Ezra Pound: Poet: Volume III: The Tragic Years 1939-1972 - A. David Moody (2015)
NOTES
title page—‘I do not think’: Henry A. Wallace to Charles Norman, [? c.1959], Norman: 1960, 360.
PREFACE
xiii ‘Bracton’: 109/771.
xiv ‘His profound and intimate knowledge’: LZ in Norman, The Case of Ezra Pound (New York: The Bodley Press, 1948), 55.
‘go to that work’: Robert Creeley, ‘A Letter to the Editor of Goad’ (1951-2), A Quick Graph: Collected Notes & Essays (San Francisco: Four Seasons Foundation, 1970), 93.
xv They are political: see EP to JT, 17 June 1957, EP/JT 44.
‘answering intensity’: Robert Duncan, The H.D. Book (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), 183.
‘awesome and rather shattering’: Robert Lowell to JL, 31 Aug. 1966, Letters of Robert Lowell, ed. Saskia Hamilton (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005), 473.
‘Partial, impartial’: Geoffrey Hill, ‘On Reading: Burke on Empire, Liberty, and Reform’, A Treatise of Civil Power (Thame: Clutag Press, 2005).
The first part, 1939-1945, is much indebted to Part II of Tim Redman’s Ezra Pound and Italian Fascism, and to Niccolò Zapponi’s L’Italia di Ezra Pound (Roma: Bulzoni Editore, 1978).
1. BETWEEN PARADISE & PROPAGANDA, 1939-40
3 ‘He come bak’: EP to OR, 27 June 1939 (Beinecke/OR).
‘He has put her off’: OR to EP, [? 4 July 1939—first page of letter missing] (Beinecke/OR).
Pennsylvania Statute on Adoption: in folder with EP letters to Joseph H. Cochran, May 1939 (Beinecke).
door locked: see Conover, 138.
playing tennis with Mary: EP to DP, 27 Sept. 1939 (Lilly).
4 ‘A clap of Thunder’: HLP to EP, 3 Aug. 1939, EP/Parents xxi.
‘Dear Son’: IWP to EP, 31 July 1939, EP/Parents xxi.
‘Dear Dad’: EP to HLP, [? 8 Aug. 1939] (Beinecke). This paragraph draws on MdR’s Discretions 188 and 310.
‘from some place high up’: MdR, Discretions 119. This paragraph draws on Discretions 115-19, and 279-82.
‘in a stronger position’: quoted in Farrell 317. Information in this paragraph drawn from Farrell’s Mussolini 315-17.
Hitler…secretly briefing: see Shirer 483ff. and 496ff.
5 ‘Mebbe been a bit callous’: EP to DP, 26 Aug. 1939 (Lilly).
‘sacrificing’: DP to EP, 8 Aug. 1939 (Lilly).
‘Since its writing’: from EP MS note on endpaper of a copy of ABCE now in HRC.
6 ‘29 Cantos AND’: EP to Ronald Duncan, 4 Aug. 1939 (HRC). See also EP to Jorian Jenks on same date, ‘I am boiling away on a book on money,’ in EPEC 224. Though this book on money was abandoned it is likely that EP drew on the drafts for contributions to The Japan Times in 1940, for a contribution to Rassegna Monetaria in April 1940 (‘Economia ortologica’), and for his wartime pamphlets—Carta da visita (1942), L’America, Roosevelt e le cause della guerra presente (1944), Oro e lavoro (1944), Introduzione alla natura economica degli S.U.A. (1944).
‘trying to pull’: EP to DP, 29 Aug. 1939 (Lilly).
‘My economic work’: EP to Douglas McPherson, 3 Nov. 1939, L (1951) 424.
‘The only American book’: EP to Douglas McPherson, 2 Sept. 1939, L (1951) 421.
‘The most lucid’: EP to DP, 22 Aug, 1939 (Lilly).
‘the younger generation’: EP to Douglas McPherson, 3 Nov. 1939, L (1951) 424.
‘There shd. be about 100’: EP to TSE, 29 or 30 Sept. 1939 (Beinecke).
‘From 72 on’: EP to JL, 24 Feb. 1940, EP/JL 115.
‘a symbol of mankind’s’: SR 127. Cf. EP: Poet I, 120.
7 next to ‘tackle philosophy’: EP to Santayana, 8 Dec. 1939, L (1951) 428. (EP wrote ‘paradiso’, not ‘paradise’ as mistranscribed by Paige.)
‘to see the connection’: EP to TSE, 18 Jan. 1940, L(1951) 433.
‘Teach?’: EP to DP, 27 Dec. 1939 (Lilly), and 74/433.
‘“A relief”’: MdR, Discretions 127-8.
‘All the way home’: MdR, Discretions 127.
Handbook: Dr Albert Schwegler, Handbook of the History of Philosophy, trans. James Hutchison Stirling, 4th edn. (Edinburgh: Edmonston & Douglas, 1872), inscribed ‘H. H. Shakespear’ and ‘EP , 1940’ on front free endpaper, now in HRC.
8 ‘a lot about light’: EP to DP, 3 Jan. 1940 (Lilly).
‘omnia quae sunt’: see 74/429, 83/528.
‘serene heaven’: EP, in a note made in the 1940s, wrote,‘Deve seguire un cielo sereno e filosofico se l’autore persiste’—see I Cantos (Milano: Arnaldo Mondadori, 1985), 1566.
‘civilizations at their MOST’: EP to TSE, 1 Feb. 1940 (Beinecke)—in L (1951) 434.
not a new conviction: re Imagisme see EP: Poet II 9, and SR 93; re the Confucian paideuma see EP: Poet II 74-6; re the intelligence of love see EP: Poet II 108-16, also ‘Terra Italica’, S Pr 54-60; re germinal intelligence see EP: Poet II 72-4 and 139-40.
‘What we really believe’: EP, ‘Statues of Gods’ (1939), S Pr 71.
‘Paganism’: EP, ‘Religio’ (1939), S Pr 70.
9 ‘The religious man’: EP, ‘Deus est Amor’ (1940), S Pr 72. For a fuller statement on ‘the mystery of the grain’ see EP, ‘Sul serio’, Meridiano di Roma V.35 (1 Sept. 1940) [1]-2.
‘semitic infections’: ‘Statues of Gods’ (1939), S Pr 71.
‘usury and mercantilism’: EP, ‘Ecclesia’, Townsman II.8 (Nov. 1939) 4-5.
‘What we believe is EUROPEAN’: EP, ‘European Paideuma’, ed. Massimo Bacigalupo, Pai 30.1-2 (2001) 226-30.
in some of his correspondence: for one example see EP to GT, 2 Nov. 1939, EP/GT 183-5.
‘I don’t think I am ready’: EP to TSE, 1 Feb. 1940, L (1951) 434.
10 ‘Re European belief’: EP to Henry Swabey, 7 Mar. 1940, L (1951) 437-8.
‘what’s use my saying’: EP to Ronald Duncan, 14 Mar. 1940 (HRC)—also L (1951) 438.
‘After half an hour’: EP to Kitasono, 25 Aug. 1940, EP&J 93.
Fengchi Yang: details from ‘Yang as Pound’s Opponent and Collaborator’, Ezra Pound’s Chinese Friends: Stories in Letters, ed. Zhaoming Quian (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 18-19—the letters exchanged by EP and Yang follow on Quian’s, 23-39.
11 ‘the student body’: see EP to Ibbotson, 14 July 1939, EP/Ibb 99-105.
‘a dead loss’: JL to EP, 26 Nov. 1939, EP/JL 107-8.
‘these next years’: JL to EP, 5 Dec. 1939, EP/JL 108-9.
‘when monetary sanity’: JL to EP, 5 Dec. 1939, EP/JL 108-9.
‘could be no connection’, and re anti-Semitism: JL to EP, 5 Dec. 1939, EP/JL, 109-10.
12 ‘fer preventin’: EP to JL, 22 Nov. 1940, EP/JL 122.
‘Until the war’: EP to JL, 13-14 Nov. 1940, EP/JL 119-20.
‘Yr hon[our’s] name’: JL to EP, n.d. [c. Nov.- Dec. 1940], EP/JL 122.
articles in Meridiano di Roma: see the following:- ‘Condutture avvelenate’, IV.19 (14 May 1939) 9—translated (with omissions) by Tim Redman as ‘Poisoned Pipelines’ in Helix 13/14 (Melbourne, 1983) 122-3; ‘Lettere dall’America. Ancora pericolo’, V.1 (7 Jan. 1940) [1]-2; ‘Antifascisti’, V.15 (14 Apr. 1940) [1]; ‘Da far capire agli americani’, V.26 (30 June 1940) [1]-2. See also ‘Paralleli storici’, Libro e Moschetto, Milan, XIV.26 (11 May 1940) 507.
13 ‘the first and oldest’: editorial note, EP&J 148.
a sage medium: see EP, ‘From Rapallo: An Ezra Pound Letter’, EP&J 162.
‘cultural news’: Yasotaro Morri to EP, 15 May 1939, EP&J 78.
his second contribution: EP, ‘Death of Yeats: End of Irish Literary Revival’, EP&J 152-4.
‘prefer to write’: EP to Kitasono and Morri, 28 Oct. 1939, EP&J 79.
‘age-old infamy’: EP, ‘From Rapallo: An Ezra Pound Letter’, EP&J 169—EP gives as an example ‘a few strophes of [Bunting’s] “Morpethshire Farmer”’.
‘With the Hitler interview’: EP, ‘Letter from Rapallo: In War Appear Responsibilities’, EP&J 172.
14 ‘the million dead’: EP&J 174.
‘the present Anglo-Jewish war’: ‘From Rapallo: An Ezra Pound Letter’, EP&J 179.
‘German propaganda stuff’: JL to EP, 26 Nov. 1939, as in Gregory Barnhisel, James Laughlin, New Directions, and the Remaking of Ezra Pound (Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2005), 78. (In EP/JL 108 an anodyne phrase appears in place of ‘Now reverent sir, I hope that you will softpedal that German propaganda stuff’.)
‘The struggle against’: in a note, ‘The Nazi Movement in Germany’, EP had cited from Mein Kampf (1924), ‘Der Kampf gegen das internationale Finanz und Leihkapital ist zum wichtigsten Programmpunkt’, and had translated, ‘War on international finance and LOAN CAPITAL becomes the most weighty etc. in the struggle towards freedom,’ Townsman II.6 (Apr. 1939) 13.
‘Germany is about 90%’: EP to Odon Por, Sept. 1939, in Redman 191.
‘Telescope is totally blind’: EP MS note, n.d. [?1961], (Brunnenburg). See below p. 480.
more or less lucid moments: EP, ‘Gli Ebrei e questa guerra’, Meridiano di Roma V.12 (24 Mar. 1940) [1]-2. Clarity and simplicity come, in line with Pound’s own principle, from being particular and avoiding prejudicial generalization, as in this paragraph in his ‘In War Appear Responsibilities’, Japan Times & Mail (21 and 22 July 1940):
Shortly before his death Robert Mond (brother of the late Alfred, Lord Melchett) sat on a sofa in Rome, which sofa is known to me, and said with hith well known lithf: ‘Napoleon wath a good man. It took uth 20 years to cwuth him. It will not take uth 20 years to cwuth Mutholini.…And the economic war hath commenthed.’ This is a fact. Statement of it does not involve antisemitism. It in no way implicates the 300 just Jews known to me, or three million unknown. But it does prove a state of consciousness in one member of known set of English financiers.
Cf. EP, ‘A Visiting Card’, S Pr 283, and Cantos 78/477.
15 ‘the hecatomb’: EP, ‘Valuta, lavoro e decadenze’, Meridiano di Roma V.27 (7 July 1940) [1]—my translation.
‘re giving a more efficient turn’: Odon Por to EP, 6 Sept. 1939, as in Redman 191.
‘to popularize Italy’: EP to Por, 7 Sept. 1939, as in Redman 192.
‘America’s place is OUT’: details from Redman 193.
He sought clearance: details from Heymann 96.
16 ‘offering advice’: Redman 183-4. Other details in this paragraph from Zapponi 59.
‘Signor Pound’: Luigi Villari, ‘Appunto per il Direttore Generale dei Servizi Propaganda’, 28 Dec. 1939, as in Zapponi 60 (my translation). This paragraph and the next are drawn from Zapponi 60-3.
17 a general notice: in Pound MSS II, Box 20 (Lilly).
‘in the light of your conversation’: Cordell Hull telegram to William Phillips, 15 May 1940, Redman 205. Details following the telegram also from Redman.
There is some evidence: Emily Mitchell Wallace found in the FBI files concerning EP (File 61-719 dated 9 January 1943), a document stating that Herman Moss, who had been US Consul at Genoa, ‘saw POUND in the Spring of 1940 at the time POUND was attempting to obtain passage to the United States. He stated that POUND had the necessary visas and passage data but that reservations on the plane were cancelled for some reason.…As far as [Moss] knows, this was the only reason POUND did not return to the United States at that time.’ I am not aware of any other evidence that EP made a serious effort to return in ‘the Spring of 1940’, and therefore assume that Moss’s recollection was of Pound’s aborted effort to return in October 1940. I am much indebted to Emily Mitchell Wallace for generously sending me a copy of her paper, containing this and much other deeply researched information, and presented to the 23rd Ezra Pound Conference in Rome on 3 July 2009, ‘The Last Diplomatic Train from Rome in 1942: Ezra Pound’s Passport and his Kafkaesque Nostos’.
18 warned by Odon Por and by Olga Rudge: Por to Pound, 9 Aug. 1940, Redman 204; and Conover 139, ‘Olga noted that Ezra’s letter of July 12 [1940] was the first opened by censors’.
bank account frozen: cf. EP’s ‘Sworn Statement’ to the FBI, 7 May 1945:
‘After Italy declared war against the United States, the Italian Government “froze” my safety deposit box and bank accounts in the Banca di Chiavari in Rapallo, and other accounts but I succeeded in having the safety deposit box at Rapallo released by appealing to the Ministry of Popular Culture and by pointing out that it contained bonds bought by my wife and me when we subscribed to the first Littorio Loan, and that the rest of the contents were almost exclusively Italian Government Loans.’—in EP/DP 67.
‘J.T. my last remaining’: EP to Kitasono, 29 Oct. 1940, EP&J 100.
19 ‘thin line of supplies’: EP&J 99.
banks refusing dollar checks: see Por to Pound, 6 Nov. 1940, in Redman 206.
One payment of ¥97: see EP&J 82, 95-9.
journalist’s card: see EP&J 82, 86.
Homer’s pension checks: EP to Camillo Pellizzi, 29 June 1941, ‘he has only had a couple of months of his pension/I think only one month’s/since last June’, in Tim Redman, ‘The Repatriation of Pound, 1939-1942: A View from the Archives’, Pai 8.3 (1979) 450.
‘De F/ asked’: EP to Por, 7 Aug. 1940, as in Redman 204.
‘Waaal, mebbe’: EP to OR, 22 Aug. 1940, as in Conover 140.
2,500 lire: see Redman 208. Redman usefully notes, ‘To give some idea of the value of these figures’, that EP’s ‘rent in 1940 was 500 lire a month’.
‘will be in London’: EP to OR, 28 Aug. 1940, as in Conover 139-40.
‘Londres delenda est’: DP, 17 Aug. 1940, Diary for 1940 (Lilly). A letter to EP of the same date specifies the Bank and government (Lilly).
‘His legitime’: OR to EP, 25 July 1940, as in Conover 139.
‘how Churchill & co.’: DP to EP, 17 Sept. 1940 (Lilly). Further details from DP to EP 21 and 22 Sept. 1940, and from an enclosed cutting from an Italian newspaper.
20 ‘Banzai!’: DP to EP, 28 Sept. 1940 (Lilly).‘back to the soil’: OR to EP, 21 July 1940, as in Conover 139. Cf. EP to Kitasono, 2 Oct. 1940: ‘Am just back from Siena…Mary after two months in Tyrol “gone native” to her mother’s distress, so there is tremendous effort to make her Salonfähig.…/ all after my instructions that she shd/ become Bauernfähig to keep up with the times. At any rate her tennis is improving’ (EP&J 97).
‘shaping nicely’: OR to EP, 29 Aug. 1940, as in Conover 140.
‘pretty, well groomed’, and remainder of paragraph: MdR, Discretions 131-3.
‘seem to remember’: EP to DP, 17 Sept. 1940 (Lilly)—see also EP to DP, 13 Sept. 1940 (Lilly), and MdR, Discretions 131-2.
Three Power Pact: see Shirer 802.
‘for as long as you are gone’: Ricardo degli Uberti to EP, 4 Oct. 1940, translated from the Italian by Redman, in Tim Redman, ‘The Repatriation of Pound, 1939-1942: A View from the Archives’, Pai 8.3 (1979) 449. Other details come from this very helpful article.
‘in Rome’: Ubaldo degli Uberti to EP, 23 Oct. 1940, Redman, ‘Repatriation’, 450.
‘Our last holiday’: MdR, Discretions 136.
21 surface sailings: ‘A status report from the American consul in Genoa…to Ambassador Phillips on June 20, 1940: “With the stoppage of American sailings from the Mediterranean and from Genoa to the United States, the further evacuation of Americans to the United States must now be greatly reduced.”’—Redman, ‘Repatriation’, 452.
‘Sir and dear Colleague’: Graham H. Kemper to Consul of Spain, 9 Oct. 1940 (Beinecke, YCAL MSS 53, box 23, folder 512).
‘all vurry interestin’: EP to HLP, [11 Oct. 1940] (Beinecke).
‘I don’t think I can’: EP to OR, 11 Oct. [1940] (Beinecke/OR).
Mary’s passport: Mary did have a passport issued by the US Consulate in Florence—there may have been difficulty obtaining it (see Conover 142), or else renewing it; but on 30 April 1945 OR wrote to MdR, ‘your passport is No. 675 (April 19, 1941) issued in Firenze’ (Conover 158).
‘legal status and citizenship’: MdR, Discretions 134-5.
‘niente’: EP to OR, 12 Oct. 1940, as in Conover 142.
travellers cheques: the receipt is among EP’s financial papers (Beinecke).
investment bond: Redman writes that the bond had been purchased with his Dial award,‘Repatriation’ 451.
‘Non vado in America’: EP telegram to OR, 13 Oct. 1940 (Beinecke/OR).
‘Thank gawd’: EP to OR, 14 Oct. 1940 (Beinecke/OR).
22 ‘unless necessary’: OR to EP, 14 Oct. 1940 (Beinecke/OR).
‘great excitements’: EP to Kitasono, 29 Oct. 1940, EP&J 100. See also EP to Tinkham, 7 Nov. 1940: ‘I packed up at beginning of Oct. to come home, but in Rome found NO clipper places till Dec. 15’ (EP/GT 213).
a sample script: the extract from the script and the background information all from MdR, ‘Fragments of an Atmosphere’, Agenda Twenty-First Anniversary Ezra Pound Special Issue, 17.3-4 and18.1 (1979-80) 157-70.
2. A DUTIFULLY DISSIDENT EXILE, 1941
23 ‘I will BUST’: EP to Camillo Pellizi, 11 Jan. 1941, as cited in Redman 207. For EP’s relations with Pellizi see Zapponi 135-6, Flory 97-9, and EPEC 278.
by the 21st…in Rome: EP to DP, 21 Jan. 1941 (Lilly).
‘made 2 discs’: EP to OR, 23 Jan. 1941 (Beinecke/OR).
‘when the senator’: EP, ‘Four Steps’ (1958), Agenda 17. 3-4-18.1 (1979/80) 141.‘Chi non vuol combattere’: EP, ‘Dei due latini e di altre cose’, Meridiano di Roma VI.3 (19 Jan. 1941) [12].
‘the only defence’: EP, ‘Freedom de Facto’ (c.1940-1), S Pr 275. See also EP interview, Paris Review 28 (1962) 43-5.
‘well-known American writer’: most details in this paragraph are drawn from Robert A. Corrigan, ‘Ezra Pound and the Italian Ministry for Popular Culture’, Journal of Popular Culture 5.4 (1972) 770-2—his quotations from the Italian officials are from the files of the US Department of Justice. See also Zapponi 62-3.
24 ‘Is it conceivable’: EP to Ibbotson, 4 Nov. [1940], EP/Ibb 108.
25 ‘This is my only way’: EP to Luigi Villari, 1941, as cited Redman 210.
‘Lenin won’: EP, GK 241.
Natalie Barney…presented: see ‘Souvenirs de Nathalie C. Barney’, 13 Nov. 1963, in Les Cahiers de l’Herne. Ezra Pound I (Paris: Editions de l’Herne, 1965), 151.
‘personae now poked’: EP to Ronald Duncan, 31 Mar. 1940, L (1951) 441-2.
to make them think, ‘to induce’: EP’s scribbled notes, [? Dec. 1941], as cited by MdR, ‘Fragments of an Atmosphere’, Agenda 17. 3-4-18.1 (1979/80) 163.
‘what drammer’: EP to Ronald Duncan, 31 Mar. 1940, L (1951) 441.
‘Nothing solemn’: EP to Gabriele Paresce, 9 Nov. 1940, as cited by MdR, ‘Fragments’, Agenda 17. 3-4-18.1 (1979/80) 164.
26 ‘compose scripts’: EP to Adriano Ungaro, 6 Feb. 1941, as cited in Redman 209.
‘Yr. Discorso’: DP to EP, 18 May 1941 (Lilly).
‘I don’t so much write’: EP to JL, 28 June 1941, EP/JL 132.
‘shd be glad to profit’: EP to William Joyce, June 1941, as cited in Carpenter 593.
‘Your methods’: William Joyce to EP, 30 June 1941, as cited in Carpenter 593.
‘New technique’: EP to William Joyce, 18 July 1941 (Beinecke).
‘prima-donnitis’: EP to OR, 19 July 1941, (Beinecke/OR)—cited Conover 144.
‘Otherwise came very clearly’: DP to EP, 11 Oct. 1941 (Lilly). The FCC transcript of ‘This War on Youth’ is dated 6 Nov. 1941 (Radio 16)—what DP heard ‘last night’ was presumably a medium-wave broadcast beamed at Great Britain on the 10th.
‘an explainer’: EP to OR, 19 July 1941 (Beinecke/OR)—cited Conover 144.
27 ‘“Something about ol’ Doc Williams”’: WCW, Autobiography (MacGibbon & Kee, 1968), 316-18; ‘lashed out at’ is from WCW to JL, 3 Sept. 1941, WCW/JL 66. See also Paul Mariani, William Carlos Williams: A New World Naked (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1981), 455-6.
‘I see by a Chicago rag’: EP to Adriano Ungaro, 26 Apr. 1941, as cited in Redman 211.
‘Yr. politics’: JL to EP, 9 Apr. 1941, EP/JL 130.
‘You are pretty much disliked’: JL to EP, n.d., EP/JL 134.
‘New passports’: EP to DP, 3 Apr. 1941 (Lilly).
Passport No. 3151: from State Department Passport File F130-Ezra Pound, cited in H. A. Sieber, The Medical, Legal, Literary and Political Status of Ezra Weston [Loomis] Pound [1885- ] | Selected Facts and Comments (Washington 25, DC: The Library of Congress Legislative Reference Service, April 1958), 52.
‘Political Activities’: Henry H. Balch to US Secretary of State, 4 Apr. 1941, document reproduced in Emily Mitchell Wallace, ‘The Last Diplomatic Train from Rome in 1942: Ezra Pound’s Passport and his Kafkaesque Nostos’, paper presented to the 23rd Ezra Pound Conference in Rome on 3 July 2009.
‘Passport should be limited’: telegram, [Sumner] Welles to American Embassy, Rome, 12 July 1941, document reproduced in Emily Mitchell Wallace, ‘The Last Diplomatic Train from Rome in 1942: Ezra Pound’s Passport and his Kafkaesque Nostos’.
28 went down to Rome from Siena: see MdR, Discretions 145-6.
‘pseudo Americans’: State Department memorandum, J. Wesley Jones to Mr Atherton, 11 Oct. 1941, document reproduced in Emily Mitchell Wallace, ‘The Last Diplomatic Train from Rome in 1942: Ezra Pound’s Passport and his Kafkaesque Nostos’.
‘Jus Italicum’: paragraph drawn from EP, ‘Ius Italicum’, Meridiano di Roma VI.34 (24 Aug. 1941) [1]. For ‘il gran rifiuto’ see Dante, Inferno III.60.
re travel permits: see EP to DP, 10 Sept. 1941, and DP telegram to EP, 12 Sept. 1941 (Lilly).
permission to remain: information from Heymann 112.
29 financial restrictions: information from Redman 218. In Pound’s safe-deposit boxes would have been the certificates for his investments in Italian State bonds: 25,000 lire in ‘Prestito del Littorio’ in 1927; 15,000 lire in ‘Città di Genova Prestito per Opere Publiche’ in 1933; 2,000 lire in ‘PNF Prestito Venticinquennia; 5% “Casa Littorio”’ in 1938. The certificates were never redeemed, and were of course worthless after the war.
restrictions lifted: in a letter to EP dated ‘30 Gen, 1943 XXI’ Luciano de Feo, Capo di Gabinetto di S. E. Il Ministro della Cultura Populare, was ‘pleased to communicate that the Prefettura di Genova has revoked the sequestration of 18 April 1942…of two safe-keeping security boxes located Banco di Chiavari, Rapallo’ (private collection).
officially employed as a script writer: see Zapponi 63.
‘I got up from bed’: EP to Adriano Ungaro, 28 Apr. 1941, as in Redman 211.
30 ‘Looks like he wuz’: EP to DP, 18 May 1941 (Lilly).
‘between 70 and 100’: EP, ‘Sale and Manufacture of War’, recorded 17 Feb. 1942, Radio [39].
The pay: information from EP, ‘Sworn Statement’, [Office of the Counter Intelligence Corps], [Genoa, Italy], 7 May 1945, in EP/DP 61; also Heymann 110.
16,400 lire: EP to DP, Dec. 1941 (Lilly).
‘Pound did not stand out’: Massimo Bacigalupo to Humphrey Carpenter, 24 Nov. 1984, as in Carpenter 586.
James (‘Giacomo’) Strachey Barnes: (1890-1955), see EP/EEC 375-6 for his obituary in The Times.
Princess Troubetzkoi: description from MdR, Discretions 164.
31 ‘Fascists in crisis’: this paragraph and the next drawn from Felice Chilanti, ‘Ezra Pound Among the Seditious in the 1940’s’, Pai 6.2 (1977) 235-50.
‘“I would do it”’, ‘and the dog-damn wop’: 77/470.
‘given himself’: EP, ‘James Joyce: to his memory’, radio talk, early 1941, as in EP/JJ 272.
32 ‘United States heritage’: EP, ‘To Consolidate’, Radio 393-5—Doob dates as 1942, but Beinecke dates as 1941 which on internal evidence is more likely.
letter to William Joyce: EP to William Joyce, 18 July 1941 (Beinecke).
33 accord with Nazi propaganda: Matthew Feldman cites ‘a Reich Press Office directive of 8 Aug. 1941’ which concludes:
Today Jewry again seeks world domination. That British and American plutocrats on the one hand and Bolsheviks on the other appear with apparently distinct political goals is only Jewish camouflage. The Jew strives for world domination in order to rob and plunder the world for his exclusive benefit.…
as in Matthew Feldman, Ezra Pound’s Fascist Propaganda, 1935-45 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 105.
‘the word KIKE’: EP, ‘America was Promises’, 1941, Radio 387.
‘a man can own’: EP, ‘Homesteads’, early 1941, Radio 382.
Guam in exchange: EP, ‘March Arrivals’, 1941, Radio 384.
‘that Italy is carrying ON’: EP, ‘Books and Music’, recorded 26 Oct. 1941, Radio 9.
34 ‘Stage, a room’: EP to Katue Kitasono, 16 Feb. 1941, EP&J 110.
‘Now sun rises’: EP to Katue Kitasono, 12 Mar. 1941, EP&J 111. See also Cantos 800.‘LXXII Erigena’: MS note reproduced in EP, Lettere dalla Sicilia e due frammenti ritrovati a cura di Mary de Rachewiltz (Valverde (Catania): Il Girasole Edizioni,1997), 47.
35 ‘“Peace and abundance”’: 53/268.
other jottings: see EP, ‘Notes for Cantos c.1940-1945’, ed. with notes by Massimo Bacigalupo, Agenda 37.2-3 (1999) 125-43; also Canti postumi 120-37.
‘First Jove’: EP, Canti postumi 132. ‘Robigalia’ = festival of the deity against wheat-rust.
36 ‘Fire causeth not’: EP, I Cantos 1566. Variant version in Canti postumi 136.
‘fer the sake of’: EP to JL, 28 June 1941, EP/JL 132.
‘propagandist scope’: EP to DP, 10 Sept. 1941 (Lilly).
‘The Signora Pellegrina’: Moscardino 3.
37 Pound’s high regard: see MdR, ‘EP/EP: Ezra Pound—Enrico Pea’, Moscardino vii-xiv; also EP, ‘Books and Music’, 26 Oct. 1941, Radio 7-8.
‘real Italian’: EP to Mrs Virgil Jordan, 3 Nov. [1941], as cited Gallup 167.
‘propsed a nedition’: EP to EEC, 6 Nov. [1941], EP/EEC 162, 163. See also EP to WCW, 18 Oct. [1941], EP/WCW 208: ‘am doing a bilingual edtn of the Ta Hio.…five vols of Morrison chinese-dic. spread round on various stands, and the first chapter of the ideograms been zincografato before I left the Eternal City on Wednesday.’
in the wrong order: the blocks of Chinese text were inserted in the sequence 1, 5, 3, 2, 4. The errors would be corrected in the full edition of the Ta S’eu/Dai Gaku published in Rapallo the following year as Confucio Studio Integrale. This would give Legge’s Chinese text set ‘back-to-front’ as a Chinese text should be, that is from the end of the book forward with the columns of characters then reading naturally from top to bottom and from right to left. The ‘Versione italiana di Ezra Pound e di Alberto Luchini’ would occupy the lower part of each page, and have also to be read of course from the back to the front. The book would be handsomely printed by the Scuola Tipografica, possibly thanks to the intervention of Olga Rudge who taught English at the technical school in Rapallo during the war. It is unlikely to have had a wide distribution.
‘digest par excellence of statal philosophy’: EP, ‘Confucio filosofo statale’, Meridiano di Roma VI.19 (11 May 1941) [1]-2. For his account of the basic principle in this and the paragraph following see EP, ‘Studio Integrale’, Meridiano di Roma VI.43 (26 Oct. 1941) 3, and ‘Ta Hio’, Meridiano di Roma VI.46 (16 Nov. 1941) 7; see also EP: Poet II 74-8.
38 ‘Studio Integrale’: EP to MdR, 16 Sept. 1955 (Beinecke).
‘the life and thought of Confucius’: EP, ‘In un mondo di luce ed acqua fluviale si svolgeva la vita ed il pensiero Confuciano’, ‘Ta Hio’, Meridiano di Roma VI.46 (16 Nov. 1941) 7. See also canto 83.
39 ‘Freedom, joyfulness’: MdR, Discretions 141-3. This section mostly from Discretions 141-51.
‘a musical whoop’: EP, ‘Books and Music’, recorded 26 Oct. 1941, Radio 8-9.
The house inside: details from MdR, Discretions 115-16; also from Stella Bowen, Drawn from Life (1940) (Maidstone: George Mann, 1974), 146.
40 ‘The humility’: MdR, ‘EP/EP: Ezra Pound—Enrico Pea’, Moscardino viii.
some seeds: EP to DP, 27 Aug. 1941 (Lilly).
‘planted peanut and soya’: DP, 1941 Diary, entry for 15 Sept. (Lilly).
an article in Meridiano di Roma: EP, ‘Arachidi’, Meridiano di Roma VI.40 (5 Oct. 1941) [1].
41 Felice Chilanti’s account: Felice Chilanti, ‘Ezra Pound Among the Seditious in the 1940’s’, Pai 6.2 (1977) 243.
‘Like Confucius’: EP, ‘Books and Music’, recorded 26 Oct. 1941, Radio 8.
‘I went along with him’: Enrico Pea, ‘Preface’, Moscardino xviii-xix.
42 ‘Your talk via Ranieri’: DP to EP, 6 Sept. 1941 (Lilly).‘poor Kate’: DP to EP, 11 July 1941 (Lilly).
‘It was my material’: EP to DP, 2 Oct. 1941 (Lilly).
‘a lot of old discs’: EP to DP, 27 Nov. 1941 (Lilly).
‘in Parigi’: EP to DP, 23 Nov. 1941 (Lilly).
‘completely converted’: EP to DP, 4 Dec. 1941 (Lilly).
‘our labours are appreciated’: EP to DP, 3 Dec. 1941 (Lilly).
‘“Omar has developed”’: Arthur Moore to DP, 3 Oct. 1941, as excerpted in Imperial Censorship Bermuda report of 14 Nov. 1941 (UK National Archives, ref. KV 2/875-36180).
‘nervous unhappiness’: DP to EP, n.d. (Lilly).
Ezra advised: EP to DP, 30 Nov. 1941 (Lilly).
43 would copy anti-Semitic propaganda: examples from DP to EP, May 1941 (Lilly).
Einsatzgruppen and Final Solution: see Shirer 956ff.
‘looking stern and teutonic’: EP to DP, 3 Dec. 1941 (Lilly).
that the ‘Bolshies’ were beaten: DP to EP, 11 Oct. 1941 (Lilly).
‘the Jews in London’: EP, ‘These Parentheses’, recorded 7 Dec. 1941, Radio 21.
44 ‘retired from the capital’: EP, ‘On Resuming’, recorded 29 Jan. 1942, Radio 23.
a ‘huge lunch’: EP to DP, 20 May 1941 (Lilly). Re Packard’s bullfighting see 82/524.
Packard’s account: in Reynolds and Eleanor Packard, Balcony Empire (Chatto & Windus, 1943), 179—as cited in Carpenter 605.
3. IN A WEB OF CONTRADICTIONS, 1942-3
One section of this chapter draws heavily upon Mary de Rachewiltz’s Discretions. For a serious and important study of Pound’s states of mind during the war see Wendy Stallard Flory, The American Ezra Pound (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), especially chap. 4, ‘The Antisemitism of the Rome Broadcasts’.
Note on Pound’s radio talks
Pound began writing scripts for Rome Radio (EIAR) towards the end of 1940, at first providing scripts and suggestions for its regular speakers. In January 1941 he began recording his own scripts, each one on a separate 78 r.p.m. plastic disc, in batches of 10 to 12 at a time, these to be broadcast (and repeated) at the station’s discretion but notionally at the rate of two or three per week. The talks were addressed to America or to England in the ratio of about two to one, but the same talk might be broadcast to both, on short wave to America and on short and medium wave to England. EP often intended the scripts to be read in a particular sequence, but EIAR did not always observe his arrangement. By his own count he had contributed between 70 and 100 scripts by February 1942, that is, in his first twelve months of broadcasting. Doob, in ‘Ezra Pound Speaking’: Radio Speeches of World War II, [Radio] prints a dozen or so of these.
The US Federal Broadcast Intelligence Service of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) started recording odd broadcasts by Pound in October 1941; instituted regular monitoring and recording in January 1942 after the USA was drawn into the war, and continued up to EP’s final broadcast on 24 July 1943—Mussolini was arrested and the Fascist government of Italy fell shortly after. There had appeared to be a six-month break in the FCC recordings between 26 July 1942 and 18 February 1943, although EP was producing scripts at his usual rate through those months; however, as Friedlander reports, recordings of 42 broadcasts delivered then have recently come to light. Preparations to indict as traitors Pound and others broadcasting over Axis radios were initiated by the US Attorney General’s office in October 1942, but the indictment by a Grand Jury was delayed until 26 July 1943. In all the FCC monitored and recorded 170 broadcasts by Pound, and these were the basis of this first indictment for treason. The original FCC recordings and transcripts are with the Records of the Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service in the National Archives, Washington DC.
In May 1945 the FBI seized the copies of Pound’s radio scripts and the cartons of discs held by the Ministry of Popular Culture, and it was these, not the FCC transcripts, which the Department of Justice relied on when bringing Pound to trial in Washington later that year. (Heymann, Ezra Pound: The Last Rower 350 n. 23)
In the Pound archive at Yale’s Beinecke Library there are well over 500 radio scripts. Pound himself recorded about 300 of these; and wrote the rest for others to broadcast, many of these for anonymous or pseudonymous delivery. Doob notes that these last ‘merely repeat ideas expressed in other speeches’. He prints ‘all the available manuscripts (105) for the broadcasts [by EP] recorded by the FCC’, taking the texts from Pound’s original typescripts; and for the 5 for which no original typescript has been found he used the FCC transcripts. He includes 10 further scripts from those not recorded by the FCC monitors. His dates for the talks are the FCC’s, i.e. the date on which a broadcast was recorded in America.
For Pound’s own account in 1945 see his ‘Sworn Statement’ and ‘Supplements’, [Office of the Counter Intelligence Corps], [Genoa, Italy], 7 and 8 May, 1945, in EP/DP 59-77; a further sworn statement was made to the FBI investigator in Genoa on 8 May, and a copy of this is in Nat. Arch. WO 204/12602-361810 [items 13A and B]. For commentary see: Mary de Rachewiltz, ‘Fragments of an Atmosphere’, Agenda 17.3-4-18.1 (1979/80) 157-70; Richard Reid, ‘Ezra Pound Asking’, Agenda 17.3-4-18.1 (1979/80) 171-86; Geoffrey Hill, ‘Our Word is our Bond’, Agenda 21.1 (1983) 13-49; L. S. C. Bristow, ‘“God, my god, you folks are DUMB!!!”: Pound’s Rome Radio Broadcasts’, in Ezra Pound and America, ed. Jacqueline Kaye (Macmillan, 1992), 18-42); Benjamin Friedlander, ‘Radio Broadcasts’, Ezra Pound in Context, ed. Ira B. Nadel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 115-24.
45 ‘The Italian radio’: from a copy of the FCC transcript, 3 Feb. 1942 (HRC).
while he was off the air: 17 ‘original manuscripts prepared by Pound’ and broadcast between 9 December 1941 and 21 January 1942 were found in the Italian Ministry of Popular Culture by the FBI investigators in 1945. These were relatively brief scripts of 1-2 pages (as against EP’s usual 5-7 pages), and were evidently read or used by someone other than Pound.—Office Memorandum from the Chief of Internal Security to the Chief of Communications & Records, 30 May 1945 (Justice Dept., <www.justice.gov/criminal/foia/records/ezra-pound-p2.pdf> [p. 37].)
‘my speeches’: EP to Cornelio Di Marzio, 28 Dec. 1941, as in Redman 215. For other letters to the same effect see Redman 213-16.
‘that can in any way prejudice’: EP to Adriano Ungaro, 9 Dec. 1941, as in Redman 213.
46 ‘acts against the government’: Thomas Jefferson, Writings of Thomas Jefferson (Washington DC: Library ed., 1903) 8:332, quoted ‘in Appendix to Cramer Case’, as cited in Sieber 8.
He could have played it safe: paragraph paraphrases and quotes from EP, ‘On Resuming’, FCC record dated 29 Jan. 1942, Radio 23-5.
‘if he failed to escape’: Romano Bilenchi, ‘Rapallo, 1941’, trans. with notes and introduction by David Anderson, Pai 8.3 (1979) 439.
Bilenchi’s account: Pai 8.3 (1979) 434-5, 439-40.
47 Carta da visita: first edn., in Italian, Rome, 1942; English translation by John Drummond, A Visiting Card (1952), reprinted in S Pr 276-305. Quotations in this para. from S Pr 276-8.
48 ‘Nothing less than the Fascist system’: EP, ‘Aberration’, 20 Apr. 1942, Radio 103.
‘The Fascist idea’: EP, ‘Idee fondamentali’, Meridiano di Roma VII.19 (10 May 1942) [1].‘I insist on the identity’: EP, A Visiting Card, S Pr 283. See also S Pr 279-82; Radio 316 (‘In the Woodshed’).
‘aberration’: EP, ‘Aberration’, Apr. 20, 1942, Radio 101-3.
49 ‘We are fighting’: EP, quoting Gioacchino Nicoletti speaking in Pisa, ‘Amor di patria’, Meridiano di Roma VIII.16 (18 Apr. 1943) [1].
it became known at least to some: Towards the end of 1942 and in 1943 Jan Karski, an emissary from the Polish underground, was informing the governments and important persons in Britain and the United States that the mass extermination of Jews was being carried out in German occupied Poland, but he was not believed.
articles in Meridiano di Roma: I refer particularly to ‘Mondiale’, VII.3 (18 Jan. 1942). [1]; see also ‘Pace decisiva’, VII.11 (15 Mar. 1942) [1].
In his radio talks: e.g. ‘Power’, 19 Feb. 1942, Radio 41-3; ‘Gold: England’, 8 Mar. 1942, Radio 55-8; ‘England’, 15 March 1942, Radio 59-62; ‘That Interval of Time’, 25 June 1942, Radio 179-82; ‘Disbursement of Wisdom’, 2 July 1942, Radio 187-90. On Pound’s ‘real enemy’ see also Redman 216, 223-5.
‘If we don’t snatch Malta’: EP, ‘Idee fondamentali’, Meridiano di Roma VII.19 (10 May 1942) [1].
50 ‘Intellectual work’: EP, ‘Ob pecuniae scarsitatem’, Meridiano di Roma VII.23 (7 June 1942) [1].
the enemy became ‘the Jews’: see radio talks of 1942-3 passim. Particular instances: ‘Non-Jew’, 30 Apr. 1942, Radio 113-16; ‘Disbursement of Wisdom’, 2 July 1942, Radio 187-90. See also articles in Meridiano di Roma: e.g. ‘La guerra degli usurai’, VII.18 (3 May 1942) [1]; ‘Idee fondamentali’, VII.19 (10 May 1942) [1].
‘Don’t start a pogrom’: EP, ‘Non-Jew’, 30 Apr. 1942, Radio 115.
‘The true definition’: EP, ‘L’Ebreo, patologia incarnata’, Meridiano di Roma VI.41 (12 Oct. 1941) [1].
51 ‘a sum of morbid’: definition from OED.
‘All fanaticisms’: EP to George Santayana, 14 June 1941 (HRC).
‘put off by rumour’: EP to Odon Por, 11 Apr. 1940, EPEC 247.
‘their origin’: EP to WCW, 13 May [1940], EP/WCW 204.
‘You better’: EP to Henry Swabey, [1940], cited Redman 202.
‘In our day’: Protocols of the Elders of Zion, copy downloaded from <http://www.aztlan.net/protocols.html>.
52 ‘We shall surround’: cited by EP in ‘Zion’, 20 Apr. 1943, Radio 284.
‘Certainly they are a forgery’: cited by EP in ‘Zion’, 20 Apr. 1943, Radio 283.
‘To what extent’: Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, trans. Ralph Manheim (Pimlico, 1993), 279.
53 ‘On 21 March 1943’: Farrell 366. Other citations from Farrell 364-5.
‘I am now responsible’: EP to Cornelio Di Marzio, 16 Dec. 1941, trans. Redman in Redman 215.
The family doctor: for his account see Giuseppe Bacigalupo, Ieri a Rapallo, V edizione (Pasian di Prato: Campanotto Editore, 2006), 83.
54 ‘read him a few pages’: EP, ‘On Resuming’, 7 Dec. 1941, Radio 24.
‘with red eyes’, ‘“The old lady”’, ‘For a few visits’: MdR, Discretions 153.
an archaic jade ring: MdR, Discretions 153, also EP to George Santayana, 30 [?Sept. 1946] (HRC). Edgar Jepson is mentioned as a ‘lover of jade’ in 74/433.
‘To attract the spirits’: EP, Canti Postumi 130.
‘You did all you could’: Giuseppe Bacigalupo, Ieri a Rapallo 83—‘“Hai fatto quello che hai potuto per il mio vecchio” mi disse affettuosamente “e voglio che questo [olio di Max Ernst] sia un ricordo mio e suo.”’
‘There is a rumour’: DP to EP, 13 Mar. 1942 (Lilly).
wrote to Uberti: see Redman, ‘The Repatriation of Pound, 1939-1942’, Pai 8.3 (1979) 454.
circulars and questionnaires: following details from Pai 8.3 (1979) 453-4. Pound did receive an April 1942 circular from the Swiss Legation in Rome to US citizens in Italy concerning the possibility of organizing return via Lisbon to America and requiring an immediate response by telegraph. It warned that US citizens able to return and failing to take this opportunity were liable to have financial assistance (i.e. access to US Funds) terminated. It further stated that a minor child not a US citizen should be sponsored for immigration by two US citizens residing in the USA, and that his/her brothers and sisters in or outside the USA should be named. Fares to be paid in US dollars in New York: $300 per adult, half-fare for children 1-10 (Private collection).
55 ‘On July 12, 1941’: memorandum, 18 June 1942, from the Division of Foreign Activities in Passport File F130-Ezra Pound, Passport Office, State Department, as in Sieber 52.
‘a (reliable) friend’: DP to AVM, 14 Dec. 1955 (Lilly).
‘a call from Time’: WCW to JL, 17 June 1942, WCW/JL 73.
‘Nancy Horton’: from Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, 5 June 1942, as cited Stock: 1970, 392, and Redman, ‘The Repatriation of Pound, 1939-1942’, Pai 8.3 (1979) 452.
Wadsworth was responsible: information from Emily Mitchell Wallace, ‘The Last Diplomatic Train from Rome in 1942: Ezra Pound’s Passport and his Kafkaesque Nostos’, paper presented to the 23rd Ezra Pound Conference in Rome on 3 July 2009. Wallace notes that Wadsworth himself left Italy on that train.
56 ‘Those circumstances’: EP, ‘Ezra Pound: An Interview’ [by Donald Hall], Paris Review 28 (1962) 46. Note that there was no interruption in Pound’s radio broadcasts around that time.
