whether or not Bertran was in love with Maent. Answers remain open as Pound imagines a discussion between Arnaut Daniel and Richard Coeur de Lion, followed by a love scene on the banks of the Auvézère river, which runs near Bertran’s castle. What is the nature of Bertran’s intrigues? That remains unanswered in Pound’s work, which explores the link between love and politics, showing how Bertran used poetry to subvert the power of his enemies through praise of the women he admired.

  1 A Perigord... ab malh: The opening lines of a poem by Bertran de Born, which Pound translates in The Spirit of Romance as “At Perigord near to the wall,/ Aye, within a mace throw of it” (SR, 45).

  2 Cino: Pound’s adopted persona in the poem may be suggested by Cino da Pistoia (cf. “Cino”), grouped by Dante with Bertran de Born and other poets in De Vulgari Eloquentia, book II.

  3 Uc St. Circ: Uc de Saint Circ, a Provençal troubadour and possibly biographer of Bertran de Born. Pound cites him in The Spirit of Romance (SR, 41).

  4 En: “Lord” or “Sir” in Provençal.

  5 canzone: Bertran’s “Dompna Soissenbuda” (“Borrowed Lady”), which Pound proceeds to summarize.

  6 Maent: The Lady Maent of Montaignac, whom Bertran addresses in his poem.

  7 Montfort: The Lady Elis (or Alice) of Monfort, sister of Maent.

  8 Bel Miral: “Fair Mirror,” an unidentified lady.

  9 Tairiran: Maent’s husband, Guillem Talairan.

  10 Altafort: Bertran de Born’s castle. In French, “Hautefort.”

  11 Dante: Dante set Bertran with the “Sowers of Discord” in the Ninth Circle of Hell for causing Prince Henry to rebel against his brother Richard Coeur de Lion and their father, King Henry II (Inferno, XXVIII).

  12 “counterpass”: Dante’s “contrapasso” (Inferno, XXVIII, 1.142), glossed by Pound as “the laws of eternal justice” (SR, 127). Bertran’s punishment, a severed head, is matched to his supposed crime.

  13 Foix: In the foothills of the Pyrenees, at the junction of the rivers Arget and Ariège.

  14 “Et albirar ab lor bordon”: Pound translates this as “And sing not all they have in mind” in a song translated from “the sardonic Count of Foix” (LE, 100-101).

  15 heaumes: Helmets or crests.

  16 Aubeterre: East of Hautefort.

  17 Ventadour: Ventadorn northeast of Hautefort, the home of Lady Maria Maent’s sister.

  18 trobar clus with Daniel: Intricate verse form concealing hermetic meaning of Provençal poetry used often by Arnaut Daniel.

  19 dies: Richard was hit by an arrow in the shoulder while attacking Chalus and died of the wound on April 6, 1199.

  20 life’s counterpart: From Dante’s Inferno, XXVIII, II. 118-23, 139-42.

  21 Ed eran: Pound translates these lines from Dante as “and they we two in one and one in two” in The Spirit of Romance (SR, 45).

  22 Auvezere: River near Hautefort.

  23 day’s eyes: Daisies.

  24 émail: Enamel.

  L’HOMME MOYEN SENSUEL

  First appeared in the Little Review (IV, September 1917); reprinted in Pavannes and Divisions (1918). The title, “The Average Sensual Man,” originated with Matthew Arnold in his essay “George Sand,” in Mixed Essays (1879).

  1 “I hate a dumpy woman”: Byron, Don Juan I, lxi.

  2 infant tick... Atlantic: Ellery Sedgwick (1872-1960), editor of The Atlantic from 1908 to 1938.

  3 Comstock’s self: Antony Comstock (1844-1915), founder of the Society for the Suppression of Vice.

  4 A novelist, a publisher and a preacher: In 1913, President Wilson appointed novelist Thomas Nelson Page and publisher Walter Hinges Page as ambassadors to Italy and Great Britain. The preacher was Henry Van Dyke, a Presbyterian minister and popular author, appointed minister to the Netherlands and Luxembourg from 1913 to 1917.

