‘There is no alternative’: Donald Davie, Ezra Pound: Poet as Sculptor (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1965), p. 161.
Hugh Kenner: see ‘Inventing Confucius’, The Pound Era (Faber & Faber, 1972) pp. 445–59. On the apparent contradiction see pp. 454–8. Kenner could see why the Comprehensive Mirror is anti-Taoist while the other Confucian books are not, so it is puzzling that he should not credit Pound with the same insight. Possibly it was because he did not quite fasten on the key to the paradox: that for good government the tao, the process of things, must be enacted by the rectified human will (Dante’s directio voluntatis). Civilization means harmony with nature, but its root, in Pound’s reading of Confucius, is volition (cf. GK 279). One might say that to Make It New requires Tao + Kung—tao alone won’t do the job.
Two books for governors: (2) cantos 62–71
This section is indebted to: The Works of John Adams, ed. Charles Francis Adams, 10 vols. (Boston, 1850–6)—Pound’s set is now in the Rare Book Room of the Library of the University of Toledo, Ohio; Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, ed. L. H. Butterfield, 4 vols. (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1961); The Adams–Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail and John Adams, ed. Lester J. Cappon (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1959, 1988); EP, ‘The Jefferson–Adams Letters as a Shrine and a Monument’ (1937, 1960), S Pr 117–28; Catherine Drinker Bowen, John Adams and the American Revolution (Boston: Little, Brown, 1950); Frederick K. Sanders, John Adams Speaking (Orono, Me.: University of Maine Press, 1975); Carroll F. Terrell, A Companion to the Cantos of Ezra Pound, [vol. i] (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), pp. 259–360; Kay Davis, chap. 5, ‘Fugue’, Fugue and Fresco: Structures in Pound’s Cantos (Orono, Me.: National Poetry Foundation, 1984); Philip Furia, chap. VIII, ‘The Adams Papers’, Pound’s Cantos Declassified (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1984); Jean-Michel Rabaté, chap. 3, ‘Ezra Pound and Pecuchet: The Law of Quotation’, Language, Sexuality and Ideology in Ezra Pound’s Cantos (Macmillan, 1986); A. D. Moody, ‘Composition in the Adams Cantos’, Ezra Pound and America, ed. Jacqueline Kaye (Macmillan, 1992); David Ten Eyck, Introduction and chapters 1–3, Ezra Pound’s Adams Cantos (Bloomsbury, 2012).
284 If we are a nation: EP, ‘The Jefferson–Adams Letters as a Shrine and a Monument’ (1937–8), S Pr 118. The paragraph in full: ‘If we are a nation, we must have a national mind. Frobenius escaped both the fiddling term “culture” and rigid “Kultur” by recourse to Greek, he used “Paideuma” with a meaning that is necessary to almost all serious discussion of such subjects as that now under discussion [i.e. American civilization]. His “Paideuma” means the mental formation, the inherited habits of thought, the conditionings, aptitudes of a given race or time.’
285 ‘nonsensical hurly-burly’: Davie, Ezra Pound: Poet as Sculptor 161.
288 ‘a society’: the reading of the early Faber editions—the current ‘of society’ is an error.
‘mowed all the grass’: Adams wrote ‘mowed’, but all editions give ‘moved’, due to a misreading of EP’s notebook transcription where the ‘w’ is unclear.
289 ‘before Lexington’: see Cantos 32/157, 33/161.
291 depreciation of the paper money: for details of the depreciation and the immense profits made see Charles A. Beard, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States (New York: Macmillan, 1913, 1935), pp. 32–8.
293 THEMIS: see The Adams–Jefferson Letters 378–80. See also Jane Ellen Harrison, Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion (1912, 1927; reprinted Merlin Press, 1963).
294 ‘cruel war’: Jefferson’s draft of ‘A Declaration [of Independence]’, in his Autobiography, in Thomas Jefferson: Writings (New York: Library of America, 1984), p. 22.
295 ‘re usury’: EP, ‘Foreword’, S Pr 6.
Cleanthes’ hymn: for EP’s translation see Cantos [256]. For a full version see Oxford Book of Greek Verse in Translation (1938), no. 483.