‘Pound refused to return’: note headed ‘Ezra Pound’, 14 Oct. 1942, in Justice Dept. Files <www.justice.gov/criminal/foia/records/ezra-pound-p1.pdf> [p. 5].
By the end of 1942: most of this and the three following paragraphs drawn from MdR, Discretions 155-9 and 162-71.
57 ‘Sprig looked very well’: EP to OR, 12 May 1943, as in Conover 147.
ration card stamped: detail from Conover 147.
‘Gaudier-Brzeska drawings: EP, ‘On the Nature of Treachery’, 2 May 1943, Radio 293.
down to 80 kilos: EP to DP, 16 May 1942 (Lilly).
58 an ironic and bitter record: DP’s diaries for 1942 and 1943 (Lilly).
‘Rome bombed’: Mussolini witnessed from the air the damage done to Rome on 19 July as he flew back from a meeting with Hitler at Feltre: ‘At 6 p.m. I took off on straight flight to Rome. I slowed down at the level of [Mount] Soracte and noticed a great cloud on the horizon. It was the smoke from the burning of the Littorio Station, which I flew over a few minutes later. Hundreds of railway cars were burning, walls were destroyed, the airport out of use. The same show at the San Lorenzo locomotive depot. The damage seemed enormous…Long queues of people crowded around the fountains as the water mains were broken’ (Benito Mussolini, entry dated 19 Aug. 1943, ‘In Captivity. Notebook of Thoughts in Ponza and La Maddalena’, translated in Edge 4 (Mar. 1957) 25.
‘Is it still era fascista?’: DP to EP, 28 July 1943 (Lilly)—‘abasso M. porco’ = ‘down with Mussolini, the swine’.
‘when there came over the radio’, ‘kicked out’: EP, ‘Sworn statement’ to agents of the US Counter Intelligence Corps, Genoa, 7 May 1945, as in EP/DP 63.
indicted for treason: EP told Frank Amprim of the FBI in his second sworn statement dated 8 May 1945—copy in Nat. Arch. WO 204/12602-361810 [item 13B]—that he knew he had been indicted for treason ‘when the Germans sent to Rome a photocopy of an article in Time magazine’; but this would only have confirmed what he already knew from the BBC news.
‘bad news’: EP to DP, 9 May 1943 (Lilly).
‘Afraid that raiding’: DP to EP, May 1943 (Lilly).
‘She not be downcast’, ‘to chuck most of discorsi’: EP to DP, 9 May 1943 (Lilly).
‘Did 5 more discorsi’: EP to DP, 10 May 1943 (Lilly).
‘Ecellenza e DUCE’: EP to Benito Mussolini, 10 May 1943, as in Zapponi 54-5.
59 ‘He is an American’: Zapponi 55-7 gives the note (here translated) and the further details in this paragraph.
‘that the American troops’: EP, ‘On Retiring’, 27 Apr. 1943, Radio 289.
‘Italy was and IS’: EP, ‘And Back of the Woodshed’: 25 May 1943, Radio 323.
‘Ezra Pound speaks from Rome’: EP, [title unknown], FCC transcript 24 May 1943, Radio 322.
‘economic aggression’: EP, ‘And Back of the Woodshed’: 25 May 1943, Radio 324. The other four broadcasts of the set were: ‘Sumner Welles’, 11 May 1943; ‘Economic Aggression’, 15 May 1943; ‘Economic Oppression’, 18 May 1943; ‘In the Woodshed’, 22 May 1943.
‘There are a number of Americans’: FDR [President Roosevelt] to Attorney General, 1 Oct. 1942, Justice Dept. Files—<www.justice.gov/criminal/foia/records/ezra-pound-p1.pdf>.
‘treasonably broadcasting’: Henry L. Stimson, Secretary of War, to [Francis Biddle], the Attorney General, 5 Feb. 1943, letter reproduced in Helix 13/14 (1983) 125.
60 ‘a travesty of justice’: Humphrey Carpenter, Carpenter 620.
‘deliberate attempts’: Eunice Tietjens, ‘The End of Ezra Pound’, Poetry Apr. 1942—as in Carpenter 611.
‘in his opinion’: WCW as reported in FBI investigatory report, May 1943 (photocopy at Hamilton). Most of this paragraph is drawn from that report. For an example of WCW’s grievances and resentments see WCW to JL, 7 Aug. 1943, WCW/JL 89-90.
‘James Laughlin’: from the FBI investigatory report, May 1943, as cited in Heymann 349 n. 3.
it was false: Pound had paid for his passage on 6 Apr. 1939, with a cheque for $299 drawn on his account with the Jenkintown Bank and Trust Co. and payable to Italian Soc. An. Navigazione, Genoa. Moreover, his cheque stubs show that between 21 Mar. and 9 June 1939, he drew US $750 from his Jenkintown Bank account (including the US$299 for his boat fare). He had also drawn on the account for his expenses in London in 1938.
61 ‘That Ezra Pound, the defendant’: from the Grand Jury Indictment, as in Norman: Case 62-3.
‘It should be clearly understood’: Francis Biddle, speaking to the press following the indictment, as in Norman: Case 63.
62 ‘I understand’: EP to Francis Biddle, 4 Aug. 1943, as in Norman: Case 63-5.
63 deliberate intent: Sieber, 8 n. 1, cites Cramer v. United States, 325 US 1. 65 S, Ct. 918: ‘The crime of treason consists of two elements, both of which must be present in order to sustain a conviction: (1) adherence to the enemy, and (2) rendering him aid and comfort. | The term “aid and comfort” as used in the provision of the Federal Constitution defining treason […] contemplates some kind of affirmative action, deed, or physical activity tending to strengthen the enemy or weaken the power to resist him, and is not satisfied by a mere mental operation. |…the acts done must be intentional. The intent sufficient to sustain a conviction of treason must be an intent, not merely to commit the overt acts complained of, but to betray the country by means of such acts.’
‘Passport No. 3154’: from Swiss Delegation at Rome to US Secretary of State, 25 Aug. 1943, as in Sieber 52.
Pound would later explain: in private conversation with G. Giovannini at St Elizabeths, 4 Sept. 1957—Giovannini’s memo is in Kenner Archive (HRC). In his second sworn statement to Frank Amprim on 8 May 1945 he had said simply, ‘they took away my passport, saying it had expired’—Nat. Arch. WO 204/12602-361810 [item 13B].
4. ‘TO DREAM THE REPUBLIC’, 1943-4
The chapter title is from The Pisan Cantos—see 78/478. For information concerning the Repubblica Sociale Italiana (RSI) I am indebted to Nicholas Farrell, Mussolini: A New Life. Details concerning the progress of the war in Italy come mainly from James Holland, Italy’s Sorrow: A Year of War, 1944-45 (Harper Press, 2008). For Pound’s correspondence with officials of the RSI I am largely indebted to Tim Redman’s Ezra Pound and Italian Fascism, to C. David Heymann’s Ezra Pound: The Last Rower, and to Marcello Simonetta, ‘Letteratura e propaganda: Pound poeta del regime’, Nuovi Argomenti 11 (Apr.-June 1997) 47-59—thanks to Danilo Breschi for this last. Note that at this time Pound was writing nearly everything in Italian, and that quotations from his letters and pamphlets are given here in translations by various hands. (Translations from EP letters to DP and to OR are mine.) An important study of Pound’s ‘totalitarian Confucianism’ in these years is Mary Paterson Cheadle’s Ezra Pound’s Confucian Translations (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997).
64 ‘On the 10th’: EP, Gold and Work, a translation of Oro e lavoro (Rapallo, 1944) by John Drummond, as in S Pr 306-7.
65 on September 5: date from entry, ‘EP to Rome’, in DP’s diary (Lilly).
‘only slightly delayed’: EP to DP, 6 Sept. 1943 (Lilly).
‘as an American’, ‘They seem to be’: EP to DP, 7 Sept. 1943 (Lilly).
sent in four or five talks: see ‘Sworn Statement by Ezra Pound, [Office of the Counter Intelligence Corps], Genoa, Italy, May 7, 1945’, in EP/DP 63.
66 That morning: this and the following two paragraphs are drawn from various accounts: Stock: 1970, 400-1 (includes Naldo Naldi’s account); EP’s 1945 ‘Sworn Statement’, EP/DP 63, (sums up his journey in one sentence); ‘to avoid German control, to keep free’, EP pencil note on envelope addressed to him at 60 Sant’Ambrogio, Rapallo (misfiled in 1921-3 folder of EP/DP correspondence, Lilly); two pages of notes by EP in Canti postumi 150, 152; EP, ‘Fragment, 1944’, Yale Review 71.2 (1982) 161-2; lines beginning ‘INCIPIT VITA NUOVA’ among Pisan Cantos drafts (Beinecke), repr. in Sulfur 1, 7-8, and Canti postumi 204, 206; Cantos 78/478; MdR, Discretions 184-7. That ‘Lo sfacelo’ is a link to Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms is my own association, but for evidence of EP’s ‘serious attention’ to the novel see EP/LZ 33.
67 Mary ‘learned’: paragraph drawn from MdR, Discretions 187-9. For ‘it all coheres’ see Trax 50.
The next day: this paragraph and the one following drawn from MdR, Discretions 190-5. The final detail of the horses on the train recalled by MdR in conversation, 2008.
68 ‘a buffer’, ‘chose Salò’: Farrell 431. See Farrell 428ff. for ‘The 600 days of the Repubblica Sociale of Salò’. See also Shirer 1004-6.
too bound to his own: see Shirer 1004.
69 ‘did not believe’: Mussolini’s words to Carlo Silvestri, a Socialist journalist, as in Farrell 430. Mussolini had concluded on 14 August 1943, while in captivity, ‘My system is defeated’ (see Benito Mussolini, ‘In Captivity. Notebook of Thoughts in Ponza and La Maddalena’, P&P IX, 188). In September he said to Hitler in East Prussia, ‘Fascism has by now had its day…it needs to return to its origins’ (Farrell 437).
‘an occupied territory’: Mussolini to his private secretary, Giovanni Dolfin, as in Farrell 435.
The notional constitution: paragraph based on Farrell 437-9, and Redman 235-6.
‘more interested in recrimination’: Farrell 439.
right to but not of’: see 78/478 and 86/564.
70 ‘Freedom of discussion’: EP to Gilberto Bernabei, head of the Cabinet of the Ministry of Popular Culture, as cited and translated by Redman, Redman 236.
‘He believed in us’: Francesco Monotti, ‘A Rapallo con Pound’, Ezra Pound: un poeta a Rapallo, a cura di Massimo Bacigalupo (Genoa: Edizione San Marco dei Giustiniani, 1985), 70 [my translation].
back to Rapallo on September 23: date from DP’s diary entry for that day (Lilly). Noel Stock, unaware that EP was back in Rapallo just two weeks after leaving Rome, and under the impression that he was in Gais for ‘several weeks’, speculated that ‘It is likely that he took the opportunity while passing around Lake Garda to make contact with ‘the new Italian Republic then in the process of being formed…at Salò’ (Stock: 1970, 402). Others have adopted this apparently reasonable speculation, which DP’s diary entry, however, renders improbable. Mussolini’s announcement of his new republic was made from Munich on 18 September; he did not return to Italy until the 25th, landing that day at Forlì in the Romagna; and he did not take up residence on Lake Garda until the second week of October. I know of no evidence to support Stock’s speculation.
‘that a reform’: EP, ‘Service Note’, Oct. 28-XXI [1943], from FBI files, trans. Robert Connolly, in Heymann 326.
‘Liguria’: EP, ‘Service Note’, Oct. 28-XXI [1943], from FBI files, trans. Robert Connolly, in Heymann 326.
‘to come north’: EP, ‘Sworn Statement…May 7, 1945’, in EP/DP 63.
‘safe and sound’: Giacomo Barnes to EP, 4 Nov. 1943, as in Redman 234-5.
had heard from Barnes: EP to Alessandro Pavolini, 9 Nov. 1943 (Beinecke), [in Italian], from Marcello Simonetta, ‘Letteratura e propaganda: Pound poeta del regime’, Nuovi Argomenti 11 (Apr.-June 1997) 53. ‘Volpe’ = Count Giuseppe Volpi (1877-1947), Italian industrialist and financier; re ‘capo squadra’, see MdR, Discretions 70-1.
71 Pavolini cordially thanked: ‘A.P.’ [Alessandro Pavolini] to EP, 13 Nov. 1943 (Beinecke), [in Italian], from Simonetta, ‘Letteratura e propaganda’, Nuovi Argomenti 11 (Apr.-June 1997) 53.
a communication: Il Ministro della Cultura Popolare to EP, 22 Nov. 1943 (Beinecke), [in Italian], Nuovi Argomenti 11 (Apr.-June 1997) 53.
‘already begun’: EP to DP, 23 Nov. 1943 (Lilly).
‘letter from Cul. Pop.’: DP to EP, 25 Nov. 1943 (Lilly).
unable to see: EP, ‘Sworn Statement…May 7, 1945’, in EP/DP 63.
‘unaltered and fervent’: ‘A.P.’ [Alessandro Pavolini] to EP, 26 Nov. 1943 (Beinecke), [in Italian], from Simonetta, ‘Letteratura e propaganda’, Nuovi Argomenti 11 (Apr.-June 1997) 53.
‘even if Italy fell’: EP, ‘Sworn Statement…May 7, 1945’, in EP/DP 63.
‘ask Andermacher’: EP to DP [in Italian], 26 Nov. 1943 (Lilly).
‘very pleasant visit’: DP to EP, 24 Nov. 1943 (Lilly).
‘Schwartz arrived’: EP to DP [in Italian], 27 Nov. 1943 (Lilly).
‘Nein, ich spreche’: EP draft in German, cited with summary indications of content by MdR, ‘Fragments of an Atmosphere’, Agenda 17.3-4-18.1 (1979/80) 169.
72 ‘at last the chance’: EP to DP [in Italian], 30 Nov. 1943 (Lilly).
about to be made Prefect: in ‘Fragment, 1944’, Yale Review 71.2 (1982) 161, EP wrote, ‘not yet capo provincia Gioacchino’.
moment of stillness: see 74/427, 76/458, 78/478.
a sonnet: see Terrell, Companion note to ‘la Donna’ (74/427).
‘genial discussion’: EP to DP [in Italian], 3 Dec. 1943 (Lilly).
‘lunge e cordiale’: EP to OR [in Italian], 3 Dec. 1943 (Beinecke/OR), cited in editorial notes to EP/DP 50.
‘could bring the slaughter’: EP, ‘Ezra Pound’s Supplements to his Sworn Statement’, [Office of the Counter Intelligence Corps] [Genoa, Italy], 8 May, 1945, in EP/DP 73.
unresponsiveness of the Japanese officials: see above p. 10.
73 ‘If I had not handed them’: EP, ‘Supplements to his Sworn Statement’, 8 May 1945, in EP/DP 73.
Buffarini: much of this paragraph drawn from Meir Michaelis, Mussolini and the Jews: German-Italian Relations and the Jewish Question in Italy 1922-1945 (Oxford: Published for the Institute of Jewish Affairs, by the Clarendon Press, 1978), 349-52. See also Carpenter 631-2.
74 ‘possibly his best’: EP to Alessandro Pavolini, 9 Nov. 1943 (Beinecke), [in Italian], from Simonetta, ‘Letteratura e propaganda’, Nuovi Argomenti 11 (Apr.-June 1997) 53-4.
‘ordered to Milan’: EP to DP [in Italian], 3 Dec. 1943 (Lilly).
standing for three hours: EP to Capo Gabinetto del Ministero della Cultura Popolare, [? 6 Dec. 1943] (Beinecke), [in Italian], from Simonetta, ‘Letteratura e propaganda’, Nuovi Argomenti 11 (Apr.-June 1997) 54. See also EP’s ‘on a cattle-truck’, ‘Sworn Statement…May 7, 1945’, EP/DP 63.
a letter of introduction: details from Heymann 149.
‘foresteria’: cf. 78/478. I owe to Massimo Bacigalupo the suggestion that EP was accommodated in the regime’s guest-houses at Salò and Gardone.
‘in a kind of corridor’: EP to Concetto Petinato and Paolo Zappa of La Stampa, 10 Dec. 1943, cited Redman 237, and MdR, ‘Fragments of an Atmosphere’, Agenda 17.3-4-18.1 (1979/80) 169.
a room with heating: EP to OR [in Italian], 12 Dec. 1943, cited by Tim Redman, ‘Il viaggio di Pound a Milano nel 1943’ in Ezra Pound e il turismo colto a Milano, A cura di Luca Gallesi (Milano: Edizione Ares, 2001), 79.
‘I see you refuse’: EP to Nino Sammartano, Dec. 1943, as cited by MdR, ‘Fragments of an Atmosphere’, Agenda 17.3-4-18.1 (1979/80) 169.
bureaucratic mixup: Sammartano to EP, 29 Dec. 1943, as in Redman 237.
‘Milano Caina’: EP TSS draft, Ezra Pound Papers YCAL MSS 43, Box 76, folder 3380 (Beinecke). The draft gives the date ‘8 Dec. ’43’. Information about the church and the Piazza from Luca Gallesi; for ‘sansepolcristi’ see Dennis Mack Smith, Italy: A Modern History (1959) 392.
75 ‘decide whether to decide’: EP to DP [in Italian], 11 Dec. 1943, cited by Redman, ‘Il viaggio di Pound’, Ezra Pound e il turismo colto, 80. On 12 Dec. EP wrote to OR, ‘Tutto ancora re-in-deciso’, Ezra Pound e il turismo colto, 79.
‘the E.I.A.R. tells me’: EP to Sammartano, Dec. 1943, as in Redman 236.
This talk, denouncing Badoglio: details from Heymann 149.
‘At Milan I refused’: EP, ‘Sworn Statement by Ezra Pound…May 7, 1945’, EP/DP 63.
Carl Goedel: details from: EP to DP, 13 Dec. 1943 (Lilly); 78/478 and 79/484; EP/DP 63, 64, 65.
back for Christmas: EP to OR [in Italian], 12 Dec. 1943, cited by Redman, ‘Il viaggio di Pound’, Ezra Pound e il turismo colto, 80.
76 wasting his time: EP to DP, 15 Dec, 1943 (Lilly).
back…at 5.30: DP diary entry, 18 December 1943 (Lilly).
Mary would be better off: ‘Maria sta meglio dov’è’, EP to OR, 12 Dec. 1943, cited by Redman, ‘Il viaggio di Pound’, Ezra Pound e il turismo colto, 79; see also Redman 237, and MdR, Discretions 198.
half-hour interview: EP to DP, 10 Dec. 1943 (Lilly); also EP to Pettinato and Zappa, 10 Dec. 1943, in Redman 237; and EP, ‘Sworn Statement…May 7, 1945’, EP/DP 67.
‘The collaborator Ezra Pound’: Fernando Mezzasoma memo to Ministry of Communications, 4 Dec. 1943, from FBI files, Heymann 145. (I have altered the translator’s ‘has placed his intellectual bearing’ to ‘has devoted his intelligence’.)
‘thoroughly interrogated’: Francis Biddle, US Attorney General, to Henry L. Stimson, Secretary of War, 24 Jan. 1944, repr. in Helix 13/14 (1983) 128. See Helix 13/14 (1983) 126 and 127 for order to the command of the US Fifth Army.
77 To Giovanni Gentile: details from Heymann 142.
‘a brief summary’: details from three ‘dispatches’ or ‘reports’ sent by EP to Mezzasoma on 15 Jan. 1944, from FBI files, as in Heymann 145-7.
‘You people refuse’: EP to Mezzasoma, 16 Jan. 1944, [trans. Robert Connolly], Heymann 332.
78 ‘material left with Nicoletti’: EP to Mezzasoma, 23 Jan. 1944, [trans. Robert Connolly], Heymann 332-3.
‘My own voice’: EP to Mezzasoma, 31 Mar. 1944, [trans. Robert Connolly], Heymann 333-4.
‘Through the rites’: Mencius II.A.2, Mencius trans. D. C. Lau (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1970), 80.
‘Radio Division IV’: memo from Tamburini, 23 Feb. 1944, from FBI files, Heymann 150.
Tamburini told the FBI: details from FBI transcript, May 1945, as in Heymann 150.
Pound told his interrogators: EP, ‘Sworn Statement…May 7, 1945’, EP/DP 63, 65.
79 ‘did not work for Goedel’: EP/DP 65—rest of paragraph based on same source, except for Tamburini’s statement to his interrogators, from Heymann 150.
his main work: see EP, ‘Sworn Statement…May 7, 1945’, EP/DP 63.
sought Pound’s collaboration: see Redman 237.
It was agreed: see Redman 242, and 252-3 re La storia di un reato.
80 ‘reason for this publication’: EP, L’America, Roosevelt, e le cause della guerra presente, in Lavoro ed usura. tre saggi, terza edizione (Milano: All’Insegna del Pesce d’Oro di Vanni Scheiwiller, 1996), 83. The condensed version of this pamphlet translated by John Drummond and included in Impact (1960) as ‘America and the Second World War’, omits its final paragraph in which the quoted sentence occurs; omits also its opening paragraph which begins (in my translation): ‘This war is not due to a whim of Hitler or Mussolini. This war forms part of the millennial war between usurer and peasant, between the usurocracy and whoever wants to do an honest day’s work with hand or mind’ (Lavoro/usura 59); it further omits this later sentence, ‘The first serious attempt, after Lincoln’s, [to resist the power of the usurers], began with the Fascist revolution and was confirmed with the formation of the Rome-Berlin Axis’ (Lavoro/usura 74). The effect of these and other cuts is to excise Pound’s concern, however misjudging, to place the 1939- war in the context of the perennial war of Usura against natural abundance and social justice.
asked him to do another: see Redman 244, 257, and 259-60.
‘For forty years’: EP, An Introduction to the Economic Nature of the United States (1944), [trans. Carmine Amore, revised John Drummond], S Pr 137. Pound’s ‘fra i maestri di color che sanno’, (among the masters of those that know), is a variation upon Dante’s ‘vidi il maestro di color che sanno’ (Inferno IV.131), honouring Aristotle as the master of philosophers whose knowledge is from human reason, (as distinct from the theologians’ divine revelation, and distinct again from the angelic intelligences).
81 ‘The trap’: EP, An Introduction to the Economic Nature of the United States, S Pr 147.
‘has its roots’: EP, An Introduction to the Economic Nature of the United States, S Pr 148.
‘because of its political’: see Gallup 72; concerning Orientamenti; Gallup 73; concerning Jefferson e Mussolini; and Gallup 74, concerning Chiung Iung.
82 a daily or weekly: see Redman 242.
suitable propaganda: see Redman 248-9 and 257-8, the latter for ‘Pound’s ideal list’, and Sammartano’s ‘for the moment’.
an economic work by Angold: see Redman 260 and 262.
edition of Vivaldi: see Redman 262.
‘My bilingual edition’: EP to Mezzasoma, from FBI files, [trans. Redman], 15 Mar. 1944, Redman 251.
83 gave his approval: see Redman 255.
‘I am absolutely convinced’: EP to Mezzasoma, 29 Jan. 1945, from FBI files, [trans. Redman], Redman 271.
‘The importance’: EP to Mezzasoma, 15 Mar. 1944, second letter, from FBI files, [trans. Redman], Redman 252.
‘26 chapters’: EP to Mezzasoma, 27 Sept. 1944, [trans. Redman], Redman 261.
republic had flopped: see EP, ‘Supplements to his Sworn Statement’, 8 May, 1945, EP/DP 71. On the same day Pound told a reporter, ‘Hitler and Mussolini were successful insofar as they followed Confucius, and…they failed because they did not follow him more closely’ (interview by Edd.Johnson, Philadelphia Record-Chicago Sun, 9 May 1945, as in Norman: 1960, 396). Cf. pp. 37-8 above.
84 a manifesto: ‘GLI SCRITTORI DEL TIGULLIO salutano gli altri scrittori d’Italia’, broadsheet signed by Gilberto Gaburri, Ezra Pound, Edgardo Rossaro, Giuseppe Soldato, Michele Tanzi, ([Rapallo, 1944]); also printed, with heading ‘Fiamma sul Tigullio’, in Il Popolo di Alessandria (27 Feb. 1944) 1. The first section of the manifesto declared:
Il pensiero vivo dell’epoca è permeato di spirito fascista.
Con o senza etichetta l’intelletto fascista si manifesta nei vari paese. Se Frobenius non è libro di testo in Germania, il suo atteggiamento fu nondimeno totalitario, e bastano pochissimi frasi per dimostralo. Zielinski cerca di liberare il cristianesimo dalla feccia giudaica. Cruet delimita la durata della legislazione. Il senso fascista è un po’ dovunque.
Ma in Italia avviene la catalisi. Si può anche affermare che Confucio sia il filosofo del fascismo, ma il fascismo nacque in Romagna.
L’intelligenzia fascista affrontò anni or sono il dilemma: NEL sistema o DEL sistema. Tale perspicacia nel distinguere risorge nel nuovo credo repubblicano che separa i diritti DELLA proprietà dai diritti ALLA proprietà.
I paralitici bisbigliavano: chi succederà a Mussolini?
Nessun individuo succederà a Mussolini, il successore di Mussolini sarà l’IDEA REPUBBLICANA.
The third section began:
Il tesoro di una nazione è la sua honestà. La filosofia d’un uomo si mostra più nei suoi atti che nelle parole.
5. FOR THE RESURRECTION OF ITALY, 1944-5
85 ‘huge destruction and loss of life’: Farrell 444.
leave their seafront flat: details from various accounts, mainly Conover 153-4; MdR, Discretions 196 and 258; Hugh Kenner, ‘D. P. Remembered’, Pai 2.3 (1973) 487.
‘To help tide over’: OR, I Ching notebook, June 1997 (Beinecke/OR), as in Conover 154.
‘One solid year’: OR, [n.d.], as cited in Conover 155.
86 ‘a mild purgatorio’: DP, personal notes, [? May 1945], cited ‘Introduction’, EP/DP 5.
‘We were all civilized’: OR in telephone conversation with Humphrey Carpenter, Apr. 1983, Carpenter 636.
‘asperities’: see 115/794.
‘pent up’: MdR, Discretions 258.
‘no water’: DP to Rose Marie Duncan, 28 Nov. 1947 (HRC)—also the detail about the church at Portofino.
‘In Rapallo’: EP to Fernando Mezzasoma, 14 Sept. 1944, [trans. Redman], Redman 260-1.
87 ‘every day for the radio’: EP to Giorgio Almirante, 16 May 1944, [from FBI files], Heymann 151.
‘Isolation’: EP to Mezzasoma, 27 Sept. 1944, [trans. Redman], Redman 262.
posters: details in Gallup 433-4.
88 La voce della verità: detail from Gianfranco de Turris, ‘“L’asse che non vacilla”: Ezra Pound durante la RSI’, Ezra Pound 1972/1992, a cura di Luca Gallesi (Milano: Greco & Greco editori, 1992), 324.
urged Mezzasoma: see Redman 243 and 268.
‘Propaganda’: EP to Mezzasoma, 27 Feb. 1944, [trans. Redman], Redman 242.
Il Popolo di Alessandria: details from de Turris in Ezra Pound 1972/1992 321-2, and Redman 238-43.
‘incomprehensible’: see Heymann 144.
‘brief articles’: Gaetano Cabella to EP, 19 Jan. 1944, [trans. Redman], Redman 240.
89 ‘This war’: ‘Ez. P.’, ‘La Guerra’, Il Popolo di Alessandria (20 Feb. 1944) 2.
‘Against this infamy’: ‘Ez. P.’, ‘Il perno’, Il Popolo di Alessandria (23 Feb. 1944).
‘No use’: ‘Ez. P.’, ‘Banchieri’, Il Popolo di Alessandria (2 Mar. 1944) [1].
‘Aristotle’s precept’: ‘Ez. P.’, ‘Del silenzio’, Il Popolo di Alessandria (30 Apr. 1944) [1].
‘Amassi’: ‘Ez. P.’: ‘Amassi’, Il Popolo di Alessandria (21 May 1944) [1]. Re Amassi see also EP to Mezzasoma, 27 Feb. 1944, [trans. Redman], Redman 267.
‘la moneta’: ‘Ezra Pound’, ‘Appunti economici: Brani d’attualità’, L’idea sociale (23 Apr. 1945) [1].
(but unremarked): Redman 247 and 251-2 did register his impression that ‘Pound was beginning to have some doubts about the course he had chosen’; but he took the doubts to be about whether his ‘proposals for economic reform’ were adequate to ‘the problems war-ravaged Italy was facing’, and not about the regime’s adequacy to the republican revolution. However, Redman also makes it clear that Pound was thinking about social reconstruction beyond both the war and the regime.
‘I GRANDI’: ‘Ez. P.’, ‘Pagamenti’, Il Popolo di Alessandria (13 Feb. 1944) [1]. On the execution of Ciano et al. see Farrell 440-3.
90 short-sighted liberals: see EP, ‘Liberali’, ‘È peccato ma…’, ‘Etica’ in Il Popolo di Alessandria, respectively 5 Mar., 9 Mar., 12 Mar. 1944; and see EP to Mezzasoma, 27 Feb. 1944, [trans. Redman], Redman 259.
‘Italy is full’: EP to Mezzasoma, 27 Feb. 1944, [trans. Robert Connolly], Heymann 333.
‘many betrayals’: EP to Mezzasoma, 27 Feb. 1944, [trans. Robert Connolly], Heymann 333.
he was sorry: ‘Ez. P.’, ‘“Mi rincresce”’: Il Popolo di Alessandria (25 May 1944) [1].
a ‘document’: ‘E. P.’: ‘D’accordo’, Il Popolo di Alessandria (8 June 1944).
‘una fede fascista’: ‘Ez. P.’: ‘Colore cadaverico’, Il Popolo di Alessandria (4 June 1944).
91 ‘all men of goodwill’: EP to Mezzasoma, 18 Nov. 1944, [trans. Redman], Redman 265.
‘Study, inform’: EP to Mezzasoma, Nov. 1944, [from FBI files], Heymann 143.
‘our cherished rights’: Barack Obama, speaking in Springfield, Illinois, 10 Feb. 2007, announcing that he would be a candidate for election to the US Presidency.
92 ‘Enforcement’: EP to Mezzasoma, 27 Feb. 1944, [trans. Redman], Redman 267. Pound would have had in mind the clause in the Declaration of Independence drafted by Thomas Jefferson which reads: ‘to secure these rights [to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness], governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed’.
‘cajoled’, and following details: Farrell 453.
‘the common fate’: ‘Ezra Pound’, ‘Poundiana’, Il Popolo di Alessandria (23 Jan. 1945) 2.
some ‘cantos’: EP to Mezzasoma, 13 Nov. 1944, [trans. Robert Connolly], Heymann 335. The assumption that the cantos were 72 and 73 was made by Heymann. There is no clear evidence that EP had been drafting new cantos in Italian before December 1944, though that cannot be ruled out. What is certain is that he had been working, with Mary and on his own, on Italian versions of some earlier cantos—among the Beinecke Ezra Pound Papers there are versions dating from 1943 of cantos 1-13, 20, 27, and a version of 49 dated 1942.
‘voices and modes’: see p. 56.
93 ‘Ballata IX’: re ‘In un boschetto’ (sung in Act 2 of the opera Cavalcanti) see EP: Poet II, Appendix C.
sent both cantos to Mary: MdR, Discretions 197. Details re the sending of cantos to Mezzasoma from Redman 269.
prologue: EP to Mary Rudge, 6 Mar. 1945, ‘Ubaldo has published the prologue to Canto 72’ (Beinecke).
‘Presenza di F. T Marinetti’: La Marina Repubblicana II.2 (15 Jan. 1945) 2. Marinetti died 2 Dec. 1944 in Bellagio on Lake Como. My citations from canto 72 are taken from EP’s own English crib, included in New Directions editions of The Cantos from 1995.
‘the simple rite’: Benito Mussolini, My Autobiography, trans. R. W. Child, (Hutchinson & Co., [1928]), 146.
94 Ezzelino: Ezzelino III. da Romano (1194-1259) is among the tyrants in Inferno XII. Details of EP’s treatment are drawn from L’Ecerinide di Albertino Mussato, tradotta in versi Italiani e annotata da Manlio Torquata Dazzi (Città di Castello: Casa Editrice S. Lapi, 1914). The front cover, printed in dull red on off-white paper, shows a human body with bull head and tail, breathing flame from mouth and nostrils, in a rocky place above the River of Blood (as in Inferno XII.47), with the inscription ‘HIC IACET TERROR ITALIAE’. EP’s copy, presented to him by Dazzi, is in HRC.
destroyed Forlì etc.: Sigismondo’s Tempio was damaged, not destroyed, by naval bombardment 29 Jan. 1944; however a catalogue of ‘L’Italia Artistica Mutilata’ by the Allied ‘iconoclasti’, running to several columns in Corriere della sera of 3 Dec. 1944, was illustrated by a photograph of the apparently ruined Tempio. There was an obituary of Marinetti on the same page. (For the discovery and for a photocopy of the relevant page I am indebted to Ron Bush.) Forlì fell to the Allies 9 Nov. 1944; Ravenna was taken 4 Dec. 1944—Bagnacavallo is just to the west of Ravenna. The Allies did not reach Bologna until 21 Apr. 1945—a detail which would suggest that EP was still working on the canto in that month.
‘Many birds’: I have made some adjustments to Pound’s English version to bring it closer to his Italian original.
95 a recent speech of Mussolini’s: the first article on the front page of Corriere della sera of 26 Nov. 1944 carried the headline: ‘Il Duce esprime al combattimenti | la fede nelle riscossa della Patria’, and reported his telling the combatants to above all rekindle in their hearts the flame of love of country as the foundation of its riscossa. He had also reaffirmed his certainty of the ultimate victory of the Tripartite powers which would mean the end of Judaic-directed material and moral exploitation by the plutocracies. (Again I am indebted to Ron Bush for this discovery and for a photocopy of the relevant page.)
‘volunteer force’: Farrell 445. Pavolini’s personal Blackshirt bodyguard was the ‘Bir el Gobi’ company.
96 The story of ‘the heroine of Rimini’: details from Daniele Balducci, ‘L’“eroina di Rimini”’, Diorama letterario 239 (Oct. 2000) 15-16.
his art: for a very positive appreciation of both cantos 72 and 73 see Massimo Mandolini Pesaresi, ‘Pound’s Admirable “Presenza” in the Italian Language: Cantos LXXII and LXXIII’, in Richard Taylor and Claus Melchior eds., Ezra Pound and Europe (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1993), [215]-21.
‘Charybdis of action’: 74/431.
a group of drafts in Italian: see Massimo Bacigalupo, ‘Annotated translations of Italian notes and drafts of Cantos 74-75’, appended to his ‘Ezra Pound’s Cantos 72 and 73: An Annotated Translation’, Pai 20.1-2 (1991) 28-41; also his ‘L’Écriture des Cantos’ in Ezra Pound, Je rassemble les membres d’Osiris (Larroque/Castin [France]: Tristram, 1989), 274-96; Ronald Bush, ‘“Quiet, Not Scornful”? The Composition of the Pisan Cantos’, in Lawrence Rainey ed., A Poem Including History: The Cantos of Ezra Pound (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996), 169-212—includes facsimiles and substantial extracts with translations; Ronald Bush, ‘Towards Pisa: More from the Archives about Pound’s Italian Cantos’, Agenda 34.3-4 (1996/97) 89-124—‘an attempt to situate the Canto 74 and Canto 75 typescripts (and the logic of Pound’s Italian composition) by reconstructing the manuscript sequence of which they form a part’—includes substantial extracts with translations. (Note that Bacigalupo’s and Bush’s ‘74’ and ‘75’ refer to EP’s numbering of these Italian drafts, not to the unrelated cantos 74 and 75 of The Pisan Cantos.) Some of the drafts carry dates: ‘12 Jan.’, ‘13 Jan.’, ‘14 Jan.’, ‘12 Feb.’ Sigismundo Malatesta and Lorenzo de’ Medici also feature in them, but I deal here only with what I take to be their most revealing elements.
An earlier fragment (headed ‘LXX…’): Ezra Pound Papers YCAL MSS 43, Box 76, folder 3383 (Beinecke).
Piero Mazda: detail from Pound’s 1945 statement to FBI, EP/DP 63.
97 ‘Her beauty, her greatness of soul’: cited by Bush, ‘Towards Pisa: More from the Archives’, Agenda 34.3-4 (1996/97) 106, from ‘Tomasini’s life of Machiavelli’ as cited in G. F. Young, The Medici (New York: Random House, 1930), 526.
‘the inside corner’: EP to Forrest Read, 31 Dec. 1958 (Hamilton).
98 ‘I thank god’: EP to Mary Rudge, 6 Mar. 1945 (Beinecke).
‘looking for a bit of Frobenius’: EP to Mary Rudge, 14 Mar. [1945] (Beinecke). ‘Gassir’s Lute’, with related Soninke legends, is translated in Leo Frobenius and Douglas C. Fox, African Genesis (Faber & Faber, 1938). For Deïoces see Herodotus I.96. The bits from both Frobenius and Herodotus were used in canto 74, the first of the Pisan Cantos.
99 ‘Caro Ub’: EP to Ubaldo degli Uberti, 4 Apr. 1945, in Riccardo M. degli Uberti, ‘Ezra Pound and Ubaldo degli Uberti: History of a Friendship’, Italian Quarterly XVI, 64 (1973) 106, as cited in Zapponi 133.
‘the light which comes’: see ‘Ta Hsio: The Great Digest’, Confucius 29. For EP’s explication of the ideogram (6162 in Mathews’ Chinese-English Dictionary) see Confucius 21. Some notes on the endpaper of EP’s Temple Classics edition of Dante’s Paradiso are dated ‘anno XXIII/ Jan’—he was noting connections between passages in the Paradiso and various works and authors, including Cavalcanti, ‘G. C.- Villon’, Mencius, and Kung. The marginal ideogram, against Par. XXXIII, 112-14, is in EP’s copy of Opere di Dante Alighieri (Oxford, 1897). Both books are now in HRC.
Secondo Manifesto: details from a copy in MdR’s collection.
100 ‘partigiani’, ‘occupation’: DP diary entries for 24 and 26 Apr. 1945 (Lilly).
On the 27th, Olga Rudge: details from Conover, 157, based on OR’s own accounts.
‘not in spirit of surrender’: EP to MdR, 13 Jan. 1974, as in Conover 157; see also ‘Ezra Pound: An Interview’, Paris Review 28 (1962) 45.
‘lookin’ fo’ his comman’’: EP mentioned the incident on a number of occasions in very similar terms—this is from EP to Peter Whigham, 23 Sept. 1953, as cited in Carpenter 645.
Mussolini was shot: details in this paragraph drawn from Farrell 474-6.
‘giustizati’: DP diary entry for 29 Apr. 1945 (Lilly).
‘in case anything should happen’: OR to Mary Rudge, 30 Apr. 1945, as cited in Conover 158.
‘very cold’: DP diary entry for 3 May 1945 (Lilly). Details in previous sentence from same entry.
‘busy with the local authorities’: Conover 158.
caccia al fascista: the phrase is from Gianfranco de Turris’ account (q.v.) in ‘“L’asse che non vacilla”: Ezra Pound durante la RSI’, Ezra Pound 1972/1992, 334.
working on his Mencius: EP frequently mentioned this, e.g. in a letter to Ronald Duncan, n.d. [c.1950?], he wrote that ‘at exact moment the pseudo-Marxists (“partigiani” after the reward, supposed) came to the door’ he was working on ‘Mencius’ (HRC). The varying accounts of Pound’s capture are derived in the main from his own and OR’s accounts given at various times to various correspondents.
101 two books: the books, now in the Ezra Pound Collection of Hamilton College, were: Si Shu. The Four Books (Confucian Analects; The Great Learning; The Doctrine of the Mean; The Works of Mencius), with English translation and notes by James Legge (Shanghai, China: Commercial Press, n.d.); and A Chinese Dictionary Revised. Comprising over Three Thousand Characters… (Shanghai, China: Commercial Press, n.d.).
‘EP gone away’: DP diary entry for 3 May 1945 (Lilly).
‘DEElicious’: EP to MdR, 1962, as cited in Massimo Bacigalupo, ‘Tigullio Itineraries’, in Ezra Pound, Language and Persona, ed. Massimo Bacigalupo and William Pratt (Genoa: Università degli Studi di Genova, 2008), 433.
‘the courtyard’: Ezra Pound, Language and Persona, ed. Bacigalupo and Pratt, 434. See also ‘Ezra Pound: An Interview’, Paris Review 28 (1962) 45.
‘paying off old scores’: OR as cited by Conover, Conover 160.
a respected member of the Resistance: from Massimo Bacigalupo, ‘Tigullio Intineraries’, Ezra Pound, Language and Persona, 434.
102 ‘K-ration box lunches’: from OR’s account, as in Conover 160.
6. TALKING TO THE FBI
An invaluable resource for this chapter has been Ezra and Dorothy Pound: Letters in Captivity, 1945-1946 edited and annotated by Omar Pound and Robert Spoo (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999)—a fine edition of essential letters and documents, and replete with ancillary information in its extensive notes. Britain’s National Archives are another valuable source of documents recording the police and intelligence surveillance of Pound (Ref: KV 2/875-361810), and also of the messages exchanged by United States judicial and military authorities concerning the capture and disposal of Ezra Pound which were copied to the British War Office (Ref: WO 204/12602-361810).
105 ‘FENOLLOSA’S EXECUTOR’: cable dictated by EP 4 May 1945, as in memo of Frank L. Amprim to J. Edgar Hoover, Director FBI, (26 May 1945), EP/DP 51.
‘Man I most want’: EP draft for Reynolds Packard, [c.7 May 1945?], EP/DP 57.
the ‘one point’: see 74/426. In his 8 May 1945 statement, ‘Outline of Economic Bases of historic process’, EP declared that ‘There are alternate remedies’ to Lenin’s ‘nationalization of the means of production’, and ‘That is why I wish—after due LINGUISTIC preparation to meet Stalin’.
106 ‘For weeks’: two-page TS ‘Extract from article in “News Review” dated 5.8.43’ in ‘Ezra Pound’s file/P.F. 34319’ (Nat. Arch. KV2/875, item 39a).
‘to look into English’: EP to A. V. Moore, 14 Jan. 1940, photocopy of intercept on behalf of MI5 (Nat. Arch. KV2/875, item 26a).
‘As shown by previous record’: ‘Comment’ by V.F./A.C., 23 Jan. 1940, on EP’s 14 Jan. 1940 letter to Moore (Nat. Arch. KV2/875, item 26a).
A letter of March 1940: two-page TS copy of EP to Raven Thomson, [published in Action 21 Mar. 1940], ‘Original in P.F. 46785 Raven Thomson. vol: 4, 167x’ (Nat. Arch. KV2/875, item 27a).
letter to the B.U.F. leader: EP to Sir O. Mosley, 12 May 1940, TS copy of ‘Original in P.F. 48909 36a’ (Nat. Arch. KV2/875, item 28a).
107 simply ‘Fascist’: ‘Extract from M.C.5 report on Anglo-Italian Societies, 19.6.40’ (Nat. Arch. KV2/875, item 28c), reads: ‘Both Ezra and Dorothy Pound are of strongly Fascist and anti-Semitic sympathies. They were in correspondence with Mr RAVEN THOMSON, the Editor of “Action” and asked of him whether ex-post facto laws—forbidden by the U.S.A.—were constitutional or legal in England, and whether this form of tyranny arose whenever Jews came into power. Another letter addressed to Eric de Mare, The Social Credit Party, 44 Little Britain, E.C.1, advised that party to unite for the accomplishment of economic reform.’
‘Cable received from AGWAR’: JAG [Judge Advocate General], NATOUSA [North African Theater of Operations United States Army], to CG [Commanding General] Fifth Army and CG Seventh Army, 19 Sept. 43 (Nat. Arch. WO 204/12602, item 1). ‘AGWAR’ = Adjutant General, War Department.
‘In the event’: Francis Biddle to Henry L. Stimson, 24 Jan. 1944, repr. in Helix 13/14 (1983) 128.
Frank Amprim: ‘since August 1943’, memo from Colonel Earle B. Nichols of G-2 [Military Intelligence] to JA [Judge Advocate], 9 June 1945 (Nat. Arch. WO 204/12602, item 16). Other details from EP/DP 6-7.
‘an FBI target’: this paragraph mainly drawn from ‘Ramon Arrizabalaga’s Memoir (1956)’, EP/DP 371, 373, 375. The ‘Memoir’ was ‘assembled’ by the editors of EP/DP from two letters written by Arrizabalaga to John Edwards, 31 Jan. and 13 Mar. 1956, in response to the latter’s request for information.
108 ‘The American writer’: press cutting from Manchester Guardian, 7 May 1945, citing Associated Press, Rome, May 6 (Nat. Arch. KV 2/875, item 50a); another cutting from The Times, 7 May 1945, (citing Reuter, Milan, 6 May), says that EP, ‘the American poet, who broadcast from Rome under the Fascist regime, has been captured near Genoa’ (Nat. Arch. KV 2/875, item 50a).
‘Traitor Pound’: The Stars and Stripes, Mediterranean edition, 7 May 1945, as in ‘Introduction’, EP/DP 10.
Olga Rudge used to tell: see Conover 160ff.
‘seemed a very decent’: John Drummond to Ronald Duncan, 30 July 1945 (HRC).
109 ‘could not dispatch’: Frank L. Amprim to J. Edgar Hoover, 26 May 1945, EP/DP 51.
a couch and easy chairs: from OR’s account, Conover 161.
‘Army K rations’: from Amprim memo to Hoover, 20 May 1945, as in ‘Introduction’, EP/DP 7.