  5 Mabie ... Woodberry: Magazine editors and critics Hamilton Mabie, Lyman Abbott, and George Woodberry.

  6 Hiram Maxim: Pound may be conflating Sir Hiram Maxim, inventor of the machine gun, or his son, the inventor of the silencer, with the critic Hudson Maxim, author of The Science of Poetry and the Philosophy of Language (1910).

  7 pantosocracy: “Equal rule of all,” and the name of the unrealized utopian community planned on the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania. Originated by Robert Southey and S. T. Coleridge.

  8 Dr. Parkhurst: Reformer and Presbyterian minister, Charles Henry Parkhurst, president of the Society for the Prevention of Crime in New York.

  9 “Prolific Noyes”: Alfred Noyes (1880-1958), who by 1915 had published more than sixteen volumes of poetry.

  10 Gilder ... De mortuis verum”: Richard W. Gilder (1844- 1909), poet and editor of The Century from 1881 until his death. De mortuis verum: “the dead speak truthfully.”

  11 “Message to Garcia”: A popular inspirational essay of 1899 by Elbert Hubbert recounting the heroism of an American lieutenant during the Spanish-American War. Mosher: Thomas Bird Mosher (1852-1933), publisher and editor of the Bibelot, known for publishing pirated books. He refused to publish Pound’s A Lume Spento.

  12 De Gourmont: Rémy de Gourmont (1858-1915), French author admired by Pound and one of the founders of the Mercure de France. In the New Age for July 26, 1917, Pound quoted Gourmont on the decline of contemporary language: “Fifty grunts and as many representative signs will serve all needful communication.” In his essay on Gourmont, Pound writes that he was “an artist of the nude. He was an intelligence almost more than an artist,” concerned only with “the permanent human elements.” Gourmont, he adds, “arouses the sense of the imagination, preparing the mind for receptiveness” (LE, 340, 345). Pound’s translation of Gourmont’s “Physique de l’amour; essai sur l’instinct sexuel” (1903) appeared as “The Natural Philosophy of Love” in 1922.

  13 Rodyheaver’s: Homer Rodeheaver (1880-1955), evangelist. Beginning in 1913, he made several recordings of revival hymns and temperance songs.

  HOMAGE TO SEXTUS PROPERTIUS

  First appeared as “Poems from Propertius Series” in Poetry (XIII, March 1919) and subsequently in six parts in The New Age (June-August 1919). Published in book form in Quia Pauper Amavi (1919). Its first separate printing was in 1934. Pound referred to the poem as a “major persona,” or mask, praising and criticizing the first-century Roman poet Pro
pertius, employing irony, mockery, and humor, which Pound defined as logopœia, “the dance of the intellect among words,” emphasizing the “ironical play” of language. Logopœia, he added “does not translate; though the attitude of mind it expresses may pass through a paraphrase” (LE, 25). What he seeks in his translation is “the original author’s state of mind” (LE, 25).

  Homage to Sextus Propertius is alternately satiric and political, drawing parallels between’s Pound’s critique of Britain in 1917 and Propertius’s critique of the Roman Empire. In uncovering and emphasizing the irony in Propertius, Pound frees him from Victorian obfuscation and sentimentalizing. But when four sections of the poem appeared in Poetry in March 1919, it aroused the anger of the classicist W. G. Hale, who attacked its numerous errors, declaring Pound ignorant of Latin. Pound replied that he had not done a translation of Propertius but attempted to restore vitality to the poet’s work (see SL, 149, 229-30). The translation is “creative” and closer to an adaptation. Eliot, in the introduction to Ezra Pound, Selected Poems (1928), called it “a paraphrase, or still more truly ... a persona” (SPo, 19).

  Pound explained that he used the term “homage” as Debussy did in “Homage à Rameau,” a piece of music recalling the manner of Rameau. In 1922, Hardy told Pound that the poem would be clearer retitled as “Propertius Soliloquizes.” Later editions added “1917” after the title. Pound based his work on a series of poems from the extant four books of the Roman elegist Sextus Aurelius Propertius (born c. 500 B.C.E.).