296 ‘governments are instituted’: Jefferson’s draft of ‘A Declaration [of Independence]’, Thomas Jefferson: Writings 19.
6. ALIEN IN AMERICA
A good deal of the detail in this chapter comes from Charles Norman’s interviews with persons who saw Pound while he was in the United States between 20 April and 17 June 1939, as used in Norman’s Ezra Pound (1960). Further details have been added to his account by Stock, Wilhelm, Carpenter, and Conover. See also Maurice Hungiville, ‘Ezra Pound, Educator: Two Uncollected Pound Letters’, American Literature XLIV.3 (Nov. 1972) 462–9.
297 ‘dug up for shelters’: DP to EP, 19 Apr. 1939 (Lilly).
‘Dear Ezz’: WL to EP, 16 Apr. 1939, EP/WL 209–10.
‘There should be no war/’: EP to Ronald Duncan, 8 Apr. [1939] (HRC). EP had written to Senator Borah on 13 Jan. 1939, ‘What every decent man in Europe wants is a sane Europe and no war west of the Vistula’ (EP/WB 68)—Chamberlain and Baldwin were saying much the same thing at the time (see Paul N. Hehn, A Low Dishonest Decade: The Great Powers, Eastern Europe, and the Economic Origins of World War II, 1930–41 (New York: Continuum, 2002), p. 25).
‘the last whimper’: EP, ‘The “Criterion” Passes’, British Union Quarterly III.2 (Apr./June 1939) 67.
‘to try to be American’: EP to Hubert Creekmore, Mar. 1939 (Beinecke)—printed with deletions in L (1950) and L (1951).
298 ‘manifestly honorific’: EP to Tinkham, 16 Jan. [1938], EP/GT 148–9—most of this paragraph is drawn from this letter, and from the editor’s note 1. The names of those EP nominated are from Ahearn’s editorial note (s.v. ‘a body’) in EP/EEC 122.
‘Mr Tinkham seems to think’: G. C. Hamelin, Secretary to Mr Tinkham, to EP, 19 Apr. 1938, EP/GT 152.
‘educated or drowned’: EP to FMF, 31 Jan. 1939, L (1951) 416.
‘scurrilous attacks’: Henry Seidel Canby to EP, 14 Mar. 1938, as in editor’s note, EP/EEC 147.
‘a working, model’: FMF to EP, 17 Feb. [1938], EP/FMF 153–4.
‘Does Olivet use’…‘Will he get’: EP to FMF, [21 Feb. 1938], EP/FMF 155.
‘I do not approve’…‘have already a press’: FMF to EP, 16 Mar. 1938, EP/FMF 156.
299 ‘they start’: EP to FMF, 18 Mar. [1938], EP/FMF 158.
‘small Western college’: EP to Kitasono, 14 May 1938, EP&J 64.
‘a revival’: EP to John Crowe Ransom, 15 Oct. 1938, L (1950) 319.
Introductory Text Book: first published following EP, ‘Are Universities Valid?’, NEW XIV.19 (16 Feb. 1939) 281–2; then privately printed as a single folded sheet broadside, 500 copies for distribution gratis by the author; subsequently reprinted in several periodicals in 1939; added as an appendix to the new edition of GK in 1952. (For other reprintings see Gallup: 1983, 433.)
‘Fundamentals’: EP, ‘Are Universities Valid?’, NEW XIV.19 (16 Feb. 1939) 282.
‘utter treachery’: comment accompanying copies of Introductory Text Book sent to new President of Hamilton and to the Alumni Committee, as enclosed with EP to Ibbotson, 25 Mar. 1939, EP/Ibb 93, 96.
300 ‘the pivot’: EP, ‘Communications [following ‘Introductory Text Book’]: I. Money’, Townsman II.6 (Apr. 1939), 12.
‘possible to restore’: EP to John Slocum, 6 Aug. 1939 (Beinecke).
‘Saw again Mongiardino’: Carlo Rupnik to EP, 4 Mar. 1939 (Beinecke).