‘expressed himself’: EP to Shakespear & Parkyn, 5 Oct. 1945, EP/DP 109.
‘sworn statement’: an early, undated, TS draft with EP’s handwritten marginal comments, is reproduced in Helix 13/14 (1983) 129-32; another TS draft, dated 6 May was copied by Amprim to Captain Sidney Henderson, Office of the Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2, Allied Force Headquarters, on 31 May 1945 (Nat. Arch. WO 204/12602, item 13); the final version, dated 7 May 1945, which EP signed is reproduced in EP/DP 59-67.
After five hours, ‘ADMITS’: EP/DP 7.
110 ‘even if Italy fell’: EP in 7 May signed statement, EP/DP 63. The words ‘fight for’, present in the two previous drafts, are missing from this final version—an omission which I assume EP simply failed to notice. The other quotations in this paragraph are from the signed statement, EP/DP 63, 65, 67, and (Nat. Arch. WO 204/12602, item 16).
supplementary statement: printed in EP/DP 69-77.
an authorization: EP to DP, [7 May 1945], EP/DP 39-43.
111 ‘among the happiest’: OR to JL, 11 Nov. 1945, as in Conover 161—also EP/DP 8.
about 6.30: DP, Diary, entry for 7 May 1945 (Lilly).
‘very cooperative’: Amprim memo to Hoover, 20 May 1945, as in ‘Introduction’, EP/DP 8.
initialled and dated: among the books from EP’s library now at HRC are nine ‘FBI copies’ carrying the agents’ initials and dates. Orientamenti (1944), for example, the collection of EP’s articles from Meridiano di Roma, carries 5 sets of initials: (1) R.A Jr.[Ramon Arrizabalaga] | 7/5/45 | Genova | F.L.A [Frank Lawrence Amprim]; (2) F.L.A | Pisa | 8-7-45 [= 7 Aug.]; (3) My work | E. Pound | 7 Aug. 45; (4) MGM | 11/15/45; (5) MGM | 12/11/45 [= 11 Dec.].
‘This partial statement’: official TSS copy of EP signed statement to Frank Amprim, 8 May 1945, Genoa, (Nat Arch. WO 204/12602, items 13A, 13B). Not included in EP/DS, the editors apparently being unaware of it—see EP/DS 8.
‘a rather forced definition’: EP sworn statement 7 May 1945, as in EP/DS 67.
112 ‘OUTLINE OF ECONOMIC BASES’: EP’s further statements dated ‘8 May 1945’ are printed in EP/DP 69-77.
115 ‘Among the many things he said’: Edd Johnson, ‘Confucius and Kindred Subjects/Pound, Accused of Treason, Calls Hitler Saint, Martyr’, Chicago Sun, 9 May 1945, as in Carpenter 650-2. In Philadelphia Record the headline was, ‘Poet-Prisoner Pound Calls Hitler Saint’.
Amprim returned to Rome: see ‘Ramon Arrizabalaga’s Memoir (1956)’, EP/DP 373.
‘decision from Washington’: 15 Army Group to AFHQ, 19 May 1945 (Nat. Arch. WO 204/12602, item 4).
‘requests to higher headquarters’: ‘Ramon Arrizabalaga’s Memoir (1956)’, EP/DP 373.
‘doing Confucio’: EP to DP, 24 May 1945, as in EP/DP 49. In his note of 7 May authorizing DP to assist Amprim in his search of 60 Sant’Ambrogio, EP had written, ‘Am doing american version of l’Asse but forget some of the analyses: so must have at least one copy of my ital. trans.’, EP/DP 43.
‘posing at the typewriter’: ‘Ramon Arrizabalaga’s Memoir (1956)’, EP/DP 373, and see note on p. 374.
‘in a military stockade’: Amprim to J. Edgar Hoover, 21 May 1945, cited ‘Introduction’, EP/DP 11.
‘Talk is’: EP to DP, 24 May 1945, EP/DP 49; EP to OR, cited EP/DP 48.
‘Transfer without delay’: CG MTOUSA to CG Fifth Army, CG Replacement and Training Command, 22 May 1945 (Nat. Arch. WO 204/12602, item 9).
116 ‘5th Army Provost Marshall’: ‘Ramon Arrizabalaga’s Memoir (1956)’, EP/DP 373.
‘Doctor EZRA POUND delivered’: Fifth Army to CG MTOUSA, 27 May 1945 (Nat. Arch. WO 204/12602, item 10).
7. A PRISONER IN THE EYES OF OTHERS
Sources for this chapter: Again an invaluable resource has been Ezra and Dorothy Pound: Letters in Captivity, 1945-1946 edited and annotated by Omar Pound and Robert Spoo; and again another has been the copies in Britain’s National Archives (Ref: WO 204/12602-361810) of official messages exchanged by United States judicial and military authorities concerning the capture and disposal of Ezra Pound. An article by Ben D. Kimpel and T. C. Duncan Eaves, ‘More on Pound’s Prison Experience’, American Literature 53.3 (1981) 469-76, gives substantial excerpts from the reports of the three psychiatrists who examined Pound while he was confined in the DTC. Professor Giovanni Giovannini wrote a memorandum of Pound’s own oral account of his confinement as given to him in St Elizabeths, 4 Sept. 1957, and a copy of this is in the Hugh Kenner Archive (HRC). Several of the officers and guards serving at the US Army’s Detention and Training Center near Pisa while Pound was confined there have published their recollections in articles or interviews: David Park Williams, ‘The Background of the Pisan Cantos’ (Poetry, 1949), and Robert Allen, ‘The Cage’ (Esquire, 1958), both reprinted in William Van O’Connor and Edward Stone eds., A Casebook on Ezra Pound (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1959), 39-43, 33-8; Michael King, ‘An Interview with John L. Steele’, Texas Quarterly 21.4 (1978) 48-61; David Feldman, ‘Ezra Pound: A Poet in a Cage’, Pai 10.2 (1981) 361-5; John L. Steele, ‘Ez at the DTC: A Correspondence between Carroll F. Terrell and John L. Steele’, ed. Michael Fournier, Pai 12.2-3 (1983) 293-303; Homer Somers with William Pratt, ‘Ezra Pound in the DTC: A Personal Memoir’, Pai 34.2-3 (2005) 53-61; there is also an unpublished typescript memoir headed ‘Ezra Pound’, unsigned but on internal evidence by Homer Somers, c.1946?—this is with the Peter Russell material at HRC (Pound, EL Misc 1). Though these recollections are of great interest, their discrepancies, personal biases, and occasional demonstrable errors provide an instructive case study in the fallibility of memory. Even first-hand sources can be unreliable: Pound himself apparently told Giovannini that he had been held in the ‘gorilla cage’ for two months, when in fact it can be established that he was held there for under one month.
118 emergency landing field: from Somers, Pai 34.2-3 (2005) 54.
‘red-bearded’: ?Homer Somers, ‘Ezra Pound’ (Pound, EL Misc. 1, HRC).
‘stubby graying growth’ and ‘curly full head’: Feldman, Pai 10.2 (1981) 362.
‘graceful, looping’, ‘nimbly’: Robert Allen, ‘The Cage’, Casebook 35.
‘boric acid’: Feldman, Pai 10.2 (1981) 363.
119 ‘It’s terrible’: EP talking to Louis Dudek in St Elizabeths Hospital, Washington DC, 10 June 1950, as in Dk/Some Letters of Ezra Pound, ed. with Notes by Louis Dudek (Montreal: DC Books, 1974), 29.
The opening lines: the two pieces of toilet paper on which the first ten lines of canto 74 were drafted are reproduced as frontispiece to the edition of The Pisan Cantos edited and annotated with an introduction by Richard Sieburth (New York: New Directions, 2003); the inside front cover of Legge’s The Four Books with those lines written by EP is reproduced in A Selected Catalog of the Ezra Pound Collection at Hamilton College Compiled with notes by Cameron McWhirter and Randall L. Ericson (Clinton, NY: Hamilton College Library, 2005), 45. Ronald Bush, who knows the drafts better than anyone, thinks that these opening lines, ‘far from being the originating kernel of the suite, in fact surfaced slowly’ and were added only as ‘an afterthought’. However, I remain persuaded that it is unlikely Pound would have written them down on toilet paper, then in his Legge, unless he did not yet have a notebook. It is true, as Bush demonstrates, that the lines were inserted only in a late typescript; but the handwritten ‘incipit’ at the head of canto 74 in that typescript could well mean, not that that was where the canto began—if that was the beginning there would be no need to mark it thus—but instead that an ‘incipit’, i.e. the lines in question, was to be inserted there. Whether that was a late decision, or a strategic one to avoid provoking the US Army censor, is a matter for speculation. See Ronald Bush, ‘“Quiet, not scornful”: The Composition of The Pisan Cantos’, in A Poem Containing History: Textual Studies in The Cantos, ed. Lawrence Rainey (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997), 169-211. Massimo Bacigalupo put the case against Bush’s argument in his ‘Pound’s Pisan Cantos in Process’, Pai 27.2-3 (1998) 98-9.
Steele returned: see John L. Steele, chronology appended to ‘Ez at the DTC’, Pai 12.2-3 (1983) 300.
‘Placed in confinement’: report of Capt. R. W. Fenner, 14 June 1945, as in Kimpel and Eaves 471.
‘This 59½ year old’: report of Capt. Walter H. Baer, 15 June 1945, as in Kimpel and Eaves 471-2.
120 moved on June 18: see John L. Steele, chronology appended to ‘Ez at the DTC’, Pai 12.2-3 (1983) 300.
The Catholic chaplain: this paragraph is drawn from Wendy Stallard Flory, ‘Confucius against Confusion: Ezra Pound and the Catholic Chaplain at Pisa’, Ezra Pound & China, ed. Zhaoming Qian (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003), 146-62. The only indication of when the exchanges between EP and Father Vath took place is ‘June 26, 1945’; Flory assumes EP was then still in the cage, but in fact he had been transferred to the medical compound on 18 June.
message from the War Crimes Office: see Kimpel and Eaves 470.
‘He shows no evidence’: report of Major William Weisdorf, 17 July 1945, as in Kimpel and Eaves 472-3.
121 keeping him sane: in 1952 Pound showed a young Chinese visitor his ‘pirated, bilingual edition of James Legge’s translation of the Four Books of Confucius, dog-eared and its spine held together with band aids and scotch tape’, and she remembered him saying, ‘This little book has been my bible for years…the only thing I could hang on to during those hellish days at Pisa…Had it not been for this book, from which I drew my strength, I would really have gone insane’ (Angela Palandri, ‘Homage to a Confucian Poet’, Pai 3.3 (1974) 305). In the same year at St Elizabeths Pound told Henry Swabey, ‘Confucius kept me sane’ (Henry Swabey, ‘A Page Without Which…’, Pai 5.2 (1976) 333).
Colonel Steele’s note: John L. Steele to CG Replacement and Training Command, 19 July 1945, as in Kimpel and Eaves 473-4.
‘walking on eggshells’: Homer Somers, Pai 34.2-3 (2005) 57.
‘ensuring responsible care’: John L. Steele, Pai 12.2-3 (1983) 295-6.
122 ‘constant clanging’: Robert Allen, ‘The Cage’, Casebook 36.
dated it ‘D.T.C., Pisa’: see Confucius (1949) 44.
‘let down completely’: Robert Allen, ‘The Cage’, Casebook 36-7.
tried to explain Gesell: ?Somers, ‘Ezra Pound’ (Pound, EL Misc. 1, HRC).
‘anxious to discuss’: Robert Allen, ‘The Cage’, Casebook 35.
all 48 words: see 77/471.
an old broom handle: see 77/471.
123 read ‘everything’: Allen, ‘The Cage’, Casebook 37.
‘no communication’: John Drummond to DP, 11 July 1945 (Lilly), cited Carpenter 669.
transfer Pound…without delay: a 21 June 1945 message FX-96763 read, ‘Return to UNITED STATES recommended without delay’; a follow up message on 5 July 1945 read simply, ‘Decision disposition EZRA POUND reourad FX 96763 requested soonest’ (Nat. Arch. WO 204/12602, items 22 and 26).
‘reinterrogation’: Brigadier General John M. Weir, War Crimes Office, Washington, to Judge Advocate, Mediterranean Theatre, 3 July 1945, as in Kimpel and Eaves 470.
‘summaries and short items’: Amprim to Director, FBI, 21 June 1945, enclosing ‘documents secured by the writer on May 7, 1945, from the premises of the subject at #60 Sant’Ambrogio pursuant to written permission granted by Pound’ (photocopy reproduced in A Selected Catalog of the Ezra Pound Collection at Hamilton College (Clinton, NY: Hamilton College Library, 2005), 84).
‘From an examination’: J. Edgar Hoover to Frank L. Amprim, 4 July 1945 (photocopy reproduced in A Selected Catalog of the Ezra Pound Collection at Hamilton College, 85).
124 ‘enough to fill up’: Heymann 156—details about the gathering of evidence concerning the typewriters are in Heymann 156-7.
‘collected far more proof’, ‘my instinct’: EP to Shakespear & Parkyn, 5 Oct. 1945, as in EP/DP 109.
‘Absolute need’: AGWAR to AFHQ for attention…Amprim, 28 June 1945 (Nat. Arch. WO 204/12602, item 24). John M. Weir—see previous note—wrote to the same effect in his 3 July message: ‘The long delay in holding Dr. Ezra Pound has been due to the necessity of securing two witnesses to the overt act of treason upon which to predicate the trial of the case.’
‘Department wishes’: AGWAR to AFHQ for…Amprim, 17 July 1945 (Nat. Arch. WO 204/12602, item 28).
125 ‘Though people named’: AGWAR to AFHQ for Amprim, 24 July 1945 (Nat. Arch. WO 204/12602, item 29).
‘two other witnesses’: Samuel C. Ely memo to ‘The Files’, 14 Aug. 1945, Justice Department Files concerning Ezra Pound released on-line—<www.justice.gov/criminal/foia/records/ezra-pound-p1.pdf>.
‘Reinterview jointly’: AGWAR to COMGENMED FOR G-2 for Amprim, 21 Aug. 1945 (Nat. Arch. WO 204/12602, item 32).
FBI memo: D. M. Ladd to J. Edgar Hoover, 29 Oct. 1945, FBI file on Pound, as cited Torrey 180.
‘Without such witnesses’: ‘Seek Witnesses in Pound Case’, D.C. Times Herald, 29 Oct. 1945, as cited Torrey 180.
six of these ‘witnesses’: Allen, ‘The Cage’, Casebook 37.
five witnesses named: for the revised indictment see Norman: Case 80-1.
126 ‘an enquiry’, ‘no objection’: record of memos exchanged between PMG and G-2, 15 and 17 Aug. 1945 (Nat. Arch. WO 204/12602, item 31).
‘that your husband’: Provost Marshall General to DP, 24 Aug. 1945, EP/DP 81.
‘This letter will constitute’: Provost Marshall to DP, 18 Sept. 1945, EP/DP 83.
‘If Mrs Pound’: John L. Steele to EP, 20 Sept. 1945, EP/DP 85.
‘famished for news’: EP to DP, 20 Sept. 1945, EP/DP 89.
127 ‘“One day’s reading”’: EP to DP, 28 Sept. 1945, EP/DP 97. Cf. 74/427.
‘done a Decad’: EP to DP, 2 Oct. 1945, EP/DP 101.
‘Please have counsel’: DP to EP, 25 Sept. 1945, EP/DP 93.
Elihu Root: paragraph mainly drawn from editors’ note, EP/DP 96.
‘cordial recollections’: EP to Shakespear & Parkyn, 5 Oct. 1945, EP/DP 109.
128 ‘We can manage the cash’: DP to EP, 9 Oct. 1945, EP/DP 121.
Pound explained: EP to Shakespear & Parkyn, 5 Oct. 1945, EP/DP 107-13.
‘Tell Omar’: EP to DP, 24 Oct. 1945, EP/DP 157, 159.
‘a sheaf of documents’: Frank L. Amprim to Major Sidney Henderson, 10 Sept. 1945 (Nat. Arch. WO 204/12602, item 38).
‘integral part of my defence’: EP to A. V. Moore, 9 Nov. 1945, cited in editors’ note, EP/DP 178.
‘prefer to see Mr McLeish’: EP to Shakespear & Parkyn, 5 Oct. 1945, EP/DP 109, 113.
129 ‘Poor old Ezra!’: Archibald MacLeish to Ernest Hemingway, 27 July 1943, Letters of Archibald MacLeish 1907 to 1982, ed. R. H. Winnick (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1983), 316.
‘obviously crazy’: Hemingway to MacLeish, 10 Aug. 1943, Selected Letters of Ernest Hemingway 1917-1961, ed. Carlos Baker (New York: Scribner Classics 2003), 548-9.
‘misinterpretation’: MacLeish to Julien Cornell, Dec. 1945, MacLeish 335.
‘I should hardly say’: JL to EP, 4 Sept. 1945, EP/JL 137-8.
‘That angle’: JL to DP, 4 Nov. 1945, EP/JL 141-2.
130 ‘a good record’: JL to EP, 4 Sept. 1945, EP/JL 138.
‘A Quaker’: DP to EP, 19 Oct. 1945, EP/DP 151.
‘Jas pathetically’: EP to DP, 24 Oct. 1945, EP/DP 157.
‘Ez, you are not’: TSE to EP, 19 Oct. 1945, cited in editors’ note, EP/DP 86.
‘I don’t believe’: DP to EP, 15 Oct. 1945, EP/DP 133.
‘an intellectual “crack pot”’: Lt. Colonel P. V. Holder, Affidavit sworn 20 Nov. 1945, EP/DP 201.
‘got me my “Ta Seu”’: EP to DP, 9 Oct. 1945, EP/DP 123.
‘a long hour’: DP to OR, [after 3 Oct. 1945], cited in ‘Introduction’, EP/DP 18.
‘all and sundry’: EP to DP, 3 Oct. [1945], EP/DP 103.
131 ‘the first slab’: EP to DP, 4 Oct. 1945, EP/DP 105.
‘Report on the prisoner POUND’: EP, signed but not dated, with covering note from MTOUSA to CG Peninsular Base Section dated 5 Oct. 1945 (Nat. Arch. WO 204/12602, items 43c and 43b). On Oct. 18 EP drafted another ‘request to be sent to Rapallo on parole’, addressed to Major Lucree, but this request seems to have gone no further—see EP/DP 148-51.
‘protecting his butt’: John L. Steele to editors in 1992, editors’ note, EP/DP 152.
‘OUT correspondence’: EP to DP, 19 Oct. 1945, EP/DP 153.
‘another batch’ and ‘Note to Base Censor’: EP to DP via Base Censor, [4 Nov. 1945], EP/DP 177.
‘talked mostly of publications’: DP to A. V. Moore, 14 Nov. 1945, cited in editors’ note, EP/DP 182.
‘much emptier’: EP to DP, 11 Nov. 1945, EP/DP 185.
‘grizzled and red-eyed’: MdR, Discretions 256.
132 ‘EZRA POUND, American’: COMGENMED to AGWAR, 22 Oct. 1945 (Nat. Arch. WO 204/12602, item 43).
‘The Department of Justice’: AGWAR to COMGENMED, 5 Nov. 1945 (Nat. Arch. WO 204/12602, item 45).
‘on regular flight’: AGWAR to COMGENMED, 16 Nov. 1945 (Nat. Arch. WO 204/ 12602, item 46).
‘to escort’: Travel orders for escort to Rome, 16 Nov. 1945, as in EP/DP 191.
a 1,000-word ‘NOTE’: EP, ‘NOTE on “The Mission to Moscow” by J. E. Davies’, 4 typed sheets, dated at end ‘15 nov 1945’ (private collection).
‘Leaving probably Rome’: EP to DP, [14 and ?16 Nov. 1945], EP/DP 189.
small attaché case: the contents were listed when EP was committed to the DC Jail on 20 Nov.
greatcoat: DP to A. V. Moore, 14 Nov. 1945, ‘He had had a greatcoat issued to him’, cited in editors’ note, EP/DP 182.
‘cold raw night’: Lt. Colonel P. V. Holder’s report, 19 Nov. 1945, EP/DP 195.
133 ‘so that no one’: Lt. Colonel P. V. Holder’s report, 19 Nov. 1945, EP/DP 195. Details in this paragraph of the flight from Rome to Washington are drawn from this report.
‘Pound, in dirty shirt’: unidentified newspaper clipping in Charles Olson’s ‘Pound file’, as in Charles Olson, Charles Olson & Ezra Pound: An Encounter at St. Elizabeths, ed. Catherine Seelye (New York: Grossman Publishers, 1975), 119n.
8. ‘IN THE MIND INDESTRUCTIBLE’: THE PISAN CANTOS
Besides Carroll F. Terrell’s invaluable Companion to the Cantos of Ezra Pound, vol. 2 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), there are helpful annotations in Richard Sieburth’s edition of The Pisan Cantos (New York: New Directions, 2003).
134 working on his Confucius: Pound’s Confucius (1949) is dated on the last page ‘D.T.C., Pisa; 5 October—5 November, 1945’. His translation of ‘The Great Digest’ was drafted in the same notebook as cantos 80-3, but starting from the back.
135 the leading themes: Ronald Bush has argued on several occasions that the late insertion into the DTC drafts of the opening eleven lines transformed the entire sequence into an angry requiem for Italian Fascism—see his ‘“Quiet, not scornful”: The Composition of The Pisan Cantos’, in A Poem Containing History: Textual Studies in The Cantos, ed. Lawrence Rainey (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997), 198ff.; see also Sieburth’s account of Bush’s argument in the introduction to his edition of The Pisan Cantos xxxv-xxxvi. That now influential interpretation seems to me to be simply not in accord with the way the opening 31-line passage of canto 74 develops, nor with the way the Pisan sequence as a whole develops; nor is it in accord with the evidence (see Chapter 11) that Pound had come to terms with the failure of Fascism and was looking beyond it politically. And note the judgment on Mussolini in canto 78: ‘Sd/one wd/have to think about that | but was hang’d dead by the heels before his thought in proposito | came into action efficiently’ (78/482). Bush’s argument takes off from his speculative interpretation of Pound’s reaction to learning on 8 October that Angold had been killed in the war, and his then beginning canto 84 with five lines marking his death with phrases from Bertran de Born’s highly rhetorical lament for the death of the young English king (Pound’s version of the ‘Planh’ is in Personae). Pound responded to the news which he had from Dorothy by writing back to her, ‘Heart-break re/ Angold’ (EP/DP 117, 119), and Bush makes much of that ‘Heart-break’; but he does not note how the long letter goes on to other matters, and returns to Angold only to add, ‘Can’t say Angold was necessarily loss to literature as wasn’t sure he would go on writing.’ Canto 84 similarly moves on from the brief Angold threnody to quite other concerns. Pound cared that Angold’s ‘few poems the best granite of that generation up to 1938’ should be collected, but there is not the least evidence in the letter, nor in the canto, of an ‘angry wound opened up by Angold’s death’, a wound which supposedly led him to reveal at the end that the whole sequence was really an act of mourning for Mussolini and Fascism. Bush’s argument would have the lament for Angold at the end, and the protest at the manner of Mussolini’s death at the start—each a matter of a few lines only—determine our reading of the entire sequence.
I have great respect for Bush’s work on the The Pisan Cantos, but I find his interpretation in this instance thoroughly misleading; as, from his own different vantage point, does Massimo Bacigalupo—see his ‘The Myth of the Revised Opening of The Pisan Cantos’, Notes & Queries 54 (2007) 169-71.
136 ‘the city of Dioce’: see p. 99 above.
virtù irraggiante: EP, Confucio 4; also ‘Nota’, ‘Chung Yung [L’asse che non vacilla]’, in Opere Scelte 504-5.
137 Confucianism made new: on this see the following: Mary Paterson Cheadle, chap. 8: ‘Confucianism in The Cantos’, Ezra Pound’s Confucian Translations (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997), 217-66; Wendy Stallard Flory, ‘Confucius against Confusion’, in Ezra Pound & China, ed. Zhaoming Qian (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003), 143-62; Ronald Bush, ‘Confucius Erased: The Missing Ideograms in The Pisan Cantos’, also in Ezra Pound & China, 163-92; Feng Lan, Ezra Pound and Confucianism: Remaking Humanism in the Face of Modernity(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005), passim; Feng Lan, ‘Confucius’, in Ezra Pound in Context, ed. Ira B. Nadel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 324-34.
ch’eng2: ‘“Sincerity”. The precise definition of the word, pictorially the sun’s lance coming to rest on the precise spot verbally. The right hand half of this compound means: to perfect, bring to focus’ (EP, ‘Terminology’, Confucius (1951) 20).
‘the biologist’: EP, ‘Epstein, Belgion and Meaning’ (1930), EP&VA 166.
‘It is music’: EP as in David Anderson, ‘Breaking the Silence: The Interview of Vanni Ronsisvalle and Pier Paolo Pasolini with Ezra Pound in 1968’, Pai 10.2 (1981) 332 (my translation).
138 ‘not words whereto’: cf. Mencius IV.B.11. Ronald Bush, ‘Confucius Erased’, Ezra Pound & China, 170, shows that Pound was thinking of Confucian doctrine in parallel with his composition of the cantos, and that he was drawing mainly on the Analects and Mencius.
‘paraclete’: John 14.
‘Sincerity’: EP, ‘Note’, Confucius (1949) [vii].
140 ‘Gassir’: see pp. 98-9 above.
‘seed-gestalt’: see Ezra Pound Poet I, 228.
did radically revise: see Ronald Bush, ‘Remaking Canto 74’, Pai 32 (2003) 157-86.
Amber Rives: otherwise Princess Troubetzkoi—see pp. 30 and 57 above.
142 the economic theme: on this see A. David Moody, ‘Directio voluntatis: Pound’s Economics in the Economy of The Cantos’, Pai 32 (2003) 187-203.
144 serial bigamist: this information about Charles Granville, born Charles Hosken, I owe to the researches of Steve Holland published on the Web, 13 Feb. 2009.
‘my fondest knight’: Symons actually wrote, ‘I am Yseult and Helen, I have seen | Troy burn, and the most loving knight lie dead.’
146 ‘not to know words’: EP, Analects XX.iii, 3 (p. 135). Legge’s commentary on chap. iii is helpful, and also his commentary on ‘The Text of Confucius’, the first part of The Great Learning—see James Legge, Confucius: Confucian Analects, The Great Learning and The Doctrine of the Mean(1893; reprinted New York: Dover Publications, Inc.,1971), 354-9.
‘remade, as the plant repairs’: Dante, Purgatorio XXXIII.142-5, as in Laurence Binyon’s version.
147 ‘Itz the double-stopping’: EP to Dudek, [May 1951], EP/Dk [63].
‘a third life’: EP, GK 152.
148 ‘che fu chiamata Primavera’: see Dante, La Vita Nuova xxiv.
154 ‘half dead at the top’, ‘pragmatical, preposterous pig’: W. B. Yeats, ‘Blood and the Moon’, The Winding Stair (1933).
‘themis’: cf. 71/417 (‘THEMIS CONDITOR’), and John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, Sept. [i.e. 4 Oct.] 1813.
155 ‘O woman, shapely as the swan’: Padraic Colum, ‘I shall not die for thee’, included by EP in Confucius to Cummings, 305-6.
156 Jacopo del Sellaio’s Venus: see ‘The Picture’ and ‘Of Jacopo del Sellaio’ in Ripostes.
157 as Zielinski saw it: Thaddeus Zielinski, The Sybil. Three Essays on Ancient Religion and Christianity, as translated in Edge 2 (Nov. 1956), 6.
158 Hugh Kenner has shown: see his The Pound Era (Faber & Faber, 1972), 488-93. For a fine analysis of the metric of the libretto see Donald Davie, Pound (Fontana/Collins, 1975), 92-5.
160 jen: 3099 in Mathews’ Chinese-English Dictionary (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1943), which gives ‘Perfect virtue…the ideal of Confucius’. Terrell, Companion II, 457, gives ‘humanitas’ (after EP in ‘Terminology’, Confucius (1951) 22), and adds ‘the man who lives out heaven’s process’ etc.
Clytaemnestra: Pound cites in Greek and Latin Clytaemnestra’s ‘my husband dead by my right hand’, from Aeschylus’ Agamemnon 1429-30. Note especially Agamemnon 1410-15 for her ritual cry. Pound discussed the problem of translating the lines in ‘Early Translators of Homer’, LE270.
‘ἔφατα πόςις ὲμός’: ‘she said my husband’—see previous note.
161 Confucian thought: cf. EP, ‘In un mondo di luce ed acqua fluviale si svolgeva la vita ed il pensiero Confuciano’, ‘Studio integrale’, Meridiano do Roma VI.43 (26 Oct. 1941) 3.
162 his ‘boyhood’s friend’: see EP: Poet I, 409 and 225-6.
out of Mencius: see James Legge, The Works of Mencius II.i.11 (1895; reprinted New York: Dover Publications, Inc.,1970), 190. EP’s emphasis departs from Legge’s.
163 ‘that day I wrote no further’: possibly an echo of Francesca’s ‘quel giorno più non vi leggemo avante’, Inferno V.138, ‘that day we read no further’.
9. AMERICAN JUSTICE
Sources for this chapter: Materials in the United States National Archives (US Nat. Arch.) from the Justice Department files and from the St Elizabeths Hospital files; H. A. Sieber, The Medical, Legal, Literary and Political Status of Ezra Weston [Loomis] Pound [1885-]/Selected Facts and Comments (Washington 25, DC: Library of Congress Legislative Reference Service, 1958); Julien Cornell, The Trial of Ezra Pound: A Documented Account of the Treason Case by the Defendant’s Lawyer (Faber & Faber, 1967); Charles Norman, The Case of Ezra Pound (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1968); Jerome Kavka, ‘Ezra Pound’s Personal History: A Transcript, 1946’, Pai 20.1-2 (1991) 144-85; Ezra and Dorothy Pound: Letters in Captivity, 1945-1946, edited and annotated by Omar Pound and Robert Spoo; Charles Olson, Charles Olson & Ezra Pound. An Encounter at St. Elizabeths, ed. Catherine Seelye (New York: Grossman Publishers, 1975); E. Fuller Torrey, The Roots of Treason: Ezra Pound and the Secrets of St. Elizabeths (Sidgwick & Jackson, 1984); Conrad L. Rushing, ‘“Mere Words”: The Trial of Ezra Pound’, Critical Inquiry 14 (Autumn 1987) 111-33; Hsiu-ling Lin, ‘Reconsidering Ezra Pound’s Treason Charge in the Light of American Constitutional Law’, Pai 34.2-3 (2005) 63-96.
Note: Because this chapter is mainly based on American sources certain words may be spelt after American usage, for example, ‘defense’, and ‘rigor’.
167 ‘My instinct’: EP to Shakespear & Parkyn, 5 Oct. 1945, EP/DP 109.
‘I dont want a fake’: EP TS fragment, n.d., [with notes for Confucius to Cummings] (Beinecke). The note continues: ‘What KIND of lawyer do you mean?? The kind who said to me in Paris in 1920 whatever: Ahj, awl I’m interested in is bunk…seein’ what you can put over.’
Giving Cornell his head
167 ‘Poet Ezra Pound’: Washington Post (19 Nov. 1945) 1—from Torrey 178.
168 ‘We are proud’: Dwight D. Eisenhower, XXXIV President of the United States, ‘Remarks upon receiving the America’s Democratic Legacy Award at a B.nai B’rith Dinner in honor of the 40th anniversary of the Anti-Defamation League, 23 Nov. 1953 (Document Archive, Public Papers of the Presidents, Washington DC).
‘scholarly 10 minute’: ‘Pound Refused Treason Trial Attorney Role’, Washington Post 20 Nov. 1945—from Torrey 181.
‘to keep hell’: ‘Wallace’s Help at Trial Sought by Ezra Pound’, Associated Press report, Washington, 19 Nov. [1945], as in EP/DP 204.
169 ‘to undertake’: Cornell 4.
‘Mr. Cornell’: Norman: Case 92.
‘retained to confer’: Cornell 12.
‘had a talk’: Cornell 13.
‘very happy to know’: Cornell 13, 182.
‘will much prefer’: AVM to JL, 9 Oct. 1945, see Cornell 4-6 for full letter.
170 ‘some concept’: EP to AVM, 5 Oct. 1945, see Cornell 7-11 for full letter.
‘prepared to read’: TSE to EP, 19 Oct. 1945, as in EP/DP 86.
‘recordings’, ‘did not sound treasonable’: Cornell 1.
‘nothing in there’: JL to DP, 4 Nov. 1945 (Lilly)—a brief extract from this two-page letter is in EP/JL 141-2.
allowed under the First Amendment: Hsiu-ling Lin cites ‘the Skokie case (1977)’—see his ‘Reconsidering Ezra Pound’s Treason Charge in the Light of American Constitutional Law’, Pai 34.2-3 (2005) 68-9.
‘I think you are mistaken’: JL to DP, 4 Nov. 1945 (Lilly).
171 ‘two hours’: JC to JL, 21 Nov. 1945, Cornell 13.
‘marvelous trip’: EP to DP, 20 Nov. [1945], EP/DP 207.
‘When he arrived’: Cornell vii.
‘tired and dishevelled’: ‘Wallace’s Help at Trial Sought by Ezra Pound’, Associated Press report, Washington, 19 Nov. [1945], as in EP/DP 204.
immediately apparent: Cornell 15.
‘found the poor devil’: JC to JL, 21 Nov. 1945—see Cornell 13-15 for the full letter from which this and the two following paragraphs are drawn.
173 ‘to advise properly’: a formulation from the Report of Psychiatric Examination of EP read in Court 21 Dec. 1945, Cornell 37.
‘back in Italy’: EP to Archibald MacLeish, 1 Sept. 1956 (Manuscript Division. Library of Congress)—as in Torrey 185.
told Dorothy Pound: ‘I expect…that after a few months the case will be dropped and he will be set free’, JC to DP, 25 Jan. 1946, Cornell 41.
174 ‘Cornell has been in’: EP to DP, 24 Nov. [1945], EP/DP 211.
‘It was wonderful’: Ida B. Mapel to EP, 21 Nov. 1945 (Beinecke)—as in EP/DP 210. Pound recalled the visit in 95/645—‘Miss Ida by the bars in the jail house’.
‘Ezra stood the trip’: Ida B. Mapel to DP, 27 Nov. 1945 (Lilly)—as in EP/DP 210.
‘Wonderful plane trip’: EP to IWP, 22 Nov. 1945 (Beinecke).
‘Receipt of Property’: Justice Dept. Files, US Nat. Arch.
175 ‘bull pen’: JC to Dr Wendell Muncie, 6 Dec. 1945, Cornell 32.
‘Five prisoners’: Washington DC Times-Herald, 25 Nov. 1945, as in EP/DP 210.
confined to their cells: see EP to DP, 21 F[eb. 1946], EP/DP 279.
‘marvelous xperience’: EP to Ronald Duncan, 25 Nov. 1945 (Lilly)—given in Carpenter 709, from Duncan’s How to Make Enemies (Hart Davis, 1964), 111.
‘Police reporters’: ‘Treason’, from Time, 10 Dec. 1945, in A Casebook on Ezra Pound, ed. William Van O’Connor and Edward Stone (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1959), 20.
176 ‘from going completely crazy’: John O’Donnell, ‘Capitol Stuff’, New York Daily News, 28 Nov. 1945, as in EP/DP 206.
‘succeeded in obtaining release’: JC to AVM, 29 Nov. 1945, Cornell 27.
‘in a state’: JC to Dr Wendell Muncie, 6 Dec. 1945, Cornell 32.
The indictment: from a copy in Justice Dept Files, US Nat. Arch.—also reproduced in Norman: Case 77-82.
178 Justice Department internal assessment: Dorothy F. Green memorandum of 27 Apr. 1950, quoted in Dorothy F. Green memorandum to William E. Foley, 10 May 1956 (Justice Department Pound file)—as in Torrey 180.
‘extreme difficulty would be encountered’: Justice Department Office Memorandum, Mr Whearty to Mr McInerney, 6 June 1950 (Justice Dept. Files, US Nat. Arch.)
179 Cramer v. United States: Sieber noted the Supreme Court finding in his Library of Congress ‘Selected Facts and Comments’ (1958); John F. Graham cited it in his ‘Additional Observations on the Ezra Pound Case’, 27 July 1972 (unpublished TS, Kenner Archive, HRC); Conrad L. Rushingdiscussed the case in his ‘“Mere Words”: The Trial of Ezra Pound’, Critical Inquiry 14 (Autumn 1987) 116-18. In 1948, in the treason case of Chandler v. United States, Chief Judge Magruder of the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Boston, wrote when confirming the sentence passed in 1947 on Chandler: ‘The significant thing is not so much the character of the act which in fact gives aid and comfort to the enemy, but whether the act is done with intent to betray’—see Henderson 232.
180 ‘the only treason case’: JC, ‘Brief Concerning Bail’, 27 November 1945, Cornell 152.
‘found a way’: JC to DP, 25 Jan. 1946, Cornell 42.
‘damned democracy’: Olson 35. On Olson’s absorption in Pound see Tom Clark, Charles Olson: The Allegory of a Poet’s Life (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1991), 107ff.
‘took him to look older’: Olson 35-6.
‘Unkempt’: New York Herald Tribune (28 Nov. 1945)—as in Cornell 24.
181 ‘said not a word’: Cornell 22.
‘handed up to Judge Laws’: Cornell 22.
‘to read the motion papers’, ‘no objection’: Cornell 23.
early trial: see New York Herald Tribune (28 Nov. 1945)—as in Cornell 24.
‘admitted each and every’: Stars & Stripes (28 Nov. 1945), cutting in (UK) Nat. Arch. WO 204/12602, item 49.
‘I do not defend’: JC, ‘Affidavit in support of Application for Bail’, sworn to in New York 26 Nov. 1945 (Justice Dept. File, US Nat. Arch.). For Cornell’s edited version see Cornell 16-22.
183 ‘there is no question’: Archibald MacLeish to Harvey Bundy, 10 Sept. 1943, Letters of Archibald MacLeish, ed. R. H. Winnick (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1983), 171-2.
in…PM: see later under ‘The friends and enemies’.
‘It was this streak’: JC, ‘Affidavit’, Cornell 8ff.
185 ‘with the recommendation’: Decision of Chief Justice Bolitha J. Laws, 27 Nov. 1945, Cornell 23.
‘Am giving Cornell his head’: EP to DP, 29 Nov. [1945], EP/DP 213.
‘relaxation, recreation’: JC to AVM, 29 Nov. 1945, Cornell 26.
nothing to worry about: JC to EP, 29 Nov. 1945 (Beinecke)—noted by Torrey 187.
‘Having a rest cure’: EP to DP, 8 Dec. [1945], EP/DP 215.
‘Dear Mother’: EP to IWP, 10 Dec. 1945 (Beinecke).
‘Is there anything’: Theodore Spencer to EP, 10 Dec. 1945 (Beinecke).
186 ‘the government accepts’: JC to Dr Wendell Muncie, 6 Dec. 1945, Cornell 30—for full letter condensing JC’s Affidavit and his briefing of Muncie see Cornell 29-34.
‘Army doctors’: Cornell 35.
inviting Pound’s friends: Cornell 34-5. See also Heymann 191.
seeking funds: Cornell 38-9. See also Carpenter 717.
‘accrued royalties’: JL to DP, 4 Nov. 1945 (Lilly).
and ‘hospital treatment’: JC to AVM, [December 1945] (Lilly), as in Carpenter 717.
Three psychiatrists: details from Torrey 187-90, and Rushing, ‘“Mere Words”’, Critical Inquiry 14 (Autumn 1987) 124-5.
187 ‘When the four doctors’: Cornell 36.
Their brief report: Joseph L. Gilbert, MD, Marion R. King, MD, Wendell Muncie, MD, Winfred Overholser, MD, to Honorable Bolitha J. Laws, 14 Dec. 1945 (Justice Dept. Files, US Nat. Arch.); repr. in Cornell 36-7. The letterhead, lacking from both the copy in US Nat. Arch. and in Cornell, is supplied from a TS copy at Hamilton.
188 ‘found Pound astute’: Stanley I. Kutler, ‘This Notorious Patient’, Helix 13-14 (1983) 135-6. On King’s changing his report see also Torrey 192-3. Under cross-examination at the insanity hearing on 13 Feb. 1946, Dr King stated that it had been his early impression ‘that he should not be classified as a psychotic or insane person and, therefore, should not be absolved from the necessity of standing trial, but during subsequent examinations and interviews my view was changed because it became obvious…that much of his talk was definitely abnormal’ (Norman: Case 143).
189 ‘damned psychopath’: Dr Muncie interviewed by Torrey, Sept. 1980 and May 1981, Torrey 193. Details concerning Muncie’s change of mind drawn from Torrey 193-4.
‘If a person is acquitted’: Dr Winfred Overholser to Subcommittee on the Judiciary of the Senate Committee on the District of Colombia, June 1955—as in John F. Graham, ‘Additional Observations on the Ezra Pound Case’, 27 July 1972, 14 (unpublished TS, Kenner Archive, HRC).
190 ‘Very wearing’: EP to DP, 16 Dec. [1945], EP/DP 219.
‘Deare[s]ts’: EP to [?OR and Mary], 20 Dec. [1945], EP/DP 223.
‘It appearing’: Court order entered by Chief Justice Bolitha J. Laws on 21 Dec. 1945—as recorded p. 3 of a listing (prepared by J. F. Cunningham for Isaiah Matlack, 27 Jan. 1947) of ‘authorities and comments which may be cited in opposition to the Motion for Bail filed in behalf of Ezra Pound, under indictment for treason, who is now committed to St. Elizabeths Hospital under a judicial decree of insanity’ (Justice Dept. Files, US Nat. Arch.).
‘ordered Pound transferred’: Cornell 40. The statute referred to (and given in my footnote) is cited on p. 7 of the listing mentioned in the previous note.
191 ‘The government’s prosecuting attorneys’: New York Herald Tribune (22 Dec. 1945)—as in Cornell 38.
Laughlin wrote to T. S. Eliot: JL to TSE, 23 Dec. 1945 (Lilly). Other excerpts from the letter cited by Gregory Barnhisel, James Laughlin, New Directions, and the Remaking of Ezra Pound (Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2005), 102. In this letter JL noted that ‘The law reads that a patient in his situation must pay his own expenses at St Elizabeths’, however ‘he will try to show that he is penniless, unless this would mean his being put in a ward’.
Lunacy at St Elizabeths
192 ‘Criminal No. 76028’: Winfred Overholser to Clerk of the District Court, 27 Dec. 1945, requesting copies of the indictment and of the psychiatrists’ report to the Court (Justice Dept. Files, US Nat. Arch.).
removed late afternoon: Torrey 199.
‘inflexible rule’: JC to JL, 10 Feb. 1946, Cornell 57-8.
‘just under seven thousand’: details from Overholser in examination by Cornell at insanity hearing, 13 Feb. 1946, in Norman: Case 147.
‘place with extensive grounds’: Ida B. Mapel to DP, 29 Dec. 1945, as in EP/DP 252.
‘high penitentiary wall’, ‘black iron door’, ‘an Indian’: Olson 37.
193 examination by Dr Parker: Case No. 58,102/Notes #1-4, 21 December 1945: Dr M. M. Parker (St Elizabeths Files, 1397a-d, US Nat. Arch.).
194 ‘Dearest Child’: EP to Mary Rudge, n.d. [towards Christmas] (Beinecke).
Olson’s Jan. 4 visit: Olson 35-41.
‘formally interviewed’: Case No. 58,102/Notes #4-5, 4 Jan. 1946: Dr Kavka (St Elizabeths Files, 1397d-e, US Nat. Arch.).
195 Kavka’s ‘psychiatric examination’: reported in ‘Ezra Pound, #58,102/Dr. Kavka/January 24, 1946’, 15 TS pages (St Elizabeths Files, 1381a-o, US Nat. Arch.); notes of interviews and ‘Retrospective Thoughts’ in Kavka’s ‘Ezra Pound’s Personal History: A Transcript, 1946’, Pai 20.1-2 (1991) 144-85.
‘dramatic conversationalist’: Kavka’s ‘Retrospective Thoughts’, ‘Ezra Pound’s Personal History’, Pai 20.1-2 (1991) 184.
‘The birds are chirping’: Kavka’s transcript, ‘Ezra Pound’s Personal History’, Pai 20.1-2 (1991) 153-4.
196 ‘easily distractible’: Kavka’s 24 Jan. 1946 report p. 14 (St Elizabeths Files, 1381n, US Nat. Arch.).
‘At this point’: Kavka’s ‘Retrospective Thoughts’, Pai 20.1-2 (1991) 173-4.
‘does not appreciate’: Kavka’s 24 Jan. 1946 report p. 15 (St Elizabeths Files, 1381o, US Nat. Arch.).
‘During his stay’: Kavka’s 24 Jan. 1946 report p. 13 (St Elizabeths Files, 1381m, US Nat. Arch.).
197 ‘young doctors’: EP to JC, n.d. [16 Jan. 1946], Cornell 72.
‘No well-devined (sic)’: Kavka’s 24 Jan. 1946 report p. 14 (St Elizabeths Files, 1381n, US Nat. Arch.).
‘Do you believe’: Kavka’s transcript, ‘Ezra Pound’s Personal History’, Pai 20.1-2 (1991) 160.
Rorschach inkblot test: Dr Kendig’s ‘Rorschach Summary’ for ‘Ezra Pound, Case #58,102 | January 10, 1946’ (St Elizabeths Files, 1385a-b, US Nat. Arch.).
198 ‘Olson gt. comfort’: EP to DP, [6 Jan. 1946], EP/DP 235.
‘if Cornell or Laughlin’: Olson 47.
‘relapse’: EP to JC, n.d. [16 Jan. 1946], Cornell 71-2.
