by Lewis Hyde
The Letters of Ezra Pound, 1907–1941.
Edited by D. D. Paige.
New York: Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1950.
Literary Essays of Ezra Pound. Edited by T. S. Eliot. New York: New Directions, 1964.
_____________Make It New. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1935.
_________Pavannes and Divagations. New York: New Directions, 1958.
________Personae. New York: New Directions, 1971.
_________Selected Prose 1909–1965.
Edited by William Cookson. New York: New Directions, 1973.
________Social Credit: An Impact. London: Peter Russell, 1951.
(First published in 1935.) Rosellini, Ippolito. I Monumenti Dell′ Egitto e Della Nubia. Vol. 3, Monumenti del Culto. Pisa: 1844.
Shell, Marc. The Economy of Literature. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978.
Shephard, Esther. “Possible Sources of Some of Whitman’s Ideas and Symbols in ‘Hermes Mercurius Trismegistus’ and Other Works.” Modern Language Quarterly 14, no. 1 (March 1953): 60–81.
Snyder, Gary. The Real Work: Interviews and Talks 1964–1979. New York: New Directions, 1980.
Whitman, Walt. The Correspondence. 6 vols. Edited by Edwin Haviland Miller. New York: New York University Press, 1961–1977.
___________Daybooks and Notebooks. 3 vols. (paginated consecutively). Edited by William White. New York: New York University Press, 1978.
________Leaves of Grass. Brooklyn, N.Y.: 1855.
__________Leaves of Grass. “Comprehensive Reader’s Edition.” Edited by Harold W. Blodgett and Sculley Bradley. New York: New York University Press, 1965.
Prose Works 1892. 2 vols. (paginated consecutively). Edited by Floyd Stovall. New York: New York University Press, 1963.
__________The Uncollected Poetry and Prose. 2 vols. Edited by Emory Holloway. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1921.
Acknowledgments
It is now time to try to free some of the spirits who labored with me in the creation of The Gift.
The idea for this book took shape during a month spent at the Center for Intercultural Documentation in Cuernavaca, Mexico. I am grateful to Ivan Illich both for the example of his work and for the fertile atmosphere I found at CIDOC.
A creative writing fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts gave me the freedom to begin my project, and a fellowship for independent study and research from the National Endowment for the Humanities supported a year’s work in the library. The Millay Colony for the Arts provided a month of meals, shelter, and butterfly hunting without which my chapter on Whitman might never have taken shape.
The endowments and colonies such as Millay are truly gift institutions. I am grateful.
Both friends and strangers have given their support throughout the years, sending me newspaper clippings, talking all morning over coffee, convincing me of my errors, and offering typing, solace, diversion, and hope. I particularly wish to thank Robert Bly, Abby Freedman, Donald Hall, Patricia Hampl, Robert Hass, Dan Hobbing, Richard Hobby, Miriam Levine, Julia Markus, Jim Moore, Sherman Paul, Kris Rosenthal, Wendy Salinger, Marshall Sahlins, Millard Schumaker, Ron Sharp, Marc Shell, Daveda Tenenbaum, and Larry Wolken.
Bill Clark helped me gain access to valuable research materials. Charlotte Sheedy gave advice when it came time to enter the marketplace. Jonathan Galassi edited the book with intelligence and care; his confidence in the unpredictable rhythms of creative labor often exceeded my own.
Linda Bamber responded to the book in manuscript, chapter by chapter. An ideal reader, she managed to combine a stranger’s cold eye with a sister’s unconditional support. If there are moments of clarity in The Gift, many of them are hers, not mine.
To Patsy Vigderman I owe a debt that I hope to repay, slowly, for years to come.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:
Actac Ltd.: Excerpt from a letter by Harold Pinter originally published in The Kenyon Review (Summer 1981). Reprinted by kind permission of Actac Ltd.
City Lights Books: Excerpt from an essay by Allen Ginsberg in City Lights Anthology. Copyright © 1974 by Allen Ginsberg and City Lights Books. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
Concordia Publishing House: Excerpt from Luther’s Works, Volume 9,© 1960 Concordia Publishing House. Used by permission.