The Globe: the relevant correspondence with James Taylor Dunn, the editor, is at Hamilton College. The Globe (1937–8) was published from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, as ‘an intimate journal of travel . romance . adventure . world interest…a truly international magazine’ (Gallup: 1983, 315).
‘The “Ente Provinciale”’: Rupnik to EP, 17 Mar. 1939 (Beinecke). The ‘Ente’ would be the Provincial Tourist Office.
‘un’ottima cabine’: Rupnik to EP, 21 Mar. 1939 (Beinecke).
His cheque for $299: the cheque, endorsed as cashed, is with other used cheques from EP’s account no. 252 with the J
enkintown Bank & Trust Co. (Brunnenburg). A further cheque for $10 was paid to the ‘ITALIA Soc. An.di Nav. —NY’ on 6 June. Possibly in preparation for his trip to America, EP had withdrawn three amounts of $100 from the account on 21, 27, and 31 March; and he withdrew a further $150 from the account while in America.
‘descriptive booklet’: EP to Rupnik, [before 1 Apr. 1939] (Beinecke).
‘an important collaboration’: Rupnik to EP, 17 July [1939] (Beinecke).
‘He iz feelink’: EP to DP, 12 Apr. 1939 (Lilly).
301 ‘magnificent quarters’: EP to DP, 13 Apr. (Lilly).
‘Aboard in surroundings’: EP to HLP, 13 Apr. 1939 (Beinecke).
‘very calm trip’: EP to HLP, 19 Apr. 1939 (Beinecke).
‘give economic’: Munson’s wire, and details of the interview, are in Norman: 1960, 357–8; Wilhelm: 1994, 146–7; Carpenter; 1988, 558–9.
‘literature…is now’: Edmund Gilligan, New York Sun, 26 May 1939, as given by Redman: 1991, 190.
‘Gargling anti-semitism’: Cummings to James Sibley Watson Jr, [30 May 1939], EP/EEC 139.
302 ‘10 . 11 . 12’: EP to DP, 22 Apr. 1939 (Lilly). Further details in this paragraph from EP to DP, 26 or 27 Apr. 1939 (Lilly).
warned him against trusting England: according to Stock: 1970, 363.
‘found Pound wandering’: Paul Mariani, William Carlos Williams: A New World Naked (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1981), p. 428.
‘I can hardly bear’: WCW to JL, 5 Apr. 1939, William Carlos Williams and James Laughlin: Selected Letters, ed. Hugh Witemeyer (New York: W. W. Norton, 1989), p. 45.
‘very mild and depressed’: WCW’s impression, according to FMF in a letter to Allen Tate, 3 May 1939, The Letters of Ford Madox Ford, ed. Richard M. Ludwig (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1965), p. 319.
‘somewhat incoherent’: Mariani, William Carlos Williams 428.
‘Bill Wms here’: EP to HLP, [1 May 1939] (Beinecke).
‘fed me’: EP to OR, 3 May 1939 (Beinecke/OR).
‘a very poor show’: EP, 83/536. Copy of pass to Senate seen at Brunnenburg.
his ‘catch’: EP to DP, 10 May 1939 (Lilly).
‘Bridges, Lodge’: EP to HLP, 10 May [1939] (Beinecke).
303 ‘Pound seemed normal’: Henry Wallace to Charles Norman, in Norman: 1960, 360.
a long article: EP, ‘Ezra Pound on Gold, War, and National Money’, Capitol Daily V.89 (9 May 1939) [1], 4–5.
Munson recalled: Norman: 1960, 364–5.
207 pounds: EP to DP, [c.18 Apr. 1939] (Lilly).
‘fatigue that prevented’: EP to Cummings, 13 Nov. [1946], EP/EEC 200.
‘gallant combatant’: EP, ‘Ford Madox (Hueffer) Ford; Obit’, (Aug. 1939), S Pr 431, 433.
304 ‘suggested to the Harvards’: JL to EP, 23 Apr. 1939, EP/JL 104.
‘the steep rows’: Norman: 1960, 365–6.
‘he spent 2½ hours’: EP to OR, 17 May [1939] (Beinecke/OR).