199 ‘I am sorry’: JC to EP, 4 Feb. 1946—as in Carpenter 733.
‘Please everybody’: EP to AVM for DP, [12 Jan. 1946], EP/DP 239.
‘I like getting | letters’: EP to EEC, [postmarked 25 Jan. 1946], EP/EEC 168.
‘great comfort’: EP to DP, 31 Jan. 1946, EP/DP 255, 257.
‘Ezra (Candide)’: EP to E. Rudge, 4 Feb. 1946 (Beinecke).
‘of Bunting’: EP to Ronald Duncan, 24 Jan. 1946, EP/DP 249.
‘Miss Ida fix’d’: EP to DP, [6 Jan. 1946], EP/DP 235.
‘at the request’: Olson 45, 42.
papers not forwarded: mentioned again in EP to E. Rudge, 4 Feb. 1946 (Beinecke). This note included a version of Minor Odes of the Kingdom III.2 (no. 176 in CA)—a very different version from the one published in CA.
hard going: Olson 46.
‘sob stuff’: EP to OR, 17 Jan. 1946 (Beinecke).
‘much better’, ‘Possum’s “4tets”’: EP to DP, 31 Jan. 1946, EP/DP 255.
200 ‘For nearly a year’: JL to WO, 9 Jan. 1946 (St Elizabeths Files, US Nat. Arch.). As to the length of JL’s time at the ‘Ezuversity’ in 1934, in EP: Poet II, 192 and associated note I calculated just ‘two or three weeks’, evidently in error. Ian S. MacNiven in his new biography of JL writes that he arrived in Rapallo on 4 November, and left before 21 December, a period of six or seven weeks—see MacNiven, ‘Literchoor is my Beat’: A Life of James Laughlin (New York: Farrar, Staus and Giroux, 2014), p. 70.
the four books: these would have been Polite Essays (Faber 1937, New Directions 1940), The Fifth Decad of Cantos (Faber and Farrar & Rinehart 1937, New Directions 1940), Culture (Faber and New Directions 1938), Cantos LII-LXXI (Faber and New Directions 1940).
‘aren’t you ever coming’: EP to JL, 1 Feb. 1946, EP/JL 145.
‘This patient appeared’: Case No. 58,102/Notes #5, 18 January 1946: Dr Griffin (St Elizabeths Files, 1397d, US Nat. Arch.).
‘a foregone conclusion’: JC to DP, 25 Jan. 1946, Cornell 41.
201 ‘mental torture’: EP to JC, [27 Jan. 1946], Cornell 75.
‘As no one ever listens’: EP to JC, 27 Jan. [1946], Cornell 77.
‘Zionist program’: in ‘Ezra Pound, #58,102 | Dr. Kavka | January 24, 1946’ p. 8, (St Elizabeths Files, 1381h, US Nat. Arch.). See also EP, ‘Ashes of Europe Calling’, draft script for radio broadcast [May 1945], EP/DP 55: ‘I believe in Palestine for the jews as a national home & symbol of jewry—not merely as a real estate speculation—zionism against international finance.’
202 conference on the 28th: Dr Duval’s 2-page report from which this and the following paragraphs are drawn is ‘Ezra Pound | Case #58102 | Notes | January 28, 1946’ (St Elizabeths Files, 1396, US Nat. Arch.). Further details from Torrey’s telephone interviews with doctors Duval and Dalmau in 1980 and 1981, Torrey 203-4.
203 ‘wound so tight’: Olson was recording his 29 Jan. visit, Olson 61.
‘“The pure products”’: EP to WCW, [31 Jan. 1946], EP/WCW 216. The lines are from WCW’s ‘To Elsie’ in Spring & All (1923), reprinted by EP in Active Anthology (1933). For an illuminating note on EP’s letter see Emily Mitchell Wallace, ‘America’, Ezra Pound in Context, ed. Ira B. Nadel(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 219-20.
‘That you’re crazy’: WCW to EP, 4 Feb. 1946, EP/WCW 217.
‘Patient was interviewed’: Case No. 58,102/Notes #5, 7 Feb. 1946: Dr Overholser (St Elizabeths files, 1397e, US Nat. Arch.).
204 ‘“4 medicos”’: Olson recording his 7 Feb. visit, Olson 68.
‘to see Pound’, ‘very nervous’: Cornell 42, 44.
‘stopped in Dr. Overholser’s office’: Cornell 42-3.
The hearing
The transcript of the hearing on Wednesday, 13 Feb. 1946, is reproduced in Norman: Case 106-80, and also in Cornell 154-215.
205 ‘he looked “nice”’: Ida B. Mapel to DP, 6 Feb. 1946, as in EP/DP 292.
‘quieted by his lawyer’: Newsweek (25 Feb. 1946), as in A Casebook on Ezra Pound 23.
‘Throughout the rest’: New York Herald Tribune (14 Feb. 1946), as in Cornell 45.
‘held his head bowed’: Albert Deutsch, ‘Pound Gets Unsound’, PM (14 Feb. 1946), as in Torrey 215.
lines from canto 80: see Cornell 33-4.
216 ‘jumped up with alacrity’: Albert Deutsch, ‘Pound Gets Unsound’, PM (14 Feb. 1946), as in Torrey 217.
‘all excited’: Olson 77.
‘most interesting’: reported in Muncie to Overholser, 14 Feb. 1946—as in Carpenter 754.
217 ‘how much the unfit plea’: Olson 77.
so Laughlin told Eliot: JL to TSE, 15 Feb. 1946, as paraphrased in Torrey 217.
witnesses back home to Italy: New York Herald Tribune (14 Feb. 1946), as in Cornell 44.
‘wanted to go to St. Elizabeths’, ‘Common sense’: Conrad L. Rushing, ‘“Mere Words”: The Trial of Ezra Pound’, Critical Inquiry 14 (Autumn 1987) 125.
‘especially the persons’, ‘The moral insults’: Thomas S. Szasz, ‘There Was No Defense’, [review of Cornell’s The Trial of Ezra Pound], New York Times Book Review, [1966]—photocopy of review (Lilly). See also Thomas S. Szasz, Law, Liberty and Psychiatry: An Enquiry into the Social Uses of Mental Health Practices (1963), (Syracuse University Press, 1987).
218 ‘It was a pleasure’: JL to WO, 27 Feb. 1946 (St Elizabeths Files, 30, US Nat. Arch.).
‘beginning to feel’: JL to TSE, 15 Feb. 1946 (HRC), as in Barnhisel, James Laughlin, 103.
‘his bounce back’, ‘The sense’: Olson recording his visit on 14 Feb., Olson 72, 75.
219 ‘I long for Pisan paradise’: EP to DP, 21 [Feb. 1946], EP/DP 279.
‘the doctors appear’: Cornell to A. V. Moore, 4 Mar. 1946, Cornell 47-9—this paragraph and the one following are based on this letter.
The friends and enemies
220 ‘I stand for…custody’: Olson was writing after his second visit, 15 Jan. 1946, Olson 46.
‘The case for and against Pound’: compiled and edited by Charles Norman, PM (25 Nov. 1945); reprinted, expanded, as a booklet, The Case of Ezra Pound (New York: The Bodley Press, 1948); included as chap. 7, ‘Points of View’, in Norman: Case 83-91. Norman’s account of Pound’s life and work made up about two-thirds of the PM symposium, with the ‘comments by noted writers’ making up the rest.
221 ‘I hope very much’: Karl Shapiro to Charles Norman, 30 Nov. 1945 (Hamilton). Shapiro withdrew his comment from Norman’s later version of the symposium, because he found himself accused of taking the part of Fascism for saying that Pound could only be tried for a political crime and not for his poetry. He had written: ‘If Pound were to be tried for his poetry he would come off very well indeed.’
‘the one bright star’: EP to EEC, 15 Oct. [1946], EP/EEC 190.
Edgar A. Guest: (1881-1959), known as ‘The People’s Poet’ for his 11,000 sentimental and optimistic poems syndicated in 300 newspapers and collected in a score of books (Wikipedia).
222 ‘You make this assumption’: TSE to Charles Norman, 19 Oct. 1945 (U Penn).
‘It seems to me’: Wallace Stevens to Charles Norman, 9 Nov. 1945, Letters of Wallace Stevens, ed. Holly Stevens (Faber and Faber, 1967), 516-17.
223 ‘did not doubt his integrity’: LZ in Norman, The Case of Ezra Pound (1948), 55-7.
225 New Masses: the cover of the issue for 25 Dec. 1945 is reproduced in Barnhisel, James Laughlin, following p. 101. The quotations from Rosten, Maltz, and Miller are cited by John F. Graham in his ‘Additional Observations on the Ezra Pound Case’, 27 July 1972 (unpublished TS, Kenner Archive, HRC).
‘Pound had been calling’: Arthur Miller, Timebends (Methuen, 1987), 409-10.
‘The mob is blood-hungry’: JL to OR, 4 Jan. 1946, as in Conover 169.
‘important or dangerous’: editorial, Washington Post (29 Nov. 1945)—as in Torrey 190.
‘assisted the perpetrators’: Frank Valery et al. to President Truman, 26 Jan. 1946 (Dept. of Justice file), as in Torrey 190.
226 ‘given the guarantee’, ‘his indictment’: Archibald MacLeish, ‘The Venetian Grave’ (1974), Riders on the Earth: Essays & Recollections (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1978), 117.
227 ‘The vitality of civil’: Mr Justice Douglas delivering the majority opinion in ‘Terminiello v. City of Chicago, 337 US 1 (1949) no. 272’, decided 16 May 1949.
‘Some of us thought’: Archibald MacLeish to Torrey, 1981, Torrey 182.
‘Free speech under modern conditions’: see above 62-3.
‘radio free speech’: 74/426.
10. A YEAR IN THE HELL HOLE
The Loomis family motto is from HLP to EP, 18 Dec. 1913 (Beinecke).
231 ‘What the hell is reality’: JL in conversation with Charles Olson, Olson 77.
a young orderly: paragraph drawn from the account by Ralph Hjelm, as cited in Carroll Terrell, ‘St. Elizabeths’, Pai 3.3 (1974) 368-9.
One of the attendants: the following paragraphs citing the observations of attendants and doctors are drawn from the ‘Notes on Ezra Pound, Case No. 58,102, US Prisoner’ (St Elizabeths Files, 1397f-j, US Nat. Arch.).
232 ‘Only present affliction’: EP to OR, 23 Mar. [1946] (Beinecke/OR).
234 ‘ignorant interns’: EP correspondence note for MdR, n.d. (Lilly).
‘you [can] hv no idea’: EP to Ronald Duncan, 1 Mar. 1946, as in editors’ note EP/DP 290.
‘I can’t hold two sides’: EP to Eileen Lane Kinney, n.d., as in Wilhelm: 1994, 261.
‘in serious breakdown’: EP to Mary Barnard, 9 Apr. 1946, as in introduction, EP/DP 31.
‘My Main spring’: EP to WCW, 26 [Apr. 1946], EP/WCW, 226-7.
235 ‘she write him simple things’: EP to OR, 23 Mar. [1946] (Beinecke/OR). ‘Shakleton’ is probably Edward, son of Ernest Shackleton, the Antarctic explorer. Edward Shackleton led an expedition to Ellesmere Land in the Canadian Arctic in 1934-5, and published Arctic Journeys in 1937. The ‘little white Ogden series’ probably ‘Psyche Miniatures’, general editor C. K. Ogden.
‘My status’, ‘I suffer’: EP to OR, 8 Apr. [1946] (Beinecke/OR).
236 ‘Basso inferno’: EP to MdR, 17 June [1946] (Beinecke).
‘I eat wot I get’: EP to Viola Baxter Jordan, n.d. (Beinecke).
‘local bulletin’: EP to OR, 5 July [1946] (Beinecke/OR).
‘Today red letter’: EP to OR, 3 June [1946] (Beinecke/OR).
‘One of the worst things’: EP, ‘A Letter by Ezra Pound’, to unidentified correspondent, 5 July 1957, from Way Out XIX.1 (1963) 19, in P&P IX, 359.
‘view of Potomac’: EP to DP, 21 Feb. [1946], EP/DP 279.
‘dry moat of the dungeon’: EP to MdR, 20 Mar. [1946] (Beinecke).
‘to pierce the wall’: EP to MdR, 24 Mar. [1946] (Beinecke). Also EP to DP, 30 Mar. [1946], EP/DP 303.
‘to think of some world outside’: EP to Nancy Cunard, 2 June 1946 (HRC).
‘to git my MIND out’: EP to EEC, 10 July [1946], EP/EEC 181.
‘I like to get letters’: EP to WL, 4 Mar. [1948], EP/WL 241.
‘Gtst difficulty’: EP to D. D. Paige, as in editorial note, EP/DP 226.
a place for news to come into: EP to VBJ, 20 July [1948] (Beinecke).
‘Keep St Amb’: EP to OR, 25 Feb. [1946] (Beinecke/OR).
‘yes if he had the wings’: EP to OR, 28 Mar. [1946] (Beinecke/OR)—cf. Psalm 55.
237 ‘Dearest Child’: EP to MdR, 28 Feb. [1946] (Beinecke)—see 74/444.
‘I have no say’: EP to OR, 8 Apr. [1946] (Beinecke/OR).
‘He would like to see’: EP to OR, [Mar./Apr. 1946?] (Beinecke/OR).
‘he better not’: EP to OR, 5 Apr. [1946] (Beinecke/OR).
‘he would like to see her’: EP to OR, [Mar. 1946?] (Beinecke/OR).
‘God Damn’: EP to OR, [Aug. 1946] (Beinecke/OR).
‘SHE damn well’: EP to OR, 14 Oct. [1946] (Beinecke/OR).
238 ‘I am quite intent’: DP to EP, 19 Dec. 1945, EP/DP 221.
‘I don’t know how’: EP to DP, 6 Feb. [1946], EP/DP 261.
‘Wd you go via England?’: EP to DP, 14 Feb. [1946], EP/DP 267.
‘D.P. a blessing’: EP to MdR, 26 Feb. 1956 (Beinecke).
‘D. attendin to practical’: EP to IWP, ‘sometime in May’ [1947] (Beinecke).
‘full of filial piety’: DP to EP, enclosed in JC to EP, 25 Jan. 1946, EP/DP 249. See also DP to EP, 23 Jan. 1946, EP/DP 247.
she sent him a poem: DP to EP, 7 Apr. 1946, EP/DP 311.
‘Hope she hit bottom’: EP to DP, 23 May [1946], EP/DP 343.
‘that perpetual mosquito’: DP to EP, 29 Jan. 1946, EP/DP 254.
‘with Siga Corradi’, ‘has always said’: DP to EP, 19 Dec. 1945, EP/DP 221.
239 clear headed: OR wrote to Ronald Duncan, 16 Mar. 1948: ‘she was a very fine-spirited lady & not ga ga—as Jas had been led to infer’ (HRC).
‘wanted at all costs’: MdR, Discretions 265.
‘“its an ill wind”’: DP to EP, 20 May 1946, EP/DP 337.
‘Very very sorry’: EP to IWP, [after 20 May 1946] (Beinecke).
‘terminated the lease’: MdR, ‘Isabel and Homer: A Double Memoir’, EP/Parents xxii.
‘to have passage’: IWP to MdR, [early 1947], as in MdR, ‘Isabel and Homer: A Double Memoir’, EP/Parents xxiii.
‘He has such charm’: paragraph drawn from Olson 87-91.
240 ‘spent mostly with Cornell’: this and other details in DP to AVM, [11 July 1946], EP/DP 363.
would rent the attic: see DP to OSP, Sept. 1946 (Hamilton).
After her 15 minutes: paragraph drawn from DP to AVM, [11 July 1946], EP/DP 363; DP to JL, 11 July and 14 July 1946, EP/JL 149, 150; DP to JC, 14 July 1946, Cornell 51-2.
‘would be much better off’: JC to DP, 15 July 1946, Cornell 52-3.
241 ‘very anxious’, and ‘What we concluded’: JL to EEC, 7 June 1946, and JL to EEC, n.d., as in editorial note, EP/EEC 179.
‘Wd like yr. version’: EP to EEC, 27 June [1946], EP/EEC 179.
‘I gather’: EEC to EP, [8 July 1946], EP/EEC 180.
he wrote to Dorothy: TSE to DP, [July 1946] (HRC).
‘How can I make you understand’: DP to Ronald Duncan, 9 Aug. [1946] (HRC).
‘really very much shattered’: DP to Ronald Duncan, 23 Aug. [1946] (HRC).
242 ‘put aside and forgotten’: DP to JC, 17 July 1946, Cornell 53.
‘how far you understand the case’: DP to JC, 14 July 1946, Cornell 51.
‘I think your husband’: JC to DP, 15 July 1946, Cornell 53.
‘something to reassure’: DP to JC, 17 July 1946, Cornell 53.
‘most anxious to see Dr. Overholser’: DP to JC, 17 July 1946, Cornell 53.
‘your benevolence’: DP to WO, 8 Aug, [1946] (St Elizabeths Files 85a-b, US Nat. Arch.).
‘working little at a time’: DP to Joseph Darling Ibbotson, 24 July 1946 (Hamilton).
‘It works for a few minutes’: EP to Ibbotson, 27 July [1946], EP/Ibb 117.
twenty stenographer’s notebooks: notebooks numbered 40-59 in Mary de Rachewiltz, A Catalogue of the Poetry Notebooks of Ezra Pound (New Haven: Yale University Library, 1980).
‘It’ll do you for a prayer’: EP to MdR, 11 June [1946] (Beinecke). The ode is numbered 289 in the standard arrangement of the Book of Odes.
243 ‘saved my mind’: EP TS note: ‘8 Jan. ’59. Rouse saved my life. i.e. he sent me the text of the Odes that saved my mind in the hell hole.’ Rouse had given him, c. Dec. 1937, a copy of Legge’s The Book of Poetry (Shanghai: Chinese Book Company)—a pirated edition, like the copy of the Four Books EP had with him in the DTC. (Thanks to Leah Flack for this information and for copies of EP’s note and letter to Rouse.) Pound had a copy of the Odes in the DTC—see EP/DP 123—probably the one Rouse had given him. MM sent EP Legge’s Sacred Books of China, containing his selective treatment of the Odes as religious verse, and the Yi King, 30 Aug. 1946—details from inscription in the book now in HRC.
‘a penciled scrawl’: paragraph drawn from Mary Barnard’s record made in March and April 1946, as in her Assault on Mount Helicon: A Literary Memoir (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 231-5.
for Olson he had just written to Eliot about…Call Me Ishmael: on this see Olson 75, 85.
244 ‘doesn’t sit and worry’: DP to Ronald Duncan, 9 Aug. [1946] (HRC).
‘not for ME’: EP note on letter to him from Clara Studer dated ‘Sunday 20th’ [1946] (Lilly).
‘dont Fox or anyone’: EP to EEC, 6 Mar. [1946], EP/EEC 170.
He told Williams: see for instance the exchange between EP and WCW in July and August 1946, EP/WCW 232-6.
‘He’s never got over’: WCW to JL, 17 July 1946, WCW/JL 127.
‘still hard for me’: EP to MdR, 18 Mar. [1946] (Beinecke).
‘I am now convinced’: MdR to EP, [Feb. or early Mar. 1946], as in Conover, 170.
‘Will you send her’: EP to JL, 19 Mar. 1946, EP/JL 147.
‘The Production of Maple Sirup’: enclosed in EP to MdR, 10 Apr. [1946], (Beinecke).
‘will put you through’: EP to MdR, 24 Apr. [1946] (Beinecke).
‘a hillside where trees’: EP to MdR, 7 May [1946] (Beinecke).
245 acero in the valleys: EP to MdR, [Jan. 1947] (Beinecke)—acero, maple.
the brilliant boy, ‘“Make sure he is healthy”’: see MdR, Discretions 261-71.
‘a centro culturale’: EP to MdR, 10 Nov. [1946] (Beinecke).
‘the best musician’: EP to MdR,11 Dec. [1946] (Beinecke).
‘majolica stoves’: MdR, Discretions 275.
‘You give me plenty’: EP to MdR, 4 Jan. [1947] (Beinecke).
‘Kung-fu-tseu lacked’: EP to OR, 2 June [1946] (Beinecke/OR).
‘Kung and Eleusis’: see 52/258 and 53/272—emphasis added.
‘no Romaunt’: EP to VJB, n.d. (Beinecke).
246 ‘just the same old Ezra’: see p. 191 above.
‘by reason of your mental condition’: JC to EP, 1 Mar. 1946 (Lilly)—as in Carpenter 757.
‘asked Dr. Overholser’: Cornell 80.
‘Would it be suitable’: EP to JC, 12 Mar. [1946], reproduced in Cornell 81.
‘Should I make power’: EP to AVM, Mar. 1946, as in Carpenter 757.
‘Will send the pwr’: EP to JC, 20 Mar. [1946], reproduced in Cornell 83.
‘extraordinary clarity of mind’: JC to WO, 2 Apr. 1946, as in Carpenter 757-8.
‘Next point’: EP to JC, 20 Mar. [1946], reproduced in Cornell 83.
‘Dear JC/’: EP to JC, 16 Apr. [1946], reproduced in Cornell 85.
247 ‘a little suspicious’: JC to AVM, 16 Apr. 1946 (Lilly)—as in Carpenter 758.
‘guardian of her husband’s estate’: JC to AVM, 16 Apr. 1946 (Lilly).
‘an insane person should be asked’: DP to WO, 12 Sept. 1946, as in Carpenter 767.
‘had arranged for the appointment’: Cornell 124.
‘no persona giuridica’: EP to MdR, 16 Feb. [1947] (Beinecke).
‘please send $100’: EP to JC, 26 Feb. [1946] (HRC).
‘I want her to get used’: EP to JC, 8 Mar. [1946] (HRC).
‘at your request’: JC to EP, 11 Mar. 1946 (Lilly).
‘inconvenience of being a lunatic’: EP to MdR, 17 Feb. [1948] (Beinecke).
248 ‘suspension of civil rights’: WO, The Psychiatrist and the Law (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1953), 89.
Pound believed: EP wrote ‘“committee” brought up by British lawyer’ in EP to MdR, 16 Feb. [1947] (Beinecke).
‘Whether he is legally competent’: JC to AVM, 16 Apr. 1946 (Lilly), as in Carpenter 758.
Laughlin and Cornell had hoped: see p. 191 above.
249 ‘They are going to think’: JL to EP, [? Mar. 1949] (Lilly). On this matter see Barnhisel, James Laughlin, 132-5, and EP/JL 182-4.
‘a moral position’: see JL to EP, 28 Mar. 1949, EP/JL 184.
a feared and powerful public perception: Some whose views I respect would maintain that the prime cause of the public hostility to Pound was not his anti-Semitism but his perceived disloyalty to the USA in time of war. I can only say that the evidence available to me points the other way. Then there are those who would go further and maintain that such was the public outrage on account of that perception of disloyalty that, regardless of the strict requirements of the law, a jury would certainly have found him guilty of treason. The case of ‘Tokyo Rose’ makes me hesitate to dismiss that as simple speculation. But those who hold this latter view tend also to argue that Laughlin’s and Cornell’s cautionary strategy saved Pound from certain execution, and here one must recall that in fact not one US citizen convicted of treason was executed. If convicted Pound would more likely have served ten years in a federal prison, not thirteen in St Elizabeths.
privately, Laughlin accepted: see JL to EP, 28 Mar. 1949, EP/JL 184.
250 ‘Except as to real property’: JC to AVM, 20 July 1946 (Lilly).
‘It is unfortunate if’: JC to AVM, 5 Aug. 1946 (Lilly).
‘By English law’: AVM to JC, 9 Aug. 1946 (Lilly).
‘would be shared by’: JC to AVM, 12 Aug. 1946 (Lilly).
Pound had made a will: see Figure 1.
to be his literary executor: MdR refers to this obliquely in Discretions 261.
sale of archives: in 1964 negotiations for the sale of the archive to Yale were ongoing.
Doubts would be raised: according to Donald Gallup the will, to meet the requirements of Italian law, should have been handwritten, not typed; and further, it should have been filed with an Italian court—see his Pigeons on the Granite (New Haven: The Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University, 1988), 197.
the New Critics: for a useful discussion of this background and its relevance see chaps. 3 and 4 in Barnhisel, James Laughlin.
‘Honest criticism’, ‘the more perfect the artist’: T. S. Eliot, ‘Tradition & the Individual Talent’ (1919), Selected Essays (Faber & Faber, 1951), 17, 18.
the essay which Eliot wrote: TSE, ‘Ezra Pound’, Poetry LXVIII (Sept. 1946) 326-38, reprinted in Ezra Pound: A Collection of Essays Edited by Peter Russell to be Presented to Ezra Pound on his Sixty-Fifth Birthday (Peter Nevill Limited, 1951), 25-36.
251 ‘I don’t know what you suppose’: DP to WCW, 29 Aug. 1946, EP/WCW 239.
‘That Ezra is guilty’: WCW to DP, 30 Aug. 1946, EP/WCW 240.
‘the mere fact’: WCW to EP, 29 Mar. 1946, EP/WCW 218.
broken ‘with old Ezra finally’: WCW to JL, 28 Dec. 1946, WCW/JL 131.
252 ‘Dear Mr President’: WCW to Honorable Harry S. Truman, President of the United States, New Year’s Eve 1946 (St Elizabeths Files, 120, US Nat. Arch.).
‘Mr. Pound is certainly’: WO to WCW, 10 Jan. 1947, as in Carpenter 770.
‘it would break me up’: WCW to EP, 6 Apr. 1946, EP/WCW 223.
Bill Bird: paragraph drawn from Bill Bird to DP, 12 Nov. 1946 (Lilly).
253 a long letter: Nancy Cunard to EP, 11 June 1946 (Beinecke).
‘too weak to write’: EP, pencil note, n.d. (Lilly, box 13).
‘My dear N.’: EP to Nancy Cunard, 1 Aug. [1946] (HRC).
both would relent: see James J. Wilhelm, ‘Nancy Cunard: A Sometime Flame, a Stalwart Friend’, Pai 19.1-2 (1990) 202-21. Wilhelm gives much of NC’s long letter of 11 June.
254 a ‘primary generative force’: Robert Duncan, ‘The H.D. Book’ I.6.(2), in Caterpillar 2 (Jan. 1968), and The H.D. Book (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), 183.
‘For my generation’: Robert Creeley, ‘A Note on Ezra Pound’ (1965), A Quick Graph: Collected Notes & Essays (San Francisco: Four Seasons Foundation, 1970), 95, 96. See also Duncan’s reflections on visiting Pound in 1948, in A Great Admiration: HD/Robert Duncan Correspondence 1950-1961, ed. Robert J. Bertholf (Venice, Calif.: The Lapis Press, 1992), 3-4, 36-9.
‘A Canto for Ezra Pound’: TS, 6 pages, with internal indications of authorship by Robert Duncan and Jack Spicer, Pound Misc. folder as ‘unidentified’, 27 Dec. 1946 (HRC).
‘I go to that work’: Robert Creeley, ‘A Letter to the Editor of Goad’ (1951-2), A Quick Graph, 93.
255 ‘Now that the elections’: JC to EP, 7 Nov. 1946, Cornell 54.
‘Motion for Bail’: see Cornell 55-7.
256 ‘a number of doctors’: Albert Deutsch, ‘Ezra Pound, Turncoat Poet, Seeks Release from Federal Mental Hospital’, PM (28 Jan. 1947), as in Torrey 232.
257 The Justice Department were well armed: copies of the twelve closely typed pages of ‘authorities and comments’ prepared for Isaiah Matlack by J. F. Cunningham, and the ‘Governments Reply in Opposition to Motion for Bail’, are among the St Elizabeths Files, numbered 140 and 139 (US Nat. Arch.).
258 ‘Dear J’: JC to JL, 10 Feb. 1947, Cornell 57.
Overholser memorandum: WO, ‘Memorandum’, ‘Notes on Ezra Pound, Case No. 58,102, US Prisoner’ (St Elizabeths Files, 13971, US Nat. Arch.).
259 ‘to get him moved’: see 240 above.
‘I am sure the next step’: TSE to DP, 26 Feb. 1947 (Lilly).
11. RESILIENCE, 1947-50
Histrionics
260 ‘By direction’: Case No. 58,102/Notes #13, 3 Feb. 1947: Dr Cruvant (St Elizabeths Files, 1397m, US Nat. Arch.).
‘He has more freedom’: DP to JL, 11 Feb. 1947, EP/JL 156.
‘Since his transfer’: Case No. 58,102/Notes #13, 28 March 1947: Dr Keeney (St Elizabeths Files, 1397m, US Nat. Arch.).
‘His insight and judgment’: Case No. 58,102/Notes…, 30 Sept. 1948: Dr Gresser (St Elizabeths Files, 1399d, US Nat. Arch.).
‘No abnormal mental trends’: Case No. 58,102/Notes, 29 July 1949: Dr Gonzalez (St Elizabeths Files, 1400, US Nat. Arch.).
‘quite obvious’: Case No. 58,102/Notes #13, 28 Mar. 1947: Dr Keeney (St Elizabeths Files, 1397m, US Nat. Arch.).
‘“people who are children”’: Case No. 58,102/Notes, 12 Mar. 1948: Dr Keeney (St Elizabeths Files, 1399a, US Nat. Arch.).
261 to put on a shirt: Case No. 58,102/Notes, 17 Oct. 1947: Dr Granatir (St Elizabeths Files, 1398a, US Nat. Arch.).
‘not particularly neatly attired’: Case No. 58,102/Notes, 18 Mar. 1949: Dr Segal (St Elizabeths Files, 1399e, US Nat. Arch.).
‘This patient blustered’: Dr Segal (St Elizabeths Files, 1399e, US Nat. Arch.).
his room was larger: Reck, who does get some details wrong, but who did visit when EP was in Chestnut Ward, wrote that ‘His cubicle was doorless’—see Reck 71.
‘Patient does no work’: #58102/Ward Notes, Chestnut, 6-16-48/Small (St Elizabeths Files, 1276, US Nat. Arch.).
‘He is very courteous’: #58102/Ward Notes, Chestnut, 7-15-48/H. S. Grant (St Elizabeths Files, 1277, US Nat. Arch.).
262 ‘This patient was out for a walk’: #58102/Ward Notes, Chestnut, 12-2-48/J. M. Langford (St Elizabeths Files, 1279, US Nat. Arch.).
‘Actually appears quite vigorous’: Case No. 58,102/Notes…, 3 Dec. 1948: Dr Saul Brown (St Elizabeths Files, 1399d, US Nat. Arch.).
‘Patient refused’: #58102/Ward Notes, Chestnut, 12-6-48/J. M. Langford (St Elizabeths Files, 1279, US Nat. Arch.).
‘Patient was out walking’: #58102/Ward Notes, Chestnut, 12-7-48/J. M. Langford (St Elizabeths Files, 1279, US Nat. Arch.).
‘walking parties’: Office Memorandum, Dr Cruvant to WO, 2 Dec. 1948 (St Elizabeths Files, 236, US Nat. Arch.).
ordinarily catatonic: see Guy Davenport, ‘Civilization and its Opposite in the 1940s’, The Hunter Gracchus (Washington, DC: Counterpoint, 1996), 96.
‘complained to the examiner’: Case No. 58,102/Notes, 1 June 1948: Dr Johan (St Elizabeths Files, 1399b-c, US Nat. Arch.).
‘Mr Pound was visited’: #58102/Ward Notes, Chestnut, 6-19-48/J. M. Langford (St Elizabeths Files, 1276, US Nat. Arch.).
‘only allowed out of doors’: DP to TSE, as reported by TSE in letter to Cornell, 24 Nov. 1948, as copied in Norman: 1960 436-7.
‘It seems to me’: TSE to Cornell, 24 Nov. 1948, as copied in Norman: 1960 436-7.
one of the worst things: EP, ‘A Letter by Ezra Pound’, written 5 July 1957, Way Out XIX.1 (Jan. 1963) 19, in P&P IX, 359.
263 ‘I doubt very much’: Office Memorandum, Dr Cruvant to WO, 2 Dec. 1948 (St Elizabeths Files, 236, US Nat. Arch.).
‘I have some hesitation’: WO to JC, 6 Dec. 1948 (St Elizabeths Files, 237, US Nat. Arch.), reproduced in Norman: 1960 437-8.
‘Mr. Pound has the following privileges’: #58102/Ward Notes, Chestnut, 12 July 1949, Earl A. Hingman (St Elizabeths Files, 1282, US Nat. Arch.).
‘They now let me out’: EP to MdR, 6 Sept. 1949 (Beinecke).
264 ‘looking very well’: MB to OR, 5 Jan. 1950, Conover 189—and see Barnard 264-7 for an account of her visit in Sept. 1949.
‘a awful lot of company’
‘O.K. & friend’: EP note on Paul Blackburn to WO, 18 Jan. 1951 (St Elizabeths Files, 351, US Nat. Arch.).
‘D.P. regrets’: note on Allen Ginsberg to EP, 30 May 1952 (Pound II, Box 22, Lilly) - and see Wilhelm: 1994, 291.
‘Ezra Pound’s Company’: detail from Hugh Kenner, ‘Preface to the Bison Book Edition Retrospect: 1985’, The Poetry of Ezra Pound (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1985), 4. Details in this paragraph drawn from Kenner’s preface; and from David Rattray, ‘Weekend with Ezra Pound’, The Nation CLXXXV (16 Nov. 1957) 343-5—as in Casebook 104-17; Carroll F. Terrell, ‘St. Elizabeths’, Pai 3.3 (1974) 363-79; Ronald Duncan, How to Make Enemies (Rupert Hart-Davis, 1968), 320-3, as in Carpenter 775-7; Reck 75-7; Thomas Cole, ‘Ezra Pound and Imagi’, Pai16.3 (1987) 55-8.
treated by ECT or lobotomy: at that time ECT and prefrontal lobotomy were commonly used as forms of ‘treatment and control’, in St Elizabeths as elsewhere. For the only indication known to me that Pound was subjected to ECT see ahead, note to p. 502,‘an episode’.
in the summer: details from Terrell, ‘St. Elizabeths’, Pai 3.3 (1974) 363-4; Reck 76; Davenport, ‘Civilization and its Opposite in the 1940s’, The Hunter Gracchus 96-7; Olson 93; Cole, ‘Ezra Pound and Imagi’, Pai 16.3, 57-8.
265 her air of Henley: Ronald Duncan, How to Make Enemies, as in Carpenter 776.
a British resonance: Reck 76.
‘tall, rather slender’: Barnard 254-5.
‘a tall ascetic woman’: WCW, The Autobiography of William Carlos Williams (1951) (MacGibbon & Kee. 1968), 336.
‘Mrs Pound’s selfless aid’: Marianne Moore note for Harry Meacham, 2 Feb. 1967 (Pound II, Box 11, Lilly).
could not speak freely: see MB to OR, 5 Jan. 1950, in Conover 189, and Barnard 265.
‘anglo-saxon fear’: Olson 93.
‘a stately figure in a large hat’: Barnard 267.
unreadable fustian: see GK 92-3.
‘lifting his legs’: Davenport, ‘Civilization and its Opposite in the 1940s’, The Hunter Gracchus 96.
foolish political infatuations: Conrad Aiken in PM (25 Nov. 1945), as in Norman: Case 89-90.
‘idée fixe’, ‘had become used to humouring’: Conrad Aiken to Charles Norman, Norman: 1960, 442.
‘Visits to St. Elizabeths [1950]’: Elizabeth Bishop, Complete Poems (Chatto & Windus, 1991), 133-5. For Lowell’s ‘reverential mockery’ see Robert Lowell to Elizabeth Bishop, 11 Mar. 1970, The Letters of Robert Lowell, ed. Saskia Hamilton (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005), 529.
266 ‘“the same great, booming boy”’: Witter Bynner as in Norman: 1960 442. Wilhelm: 1994, 272 gives the date of the visit as ‘before January 8, 1947’.
‘from my first meeting’: Witter Bynner to Dr Robert M. Duncan, 18 July 1949 (copy in Kenner Archive, HRC).
‘than William Blake’: Witter Bynner to Herbert Brownell, 13 Jan. 1958, as in Meacham 195.
‘He’s just like his later prose’: Robert Lowell to Gertrude Buckman, 1 Oct. [1947], The Letters of Robert Lowell, 72.
He ‘talked brilliantly’: MM to Charles Norman, Norman: 1960, 440.
267 ‘“KICK OUT”’: EP, according to MM to Charles Norman, Norman: 1960, 440.
‘I am quite shaken’: MM to EP, 30 July 1949, Selected Letters of Marianne Moore, ed. Bonnie Costello with Celeste Goodridge and Cristanne Miller (Faber & Faber, 1998), 473.
‘cumulative impression’: MM note for Meacham, 2 Feb. 1967 (Pound II, Box 11, Lilly).
‘the complete incongruity’: MB, Barnard 253-4, 256.
‘you & Dorothy’: EEC to EP, [2 June 1949], EP/EEC 246.
‘appalled at American ignorance’: Davenport, ‘Civilization and its Opposite in the 1940s’, The Hunter Gracchus 97.
‘What came through’: Hugh Kenner, ‘Preface’, The Poetry of Ezra Pound (1985), 3-4.
268 ‘did most of the talking’: Thomas Cole, ‘Ezra Pound and Imagi’, Pai 16.3 (1987) 55-7.
‘More useful at moment’, ‘Suggest that he do 4 pp. monthly’: notes in DP’s hand of EP’s directions for Simpson, n.d., [1947, after 18 Sept.] (Lilly).
‘only the poets’: Huntington Cairns’ notes (Library of Congress), as in Carpenter 796—for further notes of EP/Cairns conversations see Carpenter 794-8.
269 ‘Mr. Pound is frequently visited’, ‘I may say that I have talked’: WO to Alexander M. Campbell, Asst. Attorney General, US Department of Justice, 23 Nov. 1948 (St Elizabeths Files, 224, US Nat. Arch.).
‘To me Ezra Pound’: WCW to WO, 24 Oct. 1947 (St Elizabeths Files, 173, US Nat. Arch.).
‘It is my personal opinion’: WO to Alexander M. Campbell, 23 Nov. 1948 (St Elizabeths Files, 224, US Nat. Arch.).
No release
269 ‘Dorothy Pound, as Committee’: see Cornell 61-6 for full Petition.
270 ‘because of the novelty’: JC to DP, 15 Dec. 1947, Cornell 58-9.
‘should ultimately secure’: JC to DP, 4 Mar. 1948, Cornell 66-7.
Dorothy’s response: DP to JC, 13 Mar. 1948, Cornell 67—se also Cornell 60-1.
‘I must ask you to withdraw’: DP to JC, 28 Mar. 1948 (Lilly).
‘definite and final’: JC to DP, 30 Mar. 1948 (Lilly).
‘Your husband said yesterday’: JC to DP, 15 Dec. 1947, Cornell 59.
‘Ezra should be gotten out of custody’: DP to JC, 18 Dec. 1947, Cornell 59.
271 ‘if they could not go back to Italy’: EP’s attitude as reported by JC, Cornell 61.
‘Ezra for the moment’: JL to OR, 30 Nov. 1948, as in Conover 187.
‘in the “derelict” ward’: from John Berryman’s account of his visit on 3 Nov. 1948, as in John Haffenden, The Life of John Berryman (Ark Paperbacks, 1983), 214.
‘I fear your father’: TSE to MdR in conversation, April or May 1948, Discretions 289.
‘My husband is not fit’: DP to JC, 13 Mar. 1948, Cornell 67. Re EP’s ‘nerves’ in 1946 see p. 241 above.
‘she prefers the present’: JC to AVM, 3 May 1957 (Lilly).
‘is anything being DONE?’: TSE to DP, 7 Feb. 1948 (Lilly).
the one effective argument for his release: Thurman Arnold, when he investigated EP’s case in 1958, found that ‘Pound could have been released many years ago by habeas corpus, under decisions of the Ninth and Tenth Circuits and the Greenwood case [1956] in the Supreme Court of the United States, because (1) he was incurably insane and could never be brought to trial and (2) he was harmless to himself and society’—from Thurman Arnold to American Civil Liberties Union, Selections from the Letters and Legal Papers of Thurman Arnold (Washington: D. C. Merkle Press, 1961), 39-41, as in Wendy Flory, The American Ezra Pound (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 185. The decision in the Greenwood case did not directly rule on the habeas corpus issue, but could be held to have opened the way for an appeal to be made on those grounds. However, in a later decision handed down on 7 June 1972, in the case of Jackson v. Indiana 406 U.S. 715, the US Supreme Court ruled, under the heading of ‘DUE PROCESS’, that ‘indefinite commitment of a criminal defendant solely on account of his incompetency to stand trial does not square with the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of due process…because the federal statutes have been construed to require that a mentally incompetent defendant must also be found “dangerous” before he can be committed indefinitely’. The Court noted a District Court’s decision in 1970 when ‘an 86-year-old defendant committed for nearly 20 years as incompetent to stand trial on state murder and kidnapping charges applied for federal habeas corpus. He had been found “not dangerous”’, and the District Court ‘held that petitioner’s incarceration in an institution for the criminally insane constituted cruel and unusual punishment, and that the “shocking circumstances” of his commitment violated the Due Process Clause. The court quoted approvingly the language of [another case] concerning the “substantial injustice in keeping an unconvicted person in custody to await trial where it is plainly evident his mental condition will not permit trial within a reasonable period of time”.’
The question of whether or not Pound was dangerous was not addressed in the hearings which led to his committal to St Elizabeths. However, in the brief opposing Cornell’s Motion for Bail prepared for Mr Matlack by J. F. Cunningham in January 1947, a hitherto unmentioned ‘separate report’ by Dr King is cited, as if to deal with the question if it were to be raised.. No date is given for this report. Writing as Medical Director, Bureau of Prisons, Dr King commented, ‘provisions for adequate treatment and control to prevent him from becoming a further menace to himself and others are indicated’.
In his Motion for Bail in January 1947—which was, of course, summarily dismissed without arguments being heard—Cornell did claim that ‘the defendant is not violent, does not require close confinement and the public safety would not be impaired if he were allowed the degree of liberty which a private sanatorium permits for patients who are mildly insane’. His motion rested, however, not upon that claim, but upon the argument that since Pound could not be tried he should be presumed innocent, and therefore should not be subjected to life imprisonment. The law did not provide, he stated, for someone in Pound’s situation, indicted, but unable to be tried due to insanity, and not in need of permanent hospitalization. There, in the light of the Greenwood and later cases, he was evidently in error. In the Petition for Writ of Habeas Corpus in February 1948 Cornell repeated this error. And yet, puzzlingly, in one paragraph of the Petition he noted that the law did in fact provide that a person in Pound’s situation might properly be held in continued confinement only if ‘(1) there is an indictment pending against him under which he may be brought to trial if and when he recovers his sanity, or (2) his mental condition is such that he requires hospitalization, or (3) it would be dangerous to the public safety for him to remain at liberty’. In that paragraph Cornell asserted that ‘if his own and the public welfare does not require it, he may not be deprived of his liberty by confinement in an institution’—exactly the position which the Supreme Court would uphold in Greenwood and in Jackson v. Indiana. Dorothy Pound’s understanding at the time was that the Petition was seeking Pound’s release on the ground that he was incurable but not dangerous (DP to OSP, 12 Feb 1948 (Hamilton/OSP).) Cornell, however, pressed on to rest his case once again upon the ‘fundamental principle of law that every person is presumed to be innocent until he has been found guilty, and also that no person may be imprisoned until his guilt has been determined by due process of law’—an excessively theoretical argument which the Justice Department was ready to knock down on practical grounds. One can’t be sure how Cornell would have argued the Petition for Habeas Corpus if it had been carried to the higher courts, but it does appear that he had failed to perceive (as Eliot apparently could see already in 1948) that if Pound were not to be ‘tried with a good prospect of being acquitted’, then the effective argument for his release had to be that he was ‘permanently incapable but not dangerous’.
‘Don’t you want him to try’: JL to EP, 24 June 1948 (Lilly).
272 ‘does EP think’: JL to DP, 10 Nov. 1948 (Lilly).
‘had a v. good conference’: JL to EP, 6 Dec. 1948 (Lilly).
‘Pound had refused to entertain’: WCW, The Autobiography of William Carlos Williams (MacGibbon & Kee, 1968), 340-1.
‘I don’t want to get out to be assassinated’: EP as recorded by Ronald Duncan in his How to Make Enemies (1968), as in Carpenter 776.
his first visit to Pound: some details from WCW to DP, 21 Oct. 1947, EP/WCW 247, and from EP TS note for DP to WCW, [Oct. 1947], in correspondence notes for DP (Pound MSS II, Lilly). See also Lowell to WCW, [late Sept. 1947], Letters of Robert Lowell (2005) 71, 690.
Williams did write: WCW to WO, 24 Oct. 1947 (St Elizabeths Files, 173, US Nat. Arch.).
‘so apparently unmoved’: WCW, Autobiography (1968) 342-3.
a little more intelligence: reported by WL to TSE, 23 Nov. 1953 (Lilly).
‘“for his own sake”’: WL to D. D. Paige, 25 Oct. 1948, courtesy of Mrs Paula Paige. In The Letters of Wyndham Lewis, ed. W. K. Rose (Methuen & Co Ltd, 1963), 468, 467, the names are omitted, presumably on the ground that ‘they might cause embarrassment or invite libel action’ (see Rose’s introduction p. xxi).
273 ‘E.P.’s obstreperous intractableness’: WL to D. D. Paige, 12 Nov. 1948, The Letters of Wyndham Lewis, 474. Lewis commented on Paige’s petition in Oct. and Nov. 1948 in three letters included in Rose’s edition.
‘Is there hope of his receiving a pardon?’: WL to DP, 9 Apr. 1947 (Lilly).
‘at least 3 letters a week’: OR to Ronald Duncan, 16 Mar. 1948 (HRC).
