A Strong Song Tows Us

by Richard Burton

  150. Pound ‘chopped out at least one fifth, perhaps one quarter of the first two parts [of ‘Villon’], maybe more than that. He didn’t touch the third part because, he said, “I don’t know what you young fellows are up to nowadays!”’ (MONT, 72). According to Barbara Lesch, Bunting claimed that Pound reduced ‘Villon’ to half its original length. See FORDE, 151.

  151. BB to EP, ‘Last of 1928’, BRBML.

  152. BB to LZ, 9 September 1953, HR.

  153. CP, 99.

  154. BB to Roger Guedalla, 6 May 1969, DUR. There is also a clear echo of Matthew Arnold’s ‘Dover Beach’.

  155. Carpenter, 339.

  156. T. S. Eliot (ed.), Literary Essays of Ezra Pound (London, 1953), 7.

  157. Eliot, 232.

  158. Criterion, 15, 41, July 1936, 714–16. Bunting told Pound that this was ‘a bad review of a bad book’, BB to EP, 28 March 1936, BRBML.

  159. CP, 228.

  160. CP, 149.

  161. BB to HM, 19 October 1926, CHIC.

  162. Leightonian, October 1927, 280. The Leightonian seems to have found Bunting difficult to let go. The July 1928 issue noted that Bunting was ‘supposed to be in Fleet Street, but little is seen or heard of him. This can only be because our “outlook” is in the wrong quarter’ (Leightonian, July 1928, 67).

  163. Howson, 145.

  164. DESC. It was Nina Hamnett who introduced Bunting to the poetry of Ezra Pound in 1919. She lent him ‘Homage to Sextus Propertius’ and ‘Quia Pauper Amavi’. (Interview with Pitkethly and Laughlin, October 1982.)

  165. S. Fiber, The Fitzroy: The Autobiography of a London Tavern (Lewes, 1995), xi.

  166. Fiber, 2–3.

  167. Fiber, 11. She didn’t have far to go. At that time she was living above the Etoile restaurant in Charlotte Street. See D. Hooker, Nina Hamnett: Queen of Bohemia (London, 1986), 173.

  168. Fiber, 18.

  169. BB to Roger Guedalla, 25 November 1974, DUR.

  170. BB to EP, 2 December 1926, BRBML. See also Howson, 77.

  171. BB to LR, 22 April 1923, LSE.

  172. Excerpt from Christabel Dennison’s diary, 18 May 1925, DUR.

  173. CP, 101.

  174. Polyhymnia, the Muse of lyric poetry, was often associated with sacred songs.

  175. CP, 102.

  176. ‘Throb: An Inquiry’, Outlook 59, 1516, 188–9.

  177. ‘Observations on Left-Wing Papers’, SSLT, 44–7.

  178. ‘Alas! The Coster’s End’, Outlook 59, 1521, 328–9.

  179. ‘Squares and Gardens’, Outlook 59, 1527, 542.

  180. ‘Small Holdings’, Outlook 59, 1530, 674.

  181. ‘Crime and Punishment’, Outlook 59, 1531, 718.

  182. For instance ‘Capital punishment: a century of discontinuous debate’ by Carol S. Steiker and Jordan M. Steiker, The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, Vol. 101, No. 3, Northwestern University School of Law, 654.

  183. ‘Readers and Librarians’, Outlook 60, 1537, 87.

  184. ‘Some of Our Conquerors’, Outlook 60, 1538, 126–7 and 1547, 407.

  185. ‘Conducted Tour to Parnassus’, Outlook 60, 1538, 132–3.

  186. ‘Philosophic Criticism’, Outlook 60, 1540, 188.

  187. ‘Marvellous Moscow!’, Outlook 60, 1543, 283–4.

  188. ‘Mr. Lindsay and Mr. Blake’, Outlook 60, 1548, 453–4.