E. P. Dutton, Inc.: Excerpts from Argonauts of the Western Pacific by Bronislaw Malinowski, 1922 edition. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
Grey Fox Press: Excerpt from Composed on the Tongue by Allen Ginsberg. Copyright © 1980 by Allen Ginsberg. Reprinted by permission of Grey Fox Press.
Ernest Hemingway: Excerpt from “Homage to Ezra” by Ernest Hemingway. First published in This Quarter, 1925. Reprinted by permission of the Estate of Ernest Hemingway.
Houghton Library, Harvard University: An etching by Rossollini. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Library.
Indiana University Press: Excerpt from Meister Eckhart: Mystic and Philosopher, translated by Reiner Schurmann. Published by Indiana University Press, 1978.
Ironwood: Excerpt from “A Separate Notebook: The Mirrored Gallery” by Czeslaw Milosz, translated by Robert Hass and Renata Gorczynski. Reprinted from Ironwood (Special Milosz Issue).
Liveright Publishing Corporation: Excerpt from Jefferson and/or Mussolini by Ezra Pound. Copyright 1935, 1936 by Ezra Pound.
Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc. and A. P. Watt Ltd., London: Excerpt from A Vision by William Butler Yeats. Copyright 1937 by William Butler Yeats; renewed 1965 by Bertha Georgie Yeats and Anne Butler Yeats.
MCA, Inc.: Excerpt from “I Wonder” by Bill Broonzy © copyright 1947 by MCA MUSIC, a division of MCA Inc., New York, N.Y. Copyright renewed. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
New Directions Publishing Corp.: Excerpts from works by Ezra Pound. Personae. Copyright 1926 by Ezra Pound. The Cantos of Ezra Pound. Copyright 1934, 1937, 1940, 1948, © 1956, 1959, 1962, 1963, 1966, 1968 by Ezra Pound. Copyright © 1972 by the Estate of Ezra Pound. The ABC of Reading. Copyright 1934 by Ezra Pound. Guide to Kulchur. Copyright © 1970 by Ezra Pound. Pavannes & Divagations. Copyright © 1958 by Ezra Pound. Selected Prose 1909-1965. Copyright © 1973 by the Estate of Ezra Pound. Selected Letters of Ezra Pound 1907-1941. Copyright 1950 by Ezra Pound. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
Poetry: Excerpt from “Ezra Pound” by T. S. Eliot. First published in Poetry. Copyright 1946 by The Modern Poetry Association. Reprinted by permission of the Editor of Poetry.
The Shoe String Press Inc.: “Marriage gifts among the Tikopia” from Primitive Polynesian Economy by Raymond Firth, 1965, p. 323. Reprinted from Archon Books, Hamden, Conn.
Sixties Press: Excerpt from Twenty Poems of Pablo Neruda, translated by Robert Bly. Copyright © 1967 by Robert Bly. Reprinted by permission of Robert Bly.
Southern Illinois University Press: “The Ungrateful Son” is reprinted from The Grimms’ German Folk Tales, translated by Francis P. Magoun, Jr., and Alexander H. Krappe. Copyright © 1960 by Southern Illinois University Press. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
TRO: Excerpt from “The Bourgeois Blues”; words and music by Huddie Ledbetter. Edited with new material by Alan Lomax. TRO—© Copyright 1959 Folkways Music Publishers, Inc. Used by permission.
The University of Chicago Press: Excerpt reprinted from The Idea of Usury by Benjamin N. Nelson by permission of the publisher. Copyright © 1949, 1969 by Benjamin N. Nelson. All rights reserved.
The University of Washington Press: Excerpt from a lecture by Theodore Roethke as published in On the Poet and His Craft, edited by Ralph J. Mills. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
Copyright © 1979, 1980, 1983, 2006, 2007 by Lewis Hyde
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
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Portions of this work were previously published in The Kenyon Review, Corona, and Working Papers.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Hyde, Lewis, 1945–.
The gift.
1. Gifts. 2. Creation (Literary, artistic, etc.). 3. Economic anthropology.
4. Art and society. I. Title
GN449.6.H93 1983b
306′. 32
82-49088
eISBN: 978-0-307-56760-4
www.vintagebooks.com
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