‘and drive through Laughlin’s’: Ronald Duncan to OR, 15 May 1948, as in Conover 180.
‘Yesdy. Ez. said’: DP to JL, 16 Sept. 1947, EP/JL 167.
274 a lightning rod: on 25 May 1949 OR wrote to TSE about Paige’s editing of EP’s letters, ‘Could not E’s enemies, by simply quoting sentences, apart from context, of letters not in the coll. but to which they have access, discredit the coll. by making it appear an attempt at white wash?…I feel that something in the nature of a lightning rod included in the coll. would be good tactics’ (Beinecke).
‘better not to distribute in States’: JC as reported in OR to TSE, 4 May 1948 (Beinecke/OR).
Eliot advised: see Conover 179.
‘It does not matter what E. said’: JL to OR, [Jan. 1948], as in Conover 179.
a formal statement: the statement is reproduced by Massimo Bacigalupo on p. 425 of his Tigullio Itineraries as included in Ezra Pound, Language and Persona, ed. Massimo Bacigalupo and William Pratt (Genoa: Università degli Studi do Genova, 2008).
Olga sent the document: see Carpenter 784.
‘The first and only sign’: Ronald Duncan in his How to Make Enemies (1968), as in Carpenter 776.
275 ‘a tremendous mistake’: John Drummond to Robert Duncan, 19 Apr. 1948 and 18 Aug. 1948 (HRC), as in Torrey 233.
‘He cannot, absolutely cannot’: OR to TSE, 4 May 1948 (Beinecke/OR).
‘possible that Ezra is pretending’: TSE to OR, 12 June 1948 (Beinecke/OR).
‘my wife had died’: TSE’s first wife, Vivien(ne), from whom he had obtained a legal separation in 1933, and who had been confined in a mental hospital since 1938, died there in January 1947.
‘moved away from personal subjects’: John Berryman as in John Haffenden, The Life of John Berryman (Ark Paperbacks, 1983), 213.
refuse ‘to face any facts’: OR to WO, 15 Apr. 1948, as in Carpenter 784.
‘Mr Pound’s mental quirk’: Samuel Silk to OR, 4 May 1948 (Beinecke, copy in HRC), cited Carpenter 785 and Conover 182.
276 ‘I was down to see Ezra’: JL to HD, [c. Sept. 1948], as in HD to Richard Aldington, 1 Oct. 1948, Richard Aldington & H.D.: Their Lives in Letters 1918-61, ed. Caroline Zilboorg (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003), 296-7.
‘I had not seen Ezra’: JC to JL, 29 June 1948, as in Conover 179.
‘Mr. Pound would be acquitted’: JC to Saturday Review of Literature (Sept. 1948), as in Norman: 1960, 428-9.
‘EP is not interested’: DP to JC on EP note, [Sept. 1948], reproduced in Cornell 103.
Thrown to wolves
This section is particularly indebted to the researches of Robert A. Corrigan and Karen Leick: Robert A. Corrigan, ‘Ezra Pound and the Bollingen Prize Controversy’, Midcontinent American Studies Journal (fall 1967) 43-57—referred to here as ‘Corrigan’; Karen Leick, ‘Ezra Pound v. the Saturday Review of Literature’, Journal of Modern Literature 25.2 (2001/2) 19-39—referred to as ‘Leick’ (thanks to Alan Navarre for supplying a copy). There is a useful collection of material in The Case Against The Saturday Review of Literature: The attack of the Saturday Review on Modern Poets and Critics | Answered by the Fellows in American Letters of the Library of Congress | Together with Articles, Editorials, and Letters from other Writers (Chicago: Modern Poetry Association, 1949)—referred to as Case Against SRL. SRL = Saturday Review of Literature.
276 ‘Are you in NYC?’: JL to Robert Fitzgerald, 9 May 1948, as in Penelope Laurens Fitzgerald, ‘…Notes on the Friendship of James Laughlin and Robert Fitzgerald’, Pai 31 (2002) 151.
277 Marion Cummings was presented: see EEC to EP, 22 May 1948, EP/EEC 231.
in February 1946 Bennet Cerf: details in this paragraph from Cornell 112-15.
‘This Thursday a council meets’: JL to EP, 16 June 1948, EP/JL 169.
‘dramatizing his situation’: Archibald MacLeish, ‘The Venetian Grave’ (1974), in Riders on the Earth: Essays & Recollections (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1978), 120.
278 ‘We find ourselves, again, in debt’: Robert Fitzgerald, ‘“What thou Lovest Well Remains”’, New Republic (16 Aug. 1948), as in Homberger 359-68.
‘during the intervals of his illness’: see Barnhisel, James Laughlin, 117.
‘when the poet was incarcerated’: dust-jacket note recorded in Gallup 76.
279 ‘It is perhaps true’: Louis Martz, ‘Recent Poetry’. Yale Review ns 38 (1948) 144-8, as in Homberger 364-8.
‘An approach to the work’: Richard Eberhart, ‘Pound’s New Cantos’, Quarterly Review of Literature V.2 (1949) 174-91, as in Homberger 375.
the committee awarding the Bollingen Prize: much of the information in this and the following paragraphs is drawn from Leick.
280 Léonie Adams asked Cornell: see Cornell 116-19 for Adams’s letter, and for Cornell’s reply dated 7 Feb. 1949.
Francis Biddle…‘strongly against’: Carpenter 788 cites the Bollingen Prize file in the Library of Congress: ‘Katherine Garrison Chapin was furious that Ezra should be considered at all, and talked to her husband, who felt similarly and wrote to the Librarian, Luther H. Evans, that he “recommended strongly against the decision”.’
‘Pound’s work, the jurors held’: from New York Herald Tribune (21 Feb. 1949), as in Cornell 119-20. For the Library of Congress Press Release, 20 Feb. 1949, see Casebook 44-5.
281 Karl Shapiro…went public: information in this paragraph is drawn from Leick.
‘Hell will no doubt break loose’: Allen Tate to Luther Evans, 31 Jan. 1949 (Library of Congress), as cited by Leick.
‘I disagree vehemently’: Karl Shapiro, letter to the editor, Baltimore Sun (25 Feb. 1949) 16, as cited by Leick.
‘something unholy’: Albert Deutsch, ‘Editorial’, New York Post (28 Feb. 1949), as cited by Dwight MacDonald in his editorial—see next note.
‘the brightest political act’: Dwight MacDonald, ‘Homage to Twelve Judges (an editorial)’, Politics 6 (1949) 1-2, reprinted Casebook 46-8.
282 ‘It would be a pity’: William Barrett, ‘A Prize for Ezra Pound’, Partisan Review 16 (April 1949) 344-7, reprinted Casebook 49-53.
Partisan Review symposium: ‘The Question of the Pound Award’, Partisan Review 16 (May 1949) 512-22, reprinted Casebook 54-66. For Orwell’s comments see Casebook 60-1; for Howe’s Casebook 59-60; for Shapiro’s Casebook 61-3; for Tate’s Casebook 63-4; for Barrett’s rejoinder to Tate Casebook 64; for Davis’s comments Casebook 56-8.
283 Tate’s response: in his ‘Further Remarks on the Pound Award’, in Partisan Review 16 (July 1949) 667, Tate explained in general terms his having voted for The Pisan Cantos: ‘As a result of observing Pound’s use of language in the past thirty years I had become convinced that he had done more than any man to regenerate the language, if not the imaginative forms, of English verse’, and in doing so ‘had performed an indispensable duty to society’. And he had done this, Tate wrote, as if in answer to Barrett’s question, ‘even in passages of verse in which the opinions expressed ranged from the childish to the detestable’. For his revised version see Tate, The Man of Letters in the Modern World: Selected Essays 1928-1955 (New York: Meridian Books, 1955), 264-7.
284 Laughlin quit his studies: in a recorded conversation with Eliot Weinberger in 1993 JL said: ‘the so-called professor of modern poetry was a dreadful man named Robert Hillyer. He actually threw me out of his class for raising the name of Eliot. He wasn’t going to teach anything like that.…So I fled away from Harvard’—as in Emily Mitchell Wallace, ‘…A Partial Portrait of James Laughlin IV’, Pai 31 (2002) 201.
‘not merely the traitor’: Norman Cousins and Harrison Smith, ‘Ezra Pound and the Bollingen Award’, SRL 32 (11 June 1949) 20-1—extract as in Leick.
285 to strangle American democracy: Corrigan’s phrase, Corrigan 44.
‘the clouds of an intellectual neo-Fascism’: Robert Hillyer, ‘Treason’s Strange Fruit: The Case of Ezra Pound and the Bollingen Award’, SRL 32 (11 June 1949)—cited by Yvor Winters, Case Against SRL 70.
more than a hundred readers’ letters: Leick notices the objection to Hillyer’s conspiracy theory; Corrigan gives an analysis of the readers’ views, and notes that only one supported the choice of The Pisan Cantos.
sent Hillyer’s articles to Representative Jacob Javits: this paragraph drawn from Leick.
286 Smith made it clear to Laughlin: Harrison Smith to JL, 14 Sept. 1949, EP/JL 191-2.
a defence of the Library’s objects and procedure: Luther H. Evans, letter to the editor, SRL 32 (2 July 1949) 20-2, reprinted in Case against SRL 23-8.
a statement justifying the manner: Léonie Adams, ‘Statement of Procedure of the Jury for the Bollingen Award’, reprinted in Case against SRL 21-3.
a ‘personal statement’: Allen Tate, ‘A Personal Statement on Fascism’, reprinted in Case against SRL 19-21.
a statement defending the Fellows: Léonie Adams, Louise Bogan, Karl Shapiro, Willard Thorp, ‘Statement of the Committee of the Fellows of the Library of Congress in American Letters’ (Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1949), reprinted in Case against SRL 1-19.
the most ill-founded and ‘unscrupulous’: The Editors, ‘An Editorial’, Hudson Review 2 (Autumn 1949), reprinted in Case against SRL 43-5. Extract cited in Corrigan 47.
‘very likely a traitor’: Hayden Carruth, ‘The Anti-Poet All Told’, Poetry 74 (Aug. 1949) 274-82, as in Case against SRL 49, 51.
seventy-four signatures: see Corrigan 47 (though he mistakenly gives the number as ‘84’). For the text of the letter and comments see Ray B. West, ‘Excerpts from a Journal: 1949’, Western Review 14 (Winter 1950), as in Casebook 71-3.
287 ‘philistine attack’: Margaret Marshall, ‘The Saturday Review Unfair to Literature’, The Nation 169 (17 Dec. 1949) 598.
288 ‘No comment from the Bug House’: EP as recorded by Huntington Cairns, Carpenter 793.
a box of clippings: cited from Huntington Cairns’ note for 2 April 1949 in Wilhelm: 1994 280.
‘the prize, if awarded’: JC to Léonie Adams, 7 Feb. 1949, as in Cornell 118.
dealt quite savagely: Malcom Cowley, ‘The Battle Over Ezra Pound’, New Republic 12 (3 Oct. 1949) 17-20; reprinted in Case against SRL 31-8, and Homberger 405-11.
‘the obvious poetic value of the CANTOS’: New Directions press release, as in Barnhisel, James Laughlin, 125-6.
a full page in…Partisan Review: the advertisement is reproduced among the illustrations in Barnhisel, James Laughlin, following p. 101.
the New Critics’ principle: on this see Barnhisel, James Laughlin, 125-6, and his entire chap. 3 (92-126). Peggy L. Fox has shown that JL had decided about 1936 that his publishing house should be ‘less political, more literary’—see her ‘Mission Impossible: James Laughlin, Ezra Pound, and the Founding of New Directions’, Ezra Pound, Ends and Beginnings, ed. John Gery and William Pratt (New York: AMS Press, Inc.: 2011), 195.
‘to the human world’: Archibald MacLeish, ‘The Venetian Grave’ (1974), in Riders on the Earth (1978), 121.
Courage against cowardice
289 Nobody thinks but grandpa: EP, June 1947, in Poetry Notebook 67, leaf 72v (Beinecke)—cited by Edith Sarra, ‘Whistling in the Bughouse: Notes on the Process of Pound’s Confucian Odes’, Pai 16.1-2 (1987) 7.
‘the cumulative isolation’: EP, 1960, Paris Rev. interview 49.
Baratti and soon to be de Rachewiltz: see MdR, Discretions 269-70.
‘nothing could be more idiotic’: EP to ORA, [late 1949], EP/ORA 41.
‘I am profoundly convinced that it is wrong’: ORA to EP, 28 Aug. 1954, as cited in Surette’s introduction, EP/ORA xvii.
‘a religion hatched in slums’: EP to ORA, [before 22 June 1947], EP/ORA 5.
‘The Church of Rome decayed’: EP to ORA, [before 15 May 1949], EP/ORA 24.
290 ‘turgid mass of bloodthirsty rhetoric’: EP to ORA, [before 15 May 1949], EP/ORA 24.
‘ERRORS of the regime’, ‘understand the main points’: EP to ORA, [before 15 May 1949], EP/ORA 24.
‘And Mussolini’s state fell’: EP as ‘anonimo’ to ORA, [before 18 June 1948], EP/ORA14.
‘If the young had started reading me’: EP to ORA, [before 22 June 1947], EP/ORA 5.
‘I shall prob/ die of stroke’: EP to ORA, [June 1948], EP/ORA 12.
‘Got to get BUTTER idea’:EP to ORA, [June 1948], EP/ORA 12.
‘these new soil treatments’: EP to ORA, 22 Sept. 1952, EP/ORA 93.
‘private AND irresponsible’: EP to ORA, [June 1948], EP/ORA12.
‘internat/ money lenders’: EP to ORA, 23 Oct. 1948, EP/ORA15.
‘Obviously the filth of the age’: EP to ORA, 7 Jan. 1952, EP/ORA 83. Cp. ‘But there is no reason to surrender to filth’ with Pound’s Elektra, ‘Need we add cowardice to all the rest of this filth?’—see pp. 298-9 below.
291 ‘There is E.P. economic material’: EP (over DP’s signature) to Thomson & Smith Ltd, 28 May 1948, photocopy of intercept (Nat. Arch. KV2/875, item 53a).
a typed sheet ‘to be kept ready’: EP for Dallam Simpson, [1948] (folder 2, HRC). The paragraph is made up from this sheet and from other notes in folders 2 and 3: ‘OUR job’ and his ‘internal signature’ are from folder 3, ‘SEED, god dammit SEED’ is from folder 2, ‘the best receivers’ and ‘Everything used’ are from the typed sheet.
292 Pound drafted letters: see EP/EEC 228 for sample of Dallas Simpson letter evidently drafted by EP.
‘winter here, very—but warm in coop’: EP to MdR, 14 Feb. [1947] (Beinecke).
‘If cento dollars are any use’: EP to MdR, 14 Feb. [1947] (Beinecke). This was the letter in which EP wrote, ‘Now I have no persona giuridica’. See MdR, Discretions 278 for the reception of the $100 at ‘the moment of essential need’.
‘here begins nonn’entity’: EP to MdR, 15 Apr. [1947] (Beinecke).
‘I regret you do not know’: IWP to EP, 7 July 1947 (Beinecke), as in Conover 178.
‘Glad to hear yr/ news’: EP to IWP, 4 Aug. 1947 (Beinecke).
a comfortable chair: EP to MdR, Sept. [1947] [Beinecke].
‘committee has to report’: EP to MdR, 16 Feb. [1948] (Beinecke). In this letter EP again wrote, ‘I have no persona giuridica’.
293 ‘Will or (or NOTE’: EP to JL, [?Sept. 1947], EP/JL 171.
‘N.D. royalties made over to Olga’: EP, on envelope of JL to DP, 24 Nov. 1947, from Klosters, Switzerland (Pound MSS II, Box 9, Lilly).
‘Tell O. to for gods sake take the cash’: EP notes on envelope dated Dec. 1947 (Pound MSS II, Box 13, Lilly).
‘About the royalties from New Directions’: DP to JL, 24 Dec. 1947, EP/JL 168.
a cheque for $450: drawn on Jenkintown Bank & Trust Co., as recorded in Committee bank accounts (Pound MSS VI, Lilly).
‘for her services as custodian and editor’: JL to EP, Sept. 1949 (Lilly). Further details also from Pound MSS II, Box 9, Lilly.
294 petitioned the Court: Committee Accounts folder (Pound MSS VI, Lilly). Details of legal fees and expenses are in Dorothy Pound Committee for Ezra Pound account with New England Merchants National Bank.
‘GODDAM/’: EP, Correspondence notes for DP, n.d. (Pound MSS II, Box 25, Lilly).
‘FOR VALUE RECEIVED’: OSP signed and notarized document, 22 June 1949, copy among Ezra Pound Personal Papers/Legal Papers (Beinecke); the copy sent by DP to MdR with covering note held by MdR.
‘a new castle’: evident from EP’s response to MdR, May 1948 (Beinecke).
295 $100, $720: these sums mentioned in EP’s letters to MdR in 1950, when he was much concerned for the restoration of the roof as well as the planting of maples ‘to provide an income for his grandson’. In her ‘Chronicle: The Brunnenburg Tapestry’, MdR writes, ‘But we had no land of our own to plant them and moreover ours is not the right climate. Here grow apples, pears, peaches, plums and grapes, not to mention vegetables’. Later land was acquired with money from Isabel Pound’s estate: ‘It would take some research to discover how and by whom grandmother Isabel Weston Pound’s Estate was settled and how the heir under indictment and in custody was able to get Dorothy to send us the several installments to pay for the land’—MdR, ‘Chronicle: The Brunnenburg Tapestry’, Pai 37 (2010) 155.
‘How many years’ free roof’: EP to MdR, 31 Jan. [1949] (Beinecke).
‘Do you remember Olga’s little house’: JL to Heinz Henghes, 14 Feb. 1949 (item 229, Archive@Henghes, <www.henghes.org>).
no ‘real understanding of a good Chinese poem’: EP, cited in Achilles Fang’s introduction, CA xii n.
‘When you have comprehended the visual significance’: EP, CWC 36-7—the ‘Notes by a Very Ignorant Man’ were added by EP in 1935. See also his 1935 ‘Terminal Note’ re ‘the Chinese art of verbal sonority’ (CWC 33). The Fenollosa essay was concerned with a ‘method of intelligent reading’, i.e. with the visual significance of the written character, a discussion of ‘the sounds of Chinese verse’ being reserved for a second lecture—see CWC II 104.
296 nine notebooks: these are Poetry Notebooks 60-7 (Beinecke)—plus the notebook following no. 66 which is not present. For most helpful discussions of Pound’s work on the Odes see: Edith Sarra, ‘Whistling in the Bughouse: Notes on the Process of Pound’s Confucian Odes’, Pai 16.1-2 (1987) 7-31; and David Gordon, ‘“Root/Br./By Product” in Pound’s Confucian Ode 166’, Pai 3.1 (1974) 13-32.
EP’s transcription of the first stanza of Ode 167 is reproduced as ‘Fig. 7.2. EP’s sound key to Ode 167 (Beinecke)’ in EP/CF. I have added the Mathews numbers. Zhaoming Qian notes (EP/CF 53n.): ‘In the winter of 1950-1 EP used O. Z. Tsang’s Complete Chinese-English Dictionary(1920) as a guide to speculate about sound symbolism in primitive Chinese. He didn’t use Mathews’ Chinese-English Dictionary because Hawley had warned of its “scrambled romanization” (12 Jan. 1947, Lilly).’ It would appear, however, that in spite of that warning EP was using Mathews in May-June 1947.
297 ‘Pick a fern’: EP’s published version of Ode167, CA 86.
‘escape from abstract yatter’: 94/635.
treatise on music: EP read and carefully marked both the Chinese and the French texts of ‘Traité sure la musique’, chap. XVII in vol. II of Li Ki ou Mémoires sur les bienséances et les cérémonies, Texte Chinois avec une double traduction en Français et en Latin par S Couvreur S. J. (2ièmeéd), (Ho Kien Fou: Mission Catholique, 1913). On the front endpaper he wrote: ‘Harmonies & Dissociations’ (Brunnenburg).
first chapter of the Ta Hio: see 72-3 above.
‘contemplates the unity of the mystery’: EP, ‘A Visiting Card’ (1942), S Pr 276-7.
298 ‘Deep and resonant’: David Gordon, ‘“Root/Br./By Product”’, Pai 3.1 (1974) 25.
the recording of a selection of his versions: Ezra Pound Reading his Translations of The Confucian Odes (New Rochelle, NY: Spoken Arts, [?1975]—SA 1098).
Fleming…to be named as author: according to Rudd Fleming himself, cited by Richard Reid on p. xiii of his helpful introduction to Elektra. For a penetrating study of the process and achievement of Pound’s translating from the Greek see Christine Syros, ‘Beyond Language: Ezra Pound’s Translation of the Sophoclean Elektra’, Pai 23.2-3 (1994) 107-39.
left the final revision of the text: according to Mrs Rudd Fleming, letter to the editor, Pai 21.3 (1992) [145].
‘viable for the contemporary theatre’: Hugh Kenner speaking in a symposium, ‘Ezra Pound and Greek Tragedy in Contemporary Theatre’ (1987), as cited by J. Ellen Gainor, ‘Elektra…The Classic Stage Company [production], November 1-20, 1987’, Pai 16.3 (1987) 131.
‘In the character of Elektra’: Todd London, Program Notes for Elektra, as cited by Gainor, ‘Elektra…The Classic Stage Company [production]’, Pai 16.3 (1987) 130.
‘bring back the old rule of abundance’: Orestes speaking, Elektra l.74.
‘if you don’t quit bawling’: Chrysothemis, Elektra ll. 437-9.
‘Need we add cowardice’: Elektra, Elektra l. 401.
299 ‘the key phrase’: EP note, Trax 50.
‘to bend and not break’: Chrysothemis, Elektra ll. 453-4.
‘EVEN JUSTICE CAN BE A PEST’: Chrysothemis, Elektra l. 1172.
‘I’d rather die’: Elektra, Elektra l. 1174.
if ‘there be no death for a death’: Elektra, Elektra ll. 303, 305.
‘take me in with you’: Elektra, Elektra ll. 1363-5.
Pound’s notes: see notes to ll. 1128ff., 1306, 1476f., 1669ff., Elektra 99-103.
300 ‘the dark shade of courage’: 90/609.
‘rise of [a] sense of civic responsibility’: EP, ‘Hellenists’ [a brief memorandum], Feb. or Mar. 1949 (Beinecke), as cited by Reid, Elektra xii.
‘has packed the Supreme Court’: EP, ‘Four Steps’, Agenda 17.3-4-18.1-3 (1979/80) 141.
‘if ever I committed treason’: Katherine Anne Porter, 16 Feb. 1949, Letters of Katherine Anne Porter, ed. Isabel Bayley (1990) 354, as cited in Leick n. 7.
‘live on into honour’: Orestes, Elektra l. 60.
12. THE LIFE OF THE MIND, 1950-5
301 ‘living the life’: MSB. ‘Ezrology: The Class of ’57’, Pai 13.3 (1994) 376.
The shirt of Nessus
‘yr/ greek ROTTEN’: EP to Otto Bird, April 1951 (Lilly).
‘Trachiniae | infinitely higher’: EP, TS headed ‘Hunt in DEam’, and (in MS) ‘Archiv’, p. 3 (of 5) (Pound MSS II/Box 26, Lilly).
‘The Trachiniae presents’: EP, Trax p. [3].
302 ‘Scrape the drying blood’: Trax 26.
‘SPLENDOUR, | IT ALL COHERES’: Trax 50.
‘the destiny FITS’: EP to TSE, [1951] (Pound MSS II, Box 25, Lilly).
‘“You might picture”’: DP to Thomas Cole, 10 Mar. 1967, as quoted in Thomas Cole, ‘Ezra Pound and Imagi’, Pai 16.3 (1987) 63.
‘And now Miss Oineus’: Trax 44. For ‘m’la calata’ see 9/37.
‘Everyone in the Trachiniae’: EP to Denis Goacher, [?1953] (HRC). In another letter to Goacher, 15 Nov. [1953], EP wrote: ‘Any proceeds from TraX performance or radio transmission, go for first three years to Ithaca Earthquake relief | that might cover Sophokles’ droits d’auteur. After which let my descendants take over.’ The Ithaka earthquake referred to occurred in 1953.
303 ‘TRAX in antithesis’: EP to Michael Reck, 12 Mar. 1954, photo reproduction in Reck following p. 82. Re transposing Pound’s version into a Noh drama, see also EP note, Trax [3].
‘Karma works’: see p. 235-6 above.
‘when the weather is fine’: Denis Goacher, ‘Foreword’, Trax x-xi.
‘took considerable umbrage’: WO to Charles Norman, 8 Jan. 1960 (St Elizabeths Files, 1132 a-b, US Nat. Arch.).
304 reports to the Justice Department: see for example, WO to Dr Stanley E. Krumbiegel (Medical Director, Bureau of Prisons, US Department of Justice), 18 Aug. 1953, and WO to William F. Tompkins (Assistant Attorney General, Internal Security Division, Department of Justice), 13 Oct. 1954 (St Elizabeths Files, 499, 590, US Nat. Arch.).
‘The exact category’: WO to Dr Stanley E. Krumbiegel, 18 Aug. 1953 (St Elizabeths Files, 499, US Nat. Arch.). Torrey cites this letter on his p. 249 and comments, ‘Thus Dr. Overholser was admitting to the Department of Justice that Pound was not psychotic, not insane.’
305 ‘It has now come to my attention’: William F. Tompkins to WO, 30 Sept. 1954 (St Elizabeths Files, 588, US Nat. Arch.).
‘The work of this translation’: WO to Tompkins, 13 Oct. 1954 (St Elizabeths Files, 590, US Nat. Arch.).
‘God bloody DAMN’: EP to Louis Dudek, received 11 Dec. 1954, EP/Dk [105]—for Dudek’s note and commentary see EP/Dk 106-7.
Kindergarten
306 ‘300 students’: EP to Ronald Duncan, 23 Feb. 1958 (HRC).
‘When not in office’: EP to MdR, 9 Dec. [1955] (Beinecke).
‘to attack IGNORANCE’: EP to Hugh Kenner, 9 June 1951 (Kenner archive, HRC).
‘becoming a daily occurrence’: Nursing supervisor memorandum, 28 Oct. 1952 (St Elizabeths Files, 1409, US Nat. Arch.)—as cited Torrey 238.
took left-over food: see Torrey 239-40 for one account among many.
‘gobbling up hardboiled eggs’: paragraph drawn from MdR, Discretions 293-5.
‘We should reject’, ‘he didn’t like Pound’s poetry’: Babette Deutsch and John Kasper, as in Norman: 1960, 450.
307 ‘they keep the yitts out’: Kasper to EP, 8 Jan. 1951 (Lilly).
Make It New bookshop: details from Alex Houen, ‘Anti-Semitism’, Ezra Pound in Context, ed. Ira B. Nadel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 397.
‘after EP. mentions a thing’: DP to Stanislaw Jankowski, 17 May [1956], ‘Ezra Pound’s Letters to a Polish Scholar’, [ed. Stanislaw Helsztynski], Kwartalnik Neofilologiczny, Warsaw, XVII.3 (1970), as in P&P IX, 520.
‘Basic education at a price’: on inside flap of front paper cover of Square $ Thomas H. Benton. Bank of the United States (1954).
‘a partial list’: TS, roneoed, 11 pp. stapled, (New York: Make It New Bookshop [?1954])—copy with William French MSS (Lilly). According to French much of the brochure was written or edited by EP.
the strikingly prescient extract: ‘It [i.e. the financial system] still further restricts the money and purchasing- power at the disposal of individuals, and concentrates this money power in financial institutions. If the process is allowed to proceed without interruption, and it remains true that the possession of money is the only claim to the necessaries of life, then it is not difficult to see that within a short space of time, that condition of universal slavery to which the writer of “The Protocols of Zion” looked forward with such exultation, will be an accomplished fact.’—C. H. Douglas, Social Credit, Third edition, revised and enlarged (Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1933), 153.
308 ‘a private book burning’: Kasper to EP, n.d. [1954], as in Henderson 479.
‘katz is katz’, ‘a wild disrupting individual’: see EP to Dudek, received 21 Feb. 1953, EP/Dk [95-6], and Dudek’s commentary, EP/Dk 97.
had previously advised Kenner: EP to Kenner, [9 June 1951] (Kenner archive, HRC).
‘sqirril headed’: EP to Lucy Freeland de Angulo, [1954], as in Lee Bartlett, ‘The Pound/De Angelo Connection’, Pai 14.1 (1985) 72. The full sentence: ‘Horton steady, Kasper squirril headed’.
309 ‘all things from one person’: EP to Ingrid Davies, 19 June 1955 (HRC).
‘slow mountain country young man’: DP to OSP, 7 May 1950 (Hamilton/OSP).
‘Special Legislative Researcher’: [Eustace Mullins], ‘About the Author’, inside front cover of Eustace Mullins, The Federal Reserve Conspiracy (Hawthorne, Calif.: Omni Publications, 1971).
‘a sufficient phalanx of particulars’: 74/441.
‘to analyze E. P.’s economics’: D. Horton, ‘Ezra Pound’s Economics’, Mood 24 (fall 1950) 2—(copy with Horton MSS, Lilly).
‘interest-bearing and non-interest bearing government debt’: David Horton, ‘Jacob Coxey’s Ideas’, Canton Repository (Canton, Ohio) (2 Aug. 1951), reproduced in Henderson 140-2. In 84/537 EP had remarked, ‘Mr. Coxey | aged 91 has mentioned bonds and their | interest | apparently as a basis of issue.’
‘a very lucid note’: EP to ORA, 13 Aug. 1951, EP/ORA 72.
‘latish on Sundays’: EP to Jankowski, 4 Jan. [1955], P&P IX, 511.
‘working on beginning Chinese’: David Gordon, ‘Meeting E. P. and then…’, Pai 3.3 (1974) 343[-60]—other details in the paragraph come from this interview.
310 ‘music and rhythm factors’: David Gordon to EP, 4 Oct. 1952 (Lilly).
early on Saturdays: see EP to Jankowski, 4 Jan. [1955], P&P IX, 511.
William MacNaughton: paragraph drawn from Bill MacNaughton, ‘Pound, A Brief Memoir’, Pai 3.3 (1974) 319-24. For EP’s ‘Anonymous Contributions to MacNaughton’s STRIKE’ see Pai 3.3 (1974) 389-400.
‘a chance for McN/’: EP to Jankowski, 4 Jan. [1955], P&P IX, 514—see also 505 and 512.
311 his talk ‘the liveliest’: Reck 77.
‘keeping quiet 21 hours a day’: EP to MdR, 27 Jan. 1955 (Beinecke).
‘entire “raps”’: MacNaughton, ‘Pound, A Brief Memoir’, Pai 3.3 (1974) 323.
‘Like the Old Testament Ezra’: Reck 114.
‘a tendency to think’: Reck 112.
‘a genial assumption’: Reck 122.
‘constantly trying to explain’: Reck 93.
His attitude…Confucian: see Reck 94, and canto 13.
‘None of you have enough’: EP correspondence notes, n.d. (Lilly).
‘single-handed to change’: Diane Di Prima, Memoirs of a Beatnik (1969), 125, as cited by Richard Taylor, ‘Sheri Martinelli Muse to Ezra Pound’, Agenda 38.1-2 (2000-1) 103. The date of Di Prima’s visit, Dec. 1955, is given by her letter to WO asking permission (St Elizabeths Files 758, US Nat. Arch.).
‘undergone an intensive period’: Angela Palandri, ‘Homage to a Confucian Poet’, Pai 3.3 (1974) 311—other details from Pai 3.3 (1974) 307.
La Martinelli
This section is particularly indebted to: Beerspit Night and Cursing: The Correspondence of Charles Bukowski and Sheri Martinelli 1960-1967, ed. Steven Moore (Santa Rosa: Black Sparrow Press, 2001)—here referred to as CB/SM; also to Richard Taylor, ‘Sheri Martinelli Muse to Ezra Pound’, Agenda 38.1-2 (2000-1) 98-113, and to William MacNaughton, ‘The Secret History of St. Elizabeths’, Pai 30.1-2 (2001) 69-96.
312 Kasper a car salesman: see Meacham 63.
‘Before Ez’: SM, CB/SM 132.
‘new honey-pot girl’: DP to OSP, 22 Mar. 1952 (Hamilton/OSP).
‘so many who’d like to say’: SM, CB/SM 138.
‘Made Trusting & Loving’: SM to C. David Heymann, 31 May 1973, as in Heymann 226.
Torrey thought he knew: see Torrey 240-1.
‘Seeing Sheri approach’: Marcella [Spann] Booth, ‘Ezrology: The Class of ’57’, Pai 13.3 (1984) 383.
313 ‘Pound embraced her’, ‘threw his arms around her’: David Rattray, ‘Weekend with Ezra Pound’, The Nation (16 Nov. 1957), as in Casebook 113, 109.
‘he read me Dante’: SM, CB/SM 52-4.
‘As for “nymphos”’: SM, CB/SM 52.
‘girls only go to bed’: SM, CB/SM 234-5.
‘O! Telo Rigido!’: SM, CB/SM 352. Re Cavalcanti see EP: Poet II 108-14.
began drafting in July 1954: cf. Poetry Notebooks 87, 88 (Beinecke).
‘furious from perception’: 90/606.
olibanum obtained by MacNaughton: see Bill MacNaughton, ‘Pound, A Brief Memoir’, Pai 3.3 (1974) 323, and William MacNaughton, ‘The Secret History of St. Elizabeths’, Pai 30.1-2 (2001) 77.
‘Grove hath its altar’: 90/607-8.
315 as…Botticelli had done: One picture EP probably had in mind was Botticelli’s ‘Venus and Mars’ in London’s National Gallery. In two early poems, ‘The Picture’ and ‘Of Jacopo Sellaio’, Pound had praised the latter’s knowledge of ‘the secret ways of love’ as evident in ‘Venus Reclining’ (c.1500), also in the National Gallery, (since re-attributed and re-titled ‘Allegory’), a picture which closely follows the treatment of the gazing Venus in Botticelli’s ‘Venus and Mars’ (c.1485), but tellingly dispenses altogether with exhausted Mars.
Her paintings: EP mentioned some of these visionary subjects in a letter to ID, 30 Apr. 1955 (HRC).
Steven Moore reports: in his ‘Introduction’ to CB/SM 11.
Pound’s efforts to promote: see EP/JL 236-42.
‘a little more lusso’: EP to MdR, 1 Nov. [1955] (Beinecke).
an introduction: EP, ‘Introduction’, La Martinelli (Milan: [Vanni Scheiwiller], 1956) 5-12; repr. Edge (Oct. 1956) [19-20], and EP&VA 177-9, as ‘Total War on “Contemplatio”’. See also EP to ORA, 13 Nov. 1955, EP/ORA 217-18.
‘the only person yet met here’: EP to MdR, 23 Oct. [1954] (Beinecke).
‘a mist shot with lightnings’: EP to ID, 30 Apr. 1955 (HRC).
‘Yes, La Martinelli’: EP to ID, 18 July 1955 (HRC).
‘Thurs a. m. 10.30’: EP, 5 pencil MS sheets in ‘Holland Linen’ letter pad, ‘To Sheri Martinelli’, 26 Nov. (Pound MSS VI, Lilly). For hsin1 see 53/265.
It has been said: in a note referring to 1952 William French wrote: ‘he, Omar, & (covertly D.P.) tried to interrupt EP’s growing relationship with SM, & even tried to involve Overholser’ (William French MSS, Lilly).
316 ‘extraordinary amount of good sense’: EP to ID, 15 Apr. 1955 (HRC).
‘S.M. is not trying to kidnap’: EP to MdR, 7 Nov. [1954] (Beinecke).
‘particular PHOBIA’: EP to ID, 25 June 1955 (HRC). See also EP to ID, 10 July 1955: ‘jealousy which is the letch for monopoly…the mother of satan…IF people wd accept the affection that naturally flows toward them…and not try to GRAB they wd get more…it is the GRAB that bitches if not all, at any rate a wheluvalot, of human relations’ (HRC).
sensibly wrote the cheques: the record is in Box 23, Pound MSS (Lilly), and see Richard Taylor, ‘Sheri Martinelli Muse to Ezra Pound’, Agenda 38.1-2, 108.
‘longing to protect his love’: SM, CB/SM 87.
‘Shd/ like to keep Sheri’: EP to ORA, 13 Nov. 1955, EP/ORA 217.
a note to Dr Overholser: EP to WO, 22 Nov. 1955 (Beinecke).
‘We have no paid position’: WO to EP, n.d. (Beinecke), as in Torrey 241.
‘There was no question’: EP to WO, received 30 Nov. 1955 (St Elizabeths Files, 749, US Nat. Arch.).
The trial turned: see William MacNaughton, ‘Kingdoms of the Earp: Carpenter and Criticism’, Pai 21.3 (1992) 14.
‘marijuana, regularly’: William MacNaughton, ‘The Secret History of St. Elizabeths’, Pai 30.1-2 (2001) 72.
‘down in Spade-town’: SM, CB/SM 87.
‘The American milieu’: EP, ‘Introduction’, La Martinelli, as in EP&VA 178.
‘definitely using dope’: EP to EEC, 7 Sept. [1954], EP/EEC 357.
317 ‘heroin is pushed/’: EP to ORA, 23 Aug. 1954, EP/ORA 166-7; re ‘they give it to aviators’: St Elizabeths under Overholser was involved in the research and testing of mind-altering drugs. The remark may be evidence that Pound was aware of this.
‘Those charming internationalists’: EP to Noel Stock, 22 Dec. 1955 (HRC).
‘God knows the barbarians’: EP to Goacher, 16 June [? 1954] (HRC).
‘destroy the arts’: EP to ORA, 22 June 1954, EP/ORA 155. Cf. William Blake,‘Degrade first the Arts if you’d Mankind Degrade’, Annotations to Sir Joshua Reynolds’s Discourses (noted Henderson 341).
‘judging from local hell’: EP to ORA, 23 Aug. 1954, EP/ORA 167.
hooked on heroin: see EP to ORA, 23 Aug. 1954, EP/ORA 168.
‘magnifies TIME’ etc.: EP to ORA, 22 June 1954, EP/ORA 154, 155.
Adult conversation
318 ‘The first time I saw him’: Al Alvarez, ‘Two Faces of Pound’ [a review of Thrones], Observer 6 Mar. 1960, 21, condensed from his Where Did It All Go Right? (Richard Cohen Books, 1999), 176-7—noted in Henderson 508-9. Alvarez’s first visit would have been 11 Dec. 1955—see EP/ORA 219.
319 ‘Profanity and the Jews’: MM to DP and EP, 31 July 1952, The Selected Letters of Marianne Moore, ed. Bonnie Costello with Celeste Goodridge and Cristanne Miller (Faber & Faber, 1998), 502.
‘from 2:00 PM to 4:00 PM’: WO to Elizabeth Winslow, 4 Dec. 1951, ‘Letters to Elizabeth Winslow’, ed. with commentary by James H. Thompson, Pai 9.2 (1980) 343.
Pound…used to declare: for an example see EP postcard to Vianney M. Devlin, [Oct. 1953], Vianney M. Devlin OFM, ‘In Memoriam—E.P.’, Greyfriar: Siena Studies in Literature XIII (1972) 42, as in P&P X,1.
as many as twenty: see Lee Lady, ‘Memories of Pound at St. Elizabeths’, 6—sent to the Ezra Pound Mailing List, Sept. 1999, accessed 23 July /2011 at <www2.hawaii.edu/-lady/ramblings/pound.html>.
nobody: DP diary entry, 3 Jan. 1952, ‘EP 1-4 in[side] | (nobody)’ (Lilly).
‘as Mon/ Wed/ Fri/ are NOT’: EP to Achilles Fang, [Mar. 1954], EP/CF 144.
‘the nearer to one o’clock’: EP to Stanislaw Jankowski, 4 Jan. [1955], P&P IX, 511.
‘They wd/ probably’: EP to Stanislaw Jankowski, 22 Dec. [1954], P&P IX, 509.
‘very hungry for adult company’: DP to William MacNaughton in conversation, as in his memoir, ‘What Pound and Carsun Chang Talked About at St Elizabeths’, in EP/CF 105. This paragraph is drawn from MacNaughton’s memoir on 105-6, and from Zhaoming Qian’s notes on 96-7.
José Vasquez-Amaral: paragraph drawn from his introductory note to ‘Words from Ezra Pound’, Rutgers Review III (1968[/1969]) 40, as in P&P IX, 494. ‘What are you doing?’ is from Carroll F. Terrell, ‘St. Elizabeths’, Pai 3.3 (1974) 365.
320 Frank Ledlie Moore: the anecdote is from Reck 107-8.
Juan Ramón Jiménez: details from Reck 84, 122.
‘sane and cultured’: MdR’s description of Marion and Ivan Stancioff in private conversation.
two ‘civilized professors’: EP’s characterization of Giovannini and La Drière, EP to Jankowski, 22 Jan. [1955], P&P IX, 511.
‘a highly cultured couple’: EP to ORA, 21 July 1951, EP/ORA 70. Henderson 133 confirms my identification of the couple as Rudd and Polly Fleming; Reck 105 supplies the thermos jug of tea.
‘a very sober English literature scholar’: Reck 105.
321 ‘speaking in a subdued voice’: G. Giovannini’s notes, ‘4 Sept. ’57. Memo of only known discussion by EP of cage at Pisa…he being only one present’ (Kenner Archive, HRC).
‘scruples of political conscience’: Kathleen Raine, ‘Visiting Ezra Pound’, Agenda 37.2-3 (1999) 137. The rest of the paragraph is drawn from this article—the inset quotation is from p. 138—but the detail of Auden’s having visited is from DP to OSP, 28 Jan. 1948 (Hamilton/OSP).
‘after the age of forty’: EP to Kathleen Raine, ‘Visiting Ezra Pound’, Agenda 37.2-3 (1999) 141; ‘evils of usurious materialism’ is Raine’s paraphrase on p. 142.
322 Lt.-General Pedro del Valle (Ret.): this paragraph is indebted to Kevin Coogan, ‘The Defenders of the American Constitution’, <Wikispooks.com>, and to Henderson 242-7.
323 George Kearns: Kearns acknowledged the kindness of Ezra and Dorothy Pound ‘to a young soldier in Washington many years ago’ in his Guide to Ezra Pound’s Selected Cantos (1980), x.
William Pratt: Pratt gave an account of his visits in 1955 in ‘The Greatest Poet in Captivity at St. Elizabeths’, Sewanee Review 94.4 (1986) 619-29. His wife Anne Pratt told me in conversation in 2013 that she too had visited and found Pound ‘charming’ and ‘not at all mad’.
Zukofsky on a rare visit: details from David Gordon, ‘Zuk and Ez at St Liz’, Pai 7.3 (1978) 583-4.
‘I note that you have got OUT’: EP to LZ, 11[-12] July [1954], EP/LZ 208-9.
marked certain passages: Gordon records that EP marked these lines (from poems 12 and 25) in Zukofsky’s Anew.
Agenda etc.
‘in the way of legwork’: Louis Dudek, EP/Dk 13.
‘if loafing’: EP to Dudek, [after June 1949], EP/Dk [14].
324 ‘interested in doing a lot’: Louis Dudek, EP/Dk 17.
‘has GOT to be based’: EP to Dudek, [received 27 Mar. 1952], EP/Dk [88].
‘on a mantle piece’: EP to Dudek, [received 13 Apr. 1950], EP/Dk [19].
‘AGENDA’: EP to Dudek, [received 5 Mar. 1952], EP/Dk [83]. The Latin means, ‘the grove is in need of an altar’.
‘No civilization’: EP to Dudek, 21 Apr. 1955, EP/Dk [111].
‘the ONLY curricula’: EP to Dudek, [received 9 Oct. 1957], EP/Dk [133].
‘NO ONE can be considered’: EP to Dudek, [received 17 Nov. 1956], EP/Dk 114.
‘Propaganda for his ideas’: Louis Dudek, EP/Dk 82.
‘very much in agreement’, ‘From this point’: Louis Dudek, EP/Dk 90—see also 103.
325 Else Seel: this paragraph and the next are drawn entirely (and sometimes in his words) from Rodney Symington, ‘“Five years I wrote to you…”: An Unknown Correspondent of Ezra Pound’, Pai 18.1-2 (1989) 161-83. EP’s 89 letters to Else Seel are in the Special Collections Division of the University of Victoria Library, British Columbia. Seel’s poem ‘Fünfe Jahre’ is in her Ausgewählt Werke, Lyrik und Prosa, ed. Rodney Symington (Toronto: German-Canadian Historical Association,1979), 36—the lines quoted are as translated by Rodney Symington in his article.
The importance of Frobenius: in notes for Huntington Cairns EP wrote: ‘SHEER idiocy to try to crit. anything without knowing Erlebte Erdteile/force of UNWRITTEN tradition’—EP, TS headed ‘Hunt in DEam’ and (in MS) ‘Archiv’, leaf 2 (of 5), (Pound MSS II, Box 26, Lilly).
Ingrid Davies: Pound’s letters to her are in the HRC; hers to him are in the Beinecke.
‘mid dope-dolls’: 97/680-1; for Charlie Parker connection see Richard Taylor, ‘Sheri Martinelli: Muse to Ezra Pound’, Agenda 38.1-2 (2001) 111.
326 ‘Yes, my love’: EP to ID, 25 Mar. 1955 (HRC). Jaufre Rudel: a troubadour (1140-70) who sang of his love for the countess of Tripoli whom he loved from afar without ever seeing her.
his current curriculum: EP to ID, 17 Feb. [1955] (HRC).
‘My dear super-chick’: EP to ID, 12 Aug. [1955] (HRC).
‘granducal tutor’: EP to ID, 23 July [1955] (HRC).