His voice on the recording: for details see Gallup: 1983, 443 (E5a).
‘would have been magnificent’: John Holmes, as recorded by Norman: 1960, 366.
‘academic world orful’: EP to DP, 16 May 1939 (Lilly).
305 ‘across miles of Mass’: EP to HLP, [13 June 1939] (Beinecke).
‘letters of introduction’: Tinkham to EP, 15 May 1939, EP/GT 170.
Corker remembered Pound: Charles E. Corker to Daniel Pearlman, 25 Aug. 1980, printed as ‘Appendix B: The Meeting between the Poet and the Senator’, in EP/WB [79]–83.
‘I can still feel his hand’: EP, ‘On Resuming’ (29 Jan. 1942), ‘Ezra Pound Speaking’: Radio Speeches of World War II, p. 25. See also 84/537.
306 a foreign columnist: details from EP to Ibbotson, 4 Nov. [1940], EP/Ibb 108, and Redman: 1991, 189–90.
should be impeached: see EP to Tinkham, 20 Jan. [1939], EP/GT 165.
Mary Barnard: this paragraph and the next based on her own account in Assault on Mount Helicon: A Literary Memoir (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), pp. 158–67.
‘real old-fashioned’: Mrs Serly, as in Norman;1960, 362.
‘exchange of frankness’: Louis Zukofsky in Charles Norman, The Case of Ezra Pound (New York: The Bodley Press, 1948), pp. 55–7; reprinted in Charles Norman, The Case of Ezra Pound (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1968), pp. 87–8.
307 Eastman’s first impression: Max Eastman, ‘Memorandum on Dining with Ezra Pound and E. E. Cummings’, dated 24 May 1939, in EP/EEC 138.
‘What is Money For?’: reprinted in S Pr 260–72—citations from pp. 268–71.
308 ‘desperate attempt’: EP to DP, [9 June 1939] (Lilly).
‘keen on J. Adams’: EP to DP, [9 June 1939] (Lilly).
‘one of the serious characters’: EP to Douglas Fox, [? 1939], as cited by Norman: 1960, 372.
an ‘essential book’: WCW, ‘Penny Wise, Pound Foolish’, New Republic XCIX (28 June 1939) 229–30, as in Homberger: 1972, 336–7. Homberger omits WCW’s accusing EP of ‘thirty years’ anti-Semitism’—see Witemeyer’s note in EP/WCW 203.
Pound had ‘spread himself’: WCW to JL, 7 June 1939, William Carlos Williams and James Laughlin: Selected Letters, p. 49.
309 ‘useful’: EP to DP, 10 and 16 May 1939 (Lilly).
‘Hamilton at least to try’…‘with increasing irritation’ etc.: EP to Ibbotson, 17 Jan. [1939], EP/Ibb 87–8.
‘95%’: comment accompanying copies of Introductory Text Book sent to new President of Hamilton and to the Alumni Committee, as enclosed with EP to Ibbotson, 25 Mar. 1939, EP/Ibb 94, 96. See also Ezra Pound. A Selected Catalog from the Ezra Pound Collection at Hamilton College, compiled with notes by Cameron McWhirter and Randall L. Ericson (Clinton, NY: Hamilton College Library), p. 29—a facsimile of the copy sent to William Bristol, Jr, a member of the Alumni Committee.
‘Ez axd’: EP to Dr A. P. Saunders, 30 May 1939 (Hamilton).
‘such an agile’: Olivia Saunders (Mrs Robert W. Wood, Jr), to Charles Norman, as in Norman: 1960, 368.
‘down from 207’: EP to OR, [? 10 June 1939] (Beinecke/OR).
310 ‘if war came’: Mrs Edward Root to Charles Norman, as in Norman: 1960, 367.
‘Dupont (gun family)’: EP to DP, 8 June 1939 (Lilly). Cp. ‘Du Pont powder works to lunch’, EP to HLP, 8 June 1939 (Beinecke).
‘econ. & hist dept.’: EP to DP, 8 and 9 June 1939 (Lilly).