  189. ‘What are we coming to?’, Outlook 60, 1550, 520. Bunting’s joke about Haire’s name is made even lamer by the fact that Norman Haire’s father was Henry Zajac, a Polish Jew. ‘Zajac’ is Polish for ‘hare’ so Haire had already made Bunting’s jibe for him when he changed his name in 1919.

  190. BBNL, 45.

  191. ‘83 Answers … and Some Questions’, Basil Bunting and Jonathan Williams, introduced by Eric Robson, BBC North East, 17 August 1984 and 19 April 1985.

  192. BB to VF, 28 February 1972, DUR.

  193. DESC.

  194. DESC.

  195. DESC.

  196. MAK, 120.

  197. MAK, 120–1.

  198. DESC. The reference to ‘writing music’ is doubtless a transcription error.

  199. BB to LR, 24 September 1927, LSE.

  200. ‘Pianists’, Outlook, 60, 578–9. Bunting missed just three issues, 24 March, 7 April and 5 May 1928.

  201. ‘Medium Calibre’, Outlook, 60, 620.

  202. L. Foreman, Bax: A composer and his times (Woodbridge, 2007), 254. See also Hubert Foss’ glowing review in The Dominant of December 1927, 257–8. Bunting also described Sibelius’ wonderful seventh symphony, premiered in London in 1927, as dull, ‘unwieldy and disappointing’ with no more life than ‘a jelly-fish or slug’ (17 December 1927).

  203. ‘String-players’, Outlook, 60, 648.

  204. ‘Chamber Orchestras’, Outlook, 60, 676. For Bunting’s relationship with Warlock see p. 148–9. ‘Liszt’, Outlook, 26 November 1927; ‘The Third Philharmonic Concert’, Outlook, 17 December 1927; ‘César Franck’, Outlook, 25 February 1928; ‘The London Programme’, Outlook, 7 January 1928. ‘The Opera Question’, 3 December 1927 and passim; ‘Gurrelieder’, 4 February 1928; ‘Too many concerts’, Outlook, 24 December 1927, 845; ‘The influence of the ballet’, Outlook, 14 January 1928, 56. Walton was just twenty-five at the time of this review and attracted Bunting’s ‘serious, if guarded, praise’; ‘Recent fiddlers’, Outlook, 18 February 1928, 209.

  205. ‘Threes and fours’, Outlook, 3 March 1928, 265; ‘Sackbuts and harpsichords’, Outlook, 10 March 1928, 307; ‘Song and folk music’, Outlook, 17 March 1928, 344; ‘Handel mishandled’, Outlook, 31 March 1928, 404.

  206. ‘Symphonies for children’, Outlook, 14 April 1928, 472; ‘Musical stimulants’, Outlook, 21 April 1928, 508–9; ‘Criticism and music’, Outlook, 28 April 1928, 526–7; ‘Committing musical archeology, Outlook, 12 May 1928, 594–5; ‘The whole man’, Outlook, 19 May 1928, 636–6.

  207. B. Smith (ed.), The Collected Letters of Peter Warlock, Volume iv 1922–30 (Woodbridge, 2005), 113.

  208. Smith, 196.

  209. Percy Scholes, the music critic of the Observer, had referred to Fellowes’ ‘discovery’ in the Radio Times, prompting Warlock to write an (unpublished) letter to the magazine. In a letter to Scholes of 14 June 1925 Warlock repeated his claim that it was Richard Terry rather than Fellowes who had discovered Byrd’s masterpiece. Something of the flavour of Warlock’s relationship with Scholes is captured by the closing paragraph of this letter: ‘Permit me to suggest that, abandoning the pretence that you are in any way qualified to pass judgment on music, you would be much better employed in playing tennis than reporting concerts at any time, and that you would be still better employed in buggering yourself with a pair of exceptionally well-greased bellows’ (Smith, 130–1).

  210. PAID, 130.

  211. DESC.

  212. DESC.

  213. N. Pernicone, Carlo Tresca: Portrait of a Rebel (Oakland, 2010), 246–7. Margaret de Silver was also friendly with Trotsky.

