Ezra Pound: The Solitary Volcano
By John Tytell
Doubleday, 384 pages, $19.95
`Pound is an incredible ass,” Robert Frost wrote after meeting him in England in 1913. Like other American writers before and since, feeling unappreciated at home, they had gone abroad to make their mark. In green billiard cloth trousers, pink coat and blue shirt, and with his pointed red beard, single earring and sombrero, Pound had little trouble attracting attention in London and was soon taken up by Ford Madox Ford, who introduced him to the leading literati. But his costume, and theatrics like eating the tulips in dinner-table centerpieces, caused older luminaries to suspect a show-off or charlatan, or worse. He was definitely ”not our kind.”
Still, if a poseur, Pound was also precocious. He quickly absorbed the new aesthetics of Ford and T. E. Hulme, refining them into what would become the tenets of Modernism. Soon even the master, W. B. Yeats, became a disciple, submitting his work to Pound`s editorial hand as would so many others. With startling acuity, Pound perceived several as-yet unrecognized talents, and turned literary entrepreneur. He placed T. S. Eliot`s ”The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” in Poetry (founder Harriet Monroe had named Pound the magazine`s foreign editor in 1912), where he also declared the doctrines of Imagism, exemplified by the poems of H. D. (Hilda Doolittle) and James Joyce, whose fiction he promoted tirelessly. Always in action, he founded the short- lived Vorticist movement, issued manifestos, made other ”discoveries,”
translated Provencal and Chinese poetry, wrote his first Cantos. Meanwhile, he contributed staggering numbers of articles and reviews to new literary journals. In 1918 alone, he published 117 times and in 1919, 189 times.
Yet, for all this prodigious activity as poet and impresario, Pound never achieved the recognition he felt he deserved in England. Moving to Paris in 1920, he was at first elated and recharged by the stimulating artistic climate of the capital, where he soon met Cocteau, Brancusi, Picabia, Stravinsky, the Dadaists, the Surrealists, e.e. cummings. But again, initial enthusiasm soured, and Pound`s ambitions as literary mover and maitre ended in disappointment. Finally he settled in self-imposed ”exile” in Rapallo, on the Italian Riviera.
With lingering resentment, he continued on the Cantos that would be his life`s chief work, and on translations, critical books, hundreds of articles; he also penned about a thousand letters a year. With growing bitterness, he descended into the quagmire of polemics and hatred–against American politicians, bankers and Jews–which ended in scandal, charges of treason, and his return to the U.S. in ignominy. In grotesque fashion, he had regained center stage.
”As baffling a bundle of contradictions as any man whom I had ever known,” recalled the poet John Gould Fletcher in 1937. And 15 years after his death, Pound remains a mystery. His prolific and difficult work has created a major academic industry. With so much scholarly ink already spilled on the problems of his career and character, do we really need another critical biography?
That, John Tytell admits, is the question he posed to New Directions publisher James Laughlin before embarking on this latest survey of ”the solitary volcano.” Laughlin is reported to have said there was still a need to ”explore the myths behind the man rather than merely debunking them.”
Instead of ”another behemoth biography,” Tytell offers in these cleanly written pages a summary of the facts while capturing the exciting flavor of an experimental age, particularly the `20s and `30s. And, using Pound`s own
”luminous method” of carefully selected details and quotes (but without his chaos), he does largely succeed in sorting out the historical and psychological factors that created the Pound enigma.
Pound`s roles as catalyst and confidant are legendary. Hemingway claimed he taught him more ”about how to write and how not to write than anyone else.” He later eulogized: ”He defends (his friends) when they are attacked, he gets them into magazines and out of jail. He loans them money. He sells their pictures. He arranges concerts for them. He writes articles about them…. He gets publishers to take their books…. And in the end a few of them refrain from knifing him at the first opportunity.” Despite his countless efforts–the revision of ”The Waste Land” and the indefatigable promotion of ”Ulysses” are but the most famous cases–how is it Pound managed eventually to alienate almost everyone, including those he aided most? Pound`s egotism and lack of self-knowledge run as leitmotifs through Tytell`s book. Like Frost, his old friend William Carlos Williams found Pound an ass, and a patronizing one as well. Many others, friends and critics alike, found him stubborn and condescending, both single-minded and wrong-headed.
H.D., a one-time sweetheart, remarked: ”He is adolescent. He seems almost `arrested` in development.” Pound`s capacity for delusion and self-pity was indeed great. Yet his feelings of wrongful neglect were justified. As the fame of his proteges grew, so did Pound`s jealousy and paranoia. He aspired to power as literary arbiter. But tactful Eliot–impeccably dressed, prim, astutely accommodating–had by the late `20s assumed that role.
When, at their first and only meeting, Mussolini said he found the Cantos ”divertente” (entertaining!), Pound foolishly believed he could play the part of poet-philosopher to a prince. Profoundly learned in literature, he assumed similar expertise in politics and economics. Simplistic and woefully naive about Realpolitick, he was well-practiced in hatred, his Fascist sympathies and anti-Semitism already of longstanding. His crank letters
–Tytell quotes many–were now augmented by vile but disjointed diatribes on Rome Radio. His speeches were often so incoherent the Italians thought he was crazy–or speaking in code.
As in his tracing of the curves of the earlier career, Tytell`s account of Pound`s descent–the wartime broadcasts, the captivity in Pisa, the insanity hearings, the 13-year incarceration at St. Elizabeths mental hospital –is vividly detailed, lucid, balanced. Like many of Pound`s contemporaries, a majority of the examining psychiatrists and many critics, Tytell finds that while the manic poet was an unusual case, he was probably not truly or totally insane. He might have appeared to be, to those unfamiliar with his usual behavior.
Riding from the hospital one day, William Carlos Williams discussed the case with the taxi driver. Perhaps the cabbie was right when he said: ”He just talk too much.”
Whatever his true mental state, Pound`s words were often reprehensible. Whether the egotist played the knave or the fool (or perhaps King Lear) may never be settled. As in his fragmented and frequently obscure work, Pound adopted numerous masks and personas in life. Many of them were not pleasant.
Lawrance Thompson`s disclosures of Frost`s private life in his exhaustive biography revealed a miserable man; they have not diminished Frost`s stature as a poet. Pound`s work remains problematic. Tytell`s analysis of the evolution of Pound`s style and his succinct examination of the complex technique of the Cantos provide helpful guides.
With typically outrageous overstatement, in 1922 Pound declared the end of the Christian era. But his literary innovations and midwifery–so well documented here–and his influence upon contemporary writing were to prove that he was not a ”complete ass” in proclaiming the beginning of ”The Pound Era.”