‘finally had to interpose’: Mrs Edward Root to Charles Norman, as in Norman: 1960, 368.
the Alumni Luncheon: primary source for this paragraph is Norman: 1960, 369–71.
a gentleman’s agreement: see William Hoffa, ‘“Ezra Pound: A Celebration”, Hamilton College, April 25–26, 1980’, Pai 9.3 (1980) 576.
‘About bust the commencement’: EP to OR, 13 June 1939 (Beinecke/OR).
‘Hamilton ought’: EP to President Cowley, 28 June [1939], reproduced in facsimile in Ezra Pound: A Selected Catalog from the Ezra Pound Collection at Hamilton College, 26–7.
311 ‘I won’t attempt’: President Cowley to EP, 11 July 1939, Ezra Pound: A Selected Catalog from the Ezra Pound Collection at Hamilton College, 28.
‘git over the idea’: EP to Cowley, 25 July [1939] (Hamilton).
‘Ezra Pound’: the citation is as given in Norman: 1960, 369.
APPENDIX C. OUTLINE OF CAVALCANTI. A SUNG DRAMEDY IN 3 ACTS
321 ‘dramedy’: ‘T. J. V.’, ‘Dramedy’, Athenaeum XCIV. 4688 (5 Mar. 1920) 315.
‘wother hell’: EP to AB, 24 Oct. 1933 (Lilly).
Decameron: see the ninth tale of the sixth day. Cited here in the translation by Guido Waldman in The World’s Classics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 401–3.
323 ‘tour de force’: EP to AB, 20 Aug. 1932 (Lilly).
‘thought melody came up’…‘meagre’: EP to AB, 20 Aug. 1932 (Lilly).
‘dull’: as echoed by EP in letter to AB, 7 June 1933, cited CPMEP(1) 78. Margaret Fisher reports, however, that in the Bolzano 2000 performance this aria was sung
impressively and to ‘mesmerizing’ effect.
remarked in The Spirit of Romance: SR 116, 177, 127.
background to Sordello’s song: see EP, ‘Troubadours—Their Sorts and Conditions’, LE 97; GK 107–8; 6/22–3, 29/141–2, 36/180. Dante placed Cunizza in the Third Heaven (under Venus)—see Paradiso IX, 25ff. See also Peter Makin, Provence and Pound (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), pp. 79–82 and chap. 9 (pp. 186–214) especially pp. 204–5.
‘formed [Sordello’s] genius’: Makin, Provence and Pound, p. 204.
‘Background’: EP, as given in CPMEP(2) vii.
324 historical record: see Niccolo Machiavelli, History of Florence and of the Affairs of Italy, Bk. I, chap. 4.
‘Guido turns to an intellectual sympathy’: EP, ‘Introduction’ to Sonnets and Ballate of Guido Cavalcanti (1912), T 20, Anderson 14–15.
the cypher: see Margaret Fisher, EPRO 182–91 and 286–90 (n. 136). An issue for critics has been how seriously Pound took suggestions that in Cavalcanti’s (and Dante’s) poetry there was enciphered the ‘secret language’ of a mystic cult. In his ‘Cavalcanti’ essay he accepted as a useful ‘irritant’, while declaring them not applicable to ‘Donna mi prega’, ‘Luigi Valli’s theories re secret conspiracies, mystic brotherhoods, widely distributed (and uniform) cipher in “all” or some poems of the period, etc.’ (MIN 375–6—see also 382–6, LE 173, 179–82). In a letter to OR, 6 Feb. 1928, he was, however, simply dismissive: ‘a big book on Linguaggio secreto di Dante which explains a lot of things re/Guido that don’t need it and…don’t explain any of the ones that might stand a bit of xplaining’—‘fails to fit the facts’ (Lilly). In GK he wrote that ‘Valli’s wanderings in search of a secret language…are, at mildest estimate, unconvincing’ (294—see also 221). Re the critics on the issue, see Colin McDowell, ‘Literalists of the Imagination: Pound, Occultism and the Critics’, Pai 28.2–3 (1999) 56ff. McDowell argues that Pound was ‘questioning the whole idea of using codes for writing or interpreting poetry’ (57).
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