‘NO uniformity’: EP to ID, 8 Jan. [1955] (HRC).
‘no two people’: EP to ID, 8 Mar. [1955] (HRC).
‘EST DEUS IN NOBIS’: Ovid, Fasti VI.5.
327 ‘I can’t believe book learnin’’: EP to ID, 18 Apr. [1955] (HRC).
‘half open air’: EP to ID, 8 Mar. [1955] (HRC).
‘You can certainly learn more’: EP to ID, 25 Mar. [1955] (HRC).
‘Too bad about Guy’s inhibitions’, ‘To the best of my belief’: EP to ID, 18 Mar. [1955] (HRC).
‘you still leave me’: EP to ID, 19 Mar. [1955] (HRC).
‘“Is it worth it!”’: EP to ID, 5 Apr. [1955] (HRC).
328 ‘All I know’: EP to ID, 18 Apr. [1955] (HRC).
‘The illusion of being in LOVE’: EP to ID, [Apr. 1955] (HRC).
‘The renouned “purity”’: EP to ID, 4 Apr. 1955 (HRC).
‘Pound: an enclosure’: EP to ID, 1 May 1955 (HRC).
329 ‘no correspondence’: EP to ID, 7 Nov. [1955] (HRC).
‘It is the EduCaTion’: EP to ID, 29 Nov. [1955] (HRC).
‘Ingrid sunk’: EP to MdR, 11 May [1956] (Beinecke).
‘AND of course’: EP to ID, 9 July [1959] (HRC).
Not licked, merely caged
‘I don’t even feel licked’: EP to MdR, 9 Aug. [1954] (Beinecke).
‘Of course I wd/ be DEAD’: EP to ORA, 13 Nov. 1955, EP/ORA 218.
‘haven’t been able to keep head up’: EP to MdR, 27 Jan. [1955] (Beinecke).
‘hardship had stripped him’: Samuel Hynes, ‘Meeting E.P.’, New Yorker (12 June 2006) 93.
‘let out into the air more’: EP to MdR, 4 Oct. [1955] (Beinecke).
until about 8.00 o’clock: from Overholser’s note to Norman, Norman: 1960, 438.
‘thinking to save eyesight’: EP to WL, [6 Dec. 1950], EP/WL 262-3.
‘heard on radio’: EP to MdR, 24 Nov. [1951] (Beinecke).
330 Elder Solomon Lightfoot Michaux: EP to Jankowski, 9 Oct. 1954, P&P IX, 507. On Michaux see Aldon Lynn Nielsen, ‘Ezra Pound and “The Best Known Coloured Man in the United States”’, Pai 29.2 (2000) 143-56.
‘Elder Lightfoot’: 95/641. Aldon Nielsen is the critic, in his generally perceptive and informative article—see previous note. In his letter to Jankowski EP gives the full name without abbreviation, which should perhaps temper Nielsen’s Saint-Just-like rigour.
‘not a racist bone’: a painter known to Stoneback ‘only as “Gregory”’, cited by H. R. Stoneback in his ‘“I would…be hanged with you”: Ernest Hemingway and Ezra Pound’, Ezra Pound, Ends and Beginnings, ed. John Gery and William Pratt (New York: AMS Press, Inc., 2011), 176.
‘desegregation in flower’: EP to ID, 10 Mar. [1955] (HRC).
an ‘afro-confrère’: EP to MdR, 19 Nov. [1955] (Beinecke).
‘new black attendant’: EP to MdR, 7 Aug. [1954] (Beinecke). James Russell Lowell (1819-91) wrote: ‘Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne’ (‘The Present Crisis’, 1844).
had followed Frobenius’ lead: see pp. 75-81 above.
‘marse blackman’: EP to ORA, [19 Feb. 1952], EP/ORA 85.
331 racialism…racism: on this see Aldon Lynn Nielsen, ‘Ezra Pound and “The Best Known Coloured Man in the United States”’, Pai 29.2 (2000) 143-56.
‘any tendency to abstract’: EP to Robert Creeley, [1950/1], as in Robert Creeley,‘A Note Followed by a Selection of Letters from Ezra Pound’, Agenda 4.2 (1965) 20.
‘NO use EVER’: EP to ID, 20 [June 1955] (HRC).
‘Pity the pore uncawnshus’: EP to ORA, 30 May 1955, EP/ORA 193. This is not the only instance—e.g. see EP to ORA, 4 Sept. 1955, EP/ORA 205.
‘Alright—so youre not’: Jackson MacLow to EP, 3 Apr. 1955 (Beinecke).
a psychotic ‘complex’: see EP: Poet I 227-8.
332 ‘Hitler crazy as a coot’: EP to Hugh Kenner, 1 Nov. 1953 (HRC).
‘the ONLY subject’: EP to ORA, 8 Sept. 1953, EP/ORA 125. See Henderson 260ff. for relevant extracts from Hitler’s Table Talk 1941-1944: His Private Conversations trans. Norman Cameron and R. H. Stevens, introd. H. R. Trevor-Roper (Weidenfield & Nicolson, 1953).
‘The Hitler Conversations’: EP to ORA, 5 Nov. 1953, EP/ORA 131-2.
‘case of criminal lunacy’: ORA to EP, 18 Nov. 1953, EP/ORA xviii.
‘Yes, my Dear O.R.A.’: EP to ORA, 1 Dec. 1953, EP/ORA 134, 135.
‘the CONSTRUCTIVE parts’: EP to ORA, 14 June 1951, EP/ORA 65.
‘And Mussolini’s state fell’: EP to ORA, [c.18 June 1948], EP/ORA 14.
‘TEN years construction’: EP to ORA, 5 Apr. [1953], EP/ORA 107.
‘a very vigorous criticism’: EP, TS note, n.d. [? 1953], ‘2/Pound’s principles are Confucian’, among EP letters of 1953 to MdR (Beinecke).
‘individualistic, anarchic’: EP, TS note, ‘DIFFERENCE: in whole nature and history of the two peoples/in the leaders. H. mystic fanatic hysteric/M. journalist’ (Pound MSS II, box 25, Lilly).
333 ‘not a line in support’: EP to ORA, 5 Apr. [1953], EP/ORA 107.
‘never a word in favour’: EP to ORA, 30 Apr. 1953, EP/ORA 111.
‘John Adams and the American Constitution’: EP TS draft, ‘I have no doubt that the article by Si/ m. Ris in la Nazione for Jan.22’, sent to MdR, [c. Jan. 1955] (Beinecke).
‘citizen placed in a far look-out’: EP to Hugh Kenner, 10 Oct. [1953] (HRC).
‘No treason without evil intention’: EP to ORA, 7 Aug. 1953, EP/ORA 116-17. Henderson (p. 232) suggests that Pound was referring to the 1948 Douglas Chandler treason case in which Chief Judge Magruder of The United States Court of Appeal for the First Circuit in Boston wrote, ‘The significant thing is not so much the character of the act which in fact gives aid and comfort to the enemy, but whether the act is done with an intent to betray.’
‘I want OUT’: a log of pleas and petitions
Olga Rudge reproached Hemingway: OR to Hemingway, 13 Mar. [1950], as in H. R. Stoneback, ‘“I Would…Be Hanged with You”: Ernest Hemingway and Ezra Pound’, in Ezra Pound, Ends and Beginnings. Essays and Poems from the Ezra Pound International Conference Venice, 2007, ed. John Gery and William Pratt (New York: AMS Press, Inc., 2011)—hereafter referred to as Stoneback—p. 168.
hysterical and unhelpful: see, for example, Hemingway to DP, 22 Oct. 1951, cited in Stoneback 171.
‘rather serious mistake’: Hemingway to OR, 20 Mar. 1950, as in Stoneback 169-70.
334 ‘Please do NOT distribute’: EP to Dudley Kimball, [1950] (Hamilton). For Kimball’s ‘Sixteen Points’ see ‘Seize thèses sur Ezra Pound’, Les Cahiers de l’Herne: Ezra Pound II (Paris: Éditions de l’Herne, 1965), 698-701.
‘Cornell says’: JL to EP, 15 Oct. [1950] (Lilly).
‘trial yu ass’: EP to Kenner, [1951] (Kenner Archive, HRC).
‘just as unreasonable’: JL to Kenner, 26 July 1951 (Kenner Archive, HRC).
‘Many people have tried’: Hemingway to Paige, 22 Oct. 1951, Ernest Hemingway Selected Letters 1917-1961, ed. Carlos Baker (New York: Scribners Classics, 2003), 739-41.
‘It wearies me’: WL to EP, 10 Sept. 1952, EP/WL 273.
335 An open letter: see Henderson 127, 222.
Aldington and H.D.: see Richard Aldington and H.D.: Their Lives in Letters, ed. Caroline Zilboorg (Manchester University Press, 2003), 357-8 (20 Dec. 1952).
‘Committee for the Liberation’: see Henderson 222.
Mary de Rachewitz sailed to America: paragraph drawn from MdR, Discretions 287-97.
‘Tha[t] they base the defense’: EP TS note with EP to MdR correspondence, n.d. but after May 1953 by internal reference to letters published in Irish Times 1 and 3 Nov. 1952, and EP’s ‘Nov to May to get copies’.
336 ‘a good many prominent Italians’: ORA to EP, 5 June 1953, EP/ORA 114-15 n. 1.
‘idea of petition O.K.’: EP to ORA, 27 June 1953, EP/ORA 114.
a confused report: Rufus King, Attorney, Southern Building, Washington DC, to TSE, 27 Oct. 1953 (Lilly).
until ‘it is felt that Pound has been forgotten’: Rufus King to WL, 22 Dec. 1953 (Lilly).
‘It does appear to be a stalemate’: TSE to Rufus King, 4 Nov. 1953, as in Carpenter 808. (Puzzlingly, Carpenter locates TSE’s letter in the St Elizabeths files.)
‘It is time’: WL to TSE, 23 Nov. 1955, The Letters of Wyndham Lewis, ed. W. K. Rose (Methuen, 1963), 551. TSE’s response dated 4 Dec.—‘public agitation’ etc.—is given in a footnote to WL’s letter.
337 ‘It is most unlikely’: WL to TSE, 19 Dec. 1953, The Letters of Wyndham Lewis 553-4.
liberation would have to be worked from Italy: details in this paragraph drawn from: MdR, Discretions 299; Stock: 1970, 438; Tony Tremblay, ‘“Boris is very intelligent…”: The Association and Correspondence of Ezra Pound and Prince Boris de Rachewiltz’, Pai 28.1, 155-6.
‘on the purely Utopian plane’: EP to ORA, 13 May 1954, EP/ORA 149.
Dag Hammarskjöld: the principle source of information on Hammarskjöld’s interest in Pound’s case is Marie-Noëlle Little, The Knight and the Troubadour: Dag Hammarskjöld and Ezra Pound (Uppsala: Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation, 2011)—hereafter referred to as Little.
‘his tragic fate’: Dag Hammarskjöld to Lars Forssell, 8 Jan. 1954, Little 66.
338 ‘Modern art teaches us’: Dag Hammarskjöld speaking at the Opening Ceremonies of the 25th Anniversary of the Museum of Modern Art, as in Little 70.
mentioned Pound only twice: see Jacques Maritain, Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry (Bollingen Series, vol. 35), The A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts No. 1, National Gallery of Arts Washington (New York: Pantheon Books, 1953), 181n., 261.
‘Ezra Pound is a great poet’: Ernest Hemingway, Time (13 Dec. 1954) 72, as in Little 73. See also Stoneback 172.
‘For quite some time now’: Douglas Hammond to Dag Hammarskjöld, 12 Dec. 1954, as in Little 76.
In January Hammond wrote: Hammond to DP, 7 Jan. 1955 (Lilly).
339 ‘too much in the dark’: DP as reported by Hammond to A. V. Moore, 28 Jan. 1955, as in Carpenter 816.
‘no objection to a movement’: EP’s attitude as reported by Hammond to Hammarskjöld, 7 Jan. 1955 (Lilly).
the January 7 letter: Hammond to Hammarskjöld, 7 Jan. 1955 (Lilly).
‘bloody near fed up’: EP to WL. 9 Jan. [1955], EP/WL 288.
‘A buzzard named Blum’: EP to ORA, 11, 15 Dec. 1955, EP/ORA 219-20.
‘Hem/ has done what he can’: EP to ID, 19 Mar. 1955 (HRC).
‘INSIDE the locus of power’: EP to ID and Richard Davies, 28 Mar. 1955 (HRC).
‘release on probation’: American Committee for Cultural Freedom to WO, 11 Mar. 1955, as in Carpenter 817.
340 Scelba reception: details from Henderson 432.
‘It appears La Luce’: EP to ORA, [mid-Apr. 1955], EP/ORA 186-7.
‘I have been told’: AMacL to EP, [c. Aug. 1955], MacLeish 377.
though ‘not exactly grata’: AMacL to EP, 18 Aug. [1955], MacLeish 378.
‘Will gladly pay tribute’: Hemingway to Harvey Breit, 27 Oct. 1955, Hemingway 849.
341 ‘contrary to the Constitution’: Hemingway in WYBC broadcast, 5 Dec. 1955, as in Stoneback 173.
‘he shouted loud and clear’: Bengt Nirje to Marie-Noëlle Little, Little 84. Other details in this paragraph drawn from Little 82-4, 89-92.
‘discuss the case with his friends’: Hammarskjöld to Anders Österling, Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy, 23 Dec. 1955, as in Little 89-90.
‘in the name of the City of Dante’: La Pira, Mayor of Firenze, to American Ambassadress, Oct. 1955, as in Academia Bulletin 2 ([1956]) [2], repr. Pai 3.3 (1974) 386.
‘In the very moment’: Giovanni Papini, ‘Domandiamo la grazia per un poeta’, Corriere della sera (30 Oct. 1955), as in Jack LaZebnik, ‘The Case of Ezra Pound’, New Republic (1 Apr. 1957), as in Casebook 127. See also Henderson 491-2.
a petition for clemency: see ‘Pétition des écrivains italiens’, Les Cahiers de l’Herne: Ezra Pound I (Paris: Editions de l’Herne, 1965), 167.
Ambassador Luce: details drawn from her ‘informal’ account, as given to Charles Norman, Norman; 1960, 443.
342 ‘The crimes of World War II’: editorial, Life Magazine (6 Feb. 1956), as in Wilhelm: 1994, 303.
‘Now is not the time’: Ezra Pound, written on behalf of the committee formed to obtain his release, ‘privately printed’, Jan. 1956, 9. I have to thank Dryden Gilling-Smith for lending me his original copy of this pamphlet.
343 ‘faulty’, ‘dismissal of the indictment’: William E. Foley, Chief, Internal Security Section, Office Memorandum to James M. McInerney, taking up recommendations of Miss Fillius, 5 June 1950 (Justice Department files). Behind this would have been Dorothy F. Green’s memorandum of 27 Apr. 1950, cited above pp. 178-9.
‘extreme difficulty’, ‘reopen sanity proceedings’: Mr Whearty Office Memorandum to Mr McInerney, following up Foley’s Memorandum, 6 June 1950 (Justice Department files).
Writing and reading
344 ‘Professing sinologues’: Achilles Fang to JL, 10 May 1950, EP/JL 204.
‘no civilized man’: EP to Jankowski, [21 Nov. 1956], P&P IX, 521. (In this letter Pound was discussing the likelihood of Faber publishing a bilingual selection of Plotinus.)
‘The noble Fang’: EP to MdR, 28 Dec. [1950] (Beinecke).
‘HAMMER’: EP to Fang, [Mar. 1954], EP/CF 145. Some information in this paragraph and the next is drawn from Zhaoming Qian’s introductory note to the EP/Fang correspondence re the Odes—see EP/CF 107-9.
‘VISIBLE simultaneously’: EP to Fang, [31 July 1952], EP/CF 115.
‘No, my very dear ACHILLES’: EP to Fang, [15 Mar. 1954], EP/CF 141-2.
345 Fang was licensed: EP to Fang, [31 July 1952], EP/CF 116.
‘if you are waiting’: EP to Fang, [4 Feb. 1956], EP/CF 156.
‘highly imperfect but useful’: EP to Fang, [31 July 1952], EP/CF 116.
‘MORE as a graph’: EP to Fang, [Oct. 1957], EP/CF 157.
‘The infinite vileness’: EP to Fang, 18 May [1958], EP/CF 160.
‘it has taken me’: EP as quoted by Denis Goacher, ‘Denis Goacher Talks About Basil Bunting’, Sharp Study and Long Toil: Basil Bunting Special Issue, ed. Richard Caddel (Durham, NC: Durham University Journal Supplement, 1995), 204.
346 ‘Canto 85 in proofs’: EP to MdR, 23 Oct. [1954] (Beinecke).
‘typed p. 11 of 88’: EP to MdR, 25 Oct. [1954] (Beinecke).
‘to get ms/ 85/89 in order’: EP to MdR, 23 Nov. [1954] (Beinecke), as in Richard Taylor, ‘From Father to Daughter: Selected Letters’, Pai 37 (2010) 195.
‘precise knowledge of his subject’: note on inside front cover of Gists from Agassiz (Hawthorne, California: Omni Publications for the Square Dollar Series, 1973).
‘art of collecting and arranging’: note on back cover of [Thomas H. Benton], Thirty Years View (New York: Kasper & Horton, Square Dollar Series, 1954).
‘America’s greatest historian’: note on back cover of [Thomas H. Benton], Thirty Years View (New York: Kasper & Horton, Square Dollar Series, 1954).
347 ‘when the government becomes the servant’: Thomas Hart Benton, Thirty Years View (1854) I, 192; p. 22 in Kasper & Horton Square Dollar extract from Thirty Years View.
‘the driving greed of the usurer’: Charles Beard in his introduction to Brooks Adams, The Law of Civilization and Decay: An Essay on History (1898) (New York: Knopf, 1943).
Economic Dialogues in Ancient China: Terrell Companion II, 689 provides the details—the work, ed. Lewis Maverick in 1954, is drawn on in canto 106.
‘If people would regard’: The Sacred Edict, with a translation of the colloquial rendering by F. W. Baller (Shanghai: China Inland Mission, 1924), repr. in facsimile (Orono, Me.: National Poetry Foundation, 1979), 37.
‘no life-giving power’: Baller, The Sacred Edict, iv.
a place in his Thrones: see cantos 98 and 99.
The Eparch’s Book: Επαρχικὀν βιβλίον, ed. Jules Nicole (Geneva: H. Georg, 1893). The Greek and Latin texts are reproduced in Pai II.2, prefaced by a substantial introduction and commentary on Pound’s use of the work in canto 96, by Carroll F. Terrell. Nicole’s edition with both his Latin and French translations, and with an English translation added, was republished by Variorum Reprints in London in 1970.
348 ‘right down to Mustapha Kemal’: EP to MdR, 19 Oct. [1954] (Beinecke)—cf. 96/658.
‘an attempt to move out’: EP in Paris Rev. interview 49.
‘The gods are in no need’: Apollonius ‘To the Priests in Olympia’, Philostratus, The Life of Apollonius of Tyana (Heinemann Ltd., The Loeb Classical Library, 1950) II.427.
‘pivotal point in brit/ history’: EP to ID, 9 and 13 Mar. 1956 (HRC). Cf. also EP to ORA, 3 Apr. 1956: ‘St Anselm pivotal for later charters’ (EP/ORA 228); and ‘the fight between him and William Rufus…all your liberties come out of that…on to Magna Carter, or on down to Cook or Coke’ (EP in D. G. Bridson, ‘An Interview with Ezra Pound’, New Directions 17 (1961) 173. Anselm figures in canto 105.
‘it’s all there in Coke’: EP to Noel Stock, 10 Nov. 1957 (HRC).
‘live work’: EP to Jankowski, 31 Jan. 1958, P&P IX, 523.
349 ‘For the understanding of American (U.S.) LITERATURE’: EP to Jankowski, 28 Sept. [1955], P&P IX, 517.
‘apparently focusing on Dante’: EP to Kenner, [Jan. 1954] (HRC).
a statement issued in 1953: ‘ALARMED by the neglect of the Greek and Latin classics’ (1953), reprinted in EP/Dk 104.
‘read the TEXTS’: EP to Jankowski, [29 Sept. 1955], P&P IX, 518.
‘What is WANTED’: EP to Jankowski, 15 June 1954, P&P IX, 503. EP was not to know when he wrote thus that the translation he was calling for was in preparation for his friend T. S. Eliot, and would appear from Faber & Faber in 1957 as Richard of Saint-Victor: Selected Writings on Contemplation, trans. Clare Kirchberger. Jankowski completed his translation of Benjamin Minor, in a style that had the edge on Kirchberger’s for clarity and economy, but Pound’s confidence that he would find a publisher for it proved ill founded, and it was eventually printed privately in Ansbach, West Germany, in 1960—information from P&P IX, 500. Included in the Ansbach edition were EP’s selection of sentences—14 brief extracts in the original Latin with his English translation (repr. S Pr 73-4). These were drawn from the EP’s 21 brief extracts in Latin only, published by Vanni Scheiwiller in Milan in 1956 as Riccardo da S. Vittore. Pensieri sull’Amore.
‘A catholic biJAYzuss author’: EP to ORA, 29 May 1954, EP/ORA 153.
‘absorbed some R/ St V’: EP to Beatrice Abbot, [July 1954] (Beinecke).
The St Elizabeths Cantos (1): ‘Section: Rock-Drill. 85-95 de los cantares’
The following have been particularly useful in this section: Terrell’s Companion; William Cookson, A Guide to the Cantos of Ezra Pound (Croom Helm, 1985) [here referred to as Cookson]—especially for John Cayley’s glosses of the Chinese; Thomas Grieve, ‘Annotations to the Chinese inSection: Rock-Drill’, Pai 4.2-3 (1975) 361-508 [= Grieve]; David Gordon, ‘Thought built on Sagetrieb: [The Sacred Edict in cantos 98 and 99]’, Pai 3.2 (1974) 169-90; David Gordon, ‘From the blue serpent to Kati’, Pai 3.2 (1974) 239-44; David Gordon, ‘More on The Sacred Edict’, Pai 4.1 (1975) 121-68; David Gordon, ‘Corpus Juris and Canto XCIV’, Pai 11.2 (1982) 313-24; George Kearns, Guide to Pound’s Selected Cantos (Rutgers University Press, 1980) [= Kearns]; Peter Makin, Pound’s Cantos (George Allen & Unwin, 1985); James J. Wilhelm, The Later Cantos of Ezra Pound (New York: Walker and Company, 1977) [= Wilhelm, Later Cantos].
pasting ideograms on to proof sheets: EP to ID, 22 June 1955 (HRC).
350 ‘China IN ideogram’: EP pencil note on verso of Pearl Buck to DP, dated 16 Sept. 1946, reads, ‘re China, not books “about” China, but China IN ideogram’ (Lilly).
‘a locked room’: Dag Hammarskjöld to Anders Österling, 23 Dec. 1955, cited Little 91.
‘He could hardly write’: Alfred Alvarez, ‘Rock-Drill Cantos’, Observer (3 Mar. 1957) 15, as in Homberger 442.
‘read exactly the books’: Randall Jarrell, ‘New Books in Review’, Yale Review 46 (1956) 103, as in Homberger 438-9.
351 ‘the straight gaze’: see Confucius (1951) 27.
‘one who governs well’: see Grieve 390-1.
352 Terrell informs us: see Terrell, Companion 467-8.
353 ‘a scholarly-critical industry’: Kearns 193.
Williams had warned: see The Autobiography of William Carlos Williams (New York: New Directions, 1967), 146.
355 the epic issues: see Paris Rev. interview 48-9.
357 ‘plenum’: 77/475.
358 ‘the germinal universe’: SR 92-3.
an effect of heroin: see William McNaughton, ‘The Secret History of St. Elizabeths’, Pai 30.1-2 (2001) 75-6.
‘no earthly pleasure’: SM, CB/SM 235.
359 Dante raged: see his Paradiso XXVII.22-6.
‘The Princess Ra-Set’: on this synthesis of the two male deities Ra and Set (in cantos 91,92, 94, and 98), and on the sources of the Egyptian elements in the late cantos and Pound’s handling of them, see Boris de Rachewiltz, ‘Pagan and Magic Elements in Ezra Pound’s Works’, in Eva Hesseed., New Approaches to Ezra Pound (Faber & Faber, 1969), 174-97.
361 ‘energy near to benevolence’: see The Unwobbling Pivot I.xx.10, Confucius (1951) 155.
362 ‘a POLITICAL implement’: EP to JT, 17 June 1957, EP/JT 44.
Apollonius of Tyana: see p. 348 above. On the ‘Pandects’ see David Gordon, ‘Corpus Juris and Canto XCIV’, Pai 11.2 (1982) 313-24.
‘sense of cosmos’: EP note on flimsy pink paper to Denis Goacher, n.d. (HRC).
‘Cantos as guide book’: EP note on flimsy pink paper to Denis Goacher, n.d. (HRC).
363 ‘85-95 have richiami’: EP to MdR, [10 Dec. 1955] (Beinecke).
364 ‘abundant | unceasing’: 92/620.
‘Div Com/ the main structure’: EP to MdR, 18 May 1956 (Beinecke).
Intimate relations
the Lynx song: 79/489-92; see EP to DP, 2 Oct. [1945] and 4 Nov. [1945], and DP to EP, 13 Jan. 1946, EP/DP 101, 173, 239.
‘La Cara’, the ‘beloved’, ‘a great goddess’: 76/459, 74/444, 74/435.
‘a jungle of wooden row houses’: Reck 85-6.
365 ‘led a hell of a life’: Douglas Hammond to AVM, 28 Jan. 1955 (Lilly), as in Carpenter 816.
‘without comment’: Richard Aldington to HD, 23 Feb. 1952, Richard Aldington and H. D.: Their Lives in Letters 1918-61, ed. Caroline Zilboorg (Manchester University Press, 2003), 349.
‘bottomless pits’: EP to MdR, 16 Oct. 1954 (Beinecke).
‘the money to O.R.’: DP to EP [? Mar. 1953] (Lilly).
‘quoted Dorothy’: SM in interview with Anne Conover, Washington, DC, Aug. 1995, in Conover 210.
‘cannot be mortgaged’: EP to MdR, 12 Apr. 1950 (Beinecke).
‘Don’t get into debt’: see for example EP to MdR, 29 Mar. 1950 (Beinecke).
‘for Patrizia’s roof’: see DP to MdR, 1 July 1950, and EP to MdR, 25 July 1950 (Beinecke); also Conover 194.
‘This place is a Paradiso’: OR to EP, 19 Feb. 1953, as in Conover 207.
Pound was expecting Mary: details in rest of para and the one following from MdR, Discretions 291-7.
366 ‘should not attempt to hurry’: Conover 206, based on OR’s letters and diaries.
‘he is wonderful’: MdR to OR, 12 Mar. 1953, as in Conover 206.
‘heaviness, boredom, depression’: MdR to author by e-mail, 18 Jan. 2011.
‘as advance on royalties’: MdR in conversation with author, 20 June 2008.
boredom the worst horror: MdR in conversation with author, June 2010.
‘bewildered and discouraged’: MdR, Discretions 297.
‘Mary a gt/ comfort’: EP to ORA, 5 Apr. [1953], EP/ORA 107.
‘on specific condition’: EP to MdR, 19 Dec. 1953 (Beinecke).
might be forced to borrow: see EP to ORA, 4 Nov. 1954, EP/ORA 172-3.
‘the luxury and joy’: OR to EP, 24 Dec. 1953, as in Conover 207.
a pass to first class: see Conover 203, and EP Misc. Note, [Apr. 1952] (Box 25, Pound MSS II, Lilly).
367 on April 9: date from stamp in OR’s US passport (issued 20 Apr. 1950).
‘permitted three visits’: Conover 204.
‘just arrived from Siena’: Angela Palandri, ‘Homage to a Confucian Poet’, Pai 3.3, 305.
on May 7: date from EP to Peter Russell, 29 May 1952 (HRC).
‘O. arrived’: EP to MdR, 5 May 1952 (Beinecke).
‘Hope to see her again’: EP to MdR, 11 May 1952 (Beinecke).
‘This one, who expected’: OR to EP, 13 May 1952, as in Conover 204-5.
‘10 years bug house’: EP to OR, [? Jan. 1955] (Beinecke/OR).
‘ideés reçues’: EP to OR, [Feb. 1955] (Beinecke/OR).
‘A civilization’: EP to OR, 26 Feb. 1955 (Beinecke/OR).
368 ‘He not think she not noticing’: OR to EP, 21 Jan. 1955 (Beinecke/OR).
‘She not to worry’: EP to OR, [? Feb. 1955] (Beinecke/OR).
‘Having once again’: OR to EP, 22 Mar. 1955 (Beinecke/OR).
‘don’t see what good’: EP to OR, [Apr. 1955] (Beinecke/OR).
‘she won’t complicate’: OR to EP, [Apr. 1955] (Beinecke/OR).
‘Bene | she come’: EP to OR, 7 May [1955] (Beinecke/OR).
‘in Wash’s worst’: EP to ORA, 7 July 1955, EP/ORA 197.
‘[Sheri] was sitting at the right hand’: SM in interview with Anne Conover, Washington, DC, Aug. 1995, in Conover 210-11.
‘Oh well, you ma turned up’: EP to MdR, 7 July [1955] (Beinecke), as in Richard Taylor, ‘From Father to Daughter: Selected Letters’, Pai 37 (2010) 202-3.
whether Olga ‘sailed yester/’: EP to MdR, 9 July [1955] (Beinecke).
369 ‘Waaal she’za nice gal’: EP to MdR, 9 July [1955] (Beinecke).
‘It would have been so easy’: MdR in conversation with author, July 1995.
13. ‘INDICTMENT DISMISSED’, 1956-8
370 late November: date from DP to OSP, 26 Nov. 1955 (Hamilton/OSP).
fiercely attacked him: EP, ‘MacLEISH’, (23 April 1942), Radio 104-6.
‘some peace and quiet’: AMacL to EP, [c. Aug. 1955], MacLeish 377.
‘a medical disposition’: AMacL to EP, 18 Aug. [1955], MacLeish 377.
‘overlooking the simple’: see AMacL to EP, [c. Sept. 1955?], MacLeish 377-8.
‘the minute they WANT’: EP to MdR, 23 Nov. 1955 (Beinecke).
‘will not lift his hand’: Harry Meacham to Mr Wyllie, 4 Dec. 1957 (Kenner Archive, HRC).
371 MacLeish’s visit: see AMacL to EH, 19 June 1957, MacLeish 397-9.
‘Not everyone has seen’: AMacL, ‘In Praise of Dissent’, New York Times Book Review 16 Dec. 1956—as in Wilhelm: 1994, 306. NYT of 6 Jan. 1957 printed several letters responding to the article, among them one by ‘M. Span’.
‘for the good name’: AMacL to EH, 19 June 1957, MacLeish 397.
La Martinelli’s art: see AMacL to EP, 18 Aug. [1955], MacLeish 378; also EP to Robert MacGregor, 21 Dec. 1955, EP/JL 242.
‘dear Archie’: EP to HK, 31 Dec. 1955 (HRC).
‘the benevolent’: EP to AVM, [Dec. 1955] (Lilly).
‘insists on his own terms’: AVM to TSE, 4 Jan. 1956 (Lilly).
‘a mild beginning’: EP to HK, 31 Dec. 1955 (HRC).
‘what yu kno’: EP to LZ, 10 Dec. 1955 (HRC).
372 ‘a closet’: ‘An Artist Confined’, Life Magazine 40 (6 Feb. 1956) 30—quoting Samuel Hynes, ‘The Case of Ezra Pound’, Commonweal 63 (9 Dec. 1955) 251.
‘Considering various’: Hammarskjöld to Wilcox, 15 Mar. 1956, as in Little 98—see Little 97-8 for context.
‘Our chief headache’: W. H. Auden to Hammarskjöld, 21 Mar. 1956, Little 100.
‘would be unwise’: AMacL to EP, 17 Apr. [1956], MacLeish 380.
‘fighting feathers’: AMacL to Alexis Saint-Léger Léger, 9 June [1956], MacLeish 383.
nevertheless he persisted: AMacL to EP, 9 July [1956], MacLeish 384-5.
373 ‘Hem is apparently’: EP to MdR, 31 May 1956 (Beinecke).
‘prolonged incarceration’: EP to James Dickey, [30 Aug. 1956], as in Lee Bartlett and Hugh Witemeyer, ‘Ezra Pound and James Dickey: A Correspondence and a Kinship’, Pai 11.2 (1982) 301.
‘To the President and Trustees’: EP to The President and Trustees, Hamilton College, 3 Aug. 1956, reproduced in Ezra Pound: A Selected Catalog compiled Cameron McWhirter and Randall L. Ericson (Clinton, NY: Hamilton College Library, 2005), 30. The president’s reply is reproduced on facing page 31.
‘CantObile’: EP to MdR, 22 Aug. [1956] (Beinecke).
Na Khi: e.g. EP to MdR, 20 July 1956: ‘Goullart on Na Khi very interesting—“Forgotten Kingdom”’; and 31 Aug. 1956: ‘Big 2 vol/ Rock “Ancient Kingdom” arruv on loan’.
374 ‘Daylight privileges’: Clinical Record/Nursing Notes, 9-21-56 (St Elizabeths Files, 1351, US Nat. Arch.).
a statement ‘for the record’: EP, ‘Four Steps’, introd. D. G. Bridson, Agenda 17.3-4-18.1 (1979-80) 131-41.
an American Writers Group: paragraph drawn from Francis J. Bosha, ‘Faulkner, Pound and the P.P.P.’, Pai 8.2 (1979) 250-6. See also: Paul Mariani, William Carlos Williams: A New World Naked (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1981), 739-41; Donald Hall, Remembering Poets: Reminiscences and Opinions (New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1979), 164-5.
375 ‘not now legally insane’: AMacL to AVM, 14 Oct. 1956 (Lilly)
unlikely…passport: AVM to DP, 22 Oct. 1956 (Lilly).
376 Overholser’s position: AMacL to WO, 16 Nov. 1956 (St Elizabeths Files, 873, US Nat. Arch.).
‘unlikely that his mental condition’: WO to AMacL, 21 Nov. 1956 (St Elizabeths Files,874, US Nat. Arch.).
‘though unfit to stand trial’: AMacL to WO, 29 Nov. 1956 (St Elizabeths Files, 885, US Nat. Arch.).
‘I think it is high time’: WO to AMacL, 4 Dec. 1956 (St Elizabeths Files, 886, US Nat. Arch.).
‘mentally incompetent’: WO to AMacL, 21 Nov. 1956 (St Elizabeths Files, 874, US Nat. Arch.).
‘Eisenhower will never’: Guy Davenport, ‘Seeing Shelley Plain’, The Geography of the Imagination (Pan Books/Picador, 1984) 139.
‘Our interest’: RF, TSE, and EH to The Attorney General of the United States, 14 Jan. 1957—as in Heymann 245-6.
377 ‘asked that a review’: Herbert Brownell to RF, 28 Feb. 1957, Frost 563.
would be willing to talk: Rogers to each of RF, TSE, and EH, 10 Apr. 1957—noted in MacLeish 396.
had urged Hemingway: AMacL to EH, 8 Jan. 1957, MacLeish 393.
‘would be on his desk’: see Robert M. MacGregor to WO, 19 Feb. 1957 (St Elizabeths Files, 909, US Nat. Arch.).
Hammarskjöld: paragraph drawn from Little 108-17.
378 ‘Did you ever hear’: WCW to EP, 7 Jan. 1957, EP/WCW 305.
series on Kasper’s activities: Robert S. Bird in New York Herald Tribune, series beginning 30 Jan. 1957—see Meacham 61, Little 120.
‘Kasper’s idol’: Arthur Gordon, ‘Intruder in the South’, Look 21 (19 Feb. 1957) 27-31.
The Tale of John Kasper
This section is based to a large extent on Robert S. Griffin’s online ‘Tale of John Kasper’, <http://www.robertsgriffin.com/TaleKasper>, supplemented by materials generously provided by Alec Marsh.
John Kasper appeared: incident as reported by William McNaughton, ‘The Secret History of St Elizabeths’, Pai 30.1 and 2 (2001) 92. Further details from Kasper correspondence files in Beinecke.
379 ‘Dear Gramp’: Kasper to EP, 10 Apr. [1956] (Beinecke)—transcript provided by Alec Marsh.
‘don’t confuse ingenuity’: EP notes apparently to Kasper, n.d. (Beinecke)—transcript provided by Alec Marsh.
‘Our movement arises’: ‘WHITE CITIZENS COUNCILS, What are they?’, back page of VIRGINIANS ON GUARD! (1246 Wisconsin Avenue, NW, Washington 7, DC: John Kasper, Seaboard White Citizens Councils, n.d.).
381 testified on his behalf: EP to MdR, 13 Nov. 1956 (Beinecke).
letter to the editor: Kasper to Amsterdam News (18 Nov. 1956)—copy of original from Alec Marsh.
382 VIRGINIANS ON GUARD!—photocopy provided by Alec Marsh.
‘damn good guy’: EP to MacL, [? Nov. 1957], Carpenter 835.
‘2 points at least quotable’: EP to Noel Stock, cited by Alec Marsh in his unpublished paper, ‘Ezra Pound and the American right in the 1950s: Pound’s response to Brown’, from Michael J. Alleman, ‘“A Pound of Flesh”: Ezra Pound at St Elizabeths’, Diss., University of Texas, Dallas, 2007.
offered some advice: EP, 3 pp. TS notes commenting on draft of VIRGINIANS ON GUARD!, [? July 1956], mixed in with program for David Gordon’s Academia Bulletin (Beinecke YCAL MSS 43, Box 66, Folder 2838).
‘Kasper defeated’: EP to ORA, 6 Dec. 1956, EP/ORA 236.
‘Mr Kasper’s meteoric rise’: EP to ID, 26 Dec. 1956 (HRC).
‘A Nationalist Attack Newspaper’: details from Stock 431.
383 ‘violated a permanent injunction’: report in New York Times, 24 Mar. 1957, as cited Norman 453.
‘K probably in ERROR’: EP to David Wang, 28 Sept. 1957, EP/CF 194.
The skeleton in the national closet
‘Is it true that you hate’: Bo Setterlind to EP, [Feb. 1957], as in Little 121.
384 ‘NO, naturally’: EP to Setterlind, 26 Feb. 1957, as in Little 121-2.
Agassiz: for EP’s early recommendation see ABCR 17-18.
‘All study of nature’: EP to JT, 2 July 1957, EP/JT 55. In the preceding sentence EP objects to ‘Crushing ALL local civilizations in favour of uniformity and central tyranny’.
‘good that hindoos’: EP to JT, 11 Sept. 1957, EP/JT 84.
educating and directing: EP wrote to MdR in June 1957 about ‘trying to educate Kasper, Chatel et al—and direct ’em’ (Beinecke).
‘don’t think you can show’: EP to Meacham, 13 Nov. [1957], as in Meacham 68-9.
‘no more responsible’: LZ, as reported by Giovannini to Meacham, Meacham 121-2.
‘the heroism of a Crommelyn’: EP to Meacham, 13 Nov. [1957], as in Meacham 69.
385 has collected evidence: see Henderson 530ff.
‘a little publicity’: EP to ORA, 24 Nov. 1956, EP/ORA 235.
‘in no position to judge’: EP to Meacham, 13 Nov. [1957], as in Meacham 69.
‘“Au dessus du conflit”’: see EP to Meacham, 17 Nov. [1957], as in Meacham 71.
‘Kasper’s real ideology’: EP to ORA, 20 May 1957, EP/ORA 245. See Henderson 551 for relevant background; also chap. III of ‘Introductory Textbook’, GK 354.
‘the Negro business’: J. M. Ch. Fr. Châtel as cited by David Rattray, ‘Weekend with Ezra Pound’, The Nation 185 (16 Nov. 1957)—as in Casebook 111.
‘suicide troops’: SM as cited by David Rattray, ‘Weekend with Ezra Pound’, The Nation 185 (16 Nov. 1957)—as in Casebook 115.
386 ‘May be inhuman’: EP to MdR, 13 May 1958 (Beinecke).
‘attempt to implicate’: EP to WL, 3 Feb. 1957, EP/WL 302.
‘miscarriage of justice’: Harold Lord Varney, ‘Mental Health: Fact and Fiction’, American Mercury 84 (Apr. 1957)—as cited in Sieber 16.
‘act of largesse’: [editorial],‘Ezra Pound’, New Republic 136 (1 Apr. 1957) 6—as cited in Sieber 16.
‘plea for Pound’s freedom’: Jack LaZebnik, ‘The Case of Ezra Pound’, New Republic 136 (1 Apr. 1957)—as in Casebook 118.
‘good year to release poets’: EH, cited Casebook 127.
possibility of good government: see EP’s comments on Thrones in Paris Rev. interview 48-9.
‘continues in his usual manner’: Nursing Notes, 8/28/57(St Elizabeths Files, 1354, US Nat. Arch.).
‘end of Canto 105’: EP to MdR, 25 May [1957] (Beinecke).
387 ‘96/106 “Thrones” in rough draft’: EP to MdR, 27 Oct. [1957] (Beinecke).
‘gettin 107 in order’: EP to MdR, 26 Nov. 1957 (Beinecke).
Coke’s Second Institutes: see EP to JT, 31 Oct. [1957], EP/JT 111.
‘“The Twisted Cross”’: EP as ‘Herbert Briscoe’, ‘Total Morass’, Voice II (7 Apr. 1956) 4, in P&P IX, 136.
‘this quite proper fuss’: EP as ‘New York Correspondent’, ‘New York’, New Times XXII.10 (18 May 1956) 6, in P&P IX, 145.
Edge: on Stock’s magazine see William Flerming, ‘The Melbourne Vortex’, Pai 3.3 (1974) 325-8; Noel Stock, ‘Ezra Pound in Melbourne 1953-7’, Helix 13/14 (1983) 159-78, repr. in Noel Stock, My Life in Brief with a Memoir of Ezra Pound (Toledo: Rue de Rome Press, 1987), 45-74.
388 ‘Utopia’: [EP], ‘Definitions’, Edge 1 (Oct. 1956) [18]—in P&P IX, 176.
‘genuine Old Testament’: Thaddeus Zielinski, The Sibyl/Edge 2 (Nov. 1956) 47.
a German article: Jan H. Van Der Made, ‘“Mental Illness”, New Name for Nonconformity: German Statement on Ezra Pound Case’, Edge 3 (Feb. 1957) 17-20.
best since the Little Review: EP to Brigit Patmore, [?1957] (HRC).
‘the Kulchurl cenTER’: EP to Peter Russell, 1 Sept. [1957] (HRC).
389 ‘the best since Stock’s’: EP to William Cookson, 29 Sept. 1957, Agenda 17.3-4-18.1 (1979/80) [7].
‘live characters’: EP to William Cookson, 29 Sept. 1957, Agenda 17.3-4-18.1 (1979/80) [7].
‘a bit of tradition’: EP to Cookson, 18 Nov. 1957, Agenda 17.3-4-18.1 (1979/80) [11].
‘knowledge incarnate’: EP to Cookson, ‘boxing day ’57’, Agenda 17.3-4-18.1 (1979/80) [13].
‘Yr next reading’: EP to Cookson, 23 Oct. 1957, Agenda 17.3-4-18.1 (1979/80) [8].
‘The FIRST fight’: EP to Cookson, ‘boxing day ’57’, Agenda 17.3-4-18.1(1979/80) [13].
‘The QUESTION’: EP to Cookson, 6 Jan. [1958], Agenda 17.3-4-18.1(1979/80) [15].
‘I am “of course” not antisemitic’: EP to Cookson, 7 Feb. [1958], Agenda 17.3-4-18.1 (1979/80) [21].
‘The enemy is IGGURANCE’: EP to Cookson, 10 Jan. 1958, Agenda 17.3-4-18.1 (1979/80) [16]. Cookson provided the context in ‘EP and Agenda’, in Sons of Ezra: British Poets and Ezra Pound, ed. Michael Alexander and James McGonigal (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1995), 50.
390 ‘their job is to get me out of quod’: EP to Cookson, 2 Mar. [1958], Agenda 17.3-4-18.1 (1979/80) [24].
‘devotes himself to the cause’: David Rattray, ‘Weekend with Ezra Pound’, The Nation 185 (16 Nov. 1957)—as in Casebook 114n.
‘with usura’: 45/229.
‘Luigi in hill paths’: 104/741.
‘the gold light of wheat’: 106/752-3.
a red-ink seal: the characters were Pao (M4946), en (M1743), tê (M6162)—see ‘Terminology’ in Confucius 23, 21; also EP/JT 91 and 146, and EP/JL 252.
391 ‘I was troubled’: Folke Isaksson to Hammarskjöld, 18 Mar. 1957, as in Little 126.
‘when Pound was talking’: Folke Isaksson, ‘Diktaren I Dårhuset’ [‘The Poet in the Madhouse’], Bonniers Litterära Magasin 27.6 (1958)—as translated in Little 123-4.
‘As he sat in a deckchair’: John Wain, ‘The Shadow of an Epic’, Spectator 204 (11 Mar. 1960) 360—in Homberger 455-6.
‘Chess each evening’: Nursing Notes, 3/16/57 (St Elizabeths Files, 1352, US Nat. Arch.).
392 ‘Jets kept taking off’: Reno Odlin, ‘Pound at St. Elizabeths’, Antigonish Review 51 (1982) 42.
‘A coloured inmate’: Odlin, ‘Pound at St. Elizabeths’, Antigonish Review 51 (1982) 42.
‘Another day’: Odlin, ‘Pound at St. Elizabeths’, Antigonish Review 51 (1982) 44.
‘Bear no grudge’: OR to EP, 1 Jan. 1957, Conover 213.
‘Note from O’: EP to MdR, 27 Aug. 1957 (Beinecke).