  214. T. Page (ed.), The Diaries of Dawn Powell 1931–1965 (South Royalton, 1995), 75. Unkind given that she owed de Silver $800 at the time, more than she owed any other individual (82).

  215. DESC.

  216. PAID, 46–7. If Bunting was suggesting Margaret de Silver he was also confusing J. 216. PAID, 46–7. If Bunting was suggesting Margaret de Silver he was also confusing J. J. Adams with Tresca, and London with New York.

  217. DESC.

  218. DESC.

  219. BBNL, 35.

  220. PAID.

  221. DESC.

  222. CP, 103.

  223. P. Quartermain, ‘Take Oil/and Hum: Niedecker/Bunting’ in E. Willis (ed.), Radical Vernacular: Lorine Niedecker and the poetics of place (Iowa City, 2008), 282.

  224. Judges 15:15–16, King James Bible (Cambridge).

  225. CP, 103.

  226. CP, 104.

  227. SSLT, 6.

  228. BB to James Leippert, 30 October 1932, CHIC. In 1965 he told the Newcastle Evening Chronicle that he
didn’t like the ‘spurious liveliness’ of Berlin (‘Eldon’, Evening Chronicle, 9 June 1965, 6).

  229. DESC. One of Bunting’s least attractive characteristics is this ability to generalise unfavourably. He didn’t get over his prejudice towards Germany; he wrote to Peter Russell, editor of Nine, in May 1950 that ‘I’ve loathed the Germans for so many years that I approach anything of theirs with hostility … ’ (BB to Peter Russell, 18 May 1950, SUNY). He didn’t like Spaniards much either: ‘I like them better than Germans, but they are a cruel people, the Spaniards. One gets tired of their cruelty, one gets tired of the neglect of comfort, of the horrible food the Spaniards find good enough for themselves even when they’re rich enough to afford very decent food’(DESC). He ‘detested’ Arabs (BB to DP, 14 April 1949, LILLY) and he had a problem with America’s Midwest, nowhere more explicit than in a letter to Karl Drerup in 1938: ‘disgusting Middle West – America in excelsis – all the worst traits at their worst … The middle class [of Los Angeles] comes from the Middle West, and is as beastly as the Middle Westerner can be … [their] truculent hatred of all foreigners, self-complacency, and bad manners, and contempt of anything that isn’t a money-success, is very hard to put up with. They are a disgusting lot’ (BB to KD, 27 August 1938, DUR). We might recall his rant about ‘southerners’ at Leighton Park School.

  230. M. de Rachewiltz, A. D. Moody and J. Moody (eds) Ezra Pound to his Parents: Letters 1895–1929 (Oxford, 2010), 671.

  231. BB to EP, ‘Last of 1928’, BRBML. The tragedy has never been explained.

  232. de Rachewiltz, Moody and Moody, 683.

  233. Marian Bunting to Roger Guedalla, 25 September 1968, DUR. Marian recalled in 1970 that Bunting was still being financed by Margaret de Silver when they met in Venice (Marian Bunting to Roger Guedalla, 20 November 1970, DUR). Otto Theis told Pound in January 1930 that Margaret de Silver was ‘thumbs down on any further aid’ to Bunting. He wrote that he would try to help Bunting to find work if he returned to London but added that his ‘work is rather too highly individualised for ordinary journalism. If the Outlook hadn’t died he would by now have established himself as a provocative and original writer on music. Damned good stuff he used to do’ (Otto Theis to EP, 7 January 1930, BRBML). Bunting repaid the compliment by telling Pound that Theis appeared to be ‘completely booze-sodden and useless now’ (BB to EP, 22 May 1930, BRBML).

  234. Marian Bunting to Roger Guedalla, 7 March 1969, DUR.

  235. BB to C. H. Rickword, 26 April 1929, BRBML. C. H. Rickword was not the brother of the pioneering communist and poet, Edgell Rickword, but his cousin. Edgell Rickword’s Rimbaud: the boy and the poet had been published in 1924. A hasty postscript to this letter asks ‘How’s London? In particular, you, Edgell & Bertram?’ Bertram Higgins, the Australian Modernist poet who spent much of the 1920s in London working as a book reviewer, was to feature entertainingly in the correspondence a couple of years later between Bunting and Harriet Monroe regarding Bunting’s ‘British’ edition of Poetry.

  236. C. H. Rickword to BB, 30 April 1929, BRBML.

  237. BB to C. H. Rickword, 3 May 1929, BRBML.

  238. Rickword to BB, 6 May 1929, BRBML.

  239. BB to Louise Morgan (Theis), 11 April 1929, SUNY.

  240. Reading, February 1982, Riverside Studios, London.

  241. CP, 105.

  242. FORDE, 87.

  243. CP, 107.

  244. CP, 108.

  245. FORDE, 92.

  246. B. Mackay, ‘Basil Bunting, Mentor’, DUR.

  247. BB to Louise Morgan, 11 April 1929, SUNY.

  248. Lot 77 of Poetical Manuscripts and Portriats of Poets, the Roy Davids Collection, auctioned by Bonhams in London in April 2013.

  249. BB to Louise Morgan, 18 October 1929, SUNY.

  250. BB to Louise Morgan, 4 January 1930, SUNY.

  251. BB to Louise Morgan, 6 May 1930, SUNY.

  252. BB to EP, 17 June 1930, BRBML.

  253. Marian Bunting to Roger Guedalla, 18 December 1968, DUR.

  254. Marian Bunting to Roger Guedalla, 25 December 1968, DUR.

  255. BB to LZ, 11 July 1930, HR.

  256. C. Bernstein (ed.), Louis Zukofsky Selected Poems (New York, 2006), 154.

  257. Bernstein, xiii.

  258. Bernstein, 102.

  259. Bernstein, xvii.

  260. Bernstein, 41–2.

  261. Eliot, 273.

  262. Bernstein, 75.

  263. Bernstein, 104.

  264. Bernstein, xviii. This seems to have been a notion that was in the zeitgeist. Count Dionys in D. H. Lawrence’s novella, The Ladybird, delivers a lengthy lecture on the darkness of the sun.

  265. MAK, 152. Bunting also noted (153) that Zukofsky was ‘more completely a city poet’ than any other poet he could think of.

  266. Bernstein, 121.

  267. Bernstein, 50.

  268. Bernstein, xix.

  269. BB to EP, 28 July 1935, BRBML.

  270. MT.

  271. Interview with McAllister and Figgis, 10 November 1984, published by Keele University, 1995. For an excellent comparison of Bunting and Zukofsky’s poetry see P. Quartermain, ‘Parataxis in Basil Bunting and Louis Zukofsky’, SSLT, 54–70.

  272. DESC.

  273. J. Parisi and S. Young (eds), Dear Editor: A History of Poetry in Letters (New York, 2002), 289–90.

  274. BB to EP, undated but 1930, BRBML.

  275. Marian Bunting to Roger Guedalla, 25 September 1968, DUR.

  276. BB to WCW, 7 October 1930, BRBML.

  277. BB to EP, 27 October 1930, BRBML.

  278. B. Ahearn (ed.), The Correspondence of William Carlos Williams and Louis Zukofsky (Middletown, 2003), 77.

  279. FORDE, 28. He also told Forde that ‘the New Jersey State Police guarded the tunnel into New York so that the Feds could not get the bootleg liquor for themselves!’ (V. Forde, ‘Background for Letters of Basil Bunting and a Remembrance of My Visits with him, March 1982’, DUR).

  280. Contempo, 5 February 1932.

  281. Marian Bunting to Roger Guedalla, 18 December 1968, DUR.

  282. This quotation from the seventeenth-century French philosopher Jean de La Bruyère can be translated as: ‘The same justice of spirit that makes us write good things makes us stop and suspect that they are not good enough to merit praise.’

  283. These are the titles Bunting gave the poems in Complete Poems. These odes had different titles in Redimiculum Matellarum.