393 ‘I can NOT see her’: EP to MdR, 15 Nov. 1957 (Beinecke).
‘M’Amour, ma vie’
Principal sources for this section: the Marcella Spann Booth Collection of Ezra Pound (HRC/MSB); Marcella Booth, ‘Through the Smoke Hole: Ezra Pound’s Last Year at St Elizabeths’, Pai 3.3 (1972) 329-34, and ‘Ezrology: The Class of ’57’, Pai 13.3 (1984) 357-88.
393 Poundian literature course: see Miller’s Syllabus in CC 330-4.
‘see something of the world’: MS to EP, 17 Aug. 1956 (Beinecke).
‘read all the books’: MS to EP, 6 Sept. 1956 (Beinecke).
‘to develop appreciation’: MS to EP, [Dec. 1956] (Beinecke).
‘Marcella an addition’: EP to MdR, 31 Mar. 1957 (Beinecke).
‘lovely intelligent, and v. pleasant’: DP to OSP, 22 Oct. 1957 (Hamilton/OSP).
‘most frequent visitor’: MSB ‘Ezrology’, Pai 13.3 (1984) 377n.
‘The Mind of Pierre Duval’: see EP/WCW 315n.
‘on the green stretch of lawn’: MSB ‘Ezrology’, Pai 13.3 (1984) 377-8; see also Pai 3.3 (1972) 330.
‘Read the part you like’: MSB ‘Ezrology’, Pai 13.3 (1984) 378.
‘Stick with what you know’: MSB ‘Ezrology’, Pai 13.3 (1984) 375.
‘whole of Ovid’s Metamporphoses’: MSB ‘Ezrology’, Pai 13.3 (1984) 378.
‘ILLITERACY’: MSB ‘Ezrology’, Pai 13.3 (1984) 378.
‘taught like a kind father’: MSB ‘Ezrology’, Pai 13.3 (1984) 383.
394 ‘TEACHING 100 females’: EP to MdR, 28 Oct. 1957 (Beinecke).
‘in a burst of tears’: MSB ‘Through the Smoke Hole’, Pai 3.3 (1972) 330-1.
The first lesson: EP to MS, 3 TSS pages beginning ‘m A/ 7.27 // Ang/Sax’, [n.d] (HRC/MSB).
‘PREZICELY’: EP to MS, 1 Oct. [1957] (HRC/MSB).
395 potent roquefort: EP to MS, ‘SABato, 4.23’, [Feb. 1958] (HRC/MSB)—and see EP to MS, ‘JHeez. Fri. 5.30’, [n.d.] (HRC/MSB), and MSB ‘Ezrology’, Pai 13.3 (1984) 383.
‘her damn SCHOOL’: EP to MdR, 2 Nov. [1957] (Beinecke).
‘shd plan eZcape’: EP to MS, ‘Sunday 4.59’, [?October 1957] (HRC/MSB).
396 ‘yes m’amour’: EP to MS, ‘Mercoledi’, [n.d.] (HRC/MSB).
‘Terracina and the Circeo’: see 39/195, and 106/754.
‘in dumps’: EP to ID, 29 Nov. 1957 (HRC).
‘reportedly on water wagon’: EP to MdR, 2 Nov. [1957] (Beinecke).
as he would write later: the rest of this paragraph is based on an odd page of an EP letter loose in EP to MdR correspondence. Re ‘dumping the poubelle or ash can’, see SM to Bukowski, 5 June 1960: ‘maestro ezra pound kept telling me “now don’t dump yr garbage on my head”’ (CB/SM37). In a copy of Villon’s Œuvres at Brunnenburg inscribed ‘Sheri’s in keeping St Liz 1956’, ‘La Belle Heaulmière’ is marked; in contrast, a copy of The Women of Trachis (New Directions, 1957) from EP’s library at HRC has the initials ‘M.S.’ and ‘EP’ entwined on the front endpaper.
397 ‘M’Amour, Artemis’: EP to MS, ‘Sa’rdy/10.41’, [n.d.] (HRC/MSB).
In canto 106: EP had this ‘in rough draft’ at the end of Oct. 1957—EP to MdR, 26 Oct. [1957] (Beinecke).
picking cotton: see EP to MdR, 31 Mar. 1957 (Beinecke).
‘Artemis out of Leto’: 106/754.
‘God’s eye art ou’: 106/755; see also 113/790.
‘The sky is leaded with elm boughs’: the visual effect here at 106/755, as with ‘The sky’s glass leaded with elm boughs’ (107/761), is of a stained-glass window, worth noting since one learned commentator has failed to see it.
398 ‘a paradiso | terrestre’:/802; ‘in the halls of hell’: 81/521.
‘happy for weeks’: MSB ‘Ezrology’, Pai 13.3 (1984) 379.
‘NO! (continuing)’: EP to MS, [n.d.], reproduced in Paris Review 187 (2008) [26-7].
The St Elizabeths Cantos (2): Thrones. 96-109 de los cantares
In this section the following works have been helpful: Terrell’s Companion; William Cookson, A Guide to the Cantos of Ezra Pound (Croom Helm, 1985) [= Cookson]; David Gordon, ‘Edward Coke: The azalea is grown’, Pai 4.2-3, 223-99, 554 [= Gordon]; George Kearns, Guide to Pound’sSelected Cantos (Rutgers University Press, 1980) [= Kearns]; James J. Wilhelm, The Later Cantos of Ezra Pound (New York: Walker and Company, 1977) [= Wilhelm, Later Cantos].
398 ‘largely ineffective’: Kearns 223.
‘soars over what went before’: BB to EP, [?1964] (Beinecke).
‘they do not present’: BB to EP as reported by EP himself and recorded by Michael Reck in ‘A Conversation between Ezra Pound and Allen Ginsberg’, Evergreen Review 57 (1968) 28.
399 ‘after the age of forty’: EP to Kathleen Raine, ‘Visiting Ezra Pound’, Agenda 37.2-3 (1999) 141.
‘paideutic and anagogical’: ‘said EP on 5 March 1958, as recalled in 1962 by Hollis Frampton’, Reno Odlin, notes (dated 1988) around JL’s Pound as Wuz, sent by e-mail to Arnaud Lefebvre, 7 Feb. 2001, [p. 12], printed in Reno Odlin, Revues et textes critiques 1976-2001, ‘Un document de photocopies préparé par la Galerie Arnaud Lefebvre, Paris/À l’occasion de l’exposition des Lettres de Hollis Frampton, 12 sept.-12 oct. 2002’. SM started her Anagogic & Paideumic Review in San Francisco in 1959.
‘mankind’s struggle’: SR 127.
‘you might take it’: EP to IWP, 13 Nov. 1926, EP/Parents 593.
‘EFFECT on the MIND’: EP to William Watt, 27 May and 8 July [1957], Ezra Pound’s Letters to William Watt with an introduction and notes by WW (Marquette, Mich.: North Michigan University Press, 2001) [no page nos.]. Kearns 295 associates the term with contemplatio (after Anselm).
‘the anagogic leads to unity’: EP in note ‘written in pencil on two sides of a board—dated “13 Maggio”’, as recorded on tape by OR 16 Mar. 1975, and as transcribed into her Venice Notebook (Beinecke).
‘blue china’: see EP to Dudek, [received 13 Apr. 1950], EP/Dk [19], and [received 27 Mar. 1952], EP/DK [88]—cited above p. 324.
400 ‘to fully grasp’: Wilhelm, Later Cantos, 117.
‘the quest, dark and questionable’: Wilhelm, Later Cantos, 119.
401 ‘had no ground’: see 98/685 and 102/728.
K’ang-hsi: reigned 1662-1723—see cantos 59 and 60.
‘The text is somewhat exigeant’: 98/691.
‘correctly aligned warp threads’: John Cayley’s note in Cookson 136.
402 Wagadu: see 74/430 and 77/465.
403 Pound’s own protest: see EP, ‘Four Steps’, Agenda 17.3-4-18.1 (1979/80) 139.
Na Khi: on this subject see the illuminating essay by Jamila Ismail, ‘“News of the universe”: 2muan 1bpo and the Cantos’, Agenda 9.2-3 (1971) 70-87.
404 ‘One is held up’: EP, Paris Rev. interview 49.
‘as Ixion, unstill’: 113/790 and cf. 80/503.
405 ‘Kung is the outer’: EP to Denis Goacher, 11 Oct. [?1955] (Goacher fragments folder, HRC).
‘wheat surging’: cf. Homeric Hymn To Demeter ll.449-56.
the flowers of asphodel etc.: Terrell’s suggestion that ‘ulex’ belongs with the ‘paradisal flora’ will not convince those of us who have had close encounters with gorse. ‘Aquileia’ is not a flowering plant but an ancient town north of Venice on the sea-marshes. I have been unable to identify ‘Caffaris’.
406 in earlier cantos initiated Odysseus: see the sequence 17, 30, 39, 47. About Pound’s use of the Eleusinian mysteries, it should be noted that the mythology is not for Pound a matter of belief, but a way of perceiving the cosmos: see his ‘A Problem of (Specifically) Style’ and ‘Convenit esse Deos’ in MA 121-5 and 135-40.
‘my notes do not cohere’: 116/797.
‘a migration of the real powers’: Gordon 247-9.
407 ‘The Sicilian rose’: Gordon 249.
408 ‘The keeper’: Sir Edward Coke, The Second Part of the Laws of England (Bell-Yard, near Temple Bar, 1797), Cap. V, 14-15.
‘man’s efforts to synchronize’: Gordon 554, and see Gordon 279.
409 ‘IGNORANT of Coke’: EP to Moelwyn Merchant, 7 Nov. [1957], as in Moelwyn Merchant, ‘The Coke Cantos’, Agenda 17.3-4-18.1 (1979/80) 81. See also EP to Merchant, 12 Nov. [1957]: ‘set of 4 vols. of Coke sighted in London’, Merchant, ‘The Coke Cantos’, Agenda 17.3-4-18.1 (1979/80) 82—the sighting was by AVM according to EP to OSP, 14 Nov. [1957]—this may have been the 1681 edition of Coke’s Institutes which EP had bought by 8 Feb. 1958 (see DP to OSP, 8 Feb. 1958 (Hamilton/OSP)).
‘various items’: EP sheet dated ‘15 Sept’ enclosed with EP to Moelwyn Merchant, 17 Sept. [1957], as in Moelwyn Merchant, ‘The Coke Cantos’, Agenda 17.3-4-18.1 (1979/80) 80-1.
‘G. Giov. brot’: EP to JT, 31 Oct. [1957], EP/JT 111.
‘“Institutes” nearest thing to Confucius’: EP to MdR, 2 Nov. [1957] (Beinecke).
‘Parad. X’ would suggest that he already had it in mind to connect Coke with the tenth canto of Dante’s Paradiso.
no time ‘for the digestion’: Moelwyn Merchant, ‘The Coke Cantos’, Agenda 17.3-4-18.1 (1979/80) 83.
MacLeish gets his ‘nol pros’
409 no ‘substantial change’: WO to Frank Loveland, 26 Mar. 1957 (St Elizabeths Files, 929, US Nat. Arch.).
410 remove the obfuscation: Thurman Arnold, ‘The Strange Case of the Noted Poet Ezra Pound’, Fair Fights and Foul: A Dissenting Lawyer’s Life (New York: Harcourt Brace & World, Inc., 1965), 237.
Moore put it to Cornell: AVM to JC, 29 Apr. 1957 (Lilly).
‘Taking everything into account’: TSE to AVM, 8 May 1957 (Lilly).
411 ‘You can use my name’: Graham Greene to Ronald Duncan, 21 Oct. 1957 (HRC).
A petition: see Tytell 325.
‘a fellow Republican’: AMacL to EP, 11 Dec. [1957], MacLeish 404.
‘a prominent literary figure’: John Foster Dulles to RF, 12 Feb. 1957, Frost 562.
‘My purpose holds’: RF to AMacL, 24 June 1957, Frost 569.
412 ‘fully armed’: AMacL to RF, 28 June [1957], MacLeish 400.
‘anything but treasonable’: EH to RF, 28 June 1957, Hemingway 878-80.
MacLeish reported the outcome: AMacL to EH, 21 July 1957, and to EP, 22 July 1957, MacLeish 401-2.
413 Walter Winchell: much feared, widely syndicated, newspaper and radio gossip columnist, in part responsible for the re-arrest and wrongful conviction of ‘Tokyo Rose’, and, according to MacLeish, feared by the administration—see AMacL to EP, 18 Feb. 1958, MacLeish 405. EP wrote to JT, 17 June 1957, ‘What is keeping me in here is JEWS/B. Baruch/Winchell “E.P. out over my (i.e. Winchell’s) dead body”’ (EP/JT 44).
413 ‘has spread the rumour’: AMacL to EP, 22 July 1957, MacLeish 402.
Pound thanked him: EP to AMacL, 4 Aug. [1957], Carpenter 831.
‘damned nonsense’: EP to AMacL, 7 Aug. [1957], as in Carpenter 831.
‘it wd/ however be timely’: EP to MdR, 11 Aug. 1957 (Beinecke).
‘not being able to go to Italy’: AMacL to RF, 22 Aug. [1957], MacLeish 402.
Frank Lloyd Wright: see Carpenter 832.
‘nuttier than he is’: AMacL to RF, 22 Aug. [1957], MacLeish 402-3.
‘Whereas Ezra Pound’: Mr. Burdick, 85th Congress, 1st Session, H.RES.403, 21 Aug. 1957—(copy in St Elizabeths Files, 1219a-b, US Nat. Arch.).
414 ‘time to spring grampaw’: EP to Cookson, 15 Nov. [1957], Agenda 17.3-4-18.1 (1979/80) [10].
‘repeatedly offered our support’: Patrick Murphy Malin, Executive Director ACLU, to Arnold Gingrich, Esquire Magazine, 28 Aug. 1957, as in Sieber 42-3. Sieber 41 gives brief extracts from letters to the editor of Esquire Magazine following Rovere’s article. See Norman: Case 197-8 forMalin’s letter dated 18 Apr. 1958 to the Attorney General, seeking to capitalize on Pound’s release, towards which the ACLU had contributed nothing, in the interest of ‘the larger legal problem’.
moved by MacLeish’s ‘eloquent passage’: see Meacham 32-3.
‘a letter-writing drive’: see Meacham 48ff.
‘19 years of effort’: EP to Meacham, 24 Sept. 1957, Meacham 51.
415 ‘Re/ one of yr/ questions’: EP to Meacham, 24 Sept. 1957/‘later’, Meacham 52.
‘his well-meaning friends’: Meacham, Meacham 55.
‘no public stir’: AMacL to Meacham, 17 Oct. 1957, Meacham 60.
‘E.P. can only AFFORD’: EP to MS, [n.d.] (HRC/MSB).
416 Pound’s royalties: Committee accounts (Pound MSS VI, Lilly).
‘has Dr Overholser’s consent’: RF to William P. Rogers, 19 Nov. 1957, Frost 571.
‘a firm commitment from Rogers’: AMacL to WO, 27 Nov. 1957 (St Elizabeths Files,1018, US Nat. Arch.).
‘nothing much would be gained’: WO to AMacL, 5 Dec. 1957 (St Elizabeths Files,1019, US Nat. Arch.).
‘would quash the indictment’: AMacL to WO, 13 Dec. 1957 (St Elizabeths Files,1027, US Nat. Arch.).
417 ‘looks cloudy from this angle’: AMacL to Meacham, 22 Dec. 1957, Meacham 64.
‘very reasonable and patient’: AMacL to Meacham, 17 Oct. 1957, Meacham 60.
‘I cd/ do wiff a change’: EP to EEC, 20 Nov. 1957, EP/EEC 395.
‘I shd/ like to get OUT’: EP to Patricia Hutchins, 4 Nov. 1957 (British Library)—as in Carpenter 835.
‘Time has come’: EP to Noigrandres, Jornal de letras, Reo do Janeiro, X.106 (May 1958) [1]—in P&P IX, 215.
‘This ward is no fit place’: EP to MdR, 2 Nov. [1957]. See also Carpenter 835.
offering ‘to discuss the matter’: William P. Rogers to MacLeish, 2 Jan. 1958, as in Meacham 124.
‘would like somehow’: AMacL to Hammarskjöld, 2 Jan. 1958, as in Little 138. See also AMacL to EP, 18 Feb. 1958, MacLeish 405.
418 ‘one thing was certain’: AMacL to EH, 30 Sept. 1958, MacLeish 411.
‘you can give the whole story’: Christian Herter to WO, 2 Jan. 1958—as in Carpenter 836.
‘the real solution’: AMacL to Hammarskjöld, 2 Jan. 1958, as in Little 138.
‘the controversial character’: J. Edgar Hoover’s report to Attorney General, 28 Jan. 1958, as in Little 143.
‘why the Department of Justice’: Cornell 123-4.
‘the indictment against Pound’: from Little 143.
‘2 letters’: ‘The Ezra Pound Case. Extension of Remarks of Hon. Usher L. Burdick of North Dakota’, Congressional Record 104.12 (27 Jan. 1958)—the page with Burdick’s introductory remarks and the two letters is reproduced as an appendix to EP/WW.
419 ‘If Ezra Pound were released’: DP to WO, 1 Feb. 1958 (St Elizabeths Files, 1049, US Nat. Arch.).
‘Unlikely’: EP to Noigrandres, Jornal de letras, Reo do Janeiro, X.106 (May 1958) [1], in P&P IX, 215.
‘it may be o.k.’: EP to Robert MacGregor, 25 Feb. 1958, EP/JL 256 (in part); see also note to the Pound letter in Book Five (1958), part II, in WCW, Paterson, revised edn. prepared by Christopher MacGowan (Manchester: Carcanet Press, 1992), 302.
‘serious and thoughtful people’: Hammarskjöld to Herter, 18 Feb. 1958, as in Little 140.
‘idea of getting Pound to Italy’: Herter to AMacL (copied to Hammarskjöld), 5 Mar. 1958—from Little 142.
‘The idea is that you’: AMacL to EP, 16 Mar. 1958, MacLeish 406.
420 ‘an illegal arrangement’: EP to AMacL, 25 Mar. 1958, as in Carpenter 837-8.
‘First kind word’: AMacL to EP, 30 Mar. 1958, MacLeish 407-8.
‘played for a sucker’: EP to MdR, 29 Mar. 1958 (Beinecke).
‘a meal or something’: RF to Sherman Adams, 12 Feb. 1958, Frost 572.
‘TO AN INFORMAL STAG DINNER’: Dwight D. Eisenhower to RF, 16 Feb. 1958, Frost 572-3.
- ‘WHAT’S ON MY MIND’: RF to Sherman Adams, 16 Feb. 1958, Frost 573.
421 sign of his approval: Heymann 250—his note on p. 354 gives as source, ‘Telephone interview with Sherman Adams, Feb. 13, 1973’.
‘the “nod” of the President: JL to Meacham, 4 Aug. 1963 (Lilly).
‘A decision is near’: Miriam Ottenberg, ‘Liberty Being Weighed for Poet Ezra Pound’, Washington DC Sunday Star (16 Mar. 1958), as in Carpenter 839 and Sieber 17, 22.
‘if the indictment is dismissed’: AVM to EP, 26 Mar. 1958 (Lilly).
‘The Government’s case’: Sieber 1.
‘The Justice Department’: ‘Ezra Pound May Escape Trial and Be Allowed to Go to Italy’, New York Times, 2 Apr. 1958, as in Casebook 128-9.
Frost: ‘I’ve dropped in’: Meacham 124; Carpenter 840 adds Frost’s closing remark but gives no source.
‘in the public interest’: Arnold, Fortas, and Porter announcement, 5 Apr. 1958, reported in Washington Post and Times-Herald (6 Apr. 1958) 1, as in Sieber 18.
‘to Dr Overholser’s office’: DP, Diary 1958, 4 Apr. (Lilly).
‘things look more hopeful’: EP to MdR, 5 Apr. 1958 (Beinecke).
‘long talk with Thurman Arnold’: DP, Diary 1958, 7 Apr. (Lilly).
‘We have been retained’: Arnold, Fortas, and Porter News Release, 7 Apr. 1958, as in Sieber 18-19.
423 ‘The standing mute’: EP to MdR, 3 Apr. 1958 (Beinecke).
‘a certain amount of optimism’: EP to MdR, 12 Apr. 1958 (Beinecke).
‘First day one cd/ sit out’: EP to MdR, 29 Mar. 1958 (Beinecke).
‘a monument of sanity’: Norman Holmes Pearson to HD, 2 Apr. 1958, as in Little 148.
‘at the mention of music’: Robert Hughes, personal communication, 27 Oct. 2011. Cf. EP&M 464-5.
the precision of Linnaeus: EP to Hammarskjöld, 13 Apr. 1958, from Little 150.
Crabbe having mentioned Linnaeus: see EP to MdR, 24 Apr. 1958 (Beinecke).
‘got thru a lot of work’: EP to MdR, 17 Apr. 1958 (Beinecke). ‘Conversations in Courtship’, translated by EP and Noel Stock, later published as Love Poems of Ancient Egypt (1962).
an interesting challenge: seeThurman Arnold, ‘The Strange Case of the Noted Poet Ezra Pound’, Fair Fights and Foul , 236-42.
424 MOTION TO DISMISS INDICTMENT and attached AFFIDAVIT, MEMORANDUM and STATEMENT OF ROBERT FROST: from Norman: Case 191-6, and Cornell 125-31.
427 ‘and Pound listened’: MSB ‘Through the Smoke Hole’, Pai 3.3 (1972) 334.
‘Furniss fetched OP and DP’: DP, Diary 1958, 18 Apr. (Lilly). Details re Omar are from DP’s diary entries for 7 and 14 Apr.
‘shabby blue jacket’: Anthony Lewis, ‘Court Drops Charges Against Ezra Pound’, New York Times (19 Apr. 1958) 1.23, as in Casebook 139-40.
ORDER DISMISSING INDICTMENT: from Norman 196-7.
‘gave her husband a kiss’: Anthony Lewis, ‘Court Drops Charges’, as in Casebook 140.
428 ‘showed no emotion’: Max Freedman, ‘Ezra Pound Released: Government Backs Appeal’, Manchester Guardian (19 Apr. 1958) (cutting in Nat. Arch. KV 2/876/361810).
‘a firm “yes”’: Anthony Lewis, ‘Court Drops Charges’, as in Casebook 140.
‘a long yellow scarf with oriental characters’: this is from Lewis’ report in New York Times. For McNaughton’s remarks see his ‘Kingdoms of the Earp: Carpenter and Criticism’, Pai 21.3 (1992) 14-15. The scarf can be seen in illustration no. 33.
14. CLEARING OUT
430 ‘The Poet’s wife’: Anthony Lewis, ‘Court Drops Charges’, New York Times (19 Apr. 1958) 1.23, as in Casebook 139.
‘Mr Pound will now apply’: Max Freedman, ‘Ezra Pound Released’, Manchester Guardian (19 Apr. 1958) (cutting in Nat. Arch. KV 2/876/361810-60a).
‘We are informed’: William D. Rogers to DP, 21 Apr. 1958 (Lilly).
‘until his family’: Anthony Lewis, ‘Court Drops Charges’, New York Times (19 Apr. 1958) 1.23, as in Casebook 139.
‘Yr. venbl parent’: EP to MdR, 18 and 24 Apr. 1958 (Beinecke).
431 ‘Escaped with Eliz. W’: DP, Diary 1958, 18 and 24 Apr. (Lilly).
‘9.45 a.m. to Boston’: DP, Diary 1958, 19 Apr. (Lilly).
‘THE pearl necklace’: DP to AVM, 24 Jan. 1962 (Lilly). On 16 July 1927 DP had written from London to EP in Venice, ‘Signed up to a new Will yesterday: Parkyn [the family solicitor] worried about my leaving you the necklace—but it’s done’ (Lilly). ‘The pearl necklace was a Shakespear family heirloom, given to the wife of Alexander Shakespear (Dorothy’s grandfather) by the Maharajah of Benares upon Alexander’s retirement from service in India in 1873. This explains Mr. Parkyn’s concern in 1927. When Dorothy brought the necklace to Boston in 1958, she made a particular point of telling me that as Omar’s wife I could wear it but that she was giving it to him’ (communication from Elizabeth Pound, 10 Feb. 2014).
‘apt. 511 /2407’: EP to Cookson, 24 May [1958], Agenda 17.3-4-18.1 (1979/80) [30].
‘Many of our men’: Emmanuel Celler, in Paul Sampson, ‘Plan to Free Ezra Pound is Protested’, Washington Post Times-Herald (7 Apr. 1958) 1—from Sieber 18.
‘Bloodier war criminals’: ‘What the Pound Case Means’, The Nation 186 (19 Apr. 1958) 335—as in Casebook 130.
‘a little magnanimity’: ‘The Case of Ezra Pound’, Wall Street Journal (17 Apr. 1958)—from Sieber ii.
‘an attempt to stir up’: ‘The Case of Mr. Ezra Pound’, The Times (9 Apr. 1958) (cutting in Nat. Arch. KV 2/876/361810-58a).
432 ‘a magnanimous spirit’: Max Freedman, ‘Ezra Pound Released’, Manchester Guardian (19 Apr. 1958) (cutting in Nat. Arch. KV 2/876/361810-60a).
a New Directions press release: ‘New Canto for a Poet’, New York Times (19 Apr. 1958) 23—as in Casebook 141.
‘the amount of clutter’: EP to MS, 19 [Apr. 1958] (HRC/MSB).
‘boxes, bags, manuscripts’: Meacham 131-2.
433 Rip van Winkle: EP to DP, 21 Apr. [1958] (Lilly).
‘it dawned on me’: EP to MdR, 24 Apr. [1958] (Beinecke).
‘po’k chaups’: EP to MS, [21/21 Apr. 1958] (HRC/MSB).
‘shrimp cocktail’: EP to MdR, 24 Apr. [1958] (Beinecke).
‘indubitably pleasant’: EP to MS, [23 Apr. 1958] (HRC/MSB).
wrote of feeling solitary: EP to MS, [23 Apr. 1958] (HRC/MSB).
‘Giardino’: EP to MS, [22 Apr. 1958] (HRC/MSB).
‘M’Amour, ma vie’: e.g. EP to MS, [23 Apr. 1958] (HRC/MSB).
‘might try to versify’: EP to MS, [21 Apr. 1958] (HRC/MSB).
Those butterflies: see 92/619-20, and 106/754,/802 (the final fragment).
‘outta the nest’: MS, CB/SM 132, and see Steven Moore’s ‘Introduction’, CB/SM 22-3.
‘The male can’t just go’: SM to HD, as incorporated by HD, ET 57—and see ET 39ff.
434 ‘poor Undine’: HD, ET 57.
‘on a personal tangent’: Lee Lady to Stock, [n.d.] (HRC).
‘three calls during ten minutes’: EP to MdR, 24 Apr. [1958] (Beinecke).
‘Don’t you think my husband’: EP note to DP, [Apr./May 1958] (Lilly).
‘Officially I am NOT’: EP to MdR, 24 Apr. [1958] (Beinecke).
435 ‘against people being railroaded’: Usher L. Burdick as cited by Mary McGrory, ‘Ezra Pound Still Sees Mad World Out of Step’, Washington Star (30 Apr. 1958)—in Casebook 144-8.
‘did speak well of Frost’: EP to AMacL, 27 May 1958, as in Carpenter 846. When EP said the same thing to Meacham, the latter astutely reflected that ‘Pound felt no one should be obligated to him for anything he had done for them, and he, in turn, never felt he was under obligation for any services, of whatever magnitude’ (132).
met by Pound and Marcella: DP, Diary 1958, 29 Apr. (Lilly).
cooked for her: see DP to OSP, 30 Apr. 1958 (Hamilton).
‘mentally and physically exhausted’: Meacham 135.
‘chaste and dulcet’: James Jackson Kilpatrick, ‘A Conversation with Ezra Pound’, as in Meacham 137.
brilliantly impressionist account: Kilpatrick, ‘A Conversation with Ezra Pound’, as in Meacham 137-42.
436 ‘Recommendation for Discharge’: (St Elizabeths Files, 1427, US Nat. Arch.).
437 ‘Report of Discharge or Death’: (St Elizabeths Files, 1087, US Nat. Arch.).
Committee’s audited return: Committee accounts (Lilly).
‘Marcella at TOP’: EP to MdR, 30 Apr. [1958] (Beinecke).
‘one night in Verona’: EP to MdR, 14 May [1958] (Beinecke).
‘me and my body guard’: EP to MdR, 21 May [1958] (Beinecke).
‘Do credit her’: EP to MdR, 22 June [1958] (Beinecke).
‘“asylum for life”’: Rome correspondent, The Times (15 May 1958) (cutting in Nat. Arch. KV 2/876/361810-64a).
‘no official objections’: William D. Rogers to DP, 17 May 1958 (Lilly).
‘shelter on Isola S. Giorgio’: EP to MdR, 14 May [1958] (Beinecke).
438 ‘the Spannthology’: EP to MdR, 21 May [1958] (Beinecke).
‘foreign correspondent’: see Meacham 146, and EP to MdR, 14 May and 1 June 1958 (Beinecke).
‘alarUMS, scursions, whoops’: EP to Cookson, 24 May [1958], Agenda 17.3-4-18.1 (1979/80) [30].
‘continue as Committee’: DP to AVM, 27 May 1958 (Lilly).
‘not yet out of “committee” control’: EP to MdR, [?19 May 1958] (Beinecke).
‘status still entangled’: EP to MdR, 29 May 1958 (Beinecke).
the historic Old South: see Meacham 153-4.
439 ‘present state of degradation’: EP to Meacham, 21 May 1958, Meacham 149.
‘fatigue deep as the grave’: 83/533.
Caedmon Records: details from sleeve note for TC 1122 Ezra Pound Reading [volume 1] (1960), recorded 12, 13, and 26 June 1958. Pound read Hugh Selwyn Mauberley, ‘Cantico del Sole’, ‘Moeurs Contemporaines’, ‘The Gypsy’, ‘Exile’s Letter’, and cantos 1, 4, 36, 45, 51, 76 (second half), 84, 99.
‘two hours tape recording’: EP to MdR, 14 June 1958 (Beinecke).
royalties to Marcella: see EP to JL, 5 June 1959, EP/JL 269; also EP to JL, 20 Dec. 1958, cited Conover 217.
‘8 trunks packed’: EP to MdR, 22 June 1958 (Beinecke).
$1500 ‘for expenses’: EH to EP, 26 June 1958, Hemingway 883.
‘sunk in plexiglass’: EP to Hemingway, as cited by Stoneback, ‘Hemingway and Pound’, Ezra Pound, Ends & Beginnings, ed. John Gery and William Pratt (New York: AMS Press Inc., 2011), 174.
440 guests of Carl Gatter: see Stock: 1976, 105-9—this is based on Gatter’s own account. There are a number of accounts of Pound’s last days in America, but there is no agreement among them about dates. There is general agreement that Pound was with the Gatters on the night of Friday 27 June—and there is Gatter’s own authority for that; Meacham says he spent two nights with the Collins, which would be the nights of the 28th and 29th—others don’t mention that visit; and Mariani says he was with the Williams ‘from the evening of the28th to the morning of the 30th’, which would have them going straight from Wyncote to Rutherford. The date of the Avedon photograph is given variously as 29 June and 30 June—the 29th seems more likely. Most give the date of departure of the Cristofero Colombo from New York as 30 June—not 1 July as Pound had thought it would be. Accepting the 30th as the date of departure, and the 27th as the date of leaving Washington, and accepting the stay with the Collins (for which again we have Gatter’s word), allows just one night for each of the three visits.
guests of Alan C. Collins: see Meacham 161; Stock: 1976, 108-9; Stock: 1970, 449; Heymann 256.
‘Take care of yourself’: WCW to EP, 21 May 1958, EP/WCW 318
guests of WCW: see Paul Mariani, William Carlos Williams (1981) 741-2. See WCW/JL 225 for the Richard Avedon arrangement.
‘a broiling hot June day’: see Reck 134-5 for this and other details.
441 cabin 128: see DP to OSP, 24 June 1958 (Hamilton).
two cabins: see EP to EEC, [9 July 1968], EP/EEC 409, 411n.
‘on the bunk lay Ezra’: Norman Holmes Pearson to HD, as incorporated by HD into ET 61-2.
‘a certain euphoria’: EP to Reck, Reck 134-5.
15. A FINAL TESTAMENT, 1958-9
445 It had become the custom: this and the following paragraph mainly drawn from MdR, Discretions 304-5, and‘Ezra Pound at Eighty’, Esquire 65 (1966) 114-16, 178-80—the latter as reprinted in the ‘volumetto’, Centoventi e ottanta anni (Brunnenburg: per gli amici, 9 July 2005).
read Uncle Remus: see D. G. Bridson, ‘An Interview with Ezra Pound’, New Directions 17 (1961) 158.
446 ‘Sono, naturalmente’: EP, ‘Sono felice d’esser tornato fra i miei’, L’Illustrazione Italiana LXXXV.9 (1958) 34, in P&P IX, 234-5. This introductory note to MdR’s translation of ‘Canto 98’ is dated ‘Brunnenburg, 22 Iuglio 1958.’
‘a familial clan’: DP to OSP, 25 July 1958 (Hamilton/OSP).
‘something went wrong’: MdR, Discretions 305.
‘What does it matter’: DP as reported in EP to ID, 15 Apr. 1955 (HRC)—see p. 316 above.
‘still crazy about Marcella’: DP to OSP, 30 Aug. 1958 (Hamilton/OSP).
‘will the Committee’: AVM to Furniss, 31 July 1958 (Lilly).
Furniss replied: Furniss to AVM, 8 Aug. 1958 (Lilly).
447 ‘Mrs. Pound and her son’: AVM to Furniss, 18 Aug. 1958 (Lilly).
Furniss regarded the possibility: Furniss to AVM, 3 Sept. 1958 (Lilly).
‘a fascist salute’: ‘Pound, in Italy, Gives Fascist Salute; Calls United States an “Insane Asylum”’, New York Times (10 July 1958) 56—see illustration.
An even better story: I find the story first in Heymann (1976) 273-4, with no source given; then in Torrey (1984) 272, citing Heymann as source; in Tytell (1987) 334, probably from Heymann but without acknowledgement—Tytell places it in 1962, though on 1 May of that year Pound was convalescing with Olga Rudge in Sant’Ambrogio; in Carpenter (1988) 873-4, evidently from Heymann but without acknowledgement or source; and in Marsh (2011) 214, citing Torrey. The suspicion that Heymann might have invented the story is warranted by the total absence of corroborating evidence; and by the fact that he did invent an interview with EP—see his pp. 305-13, and then Hugh Kenner, Historical Fictions 55ff., and William McNaughton, Pai 5.3 (1976) 473.
448 ‘pure legend’: Giano Accame, Ezra Pound economista (Rome: Edizione Settimo Sigillo, 1995), 192—cited by Redman: see next note.
‘no such photograph exists’: Tim Redman, ‘Pound’s Politics and Economics’, Ira B. Nadel ed., Cambridge Companion to Ezra Pound (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 260-1.
‘He’s very angry’: Giacomo Oreglia, ‘Meeting Ezra Pound’, Dagens Nyheter (Stockholm, Sweden), 5 Nov. 1958—as in ‘Sort of translation’ sent by EP, with his notes and comments, to Meacham to be verifaxed ‘to all on list’, Meacham 37.
‘PROGRAM’: EP to Jaime Garcia Terrés, Feb. [1959], Excelsior (Mexico), 29 Mar. 1959, in P&P IX, 266. Cf. EP’s ‘Three points: One idea at a time | Vocational representation | Non indebetarsi’, cited by Henry Swabey, ‘A Page without which’, Pai 5.2 (1976) 334.
‘Let the poets combat’: EP to C. J. Cela, 25 Apr. 1959, Los Papeles de Son Armadans (Madrid, Palma de Mallorca), XIX.57 bis (Dec. 1960) 70, in P&P IX, 292.
‘no longer a POlitical’: EP to JL, 24 Nov. 1959, EP/JL 271.
‘now objects’: EP to JL, [before June1960], EP/JL 275.
in The European: ‘Of Misprision of Treason’ [from Coke’s Institutes, The Third Part], and ‘Three Poems [‘Old Zuk’, ‘The Draughty House (Catullus)’, ‘More’]’, European XII.5 (1959) 282-4; ‘CI de los Cant[a]res’, European XII.6 (1959) 382-4.
449 his notebooks: EP, Drafts & Fragments. Facsimile Notebooks 1958-1959—referred to here as D&F facsimile—consists of six notebooks. Four were numbered (and dated) by Pound: (1) July 23-Sept. 18, 1958; (2) Feb. 5-July 9, 1959; (3) July 12-Aug. 16, 1959; (4) Sept. 11-Dec. 5, 1959; an unnumbered and undated notebook, with the draft for ‘That I lost my centre’, is likely to belong to Aug. or Sept. 1959; the other notebook, which does not concern me here, is dated ‘10 Oct. 1958’. For an expert study of the typescripts copied from these notebooks by MS, and the subsequent drafts, see Ronald Bush, ‘“Unstill, ever turning”: The Composition of Ezra Pound’s Drafts & Fragments’, in Ezra Pound and Europe, ed. Richard Taylor and Claus Melchior (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1993), 223-41.
‘weak and enfeebled’: EP to ORA, EP/ORA 254.
‘short bursts of energy’: EP to William Cookson, 12 Sept. [1958], Agenda 17.3-4-18.1 (1979-80) [32].
‘NOT in shape’: EP to Douglas Bridson, 15 Sept. 1958 (Beinecke).
two nights in Venice: date from DP’s diary (Lilly).
a column about books: see EP to Giambattista Vicari, 18 and 22 Sept. 1958, EP/GV 203-6.
450 ‘very little energy’: EP to John Theobald, 19 Oct. 1958, EP/JT 118.
‘Mostra Delle Edizioni’: details from DP to OSP, 19, 22, 31 Oct. 1958 (Hamilton).
‘in spite of his seventy-three years’: Giacomo Oreglia, ‘Meeting Ezra Pound’, Dagens Nyheter (Stockholm, Sweden), 5 Nov. 1958—as in Meacham 34-5.
to Venice again: dates from DP’s diary (Lilly).
‘To thy quiet house’: EP MS drafts dated 12 and 13 Nov. and 10 Dec. [1958] (Marcella Spann Booth Collection, HRC).
451 ‘17 Nov. 1958’: EP TS note among EP to MdR correspondence (Beinecke).
typed thirty-seven pages: see Zhaoming Qian, ‘An Afterword concerning Pound’s 1935 revisit to the Fenollosa Papers’, Pai 31 (2002) 308.
‘ANY news of villas’: EP to Meacham, 26 Dec. 1958, Meacham [103].
went down to Lake Garda: details from DP’s diary (Lilly).
on a copy of its brochure: now in Marcella Spann Booth Collection (HRC/MSB).
proposed that they should marry: information from MdR.
a new notebook: i.e. notebook ‘2’, reproduced in D&F facsimile.
452 with three separate rooms: see DP to OSP, 8 Mar. 1959 (Hamilton/OSP).
to cook and do all the housework: see DP to OSP, 8 and 18 Mar. 1959 (Hamilton/OSP).
‘& in thy mind’: in D&F facsimile, notebook ‘2’, with date ‘28 Apr’.
‘Young people today’: EP, in ‘interview with a reporter from the New York Herald Tribune’, ‘agreed to’ by EP on 18 Jan. 1960, as in Heymann 269.
‘& who no longer make Gods’: in D&F facsimile, notebook ‘2’, with date ‘14 May’.
453 ‘19th May ’59’, ‘sun & serenitas’: in D&F facsimile, notebook ‘2’, draft of canto 113.
‘’neath overhanging air’: not in notebook, added in a TS draft of 113.
‘souls melt into air’: in D&F facsimile, from back of notebook ‘1’, draft of ‘gold mermaid’ et seq. for 111.
‘When the stag drinks’: edited from D&F facsimile, notebook ‘1’, draft for 110.
‘From Time’s wreckage’: in D&F facsimile, notebook ‘2’, between 7 and 21 Feb. 1959.
-‘falling spiders’: in D&F facsimile, notebook ‘2’, before 21 Feb. 1959.
454 Moore to Furniss: 12 Jan. 1959 (Lilly).
EP to Overholser: 2 Feb. 1959 (Beinecke).
DP to Moore: 13 Feb. 1959 (Lilly).
Moore to Peter du Sautoy: 3 Mar. 1959 (Lilly).
EP to Moore: 8 Mar. 1959 (Lilly).
Moore to EP: 13 Mar. 1959 (Lilly).
Furniss to EP: 28 May 1959 (Lilly).
Moore to EP: 7 June 1959 (Lilly).
455 DP to Moore: 13 June 1959 (Lilly).
suggest that Omar: see DP to AVM, 26 Feb. 1962 (Lilly), and AVM to DP, 5 Mar. 1962 (Lilly).
no legal existence: DP to OSP, 21 Aug. 1959 (Hamilton/OSP).
wanted to keep it that way: see AVM to DP, 21 Oct. 1959 (Lilly).
‘EP. is not crazy’: DP to OSP, 10 Mar. 1966 (Hamilton/OSP).
‘All you or anyone else’: EP to OR, 19 Feb. 1959 (Beinecke/OR).
456 ‘Evidently was altitude’: EP to OR, 27 Feb. 1959 (Beinecke/OR).
‘my status’: EP to OR, 8 Mar. 1959 (Beinecke/OR).
‘and no-one else’: OR to EP, 5 Mar. 1959 (Beinecke/OR). See also Conover 218.
‘stuff DOWN’: EP to MdR, 31 Mar. 1959 (Beinecke).
‘small regular cheques’: EP to MdR, 26 Mar. 1959 (Beinecke).
‘rush of energy’: EP to Bridson, 24 Mar. 1959 (Bridson Collection, Lilly).
Bridson seized his moment: see D. G. Bridson, ‘An Interview with Ezra Pound’, New Directions 17 (1961) 159-84.
457 ‘6th and other cerebral vertebrae’: EP to Meacham, [June 1959], Meacham 181.
‘to supply a giraffe’: EP to Katue Kitasono, 12 June 1959, as in EP&J 127.
‘slows the mind’: EP to Meacham, [June 1959], Meacham 181.
‘x-ray attack’: EP to OSP, 5 June 1959 (Hamilton/OSP).
‘Poor little Marcella’: DP to OSP, 18 June 1959 (Hamilton/OSP). Details of trip from DP’s diary (Lilly).
‘have been too exhausted’: EP to MdR, 3 Aug. 1959 (Beinecke).
Nevertheless…he composed: the last pages of notebook ‘2’ date from 9 July and contain from ‘These simple men who have fought against jealousy’ to ‘the tribu’ (114); notebook ‘3’ continues 114 from ‘armes et blasons!’ through to its end, and then has the drafts for the rest of D&F (apart from ‘La faillite de François Bernouard’, composed before 19 June). An unrelated note at the end of the notebook is dated ‘Aug. 16’.
458 ‘a bronze dawn’: in D&F facsimile, notebook ‘3’, after 23 July 1959.
‘Have I seen the divine’: D&F facsimile, notebook ‘3’—this passage at the end of the draft contains the more significant variants from the published text of 116, which is otherwise nearly identical with the notebook draft. It is followed in the notebook by a kind of dedication: ‘To the poets of my time: Disney | & quasi-anonimo | “Ah sold mah soul | to de company stoh” | honour them.’
461 ‘EP feeling low’: DP to OSP, 12 Aug. 1959 (Hamilton/OSP).
not in a fit state: EP to MdR, 12 Aug. 1959 (Beinecke).
‘my old head’: EP to MdR, 20 Aug. 1959 (Beinecke).
‘nostalgia for Brunnenburg’: EP to MdR, 26 Aug. 1959 (Beinecke).
‘Have you still got the car’: EP to MdR, 29 Aug. 1959 (Beinecke).
‘No use’: EP to MdR, 8 Sept. 1959 (Beinecke).
‘To bless people’: EP to MdR, 16 Aug. 1959 (Beinecke).
‘destino or my muddles’: EP to MdR, 4 Sept. 1959 (Beinecke).
‘amid cumulative fatigue’: EP to Richard Aldington, 25 Aug. 1959, as in RA to HD, 7 Sept. 1959, Richard Aldington and H.D.: Their Lives in Letters, ed. Caroline Zilboorg (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003), 402.
‘Not since Brigit’: EP to HD, 8 Sept. 1957, as cited by HD to RA, 30 Oct. 1959, Richard Aldington and H.D.: Their Lives in Letters, 407. For EP’s letter to HD see Timothy Materer, ‘H.D., Serenitas, and Canto CXIII’, Pai 12.2-3, 274.
‘no immediate concern’: JL to AVM, 9 Sept. 1959 (Lilly).
reported at greater length: JL to AVM, 24 Sept. 1959 (Lilly).
462 causing problems for his publishers: DP wrote to JL that EP had ‘had a fit of nerves and messed up’ a contract with Caedmon which Laughlin had sent (DP to JL, Oct. 1959 [Lilly]). EP wanted the royalties to go to Marcella, and complained that the contract as drawn up by New Directions was ‘gobbldegook’ with ‘too God DAMNED much fine print and twisty as eels’ (EP to JL, 5 June and 25 Oct. 1959, EP/JL 268-9, 270-1). DP, for her own part, thought the contract a mess and, as Committee, refused to sign it.
‘again went down into hell’: in D&F facsimile, notebook ‘4’, dated ‘Sept. 11 [1959]’.
‘becoming such a scandal’: DP to OSP, 13 Sept. 1959 (Hamilton/OSP).
‘Sitting in my ruins’: EP to TSE, 15 Sept. 1959 (Beinecke).
a passage booked for Marcella: the date, 22 Sept., and the taxi, from DP’s diary (Lilly); the original ticket is in the Marcella Spann Booth Collection (HRC); the Committee cheque stubs and accounts are in the Lilly Library; for EP’s estimate see EP to Furniss, 25 May 1959 (Lilly).