  284. ‘Here check we our career/Long works I greatly fear.’

  285. Poetry 38, no. 3, June 1931, 160–2.

  286. Pound, Cantos, 431–2.

  287. BB to Louise Morgan, 6 May 1930, SUNY.

  288. DESC.

  289. FORDE, 32.

  290. EP to HM, 11 November 1931, CHIC.

  291. Marian Bunting to Helen Groves, 11 September 1968, DUR.

  292. BB to DP, 14 September 1932, LILLY. The ‘Balilla’ was the Opera Nazionale Balilla, an Italian Fascist youth organization.

  293. Marian Bunting to Roger Guedalla, 25 September 1968, DUR.

  294. CP, 67. The reference to Antonietta indicates that Bunting was recalling an earlier visit to Italy. Nearly 50 years later Bunting still remembered Antonietta. William Corbett recalled that during a visit in 1975, ‘late on the night after his reading of Briggflatts at Harvard, Basil told us of swimming to a grotto with a young girl he once loved in Italy. Perhaps forty years ago. He paused to ask, “I hope I’m not speaking too roughly.” He wasn’t, and the gentle regard in which he held us, his listeners, and the girl in his memory has remained with me’ (CONJ, 186).

  295. Pound, Cantos, 473.

  296. W. B. Yeats, A Vision (London, 1937), 3.

  297. CP, 37–8. Bunting added a note: ‘The great man need not be identified but will, I believe, be recognized by those who knew him’ (CP, 225).

  298. Yeats, Vision, 3–4.

  299. BB to James Leippert, 30 October 1932, CHIC.

  300. BB to James Leippert, 30 October
1932, CHIC.

  301. Interview with Pitkethly and Laughlin, October 1982.

  302. A. Wade, The Letters of W. B. Yeats (London, 1954), 759.

  303. ‘Yeats Recollected’, Agenda, 12 (Summer 1974), 37.

  304. Agenda, 12, 41.

  305. Agenda, 12, 37.

  306. Reading in 1980 in London.

  307. Agenda, 12, 37.

  308. R. Foster, W. B. Yeats: A Life, Volume 2, The Arch-Poet (Oxford, 2003), 400.

  309. DESC.

  310. Agenda, 12, 42. The goat story is best told by Nathalie Blondel in her biography of Butts:

  The final straw came at the end of the summer [1921] when Mary Butts and Cecil Maitland witnessed an attempt at copulation set up by Crowley between the ‘Body of Babylon [Leah Hirsig] and the Virgin He-goat.’ In the event the goat refused to co-operate. However, according to Crowley’s biographer, ‘immediately afterwards, the Beast had cut the goat’s throat and the blood spurted over Leah’s bare back. In an aside, she asked Mary, “what shall I do now?” And Mary replied, “I’d have a bath if I were you”’ (N. Blondel, Mary Butts: Scenes from the life (New York, 1998), 105–6).

  311. Agenda, 12, 41.

  312. FORDE, 31.

  313. The names Jack and John are, of course, interchangeable in many households but in the Yeats family they are essential in distinguishing between different artists a generation apart.

  314. Agenda, 12, 42.

  315. Agenda, 12, 38.

  316. BB to William Cookson, 18 April 1974, BRBML.

  317. Agenda, 12, 41–2.

  318. Agenda, 12, 43–4.

  319. See, for instance, R. Burton, The Spiring Treadmill and the Preposterous Pig: The Accommodation of Science in the Occult, Political and Poetic Development of W. B. Yeats, 1888–1904 (University of London, PhD thesis, 1984).

  320. Agenda, 12, 44–5.

  321. See for instance A. J. Gregor, The Ideology of Fascism (London, 1969), 23.

  322. S. U. Larsen et al., Who were the Fascists?: Social roots of European Fascism (Bergen, 1980), 52–5.

  323. Quoted in T. G. Otte, The Foreign Office Mind: The Making of British Foreign Policy 1865–1914 (Cambridge, 2011), 328.