‘I have been a pitiless stone’: in D&F facsimile, notebook ‘4’.
‘In meine Heimat’: in D&F facsimile, notebook ‘4’.
‘That I lost my centre’: in D&F facsimile, unnumbered and undated notebook—two notes in the hand of MS on pages at the end indicate that EP’s lines were written before she left on 28 Sept. Her typed version (HRC/MSB) is close to the version in D&F.
463 ‘EP in a fuss’: DP diary (Lilly).
‘EP lying on his bed’: DP to OSP, 28 Sept. 1959 (Hamilton/OSP).
‘couldn’t take it any more’: JL to WCW, 25 Oct. 1959, WCW/JL 230.
‘We couldn’t go on’: DP to AVM, 5 Oct. 1959 (Lilly).
‘glad you stood firm’: AVM to DP, 21 Oct. 1959 (Lilly).
‘came up here to die’: EP to Krishna Kripalani, 31 Oct. 1959 (Beinecke).
16. ‘YOU FIND ME IN FRAGMENTS’, 1959-62
464 ‘And tower is full of you’: EP to MS, [6 Oct. 1959] (MSB/HRC).
‘one dies with out saving the world’: D&F facsimile, notebook ‘4’, fos. 6-7.
‘in the labyrinth of death’: D&F facsimile, notebook ‘4’, fos. 11-13.
‘Uncle Ezry’: JL to WCW, 23 Oct. 1959, WCW/JL 229.
‘I am so deeply concerned’: JL to WO, 1 Dec. 1959, as in Wilhelm: 1994, 325.
465 ‘reserpine and testicular hormone’: ‘Mr. Ezra Pound—Clinical report’, Clinica della Malattie Nervose e Mentali, Università di Genova, sent to Dr Clara L. Hoye, Clinical Director, St Elizabeths, 19 Nov. 1966 (St Elizabeths files, 1161b, US Nat. Arch.)
its serious side-effect: communicated to EPOUND-L@LISTS.MAINE.EDU by Hideo Nogami.
‘self-abasement’, ‘self-debasement’: DP to OSP, 30 Oct. and 23 Dec. 1959 (Hamilton/OSP).
‘Now that I am wrecked’: EP to TSE, TS draft, [Oct.-Nov. 1959] (Canaday Center, University of Toledo Libraries, Toledo, Ohio).
‘Hell, for all its horrors’: see TSE, After Strange Gods (Faber & Faber, 1934), 41-3.
‘DEEspair’: EP to OR, 31 Oct. 1959, as in Conover 220.
‘wrote to Mr. Eliot’: MdR, Discretions 306.
‘Forgive me for about 80%’: EP to AMacL, 16 Dec. 1959, as in Meacham 183.
466 ‘frightened the living bejeezzz’: AMacL to EP, [c. Dec. 1959], MacLeish 418.
‘don’t git euphoria’: EP to JL, 24 Nov. 1959, EP/JL 271.
‘Troica Roma resurgens’: D&F facsimile, notebook ‘4’, fo. 15.
‘Dec. 5. 4 p.m. Pax’: D&F facsimile, notebook ‘4’, fos. 16-18.
467 ‘Ciao, cara mia’: EP to MS, 17 Dec. [1959] (HRC/MSB). In Henry James story ‘The Private Life’ (1892), Lord Mellifont, ‘was all public and had no corresponding private life’, whereas Clare Vawdrey, the literary genius, ‘was all private and had no corresponding public [life]’.
‘M’amour’: EP to MS, 20 Dec. [1959] (HRC/MSB).
‘he better stay alive’: EP to MS, 20 Dec. [1959] (HRC/MSB).
‘and just before the end’: Eva Hesse to JL, as copied by JL to WCW, 7 Jan. 1960, WCW/JL 231-2.
‘depressed and jumpy’: DP to OSP, 1 Jan. 1960 (Hamilton/OSP).
‘during the night of Jan. 2’: DP to AVM, 3 Jan. 1960, as relayed by AVM to JL, 16 Jan. 1960 (Lilly)—cited Carpenter 862-3.
468 ‘Starting for Rome’: EP note, 9 Jan. 1960 (private collection).
‘the Eia Eia Allalà spirit’: MdR, Discretions 397. On Dadone see Heymann 269-70.
‘resting in Rap.’: DP note to folder of letters: ‘From EP (on trip to Rome) to DP (resting in Rap) Jan 1960. | Both away from corrosive castle.’ (Lilly).
‘not been so blind’: EP to DP, 11 Jan. [1960] (Lilly).
‘sorry not to contribute’: EP to DP, 11 Jan. [1960] (Lilly).
‘had orter made a better job’: EP to DP, 14 Jan. [1960] (Lilly).
‘how much of him’: EP to DP, 16 Jan. [1960] (Lilly).
‘Difficult to get unhitched’: EP to DP, 20 Jan. [1960] (Lilly).
‘Mao, Mao’: EP to DP, 22 Jan. [1960] (Lilly).
‘to hold my fragments together’: EP to DP, 24 Jan. [1960] (Lilly).
‘D/e swears’: EP to DP, 24 Jan. [1960] (Lilly).
‘Dadone idea’: EP to MdR, [10 Feb. 1960] (Beinecke).
‘Am being shot full’: EP to JL, 23 Feb. 1960, EP/JL 274.
‘emerged from the tomb’: EP to MdR, 17 Feb. [1960] (Beinecke).
an interview for the Paris Review: following paras. drawn mainly from Donald Hall,‘Fragments of Ezra Pound’ in his Remembering Poets: Reminiscences and Opinions (New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1979), 111-99—referred to here as Hall, Remembering Poets.
469 ‘we sat opposite each other’: Hall, Remembering Poets 114.
‘more than physical’: Hall, Remembering Poets 129.
‘exoneration, forgiveness’: Hall, Remembering Poets 149.
‘his new Cantos and fragments’: Hall, Remembering Poets 155; and see Paris Rev. interview 47.
470 offered free flights and hotels: EP to DP, 2 Mar. 1960 (Lilly).
‘may be the Xoros’: EP to Ronald Duncan, 6, 9, 18 Mar. [1960] (HRC).
to visit Leopardi’s house: EP to MdR, 11 Mar. [1960] (Beinecke).
‘not well but better’: EP to George Hartley 15 Mar. [1960] (Beinecke).
‘to resume human activity’: EP to Dudek, 20 Mar. 1960, EP/Dk [137]; EP to Gatter, 20 Mar. 1960 (Hamilton).
‘hadn’t changed much’: Samuel Hynes, ‘Meeting E.P.’, New Yorker (12 June 2006) 100.
571 ‘Oh, m’amour’: EP to MS, [17 Apr. 1960] (HRC/MSB).
‘His trouble’: EP to MS, 29 Apr. [1960] (HRC/MSB).
‘not transmit private discouragements’: from TS draft of canto 115, reproduced in Ronald Bush, ‘“Unstill, ever turning”: The Composition of Ezra Pound’s Drafts & Fragments’, in Ezra Pound and Europe, ed. Richard Taylor and Claus Melchior (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1993), 231.
‘dear, my dear’: EP to MS, 12 May [1960] (HRC/MSB).
showed up in Rapallo: DP to OSP, 21 May 1960 (Hamilton/OSP); also DP to AVM, 18 May 1960 (Lilly).
‘his head v. wobbly’: DP to OSP, 7 June 1960 (Hamilton/OSP).
‘Bless you for heroic offer’: EP to MS, 8 June [1960] (HRC/MSB).
472 ‘He can’t git to Texas’: EP to MS, 7 June [1960] (HRC/MSB).
‘haven’t come up with an answer’: EP to MS, 9 June [1960] (HRC/MSB).
‘don’t seem to answer question’: EP to MS, 10 June [1960] (HRC/MSB).
‘leaving Rap. domattina’: EP to MS, 14 July [1960] (HRC/MSB).
‘Of course I suspect’: DP to AVM, 30 May 1960 (Lilly).
‘released in my custody’: DP to AVM, 10 June 1960 (Lilly).
the matter of Pound’s money: see EP to DP, Feb. 1960 (Lilly).
‘you have plenty’: AVM to DP, 21 Oct. 1959 (Lilly).
packing up and sending to Omar: see DP to OSP, 12, 22 Aug., 1, 4. 9 Sept. 1959, 22 Jan., 7 Feb., 9 Mar., 25 June, 26 Oct., 3 Nov. 1960 (Hamilton/OSP).
if the letters were ‘to remain at Brun’: AVM to DP, 9 Nov. 1959 (Lilly).
‘full of manias’: DP to OSP, 4 July 1960 (Hamilton/OSP).
473 up to half an hour: see DP to OSP, 10 July 1960 (Hamilton/OSP).
‘a hunger strike’: DP to OSP, 23 July 1960 (Hamilton/OSP).
‘He start again’: EP to MS, 5 Aug. [1960] (HRC/MSB).
‘been sufficiently coherent’: EP to MS, 7 Aug. [1960] (HRC/MSB). ‘Unesco’ = Ionesco.
‘No, my Dear’: EP to MS, [13 Aug. 1960] (HRC/MSB). MS’s note is with the carbon she retained (HRC/MSB).
R. Murray Schafer: paragraph drawn from Schafer’s ‘Postcript 1942-1972’, EP&M 465-6.
474 Michael Reck: paragraph drawn from Reck 145-6.
the proofs of his Paris Review interview: see Hall, Remembering Poets 181-3. At least two serious errors remained uncorrected: on p. 41 of Paris Rev interview a negative is lacking—the sentence should read, ‘the New Age office helped me to see the war not as a separate event but as part of a system, one war after another’; and on p. 44 it should surely be not ‘the conversation’ but ‘the conservation of individual rights’.
lecture to students in Lund: see Little 160.
‘controversial figures’: EP to Dr Bengtson, Lund University, 4 June 1960 (private collection).
‘One day he feels very well’: MdR to Caverfors, as in Little 161, n.d.
a reading for a cultural society: DP to OSP, 26 Oct. 1960 (Hamilton/OSP).
‘the door swung open’: Eveline Bates Doob, ‘Some Notes on E.P.’, Pai 8.1 (1979) 70-1—referred to hereafter as Doob, ‘Some Notes’.
475 ‘the nervous breakdown’: DP to OSP, 26 Oct. 1960 (Hamilton/OSP).
Scraps and fragments: as seen in private collection.
‘nothing wrong in his middle’: DP to AVM, 19 Dec. 1960 (Lilly).
‘Ciao, Cara’: EP to MS, 15 Dec. [1960] (HRC/MSB).
‘typescript of 7 new cantos’: AB to OSP, 30 Aug. 1961 (Hamilton/OSP). These may have been typed from MS’s fresh TSS by Noel Stock, who was paid by EP to do secretarial work about this time. Henry Swabey recalled that ‘In March and April, 1960, he sent copies of cantos 110, 114 and 116 for me to look after’, in ‘A Page Without Which’, Pai 5.2 (1976) 335.
unable to control EP’s mail: DP to OSP, 27 Dec. 1960 (Hamilton/OSP).
‘3 Jan. I think’: EP to OR, 3 Jan. 1961 (Beinecke/OR).
476 ‘Feelin a bit more human’: EP to MS, 7 Jan. [1961] (HRC/MSB).
got out the Fenollosa manuscripts again: DP diary, 7 Jan. 1961 (Lilly).
‘been seeing him fairly regularly’: paragraph drawn from Doob, ‘Some Notes’, Pai 8.1(1979) 71-5.
477 ‘this WILL to starve himself’: DP to AVM, 20 Feb. 1961 (Lilly).
made her mad: DP to OSP, 17 Feb. 1961 (Hamilton/OSP).
‘a turn for the better’: DP to AVM, 10 Mar. 1961 (Lilly); and see DP to OSP, 7 and 12 Mar. 1961 (Hamilton/OSP).
‘two frail old men’: paragraph drawn from Doob, ‘Some Notes’, Pai 8.1 (1979) 75-6.
478 a meeting where Oswald Mosley spoke: details in this paragraph drawn from DP to AVM, 22 and 27 Mar. 1961 (Lilly); Tim Redman, ‘Pound’s Politics and Economics’, Cambridge Companion to Ezra Pound, 260; Archie Henderson, ‘Pound, Sweden, and the Nobel Prize’, Ezra Pound and Europe, 163-4; Alec Marsh, Ezra Pound (Reaktion Books, 2011), 214, 238 n. 15.
eating well: see DP to AVM, 27 Mar. 1961 (Lilly).
‘Evidently he not only won’t’: Doob, ‘Some Notes’, Pai 8.1 (1979) 76.
heart was failing: Dadone to MdR, [1] May 1961, as in Conover 222.
Mary went down to Rome: see DP to AVM, 3 May 1961 (Lilly); and DP to OSP, 3 May 1961 (Hamilton/OSP).
‘There’s an eye’: OR interview, May-June 1981, in the film Ezra Pound: An American Odyssey, as in Conover 222. Dates and some details in this paragraph also from Conover 222.
‘every day twice a day’: OR to Ronald Duncan, 3 Sept. 1961, as in Conover 222.
‘curled up on the back seat’: OR to Ronald Duncan, 3 Sept. 1961, as in Conover 222.
‘will never be himself again’: DP to AVM, 3 July 1961 (Lilly).
‘might not last long’: DP to OSP, 3 Aug. 1961 (Hamilton/OSP).
‘He’s just dying’, ‘he is drinking’: MdR as recorded by Doob, ‘Some Notes’, Pai 8.1 (1979) 77-8.
479 ‘the minute I entered the room’: OR as recorded by James Wilhelm [in 1987], ‘In the Haunt of the Priestess of the Hidden Nest: A Tribute to Olga Rudge’, Pai 26.1 (1997) 114-15.
a jar of Chinese ginger: OR to Ronald Duncan, 3 Sept. 1961, as in Conover 223.
that America destroyed: EP as reported in Doob, ‘Some Notes’, Pai 8.1 (1979) 77.
‘This is the end!’: EP as told by MdR to Little in 2003, Little 161.
Hilda Doolittle had died: details drawn from Jacob Korg, Winter Love: Ezra Pound and H.D. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003), 196-8—EP’s translation is on 197.
‘she isn’t @ all’: EP to Norman Holmes Pearson, 28 Sept. 1961, as in Korg, Winter Love 198.
‘60 years unrequited’: EP to OR, [Sept. 1961] (Beinecke/OR).
‘Helen in Egypt a marvel’: EP to Norman Holmes Pearson, 28 Sept. 1961, as in Korg, Winter Love 198.
‘algae of long past sea currents’: EP to Perdita Schaffner, quoted in Perdita Schaffner,‘Merano, 1962’, Pai 4.2-3 (1975) 514.
‘more lucid’, ‘looking old’: DP to OSP, 12 and 14 Oct. 1961 (Hamilton/OSP).
‘sitting at desk’: EP to OR, 14 Oct. 1961 (Beinecke/OR).
480 ‘much better’: OR to Ronald Duncan, 24 Oct. 1961, as in Conover 223.
Mary Barnard: paragraph drawn from Barnard, Assault on Mount Helicon, 305.‘At night, now 3.15 a.m.’: EP MS loose leaf, n.d. (private collection).
‘Telescope is totally blind’: EP MS loose leaf, n.d. (private collection).
‘much better lately’: DP to AVM, 26 Jan. 1962 (Lilly).
‘eating, showing interest’: OR to Ronald Duncan, 14 Feb. 1962, as in Conover 225.
481 ‘Keep hoping’: OR to Ronald Duncan, 14 Feb. 1962, as in Conover 225.
Dorothy was surprised: DP to OSP, 17 and 23 Mar. 1962 (Hamilton/OSP); and DP, Diary, 15 Mar. 1962 (Lilly).
‘Something is moving’: DP, Diary, 15 Mar. 1962 (Lilly).
‘ready to receive Him’: OR to EP, 2 Mar. 1962, as in Conover 226.
‘she hoping to see Him’: OR to EP, 27 Mar. 1962 (Beinecke/OR).
waiting for all her life: OR to EP, 22 Mar. 1962 as in Conover 224-5.
‘painting, cleaning, contriving’: OR to Ronald Duncan, 7 Apr. 1962, as in Conover 226.
‘as she painfully sees’: OR to EP, 6 Apr. 1962 (Beinecke/OR).
‘hasn’t got mobilized’: EP to OR, 12 Apr. 1962 (Beinecke/OR).
to stay with Olga for a month: see DP to OSP, 15 Apr. 1962 (Hamilton/OSP).
‘we brought EP here’: DP to AVM, 27 Apr. 1962 (Lilly).
‘not in communication’: DP to AVM, 6 May 1962 (Lilly).
‘They have taken possession’: DP to AVM, 2 Dec. 1962 (Lilly).
‘when He was well enough’: OR, I Ching notebook, 1977 (Beinecke/OR), entry dated 25 Apr. 1962, as in Conover 226.
17. HIS SICKNESS & HIS WEALTH, 1962-4
Mainly clinical
482 Pound’s physical state: paragraph drawn mainly from Giuseppe Bacigalupo, Ieri a Rapallo (Pasian di Prato: Campanotto Editore, 1993, 2006), 88-9; also from ‘Mr. Ezra Pound—Clinical report’, Clinica della Malattie Nervose e Mentali, Università di Genova (St Elizabeths files, 1161 a-b, US Nat. Arch.) See also Conover 228-9.
483 ‘a few forced words’: Thomas Cole, ‘The [Two] Women of Trachis’, Pai 26.1 (1997) [69].
‘My malady’: EP to Cole, [June 1962], enclosed with EP to WCW, [June 1962] (Beinecke).
‘Dante’s hell is COLD’: EP to WCW, [June 1962] (Beinecke).
484 ‘much thinner now’: Henry Swabey, ‘A Page Without Which’, Pai 5.2 (1976) 335-6. See also DP to OSP, 29 Aug. 1962 (Hamilton/OSP).
‘For Ezra’s “keep”’: DP to OR, 12 Sept. 1962 (Beinecke/OR).
‘all the little luxuries’: DP to OR, 2 Oct. 1962 (Beinecke/OR).
‘something extra for all your work’: DP to OR, Jan. 1963 (Beinecke/OR).
‘care and maintenance’: Court Order of 7 Aug. 1963, Committee Accounts folder (Lilly).
raised again to $400: see DP to OSP, 6 Oct. 1964 (Hamilton/OSP).
‘payments to Miss Rudge’: see Conover 248-9.
Poetry Memorial Prize: the ‘Citation’ is reprinted in Meacham 210-11.
485 ‘perhaps after your signature’: DP to EP, 16 Oct. 1962 (Lilly). See also DP to OSP, 11 and 22 Oct. 1962 (Hamilton/OSP).
‘Happy New Year’: EP to DP, 30 Dec. 1962 (Lilly).
‘no money is supposed’: DP to OR, 11 Oct. 1962 (Beinecke/OR).
Richard Stern’s account: Richard Stern, ‘A Memory or Two of Mr. Pound’, Pai 1, 2 (1972) [215]-17.
‘Dear Pound’: Oppen to EP, [Sept.-Oct. ?1962], Selected Letters of George Oppen, ed. Rachel Blau Du Plessis (Durham, NC, and London: Duke UniversityPress, 1990), 71-2.
486 ‘the best statement’: Lowell to EP, 10 Feb. 1963, The Letters of Robert Lowell, ed. Saskia Hamilton (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2005), 419.
‘he bore with me’: EP to Flossie Williams, as in The Letters of Robert Duncan and Denise Levertov, ed. Robert J. Bertholf and Albert Gelpi (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2004), 388-9.
‘This is the one’: Letters of Robert Duncan and Denise Levertov, ed. Bertholf and Gelpi, 388.
‘it is just as true’: Flossie Williams to EP, 24 Mar. 1863 (Beinecke). EP’s draft of his telegram to Flossie Williams is in the same folder.
Grazia Livi interview: as translated from Epoca (Milan), 24 Mar. 1963, in Pai 8.2 (1979) 243-7.
487 ‘beautiful, quiet, humble’: Jean McLean, ‘Translator’s note’ following her translation of the Grazia Livi interview, City Lights Journal 2 (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1964), 45-6.
488 ‘Dear Mrs Bullock’: EP to Mrs Bullock, draft dated 22 Aug. 1963 (Beinecke).
‘may draw on the prize money’: DP to OR, 2 Dec. 1963 (Beinecke/OR).
‘a perineal insertion’: ‘Clinical report’, Clinica della Malattie Nervose e Mentali, Università di Genova (St Elizabeths files, 1161 b, US Nat. Arch.).
‘remake normal men’: EP jotting on OR’s notebook, 1966, as in Conover 228.
did render the patient impotent: OR notebook 1976, as in Conover 229.
489 did successfully ‘disintoxicate’: OR as in Conover 230. Other details in paragraph from Conover 230; and see DP to OSP, 2, 6, 25 Dec. 1963 and 11, 23 Jan. 1964 (Hamilton/OSP).
The Committee’s agenda
489 ‘if my old will’: EP to DP on Villa Chiara notepaper, n.d. (Beinecke).
poring over the 1940 Will: there is much correspondence on the matter in the A. V. Moore and Frank Cockburn legal files now in the Lilly Library.
photostat copies: see DP to AVM, 23 Sept. 1962 (Lilly).
Moore suggested to Gleason and to Dorothy: AVM to Gleason, 8 Oct. 1962 (Lilly); AVM to DP, 8 Oct. 1962, and 25 Oct. 1962 (Lilly). [Under the Italian legal system the legislation of the deceased’s country of nationality would apply, unless the foreigner with an Italian will had explicitly chosen to have Italian law apply. In that case the estate would be divided equally between a surviving spouse and any children whether legitimate, illegitimate, or adopted. In the USA most states grant no rights to children to inherit from their parents. In the case of intestacy the distribution of the deceased’s property would be the responsibility of the administrator. Under US law, therefore, Omar’s being Pound’s legitimated child would not constitute him the ‘legal heir’; while under Italian law both he and Mary would be equal legal heirs.]
490 a notarized document: see p. 294 above.
‘your just inheritance’: AVM to OSP, 19 Oct. 1964 (Lilly).
a letter of instruction: EP to JL, 9 Nov. 1957, also signed by ‘Dorothy Pound, committee for Ezra Pound’—a copy sent to Cockburn by JL, 17 Dec. 1968, is with his letter in Cockburn files at that date (Lilly).
Gleason and Laughlin…suggested: see JL to AVM, 7 July 1963 (Lilly).
should be kept out of things: see AVM to DP, 29 June, 16 July, 30 Oct. 1963 (Lilly).
‘5% of what they collected’: AVM to DP, Nov. 1965 (Lilly).
‘earn tuppence’: DP to AVM, Nov. 1965 (Lilly).
491 ‘explain his anxieties’:TSE to AVM, 28 Mar. 1962 (Lilly).
‘both Gleason and Cockburn’: AVM to DP, 23 July 1962 (Lilly). See also AVM to TSE, 30 July 1962: ‘Omar has his lawyer friend Gleason and Jas. L. to advise him’ (Lilly).
‘inheritance and social position’: AVM to OSP, 7 Oct. 1964 (Lilly).
‘scandal’: for one instance see DP to AVM, 10 Mar. 1961 (Lilly).
‘any reference’: JL to AVM, 24 Aug. 1960 (Lilly).
‘Omar Shakespear Pound’: Norman 284.
‘his only child’: Ronald Duncan, ‘Pull Down Thy Vanity: A Visit to Ezra Pound’, Sunday Times (11 Feb. 1962) 33.
‘detrimental to the family’: DP to AVM, 1 July 1963 (Lilly).
special safe custody: AVM to DP, 10 Aug. 1962 (Lilly).
sending them…burning them: for examples see DP to OSP, 12, 21, 22 Aug., 4, 9 Sept. 1959, 22 Jan., 9 Mar., 26 Oct., 3 Nov. 1960; 17 Jan., 15 Aug. 1963 (Hamilton/OSP).
embargoed: see e.g. DP to OSP, 24 Sept., 3 Nov. 1960, 24 Aug. 1961 (Hamilton/OSP).
‘scandal’…suppressed: in 1988, Carpenter 455, gave a broad hint but could not be explicit; in 2000, Anne Conover was granted permission to use EP’s letters only on condition that she make major deletions of material concerning OSP’s paternity; however, Marjorie Perloff, in her review of EP/DP in the TLS of 16 July 1999, wrote that ‘Dorothy responded in pique [to the birth of Pound’s daughter] by taking a long trip to Egypt and came back pregnant’; then William Pratt, reviewing EP/DP in World Literature Today (22 Sept. 2000), wrote that EP was OSP’s ‘legal (but not biological) father’; Ira Nadel, in his Ezra Pound: A Literary Life (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 109, wrote that OSP’s ‘father was Egyptian’; and Leon Surette, reviewing a new edition of MdR’s Discretions in Pai 35.3 (2006) 184-5, wrote, ‘Discretions does not reveal that Omar’s father was not Pound, but an Egyptian officer’. See also Alec Marsh, Ezra Pound (Reaktion Books, 2011), 102.
492 ‘try to marry him’: DP to AVM, 25 May 1962 (Lilly).
give the world proof: AVM to DP, 31 May 1962 (Lilly).
‘a race—who dies first’: DP to OSP, 10 Mar. 1966 (Hamilton/OSP).
‘may not remarry’: OSP to AVM, 16 Feb. 1965 (Lilly).
‘copy of a typewritten will’: a copy is among EP’s legal papers (Beinecke).
‘to PROVE’: OSP to AVM, 16 Feb. 1965 (Lilly).
reported to Moore: DP to AVM, 26 Feb. 1965 (Lilly).
‘the permanent repository’: L. Quincy Mumford, Librarian of Congress, to EP, 28 Feb. 1965 (Beinecke).
493 ‘I appreciate the honor’: EP to Mumford, 21 Mar. 1965 (Beinecke).
‘gold-digger’: see AVM to DP, 28 Nov. 1962, and DP to AVM, 2 Dec. 1962 (Lilly).
‘for the benefit and maintenance of the patient’: AVM to TSE, 30 Jul. 1962 (Lilly).
inclined to scoff: see DP to AVM, 2 Dec. 1962 (Lilly). For an account of the eventual disposal of Pound’s literary estate see Donald C. Gallup, ‘The Ezra Pound Archive 1947-1987’, in his Pigeons on the Granite: Memories of a Yale Librarian (New Haven: The Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University, 1988), 191-210—a revised and expanded version of Donald Gallup, ‘The Ezra Pound Archive at Yale’, Yale University Library Gazette 60. 3-4 (1986) 161-77.
‘a long very quiet explanation’: DP to OSP, 15 Sept. 1963 (Hamilton/OSP).
494 ‘Boris tells me’: DP to EP, 15 Sept. 1963 (Lilly).
Cockburn advised Omar: see Cockburn to OSP, 16 Nov. 1967 (Lilly).
‘signature is not valid’: DP to OR, 10 May 1964—see also DP to OR, 12 Sept. 1963, and 6 Feb, 1969 (all Beinecke/OR). In the last DP wrote: ‘What kind of contract have you made with [Italian & German TV companies]?…the signing should by rights be by the committee—as Ezra’s signature is not valid.’
18. AFTERLIFE OF THE POET, 1965-72
495 ‘Tempus tacendi’: a time to be silent, from Ecclesiastes 3: 7, and from Sigismundo Malatesta’s motto, Tempus loquendi, Tempus tacendi. See 31/153, and 74/429.
‘visibly shaken’: Peter Russell, ‘Ezra Pound: The Last Years. A Personal Memoir’, The Malahat Review 29 (1974) 33. Referred to hereafter as ‘Russell, Malahat’.
‘On his own hearth’: EP, ‘For T. S. E.’, Sewanee Review 74.1 (1966) 109, reprinted S Pr 434.
‘the true Dantescan voice’: EP, ‘For T. S. E.’, Sewanee Review 74.1 (1966) 109, reprinted S Pr 434.
‘apparently lost’: Irish Times, 10 Feb. 1965—communicated by Walter Baumann.
496 ‘tomb without flowers’: EP to Pasolini, 1968, as in David Anderson, ‘BREAKING THE SILENCE: The interview of Vanni Ronnsisvalle and Pier Paolo Pasolini with Ezra Pound in 1968’, Pai 10.2 (1981) 335. The Horst Tappe photo is reproduced as illustration no. 36.
‘a warning’: EP to DP, 27 Feb. 1967 (Lilly).
‘to be buried alone’: EP to DP, 27 Feb. 1967 (Lilly).
a codicil: the copy in Beinecke reads, ‘Codicil to my will dated 17 June 1940 repeated 15 Aug 15, 1964: I leave these instructions: my books, art works letters and manuscripts now at 2 Sant’Ambrogio and/or 252 San Gegorio Venice, or any subsequent address of hers to which I may move them, I leave unconditionally to Olga Rudge. Further, as outlined in a letter to my wife Dorothy Pound, I wish to be buried in Hailey, Idaho, with my head by Gaudier Brzeska to mark the spot. If I have not been able to complete arrangements I wish Olga Rudge or someone else she may choose to carry out the matter. [signed] Ezra Pound | 2 Sant’Ambrogio di Rapallo, 11th September 1967.’
‘immense row of mountains’: EP to Pasolini, 1968, as in David Anderson, ‘BREAKING THE SILENCE’, Pai 10.2 (1981) 335.
‘should eliminate’: EP to DP, 27 Feb. 1967 (Lilly).
497 ‘really very difficult’: Sister Bernetta Quinn, as recalled by Mary Barnard, Barnard 306.
Peter Russell: this paragraph drawn from Russell, Malahat 14-17.
498 ‘the old poet’: Guy Davenport, ‘Ezra Pound 1885-1972’, in his collection of essays The Geography of the Imagination (Picador, 1984), 170-1.
‘Hedgehog and Fox’: see Guy Davenport, Archilochos/Sappho/Alkman (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), 57.
liked to read to her: Davenport, Geography of the Imagination, 171.
‘plenty of effects’: Russell, Malahat 19.
‘put two thoughts together’: Russell, Malahat 18.
performed as a ballet: see Testament II 198.
499 ‘still as a Mandarin statue’: Lawrence Ferlinghetti, ‘Pound at Spoleto’, from Open Eye, Open Heart (New York: New Directions, 1973), as in The Postmoderns: The New American Poetry Revised, ed. Donald Allen and George F. Butterick (New York: Grove Press, 1982), 78.
‘eyes were like stone’: John Wieners, ‘Ezra Pound at the Spoleto Festival 1965’, Agenda 4.2 (1965) 68.
‘frail but stubborn’: Ferlinghetti, ‘Pound at Spoleto’, 78.
‘The Grasshopper and the Ant’: Marianne Moore’s translation, from her The Fables of La Fontaine (New York: Viking, 1954), is included in A Marianne Moore Reader (New York: The Viking Press, 1961), 95-6.
Lowell’s ‘imitation’: ‘Brunetto Latini’, Near the Ocean (Faber & Faber, 1967), 48-52.
‘knocked me down’: Ferlinghetti, ‘Pound at Spoleto’, 78.
‘a beautiful model’: Robert Duncan to Denise Levertov, 10 Nov. 1969, The Letters of Robert Duncan and Denise Levertov, ed. Robert J. Bertholf and Albert Gelpi (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2004), 642. The recording is Spoken Arts SA 1098 Stereo, Ezra Pound Reading his Translations of The Confucian Odes (New Rochelle, NY: Spoken Arts, [?1970]).
Dominique de Roux: paragraph drawn from Jean-Luc Barré, Dominique de Roux/Le provocateur (1935-1977) (Paris: Fayard, 2005), 240-3. I am indebted to Philippe Mikriammos for the gift of this book, and also for Dominique de Roux et Ezra Pound (Paris: Au Signe de la Licorne, 2007).
500 ‘C’est moi dans la poubelle’: there are variant versions of this—one has EP saying it to OR during the performance, another has him saying it to JL next day. OR’s is in the film Ezra Pound: An American Odyssey, reported in Wilhelm: 1994, 340-1; JL’s is in Pound as Wuz. Essays and Lectures on Ezra Pound (Saint Paul: Graywolf Press, 1987), 29.
derelict: from OR’s notebook, as in Conover 241.
seen as two shades: from Richard Sieburth’s commentary, ‘Ezra Pound: Letters to Natalie Barney’, ed. Richard Sieburth, Pai 5.2 (1976) 295.
had seen…some of the great Greek temples: this paragraph and the next drawn from Demetres Tryphonopoulos’s conference paper, ‘Ezra Pound’s 1965 Trip to Greece’, and from Charles Lock’s conference paper presented in Athens in April 2006, ‘An Exacting Encounter: Ezra Pound and Zissimos Lorenzatos’—both papers generously communicated by their authors.
501 the struggle of intelligence: cf. EP, ‘As Sextant’, GK 352.
‘the 3 fates’: EP recollection recorded with OR note in OR’s Notebook II, 66 (Beinecke/OR).
‘the sea in which he floated’: Richard Stern, ‘A Memory or Two of Mr Pound’, Pai 1.2 (1972) 216.
‘dancing seems better’: OR notebook, as in Conover 239.
502 ‘three days in Paris, Orleans in May’: OR to Valerie Eliot, 18 Aug. 1970, as in Conover 249. Other details in the paragraph from Conover 232, 237, 241, 243.
an episode: drawn mainly from ‘Clinical report’, Clinica della Malattie Nervose e Mentali, Università di Genova (St Elizabeths files, 1161 c-e, US Nat. Arch.). Romolo Rossi, who, as a young psychiatrist, had observed EP in the University Clinic, gave a fuller and somewhat different account, including some new and disturbing details, at the 21st International Ezra Pound Conference in Rome in July 2005:
The report sent to us from St Elizabeths Hospital was quite detailed: the psychiatric examination showed no disorder that was schizophrenic or paranoid. Instead there was the description of a complex personality, with traits of unstable behaviour and bizarre attitudes.…
[W]hen he was admitted to our hospital, he had a depressed mood, anxiety expressed as asthenia and psychomotor retardation, severe insomnia, delusional ideas of self-deprecation, loss of interest in anything, convictions that he would never get better, of guilt, and of being contaminated by microbes…
A previous depression had been observed and had been treated with electro-convulsive therapy. This time we chose pharmacological treatment and used the prototype antidepressant medication, imipramine (trade name Tofranil) at medium to high doses of 200 to 300 milligrams [per] day. He responded dramatically within four weeks, moving into a clearly manic state: he was euphoric, had psychomotor excitement, an ecstatic attitude, and pressured speech. He responded well to sedation, and his mood and behaviour became normal. The diagnosis was now clear, both from history and clinical observation: manic depressive illness (also called bipolar disorder).
Rossi concluded his paper with this recognition: ‘Our definitions are approximate, and our tools are not able to reconstruct the mind of a poet.’—Romolo Rossi, ‘A Psychiatrist’s Recollections of Ezra Pound’, Ezra Pound, Language and Persona ed. Massimo Bacigalupo and William Pratt (Genoa: Università degli Studi di Genova, Quaderni di Palazzo Serra 15, 2008), 145-6.
under his doctor’s name: Massimo Bacigalupo, ‘Sant’Ambrogio in the half-light: Growing up near Olga Rudge and Ezra Pound’, Pai 26.1 (1997) 37.
503 ‘a catatonic state’: OR as reported in Conover 237.
‘I had a good talk with Ezra’: Robert Lowell to OR, 6 May 1966, Letters of Robert Lowell, ed. Saskia Hamilton (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005), 470.
‘awesome and rather shattering’: Robert Lowell to JL, 31 Aug. 1966, Letters of Robert Lowell, 473.
From her notebooks: see Conover 239, 258, 263.
read a great deal: Russell, Malahat 33.
played chess: Russell, Malahat 42.
cook supper: Russell, Malahat 36.
504 ‘nostos to Olga’: EP note copied by OR in her Venice notebooks (Beinecke/OR).
‘There is more courage’: EP MS note in OR’s Venice notebooks (Beinecke/OR).
‘her name was courage’: EP, Canti postumi 266.
‘If there was a trace’: in EP’s hand in OR notebook, as in Conover 248.
505 owed everything to her: see e.g. Russell, Malahat 29.
‘we might say’: Daniel Cory, ‘Ezra Pound: A Memoir’, Encounter 30.5 (May 1968) 30-9—extract in Ezra Pound: A Critical Anthology ed. J. P. Sullivan (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1970), 374-6. Curiously, TSE, in ‘A Note on Ezra Pound’, Today IV.19 (Sept. 1918), had written of the earliest cantos: ‘In appearance it is a rag-bag of Mr. Pound’s reading in various languages, from which one fragment after another is dragged to light, and illuminated by the beauty of his phrase.…And yet the thing has, after one has read it once or twice, a positive coherence.’
‘chosen at random’: EP to Pasolini, 1968, as in David Anderson, ‘BREAKING THE SILENCE’, Pai 10.2 (1981) 338.
‘to preserve some of the values’: EP note, ‘Guide to Kulchur’, dated ‘20 June 1970’ (Kenner Archive, HRC).
‘sentences referring to groups’: EP, ‘Foreword’, S Pr 6.
506 ‘The root is greed’: EP, ‘Gold and Work’ (1944, 1951), S Pr 317.
‘This ruin’: EP, ‘The Economic Nature of the United States’ (1944, 1950, 1971), S Pr 148.
upon the root cause: see Redman 254.
The Allen Ginsberg vortex: paragraph based on Allen Ginsberg, ‘Encounters with Ezra Pound. Journal Notes’ (1974), in his Composed on the Tongue, ed. Donald Allen (Bolinas: Grey Fox Press, 1979), 1-17. See also ‘The Death of Ezra Pound’, in Ginsberg’s Allen Verbatim. Lectures on Poetry, Politics, Consciousness, ed. Gordon Ball (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1975), 179-87; based also on Michael Reck, ‘A Conversation between Ezra Pound and Allen Ginsberg’, Evergreen Review 57 (June 1968) 27ff.
507 his services to literature: JL modestly said he was being honoured as EP’s publisher, but Professor Austin Briggs of Hamilton College assured me in Oct. 1994 that it was for his services to literature in general.
trip to America: details from JL to DP, 20 June 1969 (Lilly); Stock 458-60; Carpenter 900-2; Conover 243-5.
Lowell observed Pound: Robert Lowell to Elizabeth Bishop, 10 Nov. 1969, Letters of Robert Lowell, 525.
Laughlin noticed: JL, Pound as Wuz, 30. Wheelchair from Conover 244.‘The more we know of Eliot’: EP, ‘Preface’ to T.S.Eliot, The Waste Land. A Facsimile & Transcript of the Original Drafts Including the Annotations of Ezra Pound, ed. Valerie Eliot (Faber & Faber, 1971), vii.
‘a jumble’: TSE, ‘On a Recent Piece of Criticism’, Purpose 10.2 (1938) 93.
508 Hamilton College: most of this paragraph from conversation with Professor Austin Briggs at Hamilton, Oct. 1994. See also JL, Pound as Wuz, 30.
‘I take it as it comes’: Austin Briggs as reported in William Hoffa, ‘“Ezra Pound: A Celebration”, Hamilton College, April 25-26, 1980’, Pai 9.2 (1980) 576-7.
‘he talked’: detail from Austin Briggs in conversation Oct. 1994. Other details from OR’s notebook, as in Conover 245.
‘Pound silent’: George Oppen to Aleksandar Nejgebauer and family, [18 Mar. 1973], Selected Letters of George Oppen, 259-60. See also George Oppen,’Pound in the U.S.A.,1969’, Sagetrieb 1.1 (1982) [119].
509 National Book Awards: paragraph drawn from Robert Lowell to Elizabeth Bishop, 11 Mar. 1970, Letters of Robert Lowell, 528-9.
Hugh MacDiarmid: Hugh MacDiarmid as reported by G Singh, ‘Ezra Pound: A Commemorative Symposium’, Pai 3.2 (1974) 151-2.
American Academy of Arts and Sciences: my account draws on several sources: Heymann 310-11 and 356 nn. 1 and 2; Carpenter 908-9; Alan Levy, Ezra Pound: The Voice of Silence (Sag Harbor: The Permanent Press, 1983), 33-5; Donald Hall, Remembering Poets, 189-90. See also Allen Ginsberg, Allen Verbatim, 180.
510 ‘potentially just as creative’: Jean Mayer, as reported in Robert Reinhold, ‘Ezra Pound is Focus of New Dispute’, New York Times, 5 July 1972.
‘with memories of the holocaust’: Harvey Brooks, President of the Academy, to members of the Academy, as cited in Levy, The Voice of Silence 34.
‘the most despicable things’: Daniel Bell as cited in Heymann 310.
‘I am as outraged’: Martin L. Kilson in International Herald Tribune, 7 July 1972, 16—as cited in Heymann 311,561.
personally put on trial: JL to Noel Stock, 19 June 1972 (Canaday Center, University of Toledo)—as cited in Carpenter 908.
Harry Levin protested: as in Donald Hall, Remembering Poets, 189-90.
511 wrote to Hugh Kenner: John Voss to Hugh Kenner, 14 June 1972 (Kenner Archive, HRC).
a reading at the Folger: JL to Noel Stock, 5 Sept. 1972 (Canaday Center, University of Toledo)—as cited in Carpenter 908-9.
Buckminster Fuller: the main source for my account of the Fuller/Pound interaction is Buckminster Fuller, ‘Pound, Synergy, and the Great Design’, the 1977 Ezra Pound Lecture at the University of Idaho, as printed in Agenda 16.3-4 (1978/9) 130-64. I have also drawn on Scott Eastham’s distinguished conference paper, ‘“Friend of the Universe”—Pound & Bucky Fuller: The Cosmic Connection’, a copy of which he generously supplied.
an integrity of patterned energies: a Hugh Kenner formulation.
513 ‘to be men…not destroyers’: final line of Drafts & Fragments.
‘at the poets’ performance’: Buckminster Fuller, in Buckminster Fuller and Anwar Dil, Humans in Universe (NewYork: Mouton, 1981), 21—cited Eastham, ‘Friend of the Universe’, 6.
‘To Buckminster Fuller’: EP inscription on copy of D&F presented to Fuller in 1971—cited Eastham 7.
Igor Stravinsky: details from Conover 252-3.
Marianne Moore’s death: details from Russell, Malahat 40-1.
‘no finer epitaph’: Russell, Malahat 41.That year: details in this paragraph and the one following drawn from Conover 254-7; Russell, Malahat 42-3; Davenport, ‘Ezra Pound 1885-1972’, Geography of the Imagination, 169-71.
514 Olga holding his hand: Joan Fitzgerald told it differently: ‘seeing there was nothing they could do, [they] went in search of a bite to eat’, and when they returned they found Pound had died (see Tim Redman, Modernism/modernity 13.1 (2006) 936. Redman confirmed to me that it was Joan Fitzgerald herself who had told him that.
515 Bayle’s Dictionnaire: Pound’s copy of Pierre Bayle, Dictionnaire historique et critique, 5th edn., 4 vols. (Amsterdam: Chez P. Brunel [et al.], 1740), is now in HRC.
‘A little light’: 116/797.
EP’s seal: for the characters and their meaning see p. 390 and note.
Appendix The Settlement of the Estate
517 ‘AFTER THREE DAYS’: OR to OSP, 2 Nov. 1972 (Pound D. MSS adds., Lilly).
‘parked’: DP to Edith Madge, 25 May 1973 (Pound D. MSS adds., Lilly). Some details in this paragraph drawn from the recollections of Elizabeth Pound kindly communicated 20 Feb. 2014.
‘SERVICE FRIDAY’: OR to OSP, 2 Nov. 1972 (Pound D. MSS adds., Lilly).
his 1967 letter: see p. 496 above.
telegram from the American Embassy in London: a copy is in a ‘Funeral arrangements’ folder at Hamilton (Hamilton/OSP).
another telegram: a photocopy of this telegram, dated 2 Nov. 1972, from the US Consulate in Milan to the Secretary of State in Washington, DC, is also in the ‘Funeral arrangements’ folder (Hamilton/OSP), and is paraphrased in Ezra Pound: A Selected Catalog (Clinton, NY: Hamilton College Library, 2005), 81.
Omar Pound, with Peter du Sautoy: see P. F. Du Sautoy, letter to the editor, Pai 4.1 (1975) 199.
the Petition: a copy dated 24 and 26 Oct. 1972 is filed with Committee Accounts (Lilly).
‘if a new effort’: Gleason as reported in JL to DP, 21 June 1972 (Lilly).
‘without heart or conscience’: JL to Hugh Kenner, 6 March and 23 July 1968 (Kenner Archive, HRC)—I have conflated details from the two letters.
518 Final Report: the copy sent to DP by the Auditor-Master of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia on 10 Oct. 1973 is filed with Committee Accounts (Lilly). The Order Ratifying the Report was filed in the Court on 1 Nov. 1973. Notice of the filing of the Final Report was to be sent to DP, to OSP, and to their six legal firms—MdR was not on the list, nor any legal firm representing her.
declared the estate: all details from the Final Report.
sold to the Lilly Library: see Donald C. Gallup, ‘The Ezra Pound Archive 1947-1987’, in his Pigeons on the Granite: Memories of a Yale Librarian (New Haven: The Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University, 1988), 209.
services charged to the Patient’s estate: details in Committee Accounts and Frank Cockburn files (Lilly).
‘the legal heir’: Gallup, ‘The Ezra Pound Archive 1947-1987’, Pigeons on the Granite, 200. Gallup had scrupulously written, ‘There was a son, Omar, whose birth certificate bore acknowledgment by Pound of paternity’ (197).
519 the primary beneficiary: JL to Hugh Kenner, 1973 (Kenner Archive, HRC).
the purchase of the Ezra Pound Archive: see the account in Donald C. Gallup, ‘The Ezra Pound Archive 1947-1987’, Pigeons on the Granite, 191-210.